Event types: Exhibitions

16 April – 5 June 2011
a nod to Cage
To accompany the exhibition Every Day is a Good Day, the Pavilion curated a season of art and sound installations, with a nod to John Cage. An eclectic group of sound and visual artists were invited to respond to the artist’s work and ideas. These artists’ projects were installed throughout the building during April, May and the beginning of June.

The a nod to Cage live programme saw performances by Mount Kimbie + Creep, Margaret Leng Tan, Stewart Lee’s reading of Indeterminacy, eighth blackbird, Keith Tippett and the Faster Than Sound project by Brainwaves: Mira Calix, Anna Meredith, Aurora Quartet, Loop.pH.

Random Fridays reaunched this season with two free events featuring some of the UK’s most cutting edge contemporary acts, presenting work in response to Cage’s work and ideas. To read more about the acts that appeared click here.

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PROGRAMME

16 – 20 April
Felix Thorn Felix’s Machines
Felix’s Machines are music making sculptures. They were constructed in his bedroom and facilitate music by translating rhythmic audio structures into a three-dimensional visual show. The Machines are musical instruments as well as kinetic sculptures and invite an audience to share the experience of their creator. Thorn says: “I aim to build a space where artificial and dream-like environments can become a reality.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Ajg1G3vik

Friday 22 April (Random Friday)
Jane Ormerod
“Jane Ormerod’s magnificent work belongs in a grand poetry museum on a heavily-populated space station outside Earth’s predictability. One of the most imaginative, persistent poetry visionaries, she breathes fresh perspective into the ears of every life form she comes across in the universe. Jane Ormerod performed in the evening of 22 April as part of a Random Friday. Read more

22 April (Random Friday)
Sophie Fishel Skiddley Bop (2011)
HD film
Skatting is to sing with no words and is an expression of joyful abandon. Skiddley Bop is a film to remind the viewer that each human being has the ability to improvise and to create noise, music and rhythm purely using their own body. Sophie Fishel performed in the evening as part of a Random Friday. Read more

22 April  (Random Friday)
Shelley Parker Birdcage (2011)
Auditorium PA, laptop, software
Shelley Parker is a DJ/producer and sound installation artist based in London. She also runs Structure, an experimental electronic label and events programme. Her sonic practice is directly influenced by bass culture, in particular, the Hardcore Continuum and it’s potential connection with contemporary sound art. She has performed at Fabric, Tate Britain and Frieze Art Fair and produced sound installations for the Victoria & Albert museum and CT Editions.

Birdcage is a site specific sound installation, taking a real-time audio feed streamed from the roof of the Pavilion and layering it with low end bass frequencies. Shelley Parker performed in the evening of 22 April as part of a Random Friday. Read more
http://www.shelleyparker.co.uk

22 – 28 April / 22 April (Random Friday)
Void Vector Supercell: A Mixed Media Digital Installation for Sound, Light, Air and Software
A Supercell is a thunderstorm that is characterized by the presence of a mesocyclone; a deep, continuously-rotating updraft.  Taking this as a staring point, this work illuminates the hidden by-product of household machines through the combined use of magnetic pick up coils, transducer speakers, self-authored software and kinetic sculpture. As the coils are lifted in the air currents emitted by the fans, they are blown in and out of the magnetic fields created by the motors. These changes in magnetic force are converted to an audio signal. This audio is then routed to transducer speakers that physically shake large sheets of steel which is sent to the software.

This uneasy feeling, of a system on very the brink of chaos and a potential energy that could arc into existence at any second – the essence of Supercell. Void Vector performed in the evening of 22 April as part of a Random Friday. Read more http://supercell.virb.com/videos

22 April – 28 April / 22 April (Random Friday)
FOUND collective Cybraphon (2009)
Edinburgh-based artist collective FOUND (Ziggy Campbell and Tommy Perman) have teamed up with Professor Simon Kirby and created a robot band called Cybraphon.

Inspired by early 19th-century automatic bands such as the orchestrion and the player piano, Cybraphon is an interactive, mechanical band in a box. It comprises a number of acoustic instruments, antique machinery, and found objects from junk shops, played by over 60 robotic beaters and motors, all housed in an antique wooden display case.

But unlike the orchestrion and player piano, Cybraphon is emotional. Cybraphon’s repertoire has been composed especially by FOUND and spans a range of emotional states. Just like FOUND, Cybraphon is image-conscious and moody, and the music it performs depends on what state of mind it is in.

Cybraphon wants to be popular. By going to its website you affect its mood and the kind of music it plays. Cybraphon regularly checks its MySpace page, worries about how many fans it has on Facebook, looks up its website stats and obsessively Googles itself to see what people are saying about it.

