Fwd: Aesthetica February Newsletter

Recommended article from the current issue of Aesthetica Magazine The New Generation of British Fashion Photographers: Through its implicit and explicit nature, fashion photography is reaching new heights. This winter, a new wave of photographers exhibits the ultimate 21st century narrative. Image credit: © Alice Hawkins, (detail of) Dashenka Girado and Victoria the Bengal tiger. Las Vegas 2008. For more, visit www.aestheticamagazine.com
	Contents
Welcome to the February Newsletter 2010 Welcome to the February Newsletter. I love February, it's the month when it starts to stay lighter later, and everyone is waiting in anticipation for spring.	Welcome Arts News 1. Progress Reports 2. Peter Liversidge 3. Henry Moore 4. Marcus Coates 5. Ilkka Halso Special Offers for Newsletter Subscribers 1. YARN Festival – 2 for 1 Aesthetica News 1. Global distribution 2. What's on in your area?     Event listings at Aesthetica 3. Follow us Excerpt from our blog Pavel Bϋchler wins Northern Art Prize   Place an ad Advertising with Aesthetica is good value for money. For more details click here.
New Issue Out Now Exploring the creative zeitgeist, Aesthetica editorial is engaging and offers new perspectives on contemporary arts, looking at the arts in relation to the social, political and economic. Issue 33 engages with current debate and looks how the boundaries in arts and design are forever changing. Much of this issue is about ingenuity, innovation and pushing the artistic boundaries – how far and precisely where can they go? Presenting a survey of these ideas, this issue drives the debate forward. In art, opening at Liberty is OH! YOU PRETTY THING, which showcases the new generation of British fashion photographers and explores the ideas behind their work. We're also looking at artists' wallpaper and defining our interior spaces with a new exhibition Walls Are Talking opening at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. Peter Kardia curates From Floor to Sky; a major exhibition on British sculpture and Bani Abidi opens her new work Karachi Series, at Green Cardamom, exploring the personal narratives of identity. In film, we have a chat with Martin Koolhoven about his new film Winter in Wartime, looking at love, loss and deception at the close of the Second World War and Part Two of our How to Be an Animator series with The Brothers McLeod.  In addition to this, Kathryn Williams tells us about her new album and we take an in-depth look at Sound Art and its amorphous definitions. There's a preview of Danza Contemporanea de Cuba's world premiere at eight venues this winter and, to conclude, a discussion with Ireland's rising star, Paul Murray, about his new book Skippy Dies. The issue also features an extract from Aifric Campbell's new book, The Loss Adjustor, and a Q&A with the director/producer, Simon Curtis. With all the best exhibitions, productions, music and new releases of the coming months, Aesthetica Magazine celebrates innovation and ingenuity. This is an extremely exciting issue: open up, dive in and enjoy Subscribe today www.aestheticamagazine.com Inside the current issue ART New Generation of British Fashion Photographers:. The new wave. Art & Social History: Pakistan's Bani Abidi explores identity formation. Design Manifestations: Design aesthetics unfold through the unexpected medium of wallpaper. Alternative Pedagogy: Peter Kardia's experimental teaching methodologies. FILM Winter in Wartime: Martin Koolhoven's emotive film about a boy learning of love, loss and deception. How to Animate: Part 2: The award winning, BAFTA nominated The Brothers McLeod discuss Making & Shaping. MUSIC Painting with a Microphone: Sound art is complex, multilayered and creates a huge palette of experiences. Kathryn Williams:The Quickening of Time with the Most Modest Woman in Music. WRITING Sex, Drugs and M-Theory: Paul Murray goes back to school to give a crash course in bullies, boredom and power structures. Aifric Campbell: Extract from new book 'The Loss Adjustor'. THEATRE Rhythms of Cuba: Revolutionary Dance: Danza Contemporanea de Cuba celebrates its 50th anniversary with its first ever UK tour. Live on Stage: Recommended theatre productions this season. AND FINALLY: In conversation with BAFTA nominated Simon Curtis, producer and director. His extensive career spans the genres of theatre, film and television, having worked on some of the most successful productions in recent years. For more information on stockists or to buy a copy visit: www.aestheticamagazine.com.
