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8/7/2009

Three exhibitions

Whitechapel, London

East End Academy: The Painting Edition
9 July-30 August 2009
Gallery 1

This exhibition provides a timely opportunity to review some of the latest developments in British painting. It brings together twelve distinct positions which each address the pertinent issues facing painting today. Varda Caivano’s multi-layered canvases, Robert Holyhead’s delicate compositions, and Henrijs Preiss’ arrangements of circles and lines offer three different takes on abstraction.

Luke Dowd employs spray paint to depict valuable commodities. Nature and landscape are shared references for two painters otherwise as diverse as Andy Harper and Guy Allott whereas the function of memory is key to Lara Viana’s work. Emily Wolfe, Zara Matthews and Bruno Pacheco all embrace photography in their painting, be it through found images or carefully staged tableaux. Daniel Kelly assembles large-scale architectural collages on the gallery wall while Cullinan Richards explore painting’s mode of presentation through complex installations.

The artists were selected from over 600 submissions by a panel comprising Gillian Carnegie, painter and Turner Prize nominee, Marion Naggar, collector, Francis Outred, European Head of Post War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s, Barry Schwabsky, critic and Anthony Spira, Director of Milton Keynes Gallery.

East End Academy is a triennial exhibition open to all artists living or working in east London. First organised in 1932, this latest version is uniquely devoted to painting. By showcasing the work of artists in the early stages of their career, East End Academy offers a snapshot of the extraordinary breadth and vitality of art produced by the thousands of practitioners who live and work near to the Whitechapel Gallery.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication including entries on each artist.

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Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton
9 July-20 September 2009
Galleries 8 & 9

A luminous palette and rhythmic energy of line combine with realism to make Elizabeth Peyton a painter of modern life. Born in Connecticut in 1965, Peyton studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she lives and works. Executed in oil paint, watercolour, ink or pencil, her small but intense portraits may be inspired by photographs in the media, but often and increasingly they are drawn from life.

Citing literary influences such as Oscar Wilde and Gustave Flaubert, she shares their absorption with reflecting a social milieu. Peyton portrays artists and musicians of her own generation including Matthew Barney, Jake Chapman, and Angus Fairhurst, Jarvis Cocker and Liam Gallagher. She also pays tribute to iconic figures who have inspired her, including the young Elizabeth II, Georgia O’ Keefe and Frida Kahlo.

This survey of some 70 paintings also includes depictions of historical figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Ludwig II and Eugène Delacroix. In their modest scale, tightly cropped composition and sense of intimacy, Peyton’s works directly relate to photography. It is their lens-like ability to capture fleeting moments of light and colour, and to convey both the brightness and the brevity of youth, that give her paintings their depth and poignancy.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated monograph published by Phaidon Press, with essays by Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator at the New Museum, Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Gallery Director, and poet John Giorno.

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Patrizio Di Massimo
9 July-20 September 2009
Zilkha Auditorium

Oae is a recently completed video work which takes Italy’s colonial occupation of Libya as its subject matter. Patrizio Di Massimo examines this dark chapter in his native Italy’s history by overlapping excerpts of his own footage with black and white documentary and archive material taken from The Lion in the Desert, a film made in 1981 by Mustapha Akkad and censored in Italy at the time for its exposé of empire building and military atrocities. Filmed in high-definition colour on the streets of modern day Tripoli and amongst historical ruins across Libya, the artist sought out the monuments and architectural remnants of both Ancient Rome and more recently Fascist rule from 1911-1940.

Interweaving both seductive and shocking images with a soundtrack made up of different languages and popular music, Di Massimo has created a complex collage that fuses past and present in an ambiguous filmic travel journal. The exhibition is part of Art in the Auditorium, a collaborative project organised by the Whitechapel Gallery with institutions from Europe, Asia, South America and the USA to provide an international showcase for the work of some of the most exciting young artists working with film, video and animation today. These venues include Ballroom Marfa, Texas; Fundacion PROA, Buenos Aires; Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo; The Institute for the Re-adjustment of Clocks, Istanbul; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Recently graduated from the Slade School of Art, London, Di Massimo was selected by Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo.

Image: Elizabeth Peyton

For further press information please contact:
Rachel Mapplebeck on 020 75227880, 07811 456806 or email RachelMapplebeck@whitechapelgallery.org
Elizabeth Flanagan on 020 75227871 or email ElizabethFlangan@whitechapelgallery.org

Whitechapel
80-82 Whitechapel High Street
Admission free

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