For example, a good review in a local newspaper, will almost certainly cheer up Cybraphon and encourage it to play happier songs. However, Cybraphon is an insecure, egotistical band: a good review will cheer it up for a while, but once the initial excitement dies down it will soon become disillusioned if its fame does not continue to rise. Feed Cybraphon’s ego by visiting www.cybraphon.com

On 22 April FOUND Collective performed with Cybraphon for a Random Friday event as part of a nod to Cage. Read more

30 April – 5 May
Shelley Parker Birdcage (2011)
Auditorium PA, laptop, software
Shelley Parker is a DJ/producer and sound installation artist based in London. She also runs Structure, an experimental electronic label and events programme. Her sonic practice is directly influenced by bass culture, in particular, the Hardcore Continuum and it’s potential connection with contemporary sound art. She has performed at Fabric, Tate Britain and Frieze Art Fair and produced sound installations for the Victoria & Albert museum and CT Editions.

Birdcage is a site specific sound installation, taking a real-time audio feed streamed from the roof of the Pavilion and layering it with low end bass frequencies. Shelley Parker performed in the evening of 22 April as part of a Random Friday. Read more
http://www.shelleyparker.co.uk

30 April – 17 May
Steve Thompson Everyday is a Good Day (2011)
Digital prints mounted on mdf
This work evolved from a creative processing of the exhibition title Everyday is a Good Day. Each word of the title was used as the basis of an image search in an internet search engine. The first ten images found in each search were then layered and rendered transparent in photo-processing software. Five composite images are the final result. The work attempts to update John Cage’s application of chance in printmaking to twenty-first century modes of graphic manipulation and reproduction.

8 – 25 May
Charles Atlas Joints 4tet for Ensemble (1971-2010)
This is an installation of Super-8 colour films of the dancer Merce Cunningham shot by Atlas in 1971. One afternoon, after rehearsal in Irvine, California, Merce Cunningham and Charles Atlas went out of the back door of the dance studio to a raised concrete block and started to film. As Cunningham articulated his joints in a minimal dance Atlas filmed in a variety of ways with his new Super-8 camera, shooting close-ups of Cunningham’s wrist, elbow, ankle and knee capturing Cunningham’s unique style of movement. Atlas experimented with different frame rates and levels of blur, but mainly focused on following the dancer’s moving joints as if carefully observing a strange animal. Atlas made nine short films in total, most of which were extended continuous hand-held shots.

For the installation Joints 4tet for Ensemble, Atlas brings the resulting films together for the first time, editing the material into four channels of synchronized video and showing them across a choreographed arrangement of ten different sized monitors in Gallery 2. With this particular configuration of monitors Atlas harks back to ideas first used in 1978 in the creation of Fractions I and Fractions II; a video/dance collaboration he made with Cunningham. The films are accompanied by four channels of collaged sound – re-workings of ambient sound recordings made by John Cage in the 1980s whilst on his travels to cities around the world with  Cuningham. As the sound plays out across the monitors, projection lamps cast multiple and shifting shadows over the surrounding walls of the installation. http://www.vilmagold.com/newpages/artists/CA1.htm

Friday 27 May (Random Friday)
AK/DK Requiem for a Building
VJs metaLuna,sonic artist Johanna Bramli and noise-mongers AKDK will be turning the Pavilion into a musical score and sound instrument for the evening. metaLuna will create a live musical score, using the angles and curves of the building as a canvass to project onto. Johanna Bramli and AK/DK will interpret the score, using record styli and contact mics to literally play the building. AK/DK will perform for the next Random Friday on 27 May. Read more

27 May (Random Friday)
Daisy Grove-Lafarge Music from the Vacuum (2011)
Sound installation
Music from the Vacuum is a response to Cage’s practice. Using a system of chance to re-orchestrate NASA’s Voyager recordings, it creates an audible dilemma: the gallery space brings into existence sounds that can never be heard in their true context; the vacuum from which they were taken. Daisy Grove-Lafarge will perform at the next Random Friday on 27 May. Read more

28 May – 5 June
Joseph Long Mecannaissance (2011)
Timber, MDF, video camera, monitor
Ballet Dancer: Grace Yoell, Tap Dancer: Georgina Norris
Joseph Long says “In my work I view the manmade as prosthesis. Creations that physically and mentally have the ability to enable and restrict us simultaneously. In Mecannaissance, I continue to explore the relationship between the inanimate and animate. Using dance as a specialist tool for understanding physicality and psychology I am attempting to not only examine the discourse between each other but between us and the artificial creations that influence and guide our thoughts and actions.”

19 May – 5 June / Friday 27 May (Random Friday)
Lucy Phillips what cannot be seen
Ongoing project (started 2010)
Inkjet prints from scanned photographic paper negatives, handwritten and typed texts, printouts of emails. (in display cases) original paper negatives, handmade matchbox pinhole cameras, handwritten and typed texts and letters, related ephemera.

what cannot be seen is an attempt to create a visual and textual archive of the unseen by returning to the fundamentals of photographic image making. Inspired by the artist’s own experiments with pinhole photography and French artist Sophie Calle’s use of the camera as a covert device, Phillips constructed 20 pinhole cameras from matchboxes and invited people to take part in a postal photography project via a Facebook status update. See Lucy Phillips’ what cannot be seen at the next Random Friday on 27 May. Read more

15 April – 5 June
Charlie Hooker Audio Accompaniment (2011)
Yamaha Disklavier piano, laptop, Geiger-counter
Galactic cosmic rays are particles emitted from our sun and every sun in the universe – literally stardust. They enter our atmosphere and continually pass through us from all angles like flying sparks or rain, going through your body, the building and through the earth, emerging from the other side to continue their invisible journey across the universe.