February Offer: Brand New Issue 33 + Creative Works Annual for £10 (plus P&P) For newsletter readers only, this fantastic offer gives you the chance to read the latest issue of Aesthetica Magazine plus the beautiful Annual collection, which will stir your imagination and provides a glimpse into some of today's most innovative artists and writers. Offer ends 8 Feb 2010. This offer is only available from this newsletter by clicking: Add to Basket
The Aesthetica Short Film Award is now open for Entries Supporting and Championing Short Film Aesthetica is looking for filmmakers who are driving the genre of short film forward through inspirational and innovative works. Whether you are fresh out of film school or have been making films for years, we want to hear from you. Accepting films in all genres: drama, documentary, music video, satire, comedy and artists' film. This award offers the winner and runners-up a fantastic prize package, which will bring your films to a wider audience. The deadline for submissions is 30 April 2010. All winners will be notified by 31 May 2010 and the DVD will be released 1 August 2010. Winner £500 first prize. Screenings of your film at: The National Media Museum (Bradford), Rushes Soho Shorts Film Festival (London), Glasgow Film Festival, Kerry Film Festival, Glimmer: Hull Film Festival and on the Aesthetica website. 12 months membership with Shooting People. Collection of film books from Wallflower Press. Inclusion on a DVD that will go to all Aesthetica readers. Runner-up & Finalists £250 for the runner-up. The runner-up and finalists will be included on a DVD that will go to all Aesthetica readers. For more information visit http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/film_submissions.htm.
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Arts News In this section of the Aesthetica newsletter, we look at some of the most exciting events that are happening this month.
1.  Progress Reports: art in an era of diversity Presented by Iniva at Rivington Place, London 28 January – 13 March 2010 Iniva launches 2010 with a dynamic multi-voiced exhibition selected by curators, artists and filmmakers. Painting, sculpture, graphics and film reflect the times we live in and changes to the social and cultural landscape since Iniva was founded 15 years ago. The structure of the exhibition explores interpretations of 'cultural diversity'. Manick Govinda from Artsadmin, Sally Lai from the Chinese Arts Centre, and artist Zarina Bhimji have selected artists. These include Oreet Ashery and Larissa Sansour whose bold mixture of art, politics, games, sci-fi and storytelling rebels against the stereotypes of the Middle East. Ashery is from Israel and Sansour from Palestine. Artist Sanford Biggers' sculptures seamlessly blend contemporary hip-hop expressions with Eastern Spiritualism, he presents a breakdance floor modelled on a Buddhist mandala. Filmmaker and scholar Karen Alexander and filmmaker Campbell select screenings by artists such as Kara Walker whose provocative films retell narratives around slavery and domination; Hetain Patel who realigns his body in relationship to nationhood in films like Kanku Ragu, and Harold Offeh with his humorous re-interpretation of Hollywood media representations of the asexual mammy figure. … Is the era and the goal of 'cultural diversity' in the arts now over? Has the globalisation of the art world – "let a thousand biennales bloom" – 'solved' the problem? Stuart Hall, Founding Chair of Iniva and Rivington Place. A lively talks and events programme asks questions around internationalism, cultural hierarchies, participation and politics. Join the debates at Rivington Place or online. The Inivators, Iniva's Youth Advisory Board, in collaboration with artist Yara El Sherbini provide their own radical responses to Progress Reports with playful art interventions, installations and events. They stage a court of law with the cultural sector on trial; create their own version of the popular BBC Question Times programme called Questionable Times; devise a special board game installation and give news updates on their pirate radio station. Further information is available at www.iniva.org
