Leigh Ledare (American, born 1976) pushes social systems to lay bare their underlying structures. His projects, which often rely on the enactment of complex social situations, are fundamentally collaborative; agency and authorship in these situations depend on interpersonal negotiations with and before the camera.

Recently, Ledare adapted an experiential group psychology method initially developed by the Tavistock Institute in London as a means to explore these ideas. Enacted through a series of conversations among teams of participants and psychologists over the course of a multiday conference, this approach constructs a social “ecosystem” designed for the group’s self-analysis. The Tavistock method helps participants develop a set of tools for investigating individual authority and identity as they relate to factors such as race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomics. Ledare transforms the method with one key modification: the presence of the artist and cameras as observers and collaborators during the meetings. This intervention causes shifts in the established structures of authority as well as assumed boundaries among the participants and psychologists—and it calls attention, by analogy, to the power relations binding artist, subject, and viewer in the making and display of works of art.

At the center of this exhibition is The Task—a film directed by Ledare during a three-day conference that he organized in Chicago that was structured according to the Tavistock method—a project that involved recruiting 30 participants, securing the collaboration of 10 psychologists trained in the method, and directing a film crew. Complex patterns of stereotyping and other projections of identity emerge through the participants’ discussions; authority is questioned, assumed, and taken away; and viewers are implicated as the participants become aware of subjective forces that exist beyond the imposed boundaries of the conference system. The Task is accompanied by a series of photographs and assemblages of found mass media images, which act as allegories to the film’s chapters. With Ledare at its core, the entire project presents a highly structured series of dialectical encounters between the private and public, the individual and the group, and experience and representation.

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Image: Installation view: Leigh Ledare, The Plot, Art Institute of Chicago, 8 September – 31 December 2017. Image courtesy of the artist and Art Institute of Chicago.

Alice Theobald develops multifaceted installations that incorporate sculpture, music, performance and video. Her work addresses accepted concepts of spectacle and emotion to explore the spectrum of acting and performance present in our everyday lives and the demand for “authenticity”. Drawing upon a mixture of pop cultural references, Theobald questions the essence of drama, stage and life when representing complex human themes such as love, aspiration, freedom, alienation, memory and doubt.

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Image courtesy of Opening Times online platform.

How does the architecture of the museum drive new relationships between artists, architects, curators, and their diverse audiences? Join artist Rachel Rose and award-winning architects Preston Scott Cohen, Gerald M. McCue Professor in Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and Florian Idenburg, cofounder of architecture firm SO – IL, for a panel discussion about contemporary art and architecture.

Moderated by Troy Conrad Therrien, Curator, Architecture and Digital Initiatives, the panelists will discuss the ways in which these critical dialogues are transforming museums and cultivating new projects. The conversation will highlight the pioneering projects of Cohen and Idenburg—most notably the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California, Davis—and Rose’s video installations within museum contexts.

A reception and book signing will follow the discussion. Copies of SO – IL’s first-ever publication Solid Objectives: Order, Edge, Aura and Preston Scott Cohen’s Lightfall: Genealogy of a Museum: Herta and Paul Amir Building, Tel Aviv Museum of Art will be available for sale.

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Image: Installation view, Rachel Rose, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2017. Photo: Markus Tretter © Rachel Rose, Kunsthaus Bregenz

Everything we do is music, curated by Shanay Jhaveri, traces a long history, from early Indian miniature paintings (Ragamalas) through to drawings, animations and video works from the present day. Including works by pivotal Indian and Pakistani artists such as Nasreen Mohamedi and Lala Rukh, the exhibition will feature a number of works previously unseen in the UK. It will present newly commissioned pieces by Michael Müller and Sarnath Banerjee alongside works by contemporary artists such as Prabhavathi Meppayil, Shahzia Sikander and Dayanita Singh . The exhibition will also explore the influence of Indian classical music on important American artists such as Lee Mullican and Marian Zazeela, and its wider influence on western popular and counterculture.

Whilst the range of approaches represented in the exhibition are diverse, drawing and mark making form the core of each artists’ response to music – journeying from the figurative and graphic to the abstract and performative.

In Everything we do is music, figurative approaches start with the miniature Indian paintings known as the Ragamalas (a genre emerging in the second half of the 15th century, in which an attempt is made to capture an associated mood or character of raga through a staged tableau). These continue with Mohan Samant’s vibrant drawings of musicians and Shahzia Sikander’s animation Disruption as Rapture, whilst Sarnath Banerjee will make a new set of commissioned figurative drawings.

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Image: Shahzia Sikander, Disruption as Rapture, 2016. HD video animation with 7.1 surround sound. Music by Du Yun featuring Ali Sethi. Courtesy of the artist and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Studio Museum has announced its newest artists-in-residence for 2018: Allison Janae Hamilton, Tschabalala Self, and Sable Elyse Smith. Due to the institution’s planned closure next year to be redesigned by Adjaye Associates, the artists will work from studios located in a street-level space at 429 West One-Hundred and Twenty-Seventh Street.

