News

Our artist has been selected for NOW&FUTURE: JAPAN a charity auction with the aim to raise money for Tokyo-basd charity ASHINAGA. Click here to find more.

NOW&FUTURE: JAPAN commemorates one year since the 3.11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami through the three simultaneous contemporary art projects YOKO ONO: MEND PIECE, 2000 CHILDREN and BE/LONGINGS, with a coinciding catalogue publication. The aim of the project is to raise urgent social awareness and financial support for the children who lost their parent(s) or guardians in the disaster. In order to achieve this goal, educational workshops for children and academic seminars for adults will be run. These events are in addition to the evening of charitable auction and the audience-participatory work by Yoko Ono exhibited throughout the period. Any financial contributions raised through this project will be donated to the Tokyo-based charity ASHINAGA, which is committed to providing emotional, financial and social support to children in need.

Soheila Sokhanvari, who had her First Solo Show at La Scatola, THE STORYTELLER 06.09.11 – 20.09.11, is now on the The Catlin Guide.

We are very proud to discover great talents.

Read the full article here:
Viewing: BBC 

 

Working primarily with photo-etching, but also employing a range of media including collage, animation and video, Salvatore Arancio’s main interest lies in the potential of images. Departing from their literal meaning, Arancio looks to nature and science for inspiration, while unsettling any hint of the sublime by re-framing the images and the viewer’s experience.

Solo exhibitions include An Arrangement of the Materials Ejected at Spacex, Exeter (forthcoming) Sentinel – PPS/Meetings#4, Palazzo Riso – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea della Sicilia, Palermo (2010) and Sentinel, Kaleidoscope Project Space, Milan.

Andy Parker’s practice comprises an examination of the everyday through an inventive use of humble materials and found objects. Creating softly spoken and site responsive pieces, Parker encourages the viewer to find worthy subjects in overlooked surroundings. Previous solo shows include Sies + Höke Galerie, Dusseldorf (2009), We Welcome You, Museum of St Helena, South Atlantic Ocean (2006), Lokaal 01, Antwerp (2008) and Worked, Portsmouth University, Hampshire (2004).

With an elemental sensibility to form, Amy Stephens explores shifting patterns of meaning and potential for narrative in the grouping and re-grouping of found, man-made and natural objects through sculptural assemblage. Recent exhibitions include The Rise of the Wapiti, Other Gallery, Banff Centre, Canada (2010); No Soul For Sale – A Festival of Independents, Tate Modern, London (2010) and 195 Miles, Project Space Leeds in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2008).

RSVP is essential, to book your place email [email protected] or call +44 (0)20 7831 1243

Viewing:Contemporary Art Society 

 

The Process Room

04.10.11 – 16.10.11

“The rarity of urban silence is an inspiration. Beyond the everyday of acoustic assaults, our lives are shrouded in pervasive visual, emotional, political and virtual noise. Spaces for contemplation, focus and reflection are an integral necessity to everyday existence. Though much less frequently encountered, these moments of quiet clarity resonate with sensuous intensity.”1

As an artist in residence living and working in the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, you become more aware of the need for these ‘reflective’ spaces. As her main characters, Amy Stephens has cast pieces of wooden timber into solid bronze, intrinsic to the specific architectural make-up of the Process Room. Pared-down to a formal minimalism, these architectonic structures display an affinity to drawing and offer a poetic calm, a far cry from the bustling foundry. The mood is pensive, until noises from passers-by, or the low humming from the lighting above, break up the silence of the space.

This Urban Silence focuses our attention on the delicate symbiosis between form and materials that have undergone a total metamorphosis. The aesthetic of the bronze, in relation to the organic, offers the viewer a sensuous tactility hovering between abstraction and a subtle form of figuration. The work pivots around the physical tensions set up between contrasting elements offering multiple references that ensure the meaning is perpetually evolving and mutating. With each part of the structure strategically balanced, the piece demonstrates a commitment to process as the materials become both defined and imbued by the artist.

“As soon as sculpture departs from nature it becomes architecture.” The French writer Guillaume Apollinaire’s theory becomes relevant here as the artist moves further and further away from the real, moving the works into a plane of total abstraction. Here the collaborative relationship between the natural world and the man-made generates a shifting landscape against which narratives can begin to unfold and where the appropriation of nature can begin to transform the architectural space.

