Chisenhale gallery in the press 2008-2014

Chisenhale gallery in the press
2008-2014
Date
June 2014
November 2013
October 2013
October 2013
September
March 2013
March 2013
Publication
Spike Art Quarterly
Kaleidoscope Magazine
Wallpaper Magazine
Artforum
Guardian
Guardian
Art Wednesday
Reference
Curator’s Key – Polly Staple pp. 40-42
Venice Biennale 2013
Culture Club
Happy Monday
Review: a ragbag bursting with life
Next Generation: Young Brits at Biennale
Gallery of the Month
March 2013
Telegraph
Alice Rawsthorne on discovering design
January 2013
December 2012
Guardian
Frieze Blog
What to see near Mile End
Looking Back, Looking Forward: Part 6
November 2012
London Evening Standard
London’s 1000 Most Influential People 2012
November 2012
October 2012
Art Review - Multiple
British Journal of
Photography
The Independent
London Evening Standard
Blouin ArtInfo
Kunstbeeld.nl
The Guardian
p. 52
Frieze London 2012
October 2012
October 2012
October 2012
June 2012
May 2012
May 2012
March 2012
March 2012
February 2012
February 2012
December 2011
December 2011
December 2011
December 2011
December 2011
December 2011
Financial Times
The Coffee Festival
Magazine
London Evening Standard
Frieze
Time Out Blog
East London Local
Frieze Blog
The Independent
i
Artforum
Art Review- Multiple
Art Review
November 2011
Engage
November 2011
November 2011
November 2011
SelfSelector
The Sunday Times Style
Artlyst
April 2012
Frieze week
Fun at the fair
Guide to Frieze Week
Up & Upcoming: Chisenhale Gallery
London Olympics: Orbit Towers over debate
on purpose of public art
26 May
24 March
P136-141
19 February, Richard Nicoll
16 February
30 December, Best of 2011
30 December
30 December
Vol. 50, No. 4, p.192-193
p.44
p.69
16 November, Laura Wilson wins Marsh
Award
2 November
13 November, Francesca Gavin
4 November
November 2011
October 2011
October 2011
October 2011
October 2011
October 2011
Autumn 2011
Artforum.com
NYTimes.com
Artforum.com
Theartnewspaper.com
The Art Newspaper
Frieze
Elephant
September 2011
BBC Radio London
September 2011
September 2011
September 2011
July/August 2011
July 2011
May/June 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
Guardian.co.uk
Bad Culture
Art Monthly
Art Monthly
The Independent
Vogue Living Australia
Project Magazine
Time Out
BBC Radio 4
October 2010
May 2010
May 2010
March 2010
Jan-Feb 2010
December 2009
December 2009
June 2009
December 2008
October 2008
May 2008
Sunday Telegraph
Times Online
New York Times
Guardian.co.uk
Frieze
The New Statesman
Frieze
Inspiredflight
Artforum
Glamour (Germany)
Flash Art
The Times
2 November
28 October
17 October
14 October, Anny Shaw
14 October, Diary
Issue 142, p. 210-215
Issue 8, p. 46-49, Astrid Stavro
28 September, Alice Rawsthorn on Robert
Elms
Show.
27 September, Charlotte Higgins
24 September
p.16-17
No. 348, p. 20
6 July
p. 45-48, People
16 December, Best of the Year
19 November, The Today Program
9 October, the review, Art Power List 2010
(Polly Staple No.24)
6 October, Kate Salter
24 May
2 May, Culture
9 March
Issue 128, Best Solo Shows 2009
30 December, Anna Minton
9 December, Stuart Comer, Best of Film 2009
Vicki Loomes
p.225-228, Emily Pethick
Expanding the City
2 Press Reaction
The Chisenhale Gallery has enjoyed some notable successes of late, its exhibitions of James Richards, Ed Atkins and
Helen Marten last year affirming the gallery as a destination to see some of the most interesting emerging
contemporary artists.
Sam Philips, RA Magazine, April 2013
At the Chisenhale Gallery, director (and frieze contributing editor) Polly Staple continues to programme shows that
are timely as they are fresh (Christina Mackie and James Richards in particular) – the latest, by wunderkind Helen
Marten, was no exception: it was fantastically inventive (and fun).