2. Peter Liversidge The Thrill Of It All Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh 1 March - 10 April 2010 Any exhibition of work by Peter Liversidge (born Lincoln, 1973) can reliably be predicted to present the unpredictable. Liversidge makes work in almost every conceivable medium: painting & drawing, photography, performance and sculpture all play their part. The tone of his work shifts from the playful to the poignant but is always underpinned by a generosity that unifies and characterises his distinct and varied approach. Given the uncertainty that a Liversidge exhibition presents, there is always a dependably reassuring starting point: the artist sitting alone at his kitchen table with an old manual typewriter writing Proposals. These hand-typed pages, presenting suggestions for performances and artworks alongside incidental thoughts and ideas, are then mailed to the curator or gallery director and present a kind of menu for the ensuing exhibition. Over the past few years Liversidge has worked in this way with an increasingly diverse body of people and places including: Proposals for Liverpool (Tate Gallery, 2008), Proposals for Barcelona (Centre d'art Santa Monica, 2007), Proposals for Brussels (with the British Council for the Europalia Festival, 2007), Proposals for Miami (Art Basel Miami 2009) and Jupiter Proposals (the newly opened sculpture park Jupiter Artland, May 2009). Forthcoming projects include 50 Proposals to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (which will be presented at the 2010 Edinburgh Art Festival), a major new work that will be unveiled at Jupiter Artland on 1st May, 2010. All 160 of Liversidge's Ingleby Proposals will be collated into an artist's book (the book, in common with all Liversidge's projects, becoming the first realized artwork) that will be available from 15th February. For further information www.inglebygallery.com
3. Henry Moore Tate Britain, London  24 February – 8 August 2010 Radical, experimental and avant garde, Henry Moore (1898-1986) was one of Britain's greatest artists. This major exhibition will re-assert his position at the forefront of progressive twentieth-century sculpture, bringing together the most comprehensive selection of his works for a generation. Henry Moore will present over 150 significant works including stone sculptures, wood carvings, bronzes and drawings. Henry Moore will reveal the range and quality of Moore's art in new ways – sometimes uncovering a dark and erotically charged dimension that challenges the familiar image of the artist and his work. Henry Moore first emerged as an artist in the wake of the First World War, in which he served on the Western Front. This exhibition will emphasise the impact on Moore's work of its historical and intellectual contexts: the trauma of war, the advent of psychoanalysis and new ideas of sexuality, and the influence of primitive art and surrealism. The exhibition will explore the defining subjects of Moore's work, including the reclining figure, the iconic mother and child, abstract compositions and seminal drawings of London during the Blitz. The exhibition will assemble a group of Moore's great reclining figures carved in Elm wood, the largest number ever to be brought together. These beautiful, heavily grained works show the development of the reclining figure over the course of Moore's career. The recurring motif of the mother and child will be explored throughout the exhibition. Moore called it his 'fundamental obsession', and presented a complex vision of the maternal relationship, ranging from the nurturing bond of Mother and Child 1930-31 (Private Collection), to Suckling Child 1930 (Pallant House). As Official War Artist, Moore made a series of drawings of Londoners sheltering in the London Underground from the Blitz. Henry Moore will include a selection of the most important of these, made between the autumn of 1940 and the summer of 1941. The drawings transformed Moore's reputation, not only documenting, but helping to build, the popular perception of the Blitz. His depictions of rows of sleeping figures lying huddled in claustrophobic tunnels captured a sense of profound humanitarian anguish and the fragility of the human body. This continues in his work of the 1950s, reflecting the aftermath of war and the prospect of further conflict. The exhibition will look at the influence of world cultures in his work, through his primitive masks and works such as Girl with Clasped Hands 1930 (The British Council). It will include abstract sculptures of the 1930s such as Composition 1931 (The Henry Moore Family Collection), threatening and sexualised works that suggest the influence of Freud and psychoanalytical theories such as Reclining Figure 1931 (Private Collection), and sculptures that capture the political tension and anxiety of the Spanish Civil War and the approach to the Second World War, such as The Helmet 1939-40 (The Henry Moore Foundation) and Three Points 1939-40 (Tate). Henry Moore is a collaboration between Tate Britain and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. It is curated by Chris Stephens, Head of Displays at Tate Britain, and Michael Parke-Taylor, Associate Curator of European Art, Art Gallery of Ontario. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Tate Publishing. Tickets £12.50, for more information visit www.tate.org.uk  or for more information on Henry Moore visit www.henry-moore.org.
