As one of Iceland’s leading artists, Hreinn Friðfinnsson (born in 1943, Bær Dölum, IS) is celebrated for his inspirational and poetic use of everyday objects. His vocabulary, underscored by a delicate sense of humour, playfully implements storytelling and perceptual ploys. Friðfinnsson’s work could be characterised as conceptual, it investigates our understanding of time and the world around us.
Whether it is his photographic works, digital animations, performances, wall pieces, or works on paper, the core of Robin Rhode’s multimedia oeuvre is the drawing, the line. Born in Cape Town in 1976 and raised in Johannesburg, he first studied art at the Technikon Witwatersrand, now the University of Johannesburg, followed by a postgraduate program at the South Africa School of Film, Television and Dramatic Arts in 2000.
In July 2017, HRH Franz, Duke of Bavaria permanently donated his extraordinarily exquisite and diverse collection of ceramic objects dating from the 19th to the 21st century to Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum. Starting on 27 September 2019, Die Neue Sammlung will be honouring this generous gift with a major exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne.
Los Angeles–based artist Carmen Argote (b. 1981, Guadalajara, Mexico) traces, layers, and transforms diverse materials sourced from her surroundings.
Mark Leckey transforms Tate Britain’s galleries with a life-size replica of a motorway bridge on the M53 on the Wirral, Merseyside, where the artist grew up. The bridge – a recurring motif in his work – is the setting for a new audio play. Focusing on a group of teenagers, the play is inspired by folklore and stories of changelings and ‘fairy raids’ and by the artist’s own pre-adolescent experiences.
Experience the extraordinary creative process of one of the world’s most inventive photographers through his pictures, films, photographic sets, and special installations – including ten new series of photographs influenced by the V&A’s collections.
The exhibition will celebrate Peggy Guggenheim’s Venetian life, shedding light on how she significantly continued to add works of art to her collection after her departure from New York, having closed her museum-gallery Art of This Century (1942–47), and having made Venice her home in 1948. The exhibition will present a selection of paintings, sculptures and works of paper that Guggenheim acquired from the late 1940s to 1979, the year in which she passed away, while simultaneously highlighting the milestone events and exhibitions that she organized and participated in.
Mikhail Karikis’s film explores the relationship between land, industry and community. Children of Unquiet (2013–14) was created with a group of forty-five children living in the Devil’s Valley, Italy, a volcanically-active region in Tuscany that inspired Dante’s Inferno. The site of the world’s first geothermal power plant, the area has recently become depopulated following the automation of the process of generating energy.
Nigerian-born contemporary artist Otobong Nkanga will install new and existing works at Tate St Ives as the culmination of her upcoming residency at the gallery. Nkanga’s drawings, installations, photographs and sculptures variously examine ideas around land and the value connected to natural resources.
The work features performances by Yumna Marwan, Elizabeth Peace and boychild, and by Al-Maria herself. Each one is cast against the science fiction backdrop of a solar battle, as evoked by Etel Adnan’s in her 1989 war poem, ‘The Arab Apocalypse’. Beast Type Song was shot in the derelict former campus of Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design in Holborn, London.