Jennifer Higgie, Frieze Blog, December 2012
The Chisenhale has long been an incubator of creativity at the heart of the East End scene, and Staple is the latest
director to make a big impression, harnessing the burgeoning performance art scene in the capital. But she can throw
curveballs, as the impressive show of Ghanaian-born London-based painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye this year
proved.
London Evening Standard, November 2012
During the second half of the year Chisenhale will stage exhibitions of three of London's most interesting young
artists – Amalia Pica, Ed Atkins and Helen Marten. Though each is very different, they have found unique ways to
consider a very physical sense of our fast-changing world.
Laura McLean-Ferris, The Independent, December 2011
Under the directorship of Polly Staple, Chisenhale has once again become the primary venue for emerging artists’
London premieres.
Wolfgang Tillmans, Artforum, December 2011
The success of the artist Ed Atkins is symptomatic. Relatively unknown until only a year ago, in this edition of the
fair one has been able to see his work as part of the Frieze Film programme and in the screening of his collaboration
with Haroon Mirza and James Richards in the impeccable Chisenhale Gallery.
SelfSelector, Lorena Muñoz-Alonso, November 2011
In London’s East End, this public gallery very often has great, intelligent solo shows.
Laura Mclean-Ferris, Project Magazine for iPad, January 2011
Best of 2010: The evergreen Chisenhale flew the not-for-profit flag.
Time Out, December 2010
The Chisenhale Gallery may be nestled in an out-of-the-way location, by the canal off Roman Road, but Staple has
not been deterred from bringing the best in international contemporary art to the doorstep of the 2012 Olympic
Games,
Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times (Art Power List 2010), October 2010
The stripy typeface was devised by the graphic designer Frith Kerr, founder of Studio Frith, working with Polly
Staple. As the defining element of the visual identity, it needed to reflect Chisenhale’s spirit, while being distinctive
and memorable, but not so much that it overpowered the art. It looks both a little retro and up to the minute, like
warm science fiction.
Alice Rawsthorn (on Chisenhale’s identity), New York Times, May 2010
3 Fifty “women to watch” have some significant omissions: I’ll also be “watching” such women as inspired curator
Polly Staple, Director of the Chisenhale Gallery in London.
Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian, March 2010
A new generation of not-for-profit, independent galleries, in tune with a more critical tradition, is emerging… such
as the Chisenhale Gallery… At the Chisenhale, Staple has launched 21st Century, a research-based programme of
talks, film screenings, publication launches and performances, linking in with university programmes and spanning a
range of disciplines, including architecture, music, philosophy and critical theory.
Anna Minton, The New Statesman, December 2009
Spaces such as Chisenhale Gallery rose up with a vengeance, producing, supporting and presenting impressive
moving image work.
Stuart Comer, Frieze, December 2009
There are promising developments in London’s non-profit arena, where gradual reshuffling of directors and
curators – such as Polly Staple at the Chisenhale Gallery - has helped create a fresh diversity of voices, positions and
approaches.’
Emily Pethick, Artforum, December 2008
Chisenhale Gallery
Registered charity no. 1026175
Registered company no. 2851794
Company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales
Registered office 64 Chisenhale Road, London E3 5QZ
4 Curators talk about an artwork that is important to them and their work /
Kuratoren sprechen über ein Werk, das für sie und ihre Arbeit wichtig ist
spike, 2014
Photo: Mark Blower, 2014
Curator’s Key—Polly
Staple
40
Polly Staple, Director of Chisenhale
Gallery in London, on A Burial at Ornans
(1849–50) by Gustave Courbet
Polly Staple, Leiterin der Chisenhale
Gallery in London, über Gustave Courbets
»Ein Begräbnis in Ornans« (1849–50)
In the early 90s I studied Art History at Sussex University in the UK. I was a fairly distracted student until my
last year when I finally started paying attention, inspired
largely by the feminist art historian Marcia Pointon and
American art historian and critic Thomas Crow, who must
have been working on his book Modern Art in the Common
Culture (1996), which explores the interdependence of
advanced art and modern mass culture.
As opposed to more traditional art-historical models
of connoisseurship, Sussex was a hotbed of semiotics, postmodernism and interdisciplinary research. Through the
rigour of academics such as Pointon and Crow I was able
Anfang der 90er Jahre studierte ich an der Sussex University in
England Kunstgeschichte. Erst im letzten Jahr begann es mich
wirklich zu interessieren, vor allem wegen der feministischen
Kunsthistorikerin Marcia Pointon und dem amerikanischen
Kunsthistoriker und Kritiker Thomas Crow, der damals wohl
gerade an seinem Buch »Modern Art in the Common Culture«
(1996) gearbeitet hatte, in dem es um die Wechselwirkungen zwischen avantgardistischer Kunst und moderner Massenkultur geht.