4. Marcus Coates Milton Keynes Gallery 15 January – 4 April The first survey of Marcus Coates' work in a public gallery in the UK opened at Milton Keynes Gallery in January. The show, Psychopomp, includes early film pieces, sculpture, sound, costumes and photographs as well as new work.  Coates often assumes the identity of an animal, such as a fox, goshawk or stoat, by simulating its appearance, enacting its habits and appropriating its language. In the film, Stoat (1999), for example, Coates totters around on ramshackle platforms, learning to recreate the animal's bounding movements; in Goshawk (1999), a telephoto lens captures the artist as a rare bird perched precariously at the top of a tree; while in Finfolk (2003), the artist emerges from the North Sea spluttering a new dialect, as spoken by seals. He says: "My work is all about our relationship with animals and nature…There is humour in the work, but a serious side explores how we use our relationship with animals to define our humanness". Coates has also trained as a shaman and the exhibition includes films of his rituals, where he achieves a trance-like state and communes with the animal kingdom to address social issues. Wearing an array of costumes such as a badger's hide, a stuffed horse's head, a blonde wig and a necklace of money (all of which will be on display), Coates has addressed issues including prostitution, regeneration and swine flu for communities worldwide and most recently in Israel, Japan and Switzerland. Dawn Chorus (2007) is a major, multi-screen installation in which human voices re-create the chorus sung at dawn by birds, including a chaffinch, pheasant and yellowhammer. Together with wildlife sound recordist Geoff Sample, Coates recorded individual birds singing simultaneously on a single morning. Each was slowed down to a human pitch, so that people could be filmed mimicking these lower and slower sounds in their own natural habitats, such as a hotel, osteopath's clinic or even a bath tub. The films were then accelerated until people twitter like birds and their voices precisely echo the original birdsong. In Peregrine (1999) Coates has painted the feathers of this powerful predator onto the carriage of an ordinary starling. This sculpture encapsulates the artist's exploitation of art for its magical and liberating ability to transpose everyday objects and situations into unexpected, humorous and thought-provoking contexts. The exhibition includes works spoken in numerous tongues as Coates ultimately addresses his audiences using the universal language of the imagination to highlight the spiritual and social potential of art. For further information visit www.mk-g.org.
5. Ilkka Halso Restoration Galerie WAGNER + PARTNER, Berlin Until 6 March Weather has become "climate", climate has turned into "climate crisis" – an unstoppable threat of our natural environment has been a global discussion topic for years. The internationally renowned Finnish artist Ilkka Halso (born, 1965 ) has been dealing with healing and rescue of endangered nature in his work for the best part of a decade. His photographic interventions are therefore not just the Finnish sequel of "Landart", developed in the USA in the 1960s, but also a reaction to our changing planet. The exhibition at Galerie Wagner + Partner aims to trace Halso's aesthetic approach of rescuing nature. In the works of the series "Restoration" the artist develops and builds pseudo-scientific arrangements such as scaffolding trees with transparent gauze and illuminating them. Nature is given "treatment" as if in a field hospital, the damaged patient receives medical care. All photographs are made by night, when nature, so to speak is getting a good night's sleep. The later series "Museum of Nature" shows a shift in this healing approach. Nature now is no longer being healed, it is being "rescued". The viewer finds trees and whole landscapes in glass pavilions. Like a work of art, nature is stored and conserved in a museum. Has the patient become a mummy? This question must remain unanswered. While Ilkka Halso interferes directly with nature in his series restoration (photographic installation), he constructs his nature-protecting buildings by computer (digital construction) in the museum series. No real answer is given to whether this eases or increases the threat. Still, on an aesthetic level this approach of the artist remains appealing. For further information www.galerie-wagner-partner.com
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Special Offers for Aesthetica Newsletter Subscribers In this section, we like to find offers and discounts for all our newsletter subscribers to enjoy.
1. YARN Festival 2 FOR 1 Event Offer 20 – 24 February 2010 YARN is a brand new festival celebrating story and storytelling - showcasing film, theatre, music and literature and providing a platform for mixing them all up! It's all about fun and exploration, devoted to letting the imagination run wild. The debut YARN will run 20 - 24 Feb 2010 across The Book Club and The Queen of Hoxton in east London. Sponsored by bookhugger.co.uk, YARN is working in partnership with Shooting People, Faber, Little White Lies, Opium Magazine and The London Short Film Festival. Quote "Aesthetica" when booking for the "Four Stories High" event, and receive 2 tickets for the price of 1. This offer is valid for the "Four Stories High" event only.   We've got TairyFales, Sunday Lunch with Tom Wrigglesworth, Bedtime Stories, Movies in Minutes, Four Stories High and Literary Death Match to bring you in February! Find out more at www.YARNfest.com
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Aesthetica News In this section, we like to report on what's new at Aesthetica.