Each note played by the keyboard has been triggered by a radioactive cosmic ray particle passing on its immense journey through space, through the piano, through the sensor fitted within it, and through you – taking a tiny shadow of you with it as it continues its journey towards infinity. http://www.charliehooker.co.uk/

^{The De La Warr Pavillion would like to thank Yamaha Piano for the kind support of this installation with the loan of the Disklavier piano.}

15 April – 5 June
Yoko Ono Play It By Trust
Play It By Trust has a special connection to John Cage. The concept for this work was first realized in 1966 as White Chess Set, which is an all white chess set, and one of Yoko’s most iconic conceptual works. In 1987, Yoko remade the piece for the first time in bronze, as a tribute to John Cage for his 75th birthday for an exhibition at Carl Solway Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio. For this version, Yoko retitled the piece Play It By Trust, which has since been used for the several other versions she has gone on to make. http://www.flickr.com/photos/yokoonoofficial/2892798380/

16 April – 5 June
Hugh Fox Mind is Moving (2011)
Performance/two channel video installation
The work focuses on John Cage’s favourite sound experience; the sound of silence (the aural landscape of our everyday lives). For Cage, the beauty of this audio landscape is that it’s always different, no sound is ever the same.

With opposing soundtracks, two screens will broadcast an audio and visual meditation that explores the relationship between the sounds of our minds and the movements of our bodies, exhibiting how we can appear physically still, with the mind moving at speed, or moving relentlessly on the surface, but experiencing a deep state of meditative flow within.

‘Photographer Catherine Yass’s best shot’, an interview by Sarah Philips for The Guardian. Read full article.

Read Q&A with DLWP curator Jane Won from The Aesthetica Blog.

Catherine Yass is a leading contemporary photographer and film-maker whose work captures the psychological impact of architectural space. This exhibition presents her new and recent work from the last decade.

A new film Lighthouse (2011) is of the Royal Sovereign Lighthouse situated five miles out to sea, just visible from the Pavilion. Yass is fascinated by the structure of this unoccupied lighthouse, balanced precariously on the corner of a square platform, which is in turn balanced on a single concrete post. Lighthouse reflects the nature of the structure as the camera – placed on a helicopter, boat and with a diving team – slowly moves up, down and around the platform and into the sea, disrupting the viewers’ spatial order and boundaries.

^{Installation view, Lighthouse (east) 2011.}

Descent (2002) takes the viewer at a disorientating slow pace via a camera which is lowered by a crane on the side of a high rise structure in a Canary Wharf construction site. The camera frames are rotated by 180 degrees to invert the viewer’s sense of gravity.

Lock (2006) is filmed from a tanker on its slow passage through the gates of a colossal lock on the Yangtze River in the heart of industrial China. Forward and backward views are simultaneously projected on opposite walls from floor to ceiling giving a physical experience of cinematic space.

^{Installation view, Gallery 1.}

^{Installation view, Gallery 1.}

Sleep (2005-8) and Decommissioned (2010) are some of her recent photographic works presented in Gallery 1. These light boxes adopt Yass’s signature technique of overlaying negative and positive transparencies, which results in intense, electrifying colours that transport the physical space to that of the psychological or ethereal.

Lighthouse is a new film commissioned by the De La Warr Pavilion.

^{Installation view, Gallery 1.}

Limited Edition Print
To celebrate her exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion, Catherine Yass has released Lighthouse as an exclusive print edition.

Catherine Yass Lighthouse (east), 2011
Photographic print in Lucia Pigment ink on archival Hannemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm paper
Image size 45 x 35.7 cm
Paper size 60.5 x 50.8 cm
£250. Edition of 60. Signed & numbered by the artist.
BUY ONLINE

* Please note that Lucia Pigment ink has the highest archival ratings. Combined with the Hannemuhle Photo Rag 308 gsm paper used, typical archival time is 80-95 years provided storage and handling is correct.

Sovereign Lighthouse Boat Trips – SOLD OUT
Members were offered the chance to join a dramatic trip on an RIB powerboat to the Sovereign Lighthouse, followed by high tea and a curator’s exhibition tour. To become a member of DLWP please call 01424 229 118 or visit www.dlwp.com/members.

Catherine Yass (b. London, UK, 1963) trained at the Slade School of Art, London, the Hochschüle der Künste, Berlin, and Goldsmiths College, London. Important recent solo exhibitions include High Wire (commissioned by Artangel and Gi Festival, exhibition Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, and The Gymnaseum, London, 2008); Descent (St. Louis Art Museum, MO, 2009); and The China Series (Stedelijk Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands). Public collections include the V&A, Tate and Arts Council Collection. She lives and works in London and is represented by Alison Jacques Gallery. http://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/artists/29/overview/

 

Sam Taylor-Wood’s David (2004) – an hour-long silent film of David Beckham sleeping  – was shot while he was taking a siesta after an training session with Real Madrid. It shows an initmacy with its subject that the viewer does not usually see – even with the deluge of paparazzi  and celebrity images taken over the years.