Sussex war – entgegen den traditionelleren Auffassungen
von Kunstgeschichte als Kennerschaft – ein Zentrum für Semiotik,
Postmodernismus und interdisziplinäre Forschung. Erst durch
die Strenge von Wissenschaftlern wie Pointon und Crow konnte
SPIKE 40 — 2014
Curator’s Key—Polly Staple
spike, 2014
to make connections between my own limited life experience and, for example, the politics of representation and
power, or anthropological studies of potlatch systems and
exchange economies in relation to the cultural logic of
late capitalism. I quickly became preoccupied by the Pictures Generation, but I wrote my dissertation on Gustave
Courbet.
Courbet painted A Burial at Ornans between 1849
and 1850. The work depicts a seemingly ordinary provincial funeral but on the grand scale usually reserved for history painting. Painted in a new realist manner, the figures
assembled around the graveside are modelled on the people
of Ornans and the ostensible subject – death – lacks sentimentality or romantic flourish. The people and the work
itself are often described as ugly. The painting’s exhibition at the Paris Salon of 1850–51 caused an outrage and
is noted by many as a turning point in the history of nineteenth-century French art and as a marker of the birth of
modernism.
Courbet’s seemingly democratic depiction of a pettybourgeois rural community posed a direct symbolic threat
to a then increasingly reactionary ruling elite and their
control of public space; a threat aesthetically matched by
what was regarded as the compositional weakness – or,
depending on your point of view, the radical strength –
of the painting itself.
ich einen Zusammenhang zwischen meiner eigenen begrenzten
Lebenserfahrung und den Strategien von Repräsentation und
Macht herstellen; oder zwischen anthropologischen Studien von
Potlatsch-Systemen und Tauschökonomien und der kulturellen
Logik des Spätkapitalismus. Ich konzentrierte mich dann bald
auf die Pictures Generation, meine Dissertation schrieb ich
allerdings über Gustave Courbet.
Courbet malte »Ein Begräbnis in Ornans« zwischen 1849
und 1850. Das Bild zeigt ein scheinbar gewöhnliches Begräbnis
in der Provinz, im Großformat, was eigentlich der Historienmalerei vorbehalten war. Es war auf neue Art realistisch, die
Figuren um das Grab sind nach den Bewohners Ornans gemalt,
dem vordergründigen Thema – Tod – fehlt jede Sentimentalität oder romantische Ausschmückung. Die Figuren und das
Werk selbst werden oft als hässlich bezeichnet. Beim Pariser
Salon von 1850–51 sorgte das Gemälde für einen Skandal, für
viele gilt es als Umbruch in der Geschichte der französischen
Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts und als Geburtsstunde des Modernismus.
Courbets scheinbar demokratische Darstellung einer kleinbürgerlich ländlichen Gesellschaft war eine direkte symbolische
Bedrohung für die zunehmend reaktionäre Führungselite und
ihre Herrschaft über den öffentlichen Raum; eine Bedrohung,
die ästhetisch dem entsprach, was als Schwäche der Komposition gesehen wurde – oder, je nach Standpunkt, als ihre radikale Stärke.
GUSTAVE COURBET
A Burial at Ornans (Ein Begräbnis in Ornans), 1849–50
Oil on canvas / Öl auf Leinwand
314 × 663 cm
SPIKE 40 — 2014
Curator’s Key—Polly Staple
41
GUSTAVE COURBET
spike, 2014
Detail from / aus A Burial at Ornans (Ein Begräbnis in Ornans), 1849–50
42
The composition of the figures within the picture
plane – arranged as a frieze-like horizontal motif with a
degree of flatness placing the viewer in the grave – and
the blunt colour palette owes much to popular vernacular woodcuts, lithographs and engravings of the day
which were increasingly cheaply available and widely
distributed. Here the influence of technological development – by means of the printing press – is inseparable
from aesthetic formal invention and its political and socioeconomic resonance.
