Where?

Interchange Gallery,
173 Whitecross Street
EC1Y 8JT

When?

Private view: 17 May 18:00 – 21:00

Open daily: 18 – 24 May 10:00 – 18:00 (closed Sunday)

How much?

This exhibition is free and open to all members of the general public.

Mark’s unique characters explore a world which mixes fantasy and reality, reconciling themes of past and present, violence and slapstick which offers a new perspective on strangely familiar scenes.

Mark will be showcasing both new and existing work at Interchange gallery continuing his Little People 2012 group of alternative portraits In London’s Olympic year.

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art, Mark’s memorable characters have taken their growing fanbase on a journey through war zones, fairgrounds and lately through some distinctively British scenes in time for the Olympic and Jubilee year.

Based in East London, Mark exhibits in art fairs and galleries across the UK, US and Asia using a variety of mediums including animation, paint and fine art prints.

Mark Hayward at the Interchange Gallery will showcase some of the themes that recur frequently throughout Mark’s work - Military, Fairground and Childhood. Seemingly disparate, Mark has stated that he feels the themes work together as all coming from a very similar place. They all have strong actions and situations that define the characters very simply whilst the characters themselves get to be quite innocent and relaxed.

Serious subject matter is approached not with a light-hearted or flippant attitude but with an aim to finding some sense of humour or some personality that we can all relate to.

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At the table is an exploration of the mythical family dinner and the real one you may or may not have grown up with. It’s about how we communicate with strangers, or with those who know us most intimately…or is there really any difference between the two? It’s about how we craft who we are—consciously or unconsciously—for friends and family and facebook and coworkers and the person sitting next to us on the tube.

Where?

At the Table will be hosted in a private house in East London. The location will be revealed to participants prior to the event.

When?

03.05.12, 8pm-11pm

How Much?

£17 for event/dinner (a drink is included), £15 concessions

Audience members should come prepared to share and participate. The meal will be vegetarian, but we cannot cater to specific allergies, gluten intolerance, or dairy-free diets.

// NB:

Our first event last month was Sold out! We remind you that our events are ticketed, number of tickets available is limited and there will be no tickets sold at the door.

So book your tickets early, don’t be late for dinner and don’t forget to wash your hands before sitting at the table or Mum will tell you off!

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At the Table is part of TINATA – This Is Not A Take Away is a curatorial project that will showcase artists and non-artists who are interested in a particular approach towards how food is sourced, prepared, served or eaten. Every first Thursday of the month a different host cook, will serve food to the guest audience while engaging in a dialogue about their concept-idea. From primitive palette to emotional eating, from recipes as memories to family roles dynamics, this series of events will explore the way we experience food from new and fascinating points of view. The events will be taking place in different locations around East London.

For more info and tickets visit: thisisnotatakeaway.com

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Where:

The Gallery,
St Martin-in-the-Fields,
London,
WC2N 4JJ

When:

From the 1st- 13th May 2012.
Open Daily 10am – 5pm.
Private View, Tuesday 1st May 6-8pm.

How much?

Admission Free.

About:

Repre art collective is a group of artists who have come together to exhibit, celebrate and promote contemporary representational art. They share a common vision to capture and depict reality and express it through diverse and eloquent forms of painting. This is their first collaborative exhibition together and the installation promises to be a vibrant display of contemporary portrait and landscape painting.

The choice to hold their first exhibition together in St Martin-in-the-Fields and at the heart of the establishment in Trafalgar Square conveys their desire to raise the profile of contemporary figurative art and what it can truly articulate. It is fitting that a venue which has shown work by established artists such as Chris Gollon and Mike Chapman can also accommodate the work of emerging talent.

A prize draw will take place on the night of the private view as Julie Bennett, Nathaniel Fowles and Patrick Simkins will be donating limited edition prints of their work to raise funds for St. Martin-in-the-Fields BBC Radio 4 Christmas Appeal.

Exhibiting artists:

Julie Bennett, a talented artist who reappropriates mass-mediated images into gestural paintings.

Nathaniel Fowles, an artist who paints evocative scenes of London and has his work in many private collections.

Jemma Grundon, whose work concerns the landscape and the evocative nature of the world we live in.

Noel Hefele, an artist based in Brooklyn, New York who is interested in the ever expanding notions of landscape painting.

Amelia Humber, whose paintings relay the atmosphere and emotion of landscape.

Rebecca Molloy, the founder of Repre Art Collective and a burgeoning figurative artist and portrait painter.