1. Major News at Aesthetica Global distribution From December 2009, we gained International distribution, and we are now stocked in stores throughout the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and mainland Europe (France, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, etc). New gallery & bookstore stockists including National Theatre, Saatchi Gallery Shop, National Gallery Shop, Serpentine, Hayward Gallery and Foyles. For a full list, please click here. 1960 UK stockists (High Street Retailers such as WH Smith and independent newsagents. For a full list, click here. Current web stats: 18,500 visitors per month on the Aesthetica homepage, and over 54,000 page views per month.
2. What's on in your area? Event listings at Aesthetica Find out what events are happening in your area, or if you are organising an event, list it on the Aesthetica Listings Page. Go to the Aesthetica website and click on 'LISTINGS' at the top of the page, alternatively, visit http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/digital/events.php
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Excerpt from our blog
Posted Friday, January 22, 2010 Pavel Bϋchler wins Northern Art Prize The winner of the Northern Arts Prize 2010 has been announced as Pavel Bϋchler. Work by the five short listed artists was judged yesterday by a leading panel of specialists from the visual arts world: Patricia Bickers, editor at Art Monthly; Richard Deacon, artist; Paul Hobson, director, Contemporary Art Society; Peter Murray, director, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and panel chair Tanja Pirsig-Marshall. In choosing Bϋchler to win the prize they felt that: "Bϋchler has been consistently influential to a huge amount of people throughout his career, as a practitioner and teacher. We were particularly impressed with Eclipse which we felt to be a very strong piece of work. We would also like to congratulate all the shortlisted artists on their contributions to the exhibition; the success of the prize continues to enhance the contemporary visual arts scene in the North." Bϋchler, born in Prague and now living in the North West, was presented with a cheque for £16,500 by judge and artist Richard Deacon at a packed awards event held last night at Leeds Art Gallery. Bϋchler displayed seven of his most recent pieces, three of which have never been shown before, in the Northern Art Prize exhibition. As opposed to constructing objects, Bϋchler utilizes materials found in the real world and manipulates them to "reveal the strangeness in everyday life. He often juxtaposes objects to create witty visual puns and metaphors and narrative riddles, in which text, embedded in the work or in the title, plays an important role." His work has been exhibited widely internationally and across the UK and more recently in solo shows at Street Level, Glasgow (2009) and objectif / Museum Van Hdendaagse Kunst, Antwerp (2007). Bϋchler's Eclipse is a technically simple, but conceptually complex, installation inspired by the poetics of an everyday analogy in science education. The work consists of nine 1950s Leitz Prado projectors casting circles of light on a wall, evoking the structure of the solar system. Found balls and other spherical objects inserted into the optics of the projectors create the effect of several overlapping eclipses that alternate between light and dark depending on how the visitors to the exhibition move about within the piece. You Don't Love Me is an installation that uses a reel to reel tape deck, a bottle of whisky and a loop of found audio tape. The concept behind the work was brought about when Bϋchler was listening to the tape, a bootleg recording of a 1970s live gig. The recording was discovered in the tape deck shortly after its purchase, and upon playing it a lone voice is heard, which announces the eponymous title of the coming song. Bϋchler and his fellow short listed artists, Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson,Rachel Goodyear and Matt Stokes, who each received prize money of £1,500, have been showing their work at Leeds Art Gallery since the 27th November 2009. The exhibition includes several film pieces, installations of technical equipment and everyday objects, as well as intricate pencil and watercolour drawings, making this the most varied and complex Prize exhibition yet. The Northern Art Prize is a prestigious art prize for contemporary artists of any age, working in any media and living in the North of England (North West, North East and Yorkshire regions). Sponsors of The Northern Art Prize are Logistik, Arup, Leeds City Council and Leeds Metropolitan University. New Leeds hotel City Inn, a keen supporter of the arts, is also supporting the prize for the first time this year as event sponsor. The Northern Art Prize exhibition runs at Leeds Art Gallery until 21 February 2010. For more information about the artists visit: http://disquiet.com/2008/10/17/pavel-buchler-audience-mashup-mp3 www.croweandrawlinson.net www.rachelgoodyear.com www.projectspace176.com/projects/matt-stokes See more at: http://aestheticamagazine.blogspot.com
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Final farewell We hope you enjoyed this month's newsletter. It has been a pleasure sharing our news with you. © Aesthetica 2010.

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