And in this regard A Burial at Ornans becomes the
scene of a dispute over high culture, power and a redefinition of publics, as well as – to paraphrase Courbet
himself – translating the customs, the ideas and the appearances of the time into art. Linda Nochlin writes in her
2007 book Courbet: »Even today, Gustave Courbet’s A
Burial at Ornans has the power to strike us with a kind
of confrontational audacity.« Its »defiantly graceless
veracity« made Courbet notorious in his day and long
marked it out amongst the other works of »monumental
ambition« in the Louvre (it is now housed in the Musée
d’Orsay, Paris). Over the years other works of art, theoretical positions and people have had an impact on my
work as a curator but A Burial at Ornans remains an
important touchstone for what a work of art can be, and
what it can do. —
Die Komposition der Figuren auf der Bildfläche – ein
friesartiges, horizontales, flächiges Motiv, wo der Betrachter
vom Grab aus auf das Bild blickt – und die stumpfe Farbigkeit
verdanken sich den traditionellen volkstümlichen Holzschnitten,
Lithografien und Kupferstichen von damals, die immer günstiger wurden und sich immer mehr verbreiteten. Hier lässt sich
technischer Fortschritt – die Druckerpresse – von der formalästhetischen Neuerung und ihren politischen und sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen nicht trennen.
So gesehen wird »Ein Begräbnis in Ornans« zu einer Szene
des Konflikts von Hochkultur, Macht und der Neuordnung des
Öffentlichen, es übersetzt – um in den Worten Courbets zu
bleiben – die Bräuche, Vorstellungen und Gesichter der Zeit in
Kunst. Linda Nochlin schreibt in ihrem Buch »Courbet« (2007):
»Sogar heute noch hat Gustave Courbets ›Ein Begräbnis in
Ornans‹ die Kraft, uns mit seiner herausfordernden Kühnheit
zu treffen«. Dessen »provokativ reizlose Wahrhaftigkeit« machte
nicht nur Courbet zu seiner Zeit berühmt-berüchtigt, sondern
unterscheidet es auch von den anderen Gemälden mit »monumentalem Anspruch« im Louvre (heute hängt das Bild im Pariser
Musée d’Orsay). Über die Jahre haben verschiedenste andere
Werke, theoretische Strömungen und Menschen meine kuratorische Arbeit beeinflusst. »Ein Begräbnis in Ornans« bleibt
jedoch ein wichtiger Maßstab dafür, was ein Kunstwerk sein
und bewirken kann. —
Aus dem Englischen von der Redaktion
Polly Staple has been director of Chisenhale Gallery since 2008, before which she was director of Frieze Projects, the curatorial program
of the London art fair. She was also curator at Cubitt Gallery in London and co-editor of Untitled magazine / Bevor Polly Staple 2008
zur Direktorin der Chisenhale Gallery in London ernannt wurde, leitete sie die Frieze Projects, das kuratorische Programm der Londoner
Kunstmesse. Sie war Kuratorin der Cubitt Gallery in London und Redakteurin des Magazins Untitled.
SPIKE 40 — 2014
Curator’s Key—Polly Staple
guardian, january 2013
telegraph, March 2013
ART WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2013
ART WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2013
guardian, MARCH 2013
guardian, september 2013
artforum.com, october 2013
Happy Monday
LONDON
10.16.13
Left: Artist Rob Pruitt. Right: Collector Steve Cohen with dealer Monika
Sprüth. (All photos: Linda Yablonsky)
FRIEZE LONDON (as opposed to Frieze Masters and Frieze New York) isn’t
just an art fair with a split personality. It also has the UK capital itself, splendid
museums, and galleries hither and yon. In some ways they are really the hosts
of Frieze Week (or the “Frizzes,” as one cab driver put it), and on Monday,
October 14—ostensibly the week’s “quiet night”—a bunch of them threw out
the welcome mat with a round of openings and dinners that brought out the
special pleasures and anxieties of living simultaneously in past and present.
Historically minded visitors with VIP cards could dip into Whistler at Dulwich
Picture Gallery or Paul Kleeand Mira Schendel at Tate Modern. Those who
like to season their legacy issues with a sprinkle of currency only had to
scoot to Pace Gallery in Soho, for curator Nicolas Trembley’s exhibition of
contemporary and modern artworks inspired by Mingei, the nineteenth-century
Japanese arts and crafts movement. But the night belonged to those seeking
tomorrow’s yesterday today, particularly in Mayfair, where three American
artists—Jeff Elrod, Daniel Arsham, and Kehinde Wiley—were having UK solo
debuts at Simon Lee, Pippy Houldsworth, and Stephen Friedman, respectively.