David is one work in the exhibition Moving Portraits, showing sixty years of portraits made in moving image.

Other artists include Jordan Baseman, Richard Billingham, Candice Breitz, Duncan Campbell, Willie Doherty, Tracey Emin, Carl Freeman, Gilbert & George, Peter Gidal, Robert Mapplethorpe, Rebecca Marshall, Stuart Marshall, Julian Opie, Sarah Pucill, Marty St James and Anne Wilson, Georgina Starr, Guy Sherwin, Margaret Tait, Fiona Tan, Gillian Wearing, Andy Warhol, William Wegman and Sam Taylor-Wood.

^{Fiona Tan, Ruben & Niels, Study for Provenance, installation digital, 2008,  courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.}

Moving Portraits explores the past sixty years of portraits in moving image by significant international artists practising in the field of film and video technology. By using this technology, the artist has expanded the language and notion of the portrait genre. The works in this exhibition are all experimental of their time and include well-known sitters and subjects as well as more personal portraits of friends and family.

The Portrait of Ga (1955) by Margaret Tait is the earliest work in the exhibition and is a portrait of the artist’s mother that has a particular poetry all of its own. Sixties iconic artist Andy Warhol made a series of silent black and white short films of friends, colleagues and acquaintances such as Marcel Duchamp, Lou Reed and Edie Sedgwick. Twelve of these Screen Tests will be shown.

Peter Gidal, in his 1969 work Heads, featured portraits of British personalities such as Richard Hamilton, Marsha Hunt, Marianne Faithfull and David Hockney.

^{Willie Doherty, Non-Specific Threat, 2004 (video still). Courtesy the artist, Alexander and Bonin, New York, and Matt’s Gallery, London.}

Other highlights include Gilbert & George in their 1972 work Portrait of the Artist as Young Men and Robert Mapplethorpe’s intimate portrait of  rock star Patti Smith, Still Moving :Patti Smith.

There are works by the young British artists of the ‘90s such as Gillian Wearing ( 2 into 1, 1997) and Richard Billingham (Fishtank, 1998). Recent works include David (2004) a film by Sam Taylor-Wood of David Beckham sleeping and Duncan Campbell’s Bernadette (2008), a powerful portrayal of MP Bernadette Devlin composed entirely of found footage.

^{Sarah Purcill (UK) You be Mother, 1990, 16mm col, sound 7min.}
The most recent work is Factum Misericordia (2009) by South African artist Candice Breitz, comprises fascinating dual-channel video portraits of identical twins.

Moving Portraits is curated by Jane Won at the De La Warr Pavilion in association with David Curtis at the British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection.

David Curtis wrote A History of Artists’ Film and Video in Britain 1897-2004 (BFI Publising) and curated  A Century of Artists’ Film in Britain at Tate Britain in 2003.

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery will open Moving Portraits at 2pm on 22 January 2011.

^{Richard Billingham, Fishtank, 1998; video installation (video still), produced and commissioned by Artangel, 46 mins 40 secs. © the artist, courtesy Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London.}

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Myth, Manners and Memory:
Photographers of the American South
1 October 2010 – 3 January 2011

Fuelled by photography, film and fiction, the mythology of what we identify as the “American South” has grown and entered into the collective imagination.

Combining historical and contemporary work, the exhibition brings together a number of prominent American photographers including Walker Evans, William Eggleston, William Christenberry, Carrie Mae Weems, Alec Soth and Susan Lipper.  These artists have, in various ways, engaged with the physical and psychological landscape of the American South and its place in our psyche.  By striving to represent the ‘’Mind of the South” in their work they often reflect the unique cultural values of this highly charged American region.

^{Alec Soth, Bonnie (with a photograph of an angel),
Port Gibson, Mississippi, 2000
Courtesy of the Artist and Magnum}

Walker Evans’s iconic images made for the Farm Security Administration between 1936 and 1938 have had a powerful and long-lasting resonance, not only for generations of photographers, but also in the broader popular understanding of an era that defined the word Depression.

^{Susan Lipper, Untitled from the Grapevine Series, 1988-1992
Courtesy of the Artist}

Much of the work stems from the artists’ deep investment in the particulars of place and history: from William Eggleston’s seminal colour photographs (Southern Suite 1981) to William Christenberry’s memories of Alabama, Susan Lipper’s visceral photographs from Grapevine Hollow, West Virginia, and Carrie Mae Weems’s life-long exploration of African American experience ( The Louisiana Project 2003) The most recent works are selected from Alec Soth’s celebrated series Sleeping by the Mississippi, a quest journeying the South’s meandering arterial river.

