Author: Yvette
Yvette Greslé is a London based art historian and writer. She tweets @yvettegresle
Interview: Harold Offeh: Performing Covers
‘Album covers are illustrations of music. The image has a really interesting relationship to audio and to text. What I found with a lot of them, particularly funk, and soul, is that you get a real articulation of black identity.’
INTERVIEW: Chiharu Shiota: other side
‘I’m fascinated by things and places where you can sense what has been there despite the fact that it’s long gone’
Sophie Jung: Learning About Heraldry @ Ceri Hand Gallery
‘Every day I took a seashell and recorded it as though it were the ocean with words swimming in it. At the same time I practiced ‘She sells seashells on the seashore’. Then I thought what would happen if you turn the ‘she’ into ‘he’ and remove the letter ‘h’ from all the words’.
Rachel Maclean: On the Shortlist for Film London Jarman Award 2013
‘I’m interested in characters that are not like real life characters, they’re sealed in these video worlds where they’re hyper-real’.
UBERMORGEN: userunfriendly @Carroll/Fletcher
‘If art and art production politicizes itself, it becomes political and ceases to be art’
Wonderland: Sluice Art Fair 2013
Sluice, which is artist and curator led, offers a welcoming counterpoint to the shopping mall sensations of Regent’s Park.
1:54: London’s first Contemporary African Art Fair
‘This work is attached to tradition but at the same time it’s very edgy and contemporary’
Hannah Knox: BUFF @ Ceri Hand Gallery
‘I was interested, thinking about Brando, in whether you could make a sexy painting. It’s something I wanted to try and do in some way.’
Lilah Fowler: Passage and pair @ Maria Stenfors
‘I was looking a lot at desert modernism and layouts of cities in the States particularly’.
Kimathi Donkor: ‘Daddy, I want to be a black artist’ @ Peckham Space
‘I wanted to talk about inspiration, desire, commitment, and the determination these young people have’.
Paul Kindersley: One Gigantic Sketchbook
‘I do find it very frustrating when people are too afraid to be anything than what is prescribed. I enjoy characters and looks that are on the edges’.
Interview: “The Black Stars of Ghana – Art District”
‘Where is Africa on the stage of this “global” art world? What does it mean to talk about an “international art scene”?’
Interview: Barry Sykes: Hermits, Repetition, Contradiction
‘I’m wary of art that is totally certain of itself’.
Interview: Capturing Stillness: Kuba Wieczorek
‘For me, the strongest artwork is work you want to come back to again and again. I’m not interested in artwork that is a quick fix’.
Preview: South African film and video: Steven Cohen and Zanele Muholi @ICALondon
Zanele Muholi and Steven Cohen negotiate the politics of visibility and invisibility, and foreground the stakes and the risks attached to everyday life, and visibility and movement as a person who identifies as queer.
Larry Achiampong: Sankofa and Samples of me
‘You have to understand where it is you’re coming from before you can create something for the future’.
Stuart Layton: You’ll Never Work in this Town Again
‘Originally I saw myself as a painter, and started messing around with film and video as something to help move stuck paintings forward’
Review: Emma Hart: Dirty Looks at Camden Arts Centre
‘Someone keeps on coughing. After a while I feel as though I might start coughing, as if embodying this strange, toxic, disconcerting environment’.
Interview: Bedwyr Williams
‘I think I’ve always had my ears open for snatches of stories about people (hearsay, and little half-truth stories)’.
Review: Meschac Gaba: Museum of Contemporary African Art @Tate Modern
‘Nothing can be taken for granted and we adapt, move and transform with the passing of time’.
Interview: Juno Calypso at Simon Oldfield
‘When women do take pictures of themselves they take loads and loads until they get the perfect image’.
Review: Unknown Sitter DOS At Charlie Dutton Gallery
‘In contemporary portrait painting the identity of the person being portrayed gets lost. In a way, this is through the personality of the painter. This show is about the sitter. Who is the sitter? Who is the sitter represented by?’
Jan Kempenaers: ‘the aura of these places’
‘It’s quite an experience when you arrive there and see these monuments. It’s hard to explain’.