thenunnery
Bow Arts Lane
181-183 Bow Road,
London, E3 2SJ
Private View: Friday 22-5-09 6pm - 9pm
Exhibition Open: Sat 23rd - Sun 24th & Sat 30th - Sun 31st May 12 noon – 6.00pm
Critical Forum: Sun 24th 3pm - 5.30pm.
Visions in the Nunnery has become an event not to be missed in the moving image calendar. It focuses on recent work produced by global, established and emerging artists. It is the most relevant snapshot and showcase for new ideas and emerging artists, today. The event features a variety of conceptual approaches and aesthetic choices, which highlight an exciting art form thriving with enthusiasm and challenges.
Event curators Cinzia Cremona and Tessa Garland said, Submissions to this year’s Visions have been of the very highest quality, we have had the opportunity to select from over 1000 entries received from 37 countries around the world. Our final selection features 54 artists from 12 countries including South Korea and India.
Visions Special Curated Events:
“The Body and the Beholder” Each year, a unique collaboration with an invited profiled curator complements the international open submission. This year’s exciting programme of work is selected by curator Myriam Blundell, including the UK première of EXerciceS EXerciceS EXerciceS by Isabelle Arnoux, as well as recent works by Michael Nyman and Karen Knorr. (See editor’s notes)
Visions Critical Forum 2009: “Collecting Moving Images”. Sun 24-05-09 3pm - 5.30pm.
The Critical Forum is a pivotal event within Visions in the Nunnery. Its aims are to explore the practices that shape the production, exhibition, and distribution of the moving image as well as establishing connections between practitioners, their audiences and collectors.
This year the Critical Forum will focus on the collection and circulation of the moving image. Topics of discussion will include cultural and economic concerns; the dynamics of private collections, educational archives and changing technologies. The speakers will share their personal experiences and expertise in the field, and activate an open discussion with artists and viewers.
The Forum will be chaired by Cinzia Cremona with invited speakers: Myriam Blundell, Michael Maziere, Neil Cummings and Lucy Bayley (CAS).
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Editors notes:
The body and the beholder Myriam Blundell May 2009
This year’s thematically curated section of Visions in the Nunnery features three artists whose work is mainly concerned with the pursuit of an ideal of beauty most notably derived from the perfection of physical appearances and the exhibition of immaculate and faultless volumes, shapes and proportions.
In an age shaped by virtual realities and populated by cyberspace communities, in which elaborate and faultless creatures are designed to please the deepest recesses of our desires for physical perfection, the contemporary portraiture of beauty in the human body has shifted like never before in the history of aesthetics. Traditionally grounded in innate, physical qualities, this shift has become increasingly subject to cultural specifics and individual interpretations. In “Exercises”, Isabelle Arnoux captures the obsession found in western societies for a specific set of rapports and proportionality. The on-going search for a definition of the Beautiful is evoked in “Lessons” by Karen Knorr, where she applies the perspective of nature and its divine laws, that of science and its Cartesian rationale, and ultimately that of Art and its utopian pursuit of the Ideal. The human body is celebrated for its canonical beauty but also for its ephemerality and submission to the cycles of life. Equally fascinated by the effect of the passage of time on the human psyche and condition, Michael Nyman’s “Slow Walkers” observes a succession of old men and women walking very slowly in the busy streets of urban life. His piece reflects on the lessons learned from the wisdom of age and the temporality of the human body, as a means to achieving a higher state of consciousness. The idea of borrowing the human body as a vehicle to communicate with the unknown and the divine is also explored in Nyman’s second video work entitled “Zoor”. Zoor is a sequence of footage shot in Iran in 2003, featuring a group of body builders performing a sequence of Zoor Kahn, an ancient form of Iranian Martial Arts. The focus in Nyman’s narrative is shifted from the physical to the spiritual, from the beautiful to the divine, and from the transient to the eternal.
Biogs:
Myriam Blundell has over 8 years of broad, diverse contemporary art advisory and curatorial experience, founding an independent curatorial practice in 2004. Dedicated to uncovering and exhibiting the work of emerging contemporary artists, the practice acts as a coaching medium, providing both commercial and creative guidance to an international pool of artists, who practice in a variety of artistic mediums. She is currently engaged as an associate editor for Enrico Navarra’s upcoming “Made by Brazilians”, which is a part of a definitive series of critically acclaimed, art publications dedicated to depicting contemporary art, architecture and design in numerous emerging art markets, including China, India and the Arab world. She is the Executive Director of the Friends of Signy and Olaf Willums Foundation in Provence, France, which awards an annual residence for outstanding emerging artists. She is also the founding Chair of the International Collectors Forum at the Contemporary Art Society in London.
Tessa Garland is an established moving image artist showing internationally. Her work has been screened at Rencontres International Film and Video Festival, Paris & Berlin. Kino Rialto & BoS, Stockholm. Betting on Shorts, ICA - London, Point Ephemere- Paris, KIBLA Multi Media Centre -Maribo, Romanian Cultural Institute- Bucharest, Mikrokosmos Prince- Athens, CCCB Pantalla Hall- Barcelona, Kadir Has University -Istanbul, Lanificio-Naples, Kulturpalast- Wiesbaden, Germany. She is co-curator of Visions in the Nunnery. She is also an established educationalist working with the BBC, The Wellcome Trust and the National Gallery. www.tessagarland.com
Cinzia Cremona is currently working towards a PhD on video performance and how moving image works establish relationships at University of Westminster, where she is also a member of the Experimental Media Research Group. She is co-curator of Visions in the Nunnery. Since 2007 she has been a core member of Critical Practice, a research cluster hosted by Chelsea College of Art and Design – www.criticalpracticechelsea.org Her photographic and moving image work has been exhibited internationally.
The Nunnery Gallery established 1998, is one of London’s largest independent galleries supporting new and emerging international talent. The Nunnery comprises three purpose built galleries totalling over 2,000 sq ft of exhibition space converted from an C18th Carmelite Nunnery adjacent to the historic Bow Church. The gallery situated on Bow Arts Lane off Bow Rd is a part of the Bow Arts Trust a charity that has been supporting artists for the past 15 years. www.bowarts.org
For more information and digital images
Please contact:
Cinzia Cremona
m:07989 126 466
Tessa Garland
M:07749 848 436
T:020 89235756
contact@openvisions.org
www.openvisions.org
www.thenunnery.org