^{William Eggleston, Red Ceiling, Greenwood, Mississippi,
1969-1971 © Eggleston Artistic Trust
Courtesy Cheim & Read, New York and Victoria Miro, London}

Myths, Manners and Memory : Photographers of the American South does not set out to define the American South but explores what is perhaps indefinable –  the cultural complexities and tensions, the constant but unresolved dialogues between past and present, and the varying material patterns of everyday life in the South that might, however elusively, constitute its sense of identity.

For this season, Gallery 2 is transformed into a cinema showing a series of films about the American South, ranging from Deliverance to Gone With The Wind  as well as a number of documentaries. Click here for a full list and schedule of films.

Buy Season Ticket for only £35

This exhibition is the result of a curatorial collaboration between the De La Warr Pavilion and Photoworks.

Myth, Manners and Memory Photographers of the American South is guest curated by Photoworks http://www.photoworksuk.org/

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Please note: the exhibition will close at 5pm on Thursday 15 July and 6pm on Saturday 21 August due to private functions.

Tomoko Takahashi

This summer the De La Warr Pavilion brings you Introspective Retrospective, an exhibition by Japanese artist, Tomoko Takahashi. One of the most engaging installation artists of the last 20 years, Tomoko Takahashi has established her reputation through the playful recycling of everyday detritus of everyday life into illuminating works of art.

This exhibition is the first time that a comprehensive collection of Takahashi’s work has been shown together anywhere in the world. Comprsing installation, sculpture, collage, drawing, film and an interactive website, the exhibiton reveals the depth of her understanding. Scavenging from skips for raw materials, the artist champions the obselete and disregarded. These random objects are positioned and arranged precisely to give her work their particular beauty. This intricate process is an important part of the work and often involves her living in the installation space prior to the exhibition opening. Her fascination with the different ways in which we inhabit space becomes apparent through the complex and sprawling installations that she produces.

   

Living and working in Bexhill over the last few months, Takahashi has produced a major new installation for Gallery 2 entitled Paperwork @ the Seaside that engages with the Japanese phenomena of manga. She has trawled through dozens of volumes of manga comics, copying, categorising, and arranging the images into different subject matters which she has used to create a unique installation work. The piece highlights our need to make sense of the world and the bombardment of information with which we are confronted each day.

Takahashi has recreated her installation, Wet Paint, (for Rupert Carey, Bedroom: Sculpture Version (May 2010) which is housed in a shed and can be viewed on the Sun Parlour at the end of the First Floor Balcony.

Tomoko Takahashi was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2000. She has work in Saatchi Collection and Tate (London). Her last major exhibition was at the Serpentine Gallery in 2005.

Introspective Retrospective acknowledges the support of the Sasakawa Foundation.

To view full details of Gallery Events relating to the exhibition, please visit our Gallery Events listing

To purchase a Tomoko Takahashi Artist’s Edition Mug visit www.dlwpshop.com

Exhibition BLOG – read and follow it now!
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Gallery Magazine – Issue 3 – download now!
Click here to download our new Gallery Magazine for Summer Season

3 April – 13 June 2010

Gallery 2
Tony Bevan
New painting installation

^{Tony Bevan: Self Portrait After Messerschmidt}

Tony Bevan (born Bradford, 1951) is one of the most important painters working in Britain today.

For his new painting installation at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bevan has produced three colossal works specifically to utilize the dimensions of Gallery 2.

Click here to download our Gallery Magazine for the Spring Season

Inspired by his recent travels to China, in particular his experience of the Giant Buddha of Leshan, and his ongoing interest in the ‘character heads’ of the 18th century German-Austrian sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, the new paintings continue Bevan’s exploration of self-portraiture in his practice.

Bevan lives and works in London. He has participated in the Venice and Sidney Biennales and his work is held in public collections such as the National Portrait Gallery, Tate, The British Museum, MOMA (New York), The Israel Museum (Jerusalem) and IVAM (Valencia) amongst others.  He is represented by Ben Brown Fine Arts.

To see more of Tony Bevan’s work visit www.tonybevan.com

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Late Night Opening
From 8th May to coincide with our Antony Gormley exhibition – the Galleries will open late (until 8pm) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

(The Shop, Box Office and Cafe will also be open until 8pm on these days)

3 April – 13 June 2010

Gallery 1
Modern Times
responding to chaos
drawings and films
Selected by Lutz Becker

^{Kurt Schwitters, Big Fight, 1947, collage
17.8 x 11.5 cm, Victoria & Albert Museum
©DACS2010}

The De La Warr Pavilion presents Modern Times, a major exhibition in which creatively involved people are invited to trace a personal path through the art of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Click here to download our new Gallery Magazine for the Spring Season

This exhibition is being selected by film-maker, painter and curator Lutz Becker. His exhibition will comprise drawings, prints and experimental films, and will explore the recurring tension between figuration and abstraction throughout the 20th century and the ways by which ideas and concepts evolve. Presented non-chronologically, it will encompass movements such as Russian Constructivism, Futurism and Vorticism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, and comprise works by key artists, as well as works of artists who have been sidelined in the mainstream of art history. From Malevich and Lissitzky to Flavin and Judd, from Pollock to Michaux anticipates two major strands of drawing emerging – the geometric and the gestural. The exhibition will also include films by Hans Richter, Fernand Léger and Viking Eggeling.