“Our artist-in-residence program has been at the heart of this institution’s mission since our founding in 1968,” director and chief curator Thelma Golden said. “It is the embodiment of our commitment to supporting emerging artists of African descent, and is at the center of our work to bring artists together with the Harlem community. I am thrilled that Allison, Tschabalala, and Sable—three outstanding artists, each of whom has already developed her own distinctive practice—will be with us during our anniversary year, at the beginning of an exciting transition.”

Self’s paintings are on view at the New Museum’s “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon.” For more information click here

Image: Tschabalala Self, “Pop”, 2017, Acrylic, watercolour, flashe, crayon, coloured pencil, oil pastel, pencil, hand-coloured photocopy, hand-coloured canvas on canvas, 243.8 x 213.4 cm.
Photo: Damian Griffiths

Acclaimed German artist, Ulla von Brandenburg, explores her distinct visual language that draws on the traditions and tropes of theatre, film and storytelling in a new film and installation created for Aarhus. Von Brandenburg’s works, characterised by their use of curtains, costumes, props and staged settings, draws on a range of historical references, including the tableau vivant, modern theatre, folk traditions and iconic architecture. Combined with song and movement, these elements suggest a symbolic staging of ritualised encounters that are central to her oeuvre.

Von Brandenburg’s practice displays a deep engagement with the traditions of craft, music, colour theory and the construction of narratives, both real and imagined. With a unique signature style that brings film, architecture and installation together, her works explore the relationships between people and the different levels of collective consciousness.

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Image: Ulla von Brandenburg, It Has A Golden Sun and An Elderly Grey Moon, 2016. Super 16 mm on HD video, colour, sound, 22 min 25 sec. Foto / Photo: Martin Argyroglo.

Tala Madani has also been honoured in the 10th annual Distinguished Women in the Arts Luncheon held by MOCA. The MOCA Distinguished Women in the Arts Luncheon was established in 1994 by the Projects Council to recognize the many gifted women providing leadership and innovation in the visual arts, dance, music, and literature. The Wednesday event, which was at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, has recognized a long list of notable figures over the years, including Tina Brown, Twyla Tharp, Anjelica Huston, Yoko Ono and Annie Leibovitz, for their leadership in the visual arts.

For more details see here.

Image: Tala Madani, Sex Ed by God, 2017, Animation, Digital video color, sound, 2′ 11′, Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias Gallery.

Tala Madani has been honoured by Hirschorn Museum as one of 32 artists – Three generations of trailblazing women. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden announced today that its third New York gala will be held Monday, Nov. 6, at The Lincoln Center. This year, the annual event celebrates 32 women artists from around the world who transformed public perceptions of contemporary art and expanded cultural dialogue around the most important current issues.

The group represents some of the most significant artists working today, featuring trailblazers who pioneered new forms of artmaking. The Hirshhorn has continually supported the development of women artists through an active acquisition program and dynamic exhibitions, working closely with Barbara Kruger, Yoko Ono, Shirin Neshat, Jenny Holzer and Yayoi Kusama, among many others.

For a full listing of honourees and more information click here.

Image: Tala Madani, Blurry Pussy, 2017, Oil on linen, stickers, 248.9 x 203.2 cm, 98 x 80 in. Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias Gallery.

This exhibition examines the changing nature of the ceramics studio across the 20th century and how a new generation of UK based artists are looking again at ideas of art and craft. Highlights include ceramics from studio potters Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada, shining a spotlight on the relationship between Japan and the UK from the 1910s to 40s. Discover the Californian ‘clay revolution’ of the 1950s and 60s, showcasing sculptures from Peter Voulkos, Ken Price, Rudy Autio and Ron Nagle, alongside a new commission by contemporary British artist Jesse Wine.

Discover the work of the leading ceramic artists working in the UK during the 1970s and 80’s. Selected with artist Aaron Angell, these include artworks by Gillian Lowdnes, Richard Slee and other contemporaries of the hand-built movement, which saw the potter’s wheel cast aside. These will be shown alongside work by a number artists – including Anthea Hamilton – made over the last three years at Angell’s London-based Troy Town Art Pottery, which he describes as ‘a radical and psychedelic workshop for artists’.

Angell will be undertaking a residency at Leach Pottery, concluding the exhibition in the location where our story began.

To accompany the exhibition St Ives based artist Simon Bayliss will show some of his Ceramic Pasty Paintings in the café at Tate St Ives.

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Image: Installation view: That Continuous Thing: Artists and the Ceramics Studio, 1920 – Today, Tate St.Ives, 2017.

Stairways to Art is a series of projects run by the Niedersachsen Foundation and the Kunstverein Hannover , which since 2010 has presented space-changing designs in alternating rhythm, which are being developed especially for the staircase in the Künstlerhaus’s east wing. In 2017, three site-specific project proposals were spotted. From these proposals, the artist Sophie von Hellermann (* 1975 in Munich) prevailed this year in 2017 and is now the seventh artist in this series to record the »Steps to Art« in the Künstlerhaus Hannover. Previous participants were Julia Oschatz, Kathrin Sonntag, Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth, Lothar Götz, Esther Stocker and Christian Helwing.

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Image: Installation view: Stufen zur Kunst – Sophie von Hellermann, Kunstverein Hannover, 31 August 2017 – August 2018.