calendario eventi  :: 

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18/6/2010

Two exhibitions

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

Cornelia Parker. Doubtful Sound

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art presents Doubtful Sound a major new exhibition by one of Britain's leading artists Cornelia Parker. Opening on Saturday 19 June, the exhibition incorporates new work with rarely seen pieces including sculpture, film, drawings, photographs and objects.

Parker's compelling transformations of familiar, everyday objects investigate the nature of matter, test physical properties and play on private and public meaning and value. Using materials that have a history loaded with association, a feather from Sigmund Freud's pillow for example, Parker has employed numerous methods of exploration - suspending, exploding, crushing, stretching objects and even language through her titles - transporting them to a realm between two states.

A highlight of the exhibition will be Parker's Perpetual Canon 2004. Shown in the UK for the first time, the installation consists of 60 silver-plated instruments from a marching band that have been squashed and suspended in midair. The title of the work is a musical term to describing a 'round', the repetition of a phrase again and again. The instruments robbed of their third dimension have a cartoon like quality, appearing as if they have inhaled, but not exhaled, a catastrophe frozen and forever silenced. Lit from the light of a single bulb, a cacophony of shadows replace the sound, both amplifying and containing the instruments, the shadows of the viewers replacing the absent players.

The exhibition reveals a long-standing preoccupation in Parker's work of the hidden acoustic: percussive moments, intricacies and identities and that are somehow intensified through their absence. Her Bullet Drawings 2010 consist of bullets that have been melted down and drawn into lead wire. Through the process of being drawn, they have been made into their own possible trajectories. Woven into a grid- like structure, a bullet's worth of lead wire is trapped between two sheets of glass in a box frame, creating a 'suspended' drawing with its own shadow. The absent gunshot is replaced with a visual ricochet.

In her ongoing series Avoided Objects, objects have been extracted from their current existence and manipulated into something new. Some of her objects are not yet fully formed, having been removed prematurely from production (Embryo Firearms 1995) and some cannot even be classified as objects in any traditional sense: The Negative of Whispers 1997, ear plugs made of fluff gathered in the Whispering Gallery of St Paul's Cathedral, London. Put together like sculptural material, the result is an orchestration of objects that play with their own histories through a dense web of associations.

Cornelia Parker b. 1956, Cheshire, England
A solo exhibition of Cornelia Parker's work was staged last year at Frith Street Gallery at the same time her video piece Chomskian Abstract was screened at London's Whitechapel Art Gallery Laboratory.

Her work was included in the 16th Sydney Biennale in 2008 and in the 8th Sharjah Biennial, 2007. Parker had major solo exhibitions at Birmingham's Ikon Gallery and the Museo De Arte de Lima, Peru in 2007. Other notable solo exhibitions include Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin; ICA, Philadelphia; Aspen Museum of Art, Colorado; Chicago Arts Club and the ICA, Boston. Parker's work is represented in many international collections including The Arts Council of England, Tate Gallery, London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997.

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John Cage
Every Day is a Good Day

Every Day is a Good Day is the first major exhibition and publication devoted to the entire range of American composer, writer and artist John Cage’s prints, watercolours and drawings. Cage was one of the leading avant-garde composers of the twentieth century, most famous perhaps for his silent work of 1952, 4'33".

The exhibition will include over 100 works on paper that span Cage’s entire visual art career. It will include his extraordinary Ryonaji series, described by the art critic David Sylvester as 'among the most beautiful prints and drawings made anywhere in the 1980s'. Echoing the artist’s use of chance to create work, the exhibition will be selected and installed using a computerised version of the Chinese oracle, the 'I Ching'.

The exhibition is organised by Hayward Touring in collaboration with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and the John Cage Trust. A special publication will accompany the exhibition.

SEMINAR ART, MUSIC + CHANCE: THE LEGACY OF JOHN CAGE (1912-1992)
Saturday 19 June 2010, 10.30-16.00, £20.00 (£15.00 concessions)

BALTIC & the Open University, present a seminar and study day exploring the vital legacy of John Cages experimentation in music, composition and art. Speakers: Cornelia Parker (artist) / Laura Khun (John Cage Trust) / Atau Tanaka (artist / director of Newcastle University Culture Lab) / Ben Ponton (amino and zoviet france) / Jeremy Millar (artist/curator) / Helen Baker (Gallery Director at Gallery North and Principal Lecturer in Fine Art) / Roger Malbert (Senior Curator, Hayward Touring Exhibitions) / Alessandro Vincentelli (BALTIC Curator)

The day will also include sonic interventions from Sam Belinfante and renowned vocalist Linda Hirst performing Cages works for voice including the famous Aria and Fontana Mix. In collaboration with The Sage Gateshead. Ticket price includes a light lunch. Concessions include students with valid NUS card and unwaged.

PERFORMANCE: JOHN CAGE MUSIC FOR MASSED HARPS
Saturday 26 June 2010 / 19.00-20.00 / £8.00/(£6.00 concessions)

Coinciding with BALTICs two exhibitions centred around John Cage, BALTIC presents an evening performance of Cages rarely staged pieces for harp and other instruments. Devised and performed by Branches Ensemble convened by Rhodri Davies with members of the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester Harp Ensemble. From 1948 to 1988, the works performed will range from solo works such as; In a Landscape (1948) culminating in a rare performance of Postcard from Heaven (1983) scored for up to 20 harps.

Event supported by Salvi Harps & Royal Northern College of Music

PERFORMANCE: FONTANA MIX
Saturday 26 June 2010 / throughout the day / FREE

Fontana Mix is a significant work by Cage that employs chance in both its construction and its performances. These performances will take place in the galleries throughout the day by artist and curator Sam Belinfante together with a specially formed ensemble from The Sage Gateshead. In collaboration with The Sage Gateshead.

Book tickets for both online at http://www.wegottickets.com or buy in person from BALTIC SHOP.

Support for Doubtful Sound has been generously provided by Aspire
Technology Solutions.

For further information on the exhibition, please contact:
Ann Cooper, Media Officer T: 0191 440 4915 E: annc@balticmill.com
Nikki Johnson, Comms Assistant T: 0191 440 4912 E: nikkij@balticmill.com

Image: Cornelia Parker, Perpetual Cannon

Opening 19 June 2010

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Gateshead Quays, South Shore Road, Gateshead, NE8 3BA, UK
Open Daily 10–18 except Tuesdays 10.30–18

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