^{Philip Guston, Hooded, 1968, charcoal on paper
40.5 x 58.6 cm, Trustees of the British Museum}

Lutz Becker writes: It is the awareness of time as the measure of the distance between thought and realisation, of the value of the transient and sense of the fragility of the inspirational moment, that made me decide to show predominantly works on paper: drawing, no longer about the recording of appearances, but as a language reflecting its own becoming, often daring and experimental. The inclusion of film will extend the idea that mental and physical motion are key experiences common to artists and audience.

This show is in partnership with Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge and is showing there from 16 January – 14 March.

Lutz Becker biography

Lutz Becker is currently Curatorial Fellow at Kettle’s Yard. He was born in 1941, brought up in East and West Berlin, and studied at the Slade, becoming a distinguished director of political and art documentaries such as ‘Art in Revolution’ 1971, ‘Double Headed Eagle’ 1972, ‘Lion of Judah’ 1981 and ‘Vita Futurista’ 1987.

A practicing painter, he is also an experienced curator of exhibitions. He collaborated with the Hayward Gallery on ‘The Romantic Spirit in German Art’ 1994, ‘Art and Power’ 1995 and Tate Modern on ‘Century City’ 2001. He curated the SouthBank Centre touring exhibition ‘Avant-Garde Graphics’ and the recent exhibition at the Estorick Foundation, ‘Cut and Paste – European photomontage 1920-45’. Becker is currently reconstructing Sergei Eisenstein’s film ‘Que viva Mexico’, and an updated version of ‘Vita Futurista’ accompanied the recent Futurist exhibition at Tate Modern.

Click here to read the exhibitions notes by Lutz Becker

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To accompany the exhibition, we have the following catalogue available from the De La Warr Pavilion Shop. Call 01424 229 111 to mail order.

  Modern Times
responding to chaos

  120 pages,
230mm x 210mm
112 illustrations (17 B&W)

  £12.95 Plus P&P

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Late Night Opening
From 8th May to coincide with our Antony Gormley exhibition – the Galleries will open late (until 8pm) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

(The Shop, Box Office and Cafe will also be open until 8pm on these days)

Click here to Download the Timeline that appeared in Gallery 1 as part of this exhibition.

^{Top Tony Fretton, Preliminary drawing of British Embassy, Warsaw}

^{Above Tony Fretton, British Embassy, Warsaw}

17 October 2009 – 3 January 2010
Gallery 1

Mind into Matter –
Eight Exemplary Buildings 1834 – 2009

Selected by the architectural historian Alan Powers at 25 year intervals since the foundation of the Royal Institute of British architecture in 1834, the eight buildings included in Mind into Matter illuminate architectural practice throughout this 175 year period. Each building has an intriguing story of patronage, revealing the motives that have caused exceptional buildings to come into being for symbolic as well as practical reasons. From Charles Barry’s opulent Reform club, built for the Whig Party and influenced by his visit to Italy on the Grand Tour in the early 1800s to the Smithson’s assertion of the ‘New Brutalism’ in their 1959 design for the Economist Group, in each case the architects have held a passionate commitment to a particular way of designing and building.

Through the inclusion of a timeline that points up important social, political and cultural events of the past 175 years, Alan Powers has provided us with a broader, global context in which to understand the buildings that he has selected.

Mind into Matter uses newly commissioned photographs by local artist Nigel Green, original drawings, models, photography and archive material to make the architecture of the past 175 years accessible to new audiences.

The Principled Buildings are:

The Reform Club, Pall Mall, London,
architect Sir Charles Barry, 1841

Although completed six years after the foundation of the RIBA in 1834, the Reform Club owes its origin to the Reform Act of 1832 and the same impulse of liberal improvement that caused architects to join together in a professional body. Charles Barry, the architect of the new Palace of Westminster, perfected the Italian palazzo as a model for a complex modern institutional building, with the first glass-covered atrium in London added as an afterthought. The classical detailing was rich and correct, but equally interesting are the building services – heating, ventilation and lighting.

The Oxford University of Natural History,
architects Deane and Woodward, 1854-60

Home to dinosaurs and the world’s only dodo remains, the Oxford University of Natural History was a controversial building at a time when Darwin and other naturalists were challenging accepted beliefs. Sir Henry Acland, a friend of John Ruskin, believed that Britain’s science education was neglected, and the museum building, which also housed laboratories and lecture halls, aimed to bring the University up to date. That this should be done beneath mediaeval arches and roofs was a paradox of the era, but seldom has so much passion gone into a building. The columns are an encyclopaedia of British building stones and the Irish carvers, James and John O’Shea, cut animals, birds and plants into the capitals and window surrounds, to Ruskin’s delight, before being dismissed for ‘defacing’ the building. The iron and glass courtyard roof aimed to recreate Gothic forms in modern materials and today the building continues to delight students and visitors with its playful seriousness.