Another, Rob Pruitt, produced paintings and sculpture at Massimo De Carlo
that treated the subject of suicidal depression to a Popish optimism. This
sanguine mien also turned up, with a tad more violence, in refreshing paintings
of the 1960s and ’70s by the late Jerzy (“Jurry”) Zeiliński at Luxembourg &
Dayan, while the French-bornCyprien Gaillard found a kindred spirit in Morris
Louis at Sprüth Magers, where his folded National Geographic magazine
collages made clever formalist connections to the painter’s ethereal waves and
spills.
artforum.com, october 2013
Left: Dealer Massimo De Carlo. Right: Dealer Daniel Buchholz, choreographer Michael Clark, and dealer Nicholas Svennung.
Due to traffic, time constraints, and jet lag, I missed Simon Lee’s celebration
of Elrod but arrived at Pippy Houldsworth just as choreographer Jonah Bokaer
began a ten-minute movement dialogue with Arsham’s volcanic-ash sculptures.
A world and a few minutes away at Friedman, Wiley’s smashing new portraits
of smiling Jamaicans posed nineteenth-century British style against his
signature William Morris–patterned grounds. The show inspired an impromptu
voguing session by Art Production Fund cofounders Yvonne Force Villareal
and Doreen Remen. Standing beside his installation of pedestal cubes, Pruitt
described his Color Field paintings as portals to the afterlife. “They’re Prozac
ads with the text removed,” he said, before departing for a pass-along dinner in
the charmingly shabby environs of a Portland Place townhouse—perfect for a
veteran depressive.
Over at Simpsons-on-the-Strand, an old-timey British restaurant that came
alive with a multinational crowd that included Hans Ulrich Obrist, Abdullah alTurki and supercollector Steve Cohen, Gaillard pronounced Louis “a prophet”
who made “veiled paintings” in Washington, DC, home of the veiled. Here, in
the parallel universe of the art world, it was hard to remember that the American government was entering its third week of terminal dysfunction. Perhaps it
could do with an art fair.
Meanwhile, at St. John restaurant in the East End, dealer Maureen Paley
toasted Wolfgang Tillman’s seventh solo show in twenty years with her gallery, characterizing his single-subject exhibition as “intimate and daring.” The
crowd itself was a tribute to the artist. “I know!” Tillmans said, eyes wide.
“Every museum director in town is here!” That was pretty close to true. The
Tate’s Nicholas Serota andChris Dercon were both on hand, as were the Whitechapel’s Iwona Blaswick, the Hayward’s Ralph Rugoff, and the ICA’s Gregor
Muir.
artforum.com, october 2013
Left: Artist Wolfgang Tillmans. Right: Art Production Fund cofounders Yvonne
Force Villareal and Doreen Remen.
But so were Artists Space director Stefan Kalmár and White Columns director
Matthew Higgs, a complement of artists who included Michael Craig-Martin
and Gillian Wearing, collectors Maja Hoffmann and Phil and Shelley Fox
Aarons, and dealers Nicky Verber, Jake Miller, Chantal Crousel, and Daniel
Buchholz. There was some talk of a competition between the two Frieze fairs
in London, whether or not there was really any crossover audience, and if even
a reformatted Frieze could meet the challenge of Masters, its elegant sibling.
“I’m doing both Masters and Frieze,” Buchholz told graphic designer Peter
Saville. “How?” Saville asked. “I have a different dress for each,” Buchholz
replied. “Polyester for Frieze, linen for Masters,” Saville advised. “Masters is
very linen.”
—
Linda Yablonsky
Left: Dealers Amalia Dayan, Thaddaeus Ropac, and Daniella Luxembourg.
Right: Dealer Maureen Paley.
artforum.com, october 2013
Left: Artist Liam Gillick, Fiorucci Art Trust curator Milovan Farronato, and
Chisenhale Gallery curator Polly Staple. Right: Hayward Gallery director
Ralph Rugoff.
Left: Artist Jonathan Horowitz. Right: Dealer Gavin Brown.
Left: Artist Andreas Gursky with Serpentine Gallery codirector Hans Ulrich
Obrist and artist Koo Jeong-A. Right: CollectorAbdullah Al-Turki.
Wallpaper* Magazine, october 2013
Kaleidoscope, NOVEMBER 2013