PLAY TIME, Contemporary Art Biennale Les Ateliers de Rennes




Contemporary art biennale
27 September–30 November 2014
Opening and professional preview:
Friday 26 September

Artists in PLAY TIME:
Michael Beutler, Cosima von Bonin, Lilian Bourgeat, Nicolas Chardon, François Curlet, Sam Curtis, Michael Dans, Denicolai & Provoost, Dewar & Gicquel, Florence Doléac, Jimmie Durham, Priscila Fernandes, Robert Filliou, Marianne Flotron, Michel François, Fucking Good Art, Gaillard & Claude, Ane Hjort Guttu, Pierre Huyghe, Ann Veronica Janssens, Sven ‘t Jolle, Gaspar Libedinsky, Erik van Lieshout, Maider López, Emilio Lopéz-Menchero, M/M (Paris), Erwan Mével, Gareth Moore, Mrzyk & Moriceau, Oscar Murillo, Rivane Neuenschwander & Cao Guimarães, Jean-Marc Paquot, Bruno Peinado, Hugues Reip, Hans Schabus, Franck Scurti, Katarina Ševic, Pilvi Takala, Jay Tan, Koki Tanaka, Pierre Tatu, Christophe Terlinden, Tehnica Schweiz, Thomas Tudoux, Donelle Woolford

Curator: Zoë Gray

Why today has work become our sole source of self-validation? 
As adults, do we still have the right to play?
Should we be dedicating more time to idleness?

In our work-oriented culture, especially in the protestant north, we have been told since the Middle Ages that idle hands are morally suspect. Since the Industrial Revolution, our hitherto self-organized manner of working—and playing—has been standardized, made to fit the factory whistle and the office clock. What has this done to our understanding of play time?

Appropriating the title of Jacques Tati’s most famous commercial flop, the 4th edition of Les Ateliers de Rennes – biennale d’art contemporain takes a Hulotesque stroll through the field of contemporary artistic practice. Exploring notions of work, play, idleness and the time we devote to each, PLAY TIME is structured around three international group shows that take place at La Halle de la Courrouze (a former military arsenal), at the Rennes Museum of Fine Arts and at the Frac Bretagne.

Bringing together the work of established and emerging artists, new commissions and existing works, PLAY TIME approaches the exhibition simultaneously as a playground and a place of work, a space and time of possibility in which artists and audience can play together. 

La Halle de la Courrouze
Le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes
Frac Bretagne
& associated venues
Rennes, Brittany
France

http://www.lesateliersderennes.fr

Emotional Resources




Exhibition dates: 19 September 2014 to 10 January 2015.
Preview: Thursday 18 September, 6:00 - 8:00pm 

Performances: Daniel Lichtman will be performing: 'Broadcasting from a Secret Underground Bunker - one million views, thanks for watching' on the evening of the preview at 6.45pm & 7.30pm.

Main Gallery: Victor Alimpiev, Amalia Ulman,  Johann Arens,  Renate Bertlmann,  Ian Breakwell, Harry Burke, Moyra Davey, Július Koller, Daniel Lichtman, Harry Meadley, Erica Scourti, Matthew Smith, Pilvi Takala, Marie Toseland,  Phoebe Unwin, Donald Urquhart
Project Space: Joanna Piotrowska

"To intimate is to communicate with the sparest of signs and gestures, and at its root intimacy has the quality of eloquence and brevity"  - Lauren Berlant

What does it mean to convert private experience into public speech? Emotional Resources is a group exhibition that brings together art works from an international group of artists from the Seventies to the present day, exploring forms of intimacy and the everyday. The artists employ a range of approaches and media, including painting, video, photography and performance.  Alongside the group show NGCA will present Polish photographer Joanna Piotrowska's first solo exhibition, s.w.a.l.k. (sealed with a loving kiss) in the Project Space. From the tender touch to an awkward embrace the exhibitions ask, how did the public sphere become saturated with the exposure of private life?

The artworks shift between embodied forms of conversation such as speech and gesture towards more textual forms of communication, registering a curiosity in the overlooked details of daily life. Intimacy, to paraphrase Lauren Berlant, has the ability to repel the rhetoric and logic of law and politics within the public sphere and engender more intuited relationships. We can see the love letter in the workplace as a radical act; vulnerability and awkwardness can be a quest for something more authentic.  At a moment when the division between private and public is increasingly dissolved, how do we value emotionalism? 

Central to the exhibition is Ping-Pong (U.F.O.) (1970-onwards), a functioning Ping-Pong table by Július Koller. The work attempts to disarm the usual expectations of a gallery environment and calls for a more playful and social engagement with public space. Working in Communist Czechoslovakia throughout the Seventies and Eighties, Koller's work offered a spirited counterpoint to a society that was increasingly governed by bureaucracy. This serves as a guiding principle for 'Emotional Resources', and suggests that it is valuable to assert our personal histories and actual bodies into public concerns. 

Emotional Resources is the first project curated by George Vasey since joining the organisation.



Emotional Resources
Exhibition Seminar: Art, intimacy and the public sphere
Saturday 1 November, 11am-5pm. £7

Address:
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art
City Library and Arts Centre
Fawcett Street
Sunderland
SR1 1RE
W www.ngca.co.uk
T 0191 561 1235
F 0191 567 0907

Attires and Attitudes at Tartu Art Museum






On Thursday, 4 September at 5 pm Pilvi Takala`s solo show “Attires and Attitudes” will open at Tartu Art Museum, Estonia.

For Tartu Art Museum, showing contemporary art by the most important artists from our neighbouring countries, alongside our own collection of Estonian contemporary art  has developed into a tradition. This year we have chosen Pilvi Takala from Finland, one of the most distinctive and productive artists amongst the younger generation active and in the international art scene today.

This exhibition at Tartu Art Museum is Pilvi Takala’s first comprehensive solo exhibition in the context of an art museum and it is a great honour and pleasure for us to host her and to produce this exhibition.


The exhibition “Attires and Attitudes” is accompanied by a publication that contains an interview with Pilvi Takala about her practices of art and life. 32 pages, in English and Estonian.

TARTU ART MUSEUM
Raekoja plats 18, Tartu

Exhibitions open
Wed, Fri–Sun 11–18 / Thu 11–21
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