Clouds House, East Knoyle, Wiltshire,
architect Philip Webb, 1881-86

The largest country house by the architect whose career began by building Red House for his friend William Morris, Clouds was commissioned by Percy Wyndham and his wife, leading members of the late Victorian group, ‘The Souls’. Lovers of art and high-minded sensualists, the Souls helped to temper the severity of Victorian beliefs with humanity. Webb’s architecture spoke of quality in workmanship and design that avoided the trap of stylistic copying, while still evoking the past. His decorative details drawn from plants and birds, showed his tender side. When the main house burnt down, the Wyndhams congratulated themselves on having employed a socialist designer, because the servants’ quarters into which they moved while rebuilding took place were so comfortable.

St Mary, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, architect Sir Ninian Comper, 1906-1936

The year 1909, with the high tide of Imperialism breaking on the rock of Lloyd George’s social reforms, was a confusing time in architecture. We have chosen a building that aimed to be timeless, representing the culmination of the Gothic Revival of the previous 100 years, but equally a design full of new ideas about the relationship between East and West, between the deep past and the eternal present. Sir Ninian Comper believed that a church should bring people to their knees when they entered. For him, beauty led to holiness, and few people resist the singing light of St Mary’s interior, culminating in the gold and blue elaboration of the high altar and screens. Equally significant is the way that the worship space was planned to follow ancient doctrine, but at the same time to involve the whole congregation.

De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea,
architects Mendelsohn and Chermayeff, 1934-5

What better way to exhibit a building than to be inside it? The De La Warr Pavilion conveniently marks the centenary year of the RIBA, representing the newest architectural ideas of the time, brought to Britain by Mendelsohn whose German work was already world famous, in partnership with the Russian born Chermayeff, lifelong propagandist for a social understanding of designed space. The modern style of the design was an airy frame for human activities and a viewing platform for sea and sky, with its famous staircase more theatrical than the adjacent theatre. Since 1934, the Pavilion has remained controversial and but increasingly it has convinced a sceptical public to share Lord De La Warr’s belief that certain forms of design can create the identity of a place and make life more vivid.

The Economist Plaza, St James’s Street, London,
architects Alison and Peter Smithson, 1959-64

Should we look at buildings, or the spaces between them? This question engaged the husband and wife partnership at the centre of The New Brutalism, the revisionist movement in modern architecture that was centred in London in the 1950s. For Geoffrey Crowther, the Chairman of the Economist, the opportunity to build a magazine office in the heart of ceremonial London became an exercise in thinking about the city of the future: not a futurist dream of elevated motorways but a place where the pedestrian wove through quiet side streets and enjoyed the contrast of old and new. The Economist buildings symbolise a moment of transition, looking forward to today’s condemnation of the private car and our belief in the importance of public space.

Royal Mail Mechanised Letter Office, Hemel Hempstead, architects Aldington, Craig and Collinge, 1983-86

Over 175 years, Britain has had a patchy record of official building commissions apart from the high period of 1950s schools, 1960s universities and selected housing projects. In the Thatcher era, public service was threatened by privatisation. Unlike British Telecom, the Royal Mail still survives in its old form. This building, still in its original use, was part of a national programme of modernisation in response to the introduction of post codes, and stands out for its exciting visual forms and thoughtful solutions to human as well as technical problems. The architects, based in a Buckinghamshire village, were admired in the profession out of proportion to the volume of their work for their meticulous analysis of users’ needs and their direct handling of materials. The MLO married a solid blockwork base to a high tech roof, representing the shift in British architecture towards lightweight components and cladding, designed in collaboration with the engineer Mark Whitby.  In 1984, when modern architecture came under attack from the Prince of Wales, these architects’ record of humane care and visual invention could withstand any criticism.
Images courtesy of www.arcaid.co.uk

The British Embassy, Warsaw,
architect Tony Fretton, first project 2003-06, second project 2006-09

How to represent the resurgence of British architecture in the past 25 years though a single project? Like Philip Webb, Tony Fretton is an ‘architects’ architect’. He avoids producing eye-catching ‘icon’ designs, and has provided a moral compass for younger generations since the 1970s as one who resisted the allure of post-modernism and high tech. His work reflects the orientation of a significant section of British architecture towards European intellectual acuity, where the cultural values of architecture are less undermined by commercial and populist pressure than in Britain. Many British practices have achieved their best work in Europe since the 1980s, and the Warsaw Embassy, while commissioned on this side of the channel, represents the high standing of British design abroad, embodying some of the values of individualism and invention explored through the sequence of eight buildings.