Louise Morgan, a landscape painter that produces exquisite little watercolours.

Andrew Newton, an experimental hyper-realist who creates powerful compelling portraits reflecting scenes of real life.

Patrick Simkins, a London-based artist exhibiting work throughout UK and is an official London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Storyteller.

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The Great Wall of Vagina, 2011, Plaster.

The controversial Great Wall of Vagina created by British artist Jamie McCartney is making its way to London for a long awaited debut show. McCartney who set out to change female body perception through his art will also debut his latest innovative project, the Physical Photography series, at The Hay Hill Gallery in May.

Where?

5a Cork Street, London, W1S 3NY

When?

8th May – 2nd June 2012

How Much?

This exhibition is free and open to all members of the general public

Challenging and visually imposing the 9‐metre wall features individual plaster cast panels taken from 400 different women’s most intimate parts. The sculpture, which took 5‐years to complete, has attracted global interest – The Hay Hill gallery comments: “The pun in the title The Great Wall of Vagina belies a serious artwork of great social importance. It is a highly provocative response to the exponential rise in cosmetic labial surgeries, opposing any notion of a perfect aesthetic. Volunteers for the wall ranged in age from 18 to 76 and included mothers, daughters, identical twins, a pre and post‐natal woman and, rather provocatively, a woman pre and post labiaplasty. McCartney set out to alleviate the needless anxiety that is driving many women to contemplate surgery.”

The SKIN DEEP exhibition features over forty sculptures and photographs, focusing on notions of beauty and society’s obsession with the physical self. Of his pioneering Physical Photography series McCartney comments: “I wanted to depict my models in their natural state without recourse to the scourge of image manipulation. The impact of these full‐size body portraits of up to six feet square is extremely powerful. They celebrate both the human body and the human condition.”

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This symposium will explore the presence of the past, national identity, taste and nostalgia in relation to the Recording Britain collection of water colours and drawings.

Where?
Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
London
Sw7 2RL

When?
Friday 20 April, 10.30-17.30

How Much?
£25, £20 concessions, £10 students.
To book call 020 7942 2211.

This symposium will explore the presence of the past, national identity, taste and nostalgia in relation to the Recording Britain collection of water colours and drawings produced at the start of World War II.  Invited speakers to the symposium include historian Patrick Wright, cultural historian David Heathcote, and artists Ingrid Pollard, Abigail Reynolds, Simon Roberts and Paul Scott.

At the outbreak of World War II an ambitious scheme was set up to employ artists on the home front. The result was a collection of more than 1500 watercolours and drawings that make up a fascinating record of British lives and landscapes at a time of imminent change.  Recording Britain was the brainchild of Sir Kenneth Clark, who saw it as an extension of the Official War Artist scheme. By choosing watercolour painting as the medium of record, Clark hoped that the scheme would also help to preserve this characteristic English art form. Recording Britain was intended to boost national morale by celebrating the country’s natural beauty and architectural heritage, but it was also a memorial to the war effort itself. These watercolours and drawings are a uniquely fascinating record of their time. They were widely exhibited during the war years, and in 1949 the Pilgrim Trust gave them to the V&A.

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On view in London for the first time ever, is Edvard Munch’s iconic The Scream. Only for a week though. So be quick!

Where?

Sotheby’s
34-35 New Bond Street
London W1A 2AA UK
Tel: +44 20 7293 5000

When?

13th April – 18th April 2012

How much?

Free

One of the best known images in both art history and popular culture, the work will be on exhibit in Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries until 18 April. The masterwork will lead Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 2 May and is rumored to fetch around $80 million.

Andy Warhol’s own rendition of The Scream (The Scream (After Munch)) was also sold by the auction house in March of this year and was estimated at between £150,000 – £200,000, but sold for £313.250.

Undoubtedly one of the most iconic paintings of our times, it is the last remaining picture in the series of four that is still held privately. The other three images all being housed in Norwegian Museums.  The Scream (Norwegian: Skrik) is a series of Expressionist paintings and prints created by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch between 1893 and 1910, showing an agonised figure against a red sky. The landscape in the background is the Oslofjord, viewed from Ekeberg, Oslo.

Edvard Munch created several versions of The Scream in various media. The National Gallery, Oslo holds one of two painted versions (1893, shown to right). The Munch Museum holds the other painted version (1910, see gallery) and one pastel. This particular version (1895), is in pastel and owned by Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen.

