Damien Hirst
Garage magazine
DAMIEN HIRST
‘Modern Woman’ Death 2
Collage and pencil on two colour foilblock
Unique
Signed, titled and dated
72 x 51cm
2010
Damien Hirst
‘Union Jack’
2012
Hirst’s giant interpretation of the union jack flag filled the entire floor of the Olympic Stadium as part of the magnificent celebration of the arts in Britain.
Tim Noble & Sue Webster
Girlfriend From Hell
Edition of 10,000
Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s work fuses dark and light, male and female, and high and low art. Evident here, Girlfriend from Hell, along with its companion piece, Puny Undernourished Kid, recalls the aggressive tattoos that adorn the bodies of those who fill English seaside towns in the summer.
The large neon work is based on a cartoon-like drawing of Sue created by Tim ten years previously. The artist boldly gives the middle finger to the viewer, brandishing Nazi symbols and proclaiming that she has ‘no fear’. Displayed together, the works strongly portray the persona of the artists, and it is as if we are witnessing the figures of Noble and Webster standing tall against the world.
Richard Prince
Dude Ranch Nurse, 2008
Collage with offset lithography,
hand colouring, hand cutting and pencil
48.26 x 60.96 cm
Edition of 96
Prince (b.1949) is one of the world’s most celebrated artists and one of its greatest artistic innovators.
Group 2012 - Exhibition of 38 artists longlisted for the WW Solo Award
WW Gallery 34/35 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8DX
1 – 25 August 2012
Open Weds – Fri 11 – 6pm; Sat 11 – 4pm
The WW SOLO award is different to other arts awards in that its focus stretches further than just new graduates. Other art prizes might be on the look out for the new generation of YBAs in the budding talent of the freshest of graduates, but the WW gallery believe that artists can be emerging at any age. From over 300 entries, 38 artists were selected who will be exhibiting their work at the WW Gallery during the month of August.
A distinguished panel of judges, including Sheila McGregor (Chief Executive, Axis, the online resource for contemporary art), Helen Sumpter (Art writer and Deputy Visual Art Editor of Time Out London ), Kate Davis (Artist & Tutor in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art) and Deb Covell (Artist & Co-founder Platform-A Gallery, Middlesbrough) will then short list six artists who will be announced at the opening of the Solo Award.
The overall winner will be announced on the 25th August and will benefit from a structured opportunity; prize money, a three month residency and a solo exhibition at the gallery in January. The winner will also be commissioned to produce a limited edition work for display and sale at WW Gallery next year.
Visitors to GROUP 2012 will be encouraged to vote for their favourite work in the show.
Damien Hirst
Perillartine
Woodcut
14.5 x 18 inches
Edition of 55
From the outset of his career Hirst was interested in the possibilities of printmaking and the multiple image. One of the main strands of Hirst’s work are the spot paintings which he first introduced in 1988. Referred to as his pharmaceutical paintings, Hirst invented the composition of coloured spots in a grid as a system offering endless possibilities with only one simple rule – for each work all colours could only be used once. The spot prints seduce through exuberant colours and are technically accomplished and labour-intensive as each spot needs to be inked individually before printing. The titles of each spot print derive from chemical substances used by the pharmaceutical industry.
Technique
A 2-inch spot woodcut, printed on 410gsm Somerset White Paper, published by The Paragon Press in 2012.
Sarah Lucas: Ordinary Things
Institute exhibition
19th July 2012 - 21st October 2012
Ordinary Things takes Sarah Lucas’ (b. 1962) recent series of sculptures ‘NUDS’ (2009-) as a starting point, looking forward and backward across an artistic practice that has engaged with the possibilities of sculpture for over two decades.
Many exhibitions of Lucas’ work have focused on her as a central player within British art in the 1990s. Ordinary Things offers a counter position: this exhibition of thirty sculptures turns to the sculptural rather that the sensational, positioning Lucas’ work within an art historical lineage that addresses the materials and processes of sculpture. From ‘Big Fat Anarchic Spider’ (1993) to ‘NUDS’ (2009-2010), to ‘Unknown Soldier’ (2003) and ‘Jubilee’ (2012), via ‘Suffolk Bunny’ (1997-2004), ‘Au Naturel’ (1994) and ‘Penetralia’ (2008), Ordinary Things identifies Lucas’ consistent questioning of the definition of sculpture. Lucas works with the ‘ordinary things’ that form our surroundings and assumptions.
Sculpture is formed of a narrow and specific history, concerned with processes of making and informed by the ways in which human beings use objects to attempt to make sense of the surrounding world. Lucas’ sculptures are built on the art historical idea of what a sculpture might be - an object, defined by gravity, space, the human body and naturally found forms. Ordinary Things locates Lucas’ works firmly in this history, with the works pointing to the canon of sculpture, ranging from third century Italian votives, Bernini’s classical statuary, the figures of Henry Moore and the natural materials of Barbara Hepworth, to the Arte Povera strategies of Mario Merz and the found objects of Robert Filliou. Her works also recall the knotted bodies of Orlan from the 1960s and the dolls of Hans Bellmer and Oskar Kokoschka, as well as the surrealist figures of Pablo Picasso, Robert Gober and Louise Bourgeois, Cycladic torsos and archaeological artefacts. Ordinary Things is a consideration of the ways in which Lucas uses the sculptural languages of the figure and the cast. Made by her own hand, her objects are produced through the languages that surround them, materials that are ready at hand, and sculptural procedures and traditions, taking in cutting, welding, moulding, handling, stuffing, assembling; monumental, ready-made, formal, quick-build, representational and abstract.
Lucas’ sculptures are made of and from the human body - a decaying and sensible object that requires maintenance and care. ‘Au Naturel’ (1994) is a portrait of a couple on a bed, a man represented by a cucumber and a pair of oranges and a woman by a pair of melons and a bucket. Both vulgar compositions are constructed from materials and vernacular slang that are commonplace, their ‘human’ component made from organic matter that needs to be replaced as inevitable decay sets in. In the seven ‘NUDS’ (2009-2010) here on display, limbs can be seen wrapping around each other in knotted couplings and solo acrobatics, the cellulite-marked flesh formed from ‘natural’ tights stuffed with fluff and stiffened by wire, the delicate surface bruised and wrinkled as the bodies perch on their breeze-block supports.
Sarah Lucas is currently the host of Situation at Sadie Coles HQ in London, a project running throughout 2012 that channels the spirit of the artist-led exhibitions of the late 1980s and 1990s with which Lucas and her contemporaries launched their careers. Since the 1990s Lucas’ work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group presentations. Recent solo exhibitions include NUDS (Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli, Coyacan, Mexico, 2012), Spirit of Ewe (Two Rooms, Auckland, New Zealand, 2011) and NUDS CYCLADIC (Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, 2010) and recent group exhibitions include Modern British Sculpture (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2011), British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet (Nottingham Contemporary; Hayward Gallery, London; Tramway, Glasgow; Plymouth Museum, 2010-11) and The Surreal House (Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2010).
Ordinary Things is curated by Lisa Le Feuvre, Head of Sculpture Studies at the Institute, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring essays by Lisa Le Feuvre, Deborah Orr, Anne Wagner and Gilda Williams.