There is a special book created to accompany the exhibition and written by the Curator, Alan Powers. This can be purchased from the De La Warr Shop for £7.50

Click here for more information or call the shop on 01424 229 111

^{Below: installation shots courtesy of Nigel Green}

^{Joseph Beuys
Save the Woods. Overcome Party Dictatorship Now. 1971 Poster on paper ARTIST ROOMS, Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Acquired jointly through the d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and The Art Fund 2008. Photo courtesy Anthony d’Offay Ltd. Estate of Joseph Beuys/DACS 2008.}

Beuys Is Here
Sculpture Object Action Revolution

German artist Joseph Beuys (1921–86) is widely recognised as one of the most influential and extraordinary artists of the twentieth century.
Artist, educator, political and social activist, Beuys’s philosophy  proposed the healing power and social function of art, in which everyone can participate and benefit. The works in this exhibition provide an opportunity to experience this expanded concept of art as he understood it. Collectively, the exhibition presents the ‘constellation of ideas’ central to Beuys’s practice, revealing his ideas on zoology, ecology,  homeopathy, economics, politics, social activism, teaching and learning. Beuys incorporated into his work various materials such as felt, fat and metal, selected because of their inherent properties such as insulation, conduction and protection which all have associations with Beuys’s ideas.

The exhibition is largely selected from the ARTIST ROOMS collection and brings together well-known sculptures, drawings, vitrines and a remarkable selection of posters recalling live actions and events. Works include Fat Chair (1964–85) and, in Gallery 2, a single major work Scala Napoletana (1985) is shown for the first time in the UK. In addition nearly twenty notable multiples are included within the exhibition selected from National Galleries of Scotland. The multiple was a form of communication for Beuys – a means by which he could share and distribute his ideas beyond the confines of the artworld.

^{Joseph Beuys
Scala Napoletana. Neopolitan Ladder.1985 Wood, steel wire and lead. ARTIST ROOMS, Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Acquired jointly through the d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and The Art Fund 2008. Photo courtesy Anthony d’Offay Ltd. Estate of Joseph Beuys/DACS 2008.}

Beuys Is Here is the inaugural exhibition of Joseph Beuys’s work in the context of ARTIST ROOMS. It seeks to illustrate the function of creativity within the social, economic and political climate and reflects the
multi-faceted nature of Beuys’s life and work.

Guardian preview
Art Review piece

Book

Beuys Is Here
A newly published pocket-sized book, Beuys Is Here, explores with readers the expanded concept of art as understood by Beuys. This ‘battery of ideas’ includes a series of short contributions from artists, specialists and commentators. Contributors include Richard Wentworth, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Richard Demarco and Anthony d’Offay.

£5 – Available from the DLWP shop by calling 01424 229 111.

Multiples

As part of the Joseph Beuys exhibition we are pleased to offer a rare opportunity to buy Felt Postcard and Wood Postcard, an artist multiple (unlimited edition).

£10

^{Joseph Beuys, Felt & Wood Postcards, Scottish National Gallery of
Modern Art.}

Click here to visit the Beuys Is Here Shop pages with a whole host of great items available from the De La Warr Pavilion Shop during the exhibition.

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ARTISTS ROOMS

ARTIST ROOMS is a modern and contemporary art collection jointly owned and managed by National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. ARTIST ROOMS on Tour with The Art Fund is an inspired partnership with the UK’s independent art charity enabling displays of ARTIST ROOMS across the UK.

^{Photography courtesy of Nigel Green}

 

ANTHEM

 

A new audio work by William Furlong

A framework of wires, with speakers attached, will be stretched across the North and South walls of the gallery.

The sound heard over the speakers will all be recorded locally, exploring issues around the character, identity, use of the Pavilion and the atmosphere of the area around the Pavilion and seafront. The work would address the universal as well as the local in terms of people’s attitudes, ideas about the local environment, about change and the past, present and future, from personal perspectives.

Children, teenagers, couples, middle age and the elderly will be recorded and will involve tourists, visitors, holiday makers, people just passing through, those who work locally and people from abroad. The ambience of the local environment will also be part of the work with the sounds of children playing on the beach, the sea and sea gulls. The work will ‘map’ the preoccupations, thoughts and attitudes of those who visit Bexhill and the De La Warr Pavilion.

Anthem acknowledges and celebrates the De La Warr Pavilion, as a unique modernist and monumental building, its associations and activities on the South Coast of England.

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BBC News
‘Wall of sound’ hits Bexhill – review of Anthem
Click here to hear the review

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Biography

William Furlong (b. 1944 -) is recognised as belonging to a generation of British artists who developed a new concept of sculpture in the 1970s and 80s. Over the past 35 years his Audio Arts magazine has been published as a series of cassette editions (now on CD) and is a comprehensive archive of artists and interviews and important document of visual art festivals, and exhibitions. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including a sound installation in Intelligence, New British Art 2000 at Tate Britain and a solo show at the South London Gallery To Hear yourself as Others Hear You (2002). In 2007 the Audio Arts archive was exhibited at Tate Britain and his commission Walls of Sound for Goodwood Sculpture Park was acquired for the Berado Museum, Lisbon.He currently has a solo exhibition Possibility & Impossibility in Fixing Meaning at Laure Genillard, London.

Anthem is commissioned by the De La Warr Pavilion

Click here to download the Gallery Guide for this season. William Furlong’s commentary begins on page 7.
Installation Images: by Nigel Green