On February 12, 1994, the same day as the opening of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, four men broke into the National Gallery and stole its version of The Scream, leaving a note reading “Thanks for the poor security”. After the gallery refused a ransom demand of US$1 million in March 1994, Norwegian police set up a sting operation with assistance from the British police and the Getty Museum, and the painting was recovered undamaged on May 7, 1994.

As it’s only showing for a week and this might be the last time the public may be able to get a glimpse of this particular edition, it is probably a good idea to get down to New Bond Street this weekend to sneak a peak.

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Gallery Vela is delighted to present a solo exhibition of new works by London-based artist, Kate Hawkins. This will be the most comprehensive exhibition of new work to date.

Where?

Gallery Vela

38 Langham Street

London, Greater London

W1W 7AR

When?

Thursday – Saturday, 12 – 6 pm

How much?

Admission is free.

Moustaches are performative. As well as being plays on sincerity they are just plays. A moustache, unlike a beard, performs its presence – it can only come into being by consciously cutting away everything around it. And through acting itself out, it tends to reveal more than it hides. Sometimes a moustache is so parodic and consciously curated, a spectator can forget he or she is witnessing a staged fiction at all. The moment of disorientation between fake and sincere is where the parody becomes the reality. And the ridiculed, the strong. The moustache becomes honest, not a cover-up: it becomes accountable for itself. Accountability, like moustache maintenance, is a fragile thing. There is a fine balance between too much and too little – physically a moustache needs distinctive parameters to be a moustache at all. It is a balance of nerve and skill. Like painting.

Hawkins’ paintings, like moustaches, play with ideas of transparency in their realisation and display strategies. By making the spectator aware of the mechanics of producing and hanging a painting she considers modes of active and passive spectatorship in relation to performance and theatre. Hawkins is intrigued by social rituals as cultural stereotypes and ways in which society increasingly performs its own display. The King Of Hearts Has No Moustache explores these notions through the simultaneous exposure (the making visible of installation techniques) and disguise (the drawing of moustaches) of the paintings on show.

Kate Hawkins lives and works in London. She is currently researching a practice-based PhD at Winchester School of Art. Recent two person and group shows and performances include My Brother is a Hairy Man, George Polke, London, Object Subjects, Silverman, San Francisco, Let’s Be Civil, AND/OR, London, Psychedelica, The ICA, The Pelvic Flaw and IMaterialI, Physical Center, Guest Projects, London

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Where?

Hay Hill Gallery, 5a Cork Street, London W1S 3NY

When?

06.02.2012 – 03.03.2012

How Much?

Admission is free

Represented by Hay Hill Gallery since 2002 and exhibited annually until 2010, Plutenko’s latest exhibition is entitled ‘Evolution’ and as the name would suggest, reflects his personal evolution as an artist.

The majority of the collection centers on paintings from Plutenko’s early career in the 1990’s. However, the inclusion of a selection of his recent works, which date from 2009 to 2010, enables Plutenko to map his personal progression as an artist. Plutenko’s work may appear to emerge from a mix of the surreal and the real, while reflecting old West Indian paintings along with the work of artists such as Salvador Dali, yet his overriding aim is to take the unusual and to make it more so.

Stanislav Plutenko produces vigorous, illustrative works that play on colour contrasts. His original method of painting employs a mixed palette of oil, tempera, acrylic, watercolour, airbrushing and glazing. Plutenko injects his paintings with a sense of sarcasm that is based on reality. While often presented through elements of the grotesque, each painting holds a symbolical underlying theme. Built around a variety of genres the effect of Plutenko’s painting is to reflect representations of the ironic, the sarcastic and the bizarre. A variety of feelings are stimulated in the spectator as each painting is imbued with a small history of life that is replayed through a variety of genre scenes.

Stanislav Plutenko was born in Moscow in 1961. He studied at the Moscow University of National Economy, while taking lessons in painting from private masters. Plutenko created his first works in 1984 and from 1985 to 1990 worked in commercial advertising. In 1991 he joined UNESCO’s guild of graphic artists and was rewarded with the Grand Prix of the ‘Golden Brush’ exhibition in 1997.

In 2007 Plutenko received a rank at the International Academy of Creative Endeavors. The following year he was awarded with an order of ‘Peter The Great’ for his work towards the development of Russian Culture and Arts. In 2009 Plutenko received a Gold Medal named after N. Sats for his ‘outstanding creative achievements in art development.’ Plutenko’s work has been exhibited internationally in Stockholm, Helsinki, USA, Germany and London along with his native Moscow.

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