Upcoming or recent exhibitions by Amy Stephens include;

Spatial Territories, La Scatola Gallery, London (2011); Piece of Paper, Madder139, London (2011); Line, Poppy Sebire, London (2011); The Rise of the Wapiti, Other Gallery, Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada (2010); No Soul For Sale – A Festival of Independents, Tate Modern, London (2010); Meet Pamela, John Jones Project Space, London (2009); 195 Miles, Project Space Leeds in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2008). Amy Stephens has recently been shortlisted for The Threadneedle Prize for Painting and Sculpture 2011. She has work in several public and private collections, including the Zabludowicz Collection. The artist lives and works in London. Further information can be found at www.amystephens.co.uk.

1 Karla Maria Rothstein, Critic

 

Copper Mountain, 2011, Oak, flock, copper, paper, 200 x 120 x 42cm. / Copper Mountain, Close up

The Threadneedle Prize 2011

Amy Stephens will have a Solo Exhibition at La Scatola Gallery,
SPATIAL TERRITORIES
6 October – 16 October 2011

 

30th August 2011, 7.30pm till 10pm

The Modern Language Experiment is continuing its monthly new findings and research critical discussion groups, and is very excited to say that it will take place at La Scatola, where will be discussing the work of two artists.

This month we are very pleased to announce that we will be discussing the work of Carlos Noronha Feio and Xenofon Kavvadias. The works will be new, and previously un-shown works in progress. Please see invite for more info.

We are wishing to engage in robust discussions with curators, critics, artists and theorists and for this reason would be delighted if you are able to make it.

come join us!

 

NEW SENSATIONS 2011

The New Sensations Prize was launched in 2007 to find and support the most imaginative and talented artists graduating in the UK and Republic of Ireland. Since it was started five years ago the Prize has given young graduates many opportunities – they have sold their work, been taken on by galleries, invited to be in exhibitions both in the UK and internationally and shortlisted for other prizes as a result of their work being seen in the New Sensations exhibition.

THE 2011 JUDGES

The judges for the 2011 New Sensations Prize are the artists Hew Locke and Chantal Joffe; Kate Bush, Head of Barbican Art Galleries; Tabitha Jackson, Commissioning Editor, Arts, Channel 4; Tony Chambers, editor-in-chief, Wallpaper magazine; and Rebecca Wilson, associate director of the Saatchi Gallery.

THE 2011 NEW SENSATION EXHIBITION

The New Sensations exhibition will take place at Victoria House, Bloomsbury, London WC1, in a 22,000 sq ft venue exclusively represented by Location House. The exhibition will be open to the public from 11-17 October 2011, 11am – 6.30pm, with late opening until 9pm on Saturday 15 October. There will be an invitation only private view on Monday 10 October.

 

The Guardian Guide

 

You can be sure of one thing about the first solo show in London from Sarah Tew, and that is that the outcome is uncertain.

Sarah knows what she is doing, but her installations never rest, day or night, or at least will not come to a halt until her exhibition at La Scatola Gallery is scheduled to close. Her main work here, Untitled (Ebbing), consists of huge sheets of paper suspended above containers filled with a mixture of pigment, including everyday food colorant. The folios dip into the trough, gradually absorbing all the liquid. It takes many days for the final design – shaping up to resemble a multi-layered skyscape or landscape – emerges.

Curator Valentina Fois says that the work evolves on its own, detached from the artist to a certain extent, and presenting to the viewer an unknown moment. One can only cheer on such experimentation, partly as a reminder of the fun we all had as kids concocting improbable mixtures from all manner of household materials such as cold tea and coffee and garden mud.

Here we are on a different and more organized scale, as Sarah sets out to engage as she always does, with the physicality of the material. She is conscious that she has animated a process that will take its own course and make some sense out of randomness. In the ebb and flow of this and other works (including Untitled, 2011, shown previously at the inaugural exhibition of La Scatola), Sarah harks back to her Cumbrian roots and the inexhaustible visual changes afforded by the brooding lakes.

Review by James Brewer

Viewing:Global News Box

 

2011 3rd prize, annual juried exhibition at Viridian artists, curated by Elisabeth Sussman,
Curator at the Whitney Museum, NYC

Pauline Thomas and Elisabeth Sussman from the Whitney Museum

Weight of Unseen from Ronin Cho on Vimeo.

‘WEIGHT OF UNSEEN’, 2011
23 X 35 X 184 CM (CHAIN LENGTH CAN BE VARIED) STEEL SHEET, STEEL ANGLE, SERVO MOTORS, PROXIMITY SENSOR, MICRO-PROCESSOR, CHAIN, MANUAL HOIST. This is a new installation made for the show ‘Behind the Object’.

 

Mindless Consumption II from Ronin Cho on Vimeo.

MAY 2011,100 X 100 X 40 CM (INCLUDING PLINTH), VINYL TUBE,TAP WATER, PUMP
Mindless Consumption II (2011) is a closed circuit pump system which circulating water in the tube endlessly. The water gets dirtier and darker over time as the pump corrodes. This is a new installation made for the show ‘Behind the Object’.

 

By Francesca Zedtwitz-Arnim for Portable

Continuing from his last exhibition, London based artist Kentaro Yamada investigates the aesthetics of nature and everyday life and presents a delicate and poetic exhibition. In a previous feature on Portable he spoke about his life-like approach on art and his fascination for natural phenomena such as sunsets. For his recent exhibition Behind the Object, a two person exhibition with Ronin Cho at La Scatola Gallery in London, Yamada presents a large scale light installation.

Light bulbs arranged on the gallery floor and connected to each other by black electrical cables. The bulbs pulsate in intervals, translating a human breathing pattern known as Cheyne-Stokes respiration into a motion of light. This abnormal breathing pattern occurs before one’s death. It is characterised by a period where respiration is temporarily suspended, followed by a cycle of deeper and faster breaths. Each time the breath is suspended, it is uncertain whether the cycle will continue or the subject has died.

Light is used as a symbol for life to reflect on the artist’s personal experience. He took care of a beloved person in the last months before death and witnessed the gradual decay of the body. Despite the decay and change he was observing, he recalls that there was something essential about the person that remained constant. Yamada puts the spotlight on this extreme moment – moment so tragic, yet full of new perception and heightened awareness that it could even be suitable for comedy or satire.

Pictures by Michael Heilgemeir

 

This is heavyweight stuff! An installation weighing 150kg just has to be seen – and lifted, thanks to a chain and pulley arrangement. Few galleries could handle a work like this, but La Scatola, the edgy and expansive place on the fringe of the City, has managed to suspend the work of “steel, motors, micro-processor and chain hoist” from its sturdy ceiling beams. Ronin Cho, born in South Korea, crafted his Weight of Unseen in the metal workshop of Goldsmiths College, where he has been completing his Master of Fine Arts in computational studio arts.

It is built as a huge, steel, seven-segment display unit, and there is a proximity sensor which ensures it remains stationed at a safe distance from the floor. As spectators pull on the linked chain, the display changes, showing 0 and 1 in combination, referring to the binary code 0001 1010, meaning ‘end of file’. So what is this “interactive kinetic sculpture” all about? Ronin told us that it is meant to give space to people, in this online age, to think about what they are doing, to approach something sturdy, physical and tangible. The way the audience interacts with the work requires much more physical power than they usually wield in daily life. They elevate their presence “to a sense-sharpening tool,” says Ronin.

He wants people to question their dependency on unseen systems (as represented by technology, small lightweight gadgets, the internet), which is coming to dominate our lives, through all forms of media. Ronin, who has a graphic design background, now lives and works in London. He says: “As society evolves by increasingly adopting new media into everyday life, art should increasingly reflect this progression to remain relevant. My current work is strongly engaged with traditional craftsmanship but it contains computer-driven kinetic parts.” Fascinated by the physicality of the large work he has created, and its contrast with the digital world, he plans to work on more such kinetic sculptures.

In the same show, curated by Valentina Fois, Japanese-born Kentaro Yamada takes a different approach to technology with his installation, Everything Comes in Waves. A network of light bulbs pulsates in imitation of the abnormal breathing pattern of a person near to death. Each time the breath is suspended, it is unclear whether the cycle will continue, or whether the subject has died. This grim theme is based on Kentaro’s personal experience of caring for someone close to him. Although the person was expiring, there was something about him that remained constant. Implicit in the work is the fear of what the after-life, may hold, if anything. Further dealing with the subject of life and death, Kentaro is also presenting a series of prints based on the tsunami disaster in Japan. What at first impression seems a beautiful picture of the sea, conceals a tragic reality. Part of the proceeds of the sale of the prints will be donated to Red Cross Japan for relief work.

Pictures by Andy Matthews
Behind the Object. A kinetic show with artists Kentaro Yamada and Ronin Cho. La Scatola Gallery, 1 Snowden Street, London EC2. Until July 9, 2011.
Review by James Brewer on Global Newsbox

 

2011 National Portrait Gallery, Road to 2012 Olympics commission, UK

 

The American Korean artist David Choe contacted Wilfrid Wood a few months ago from with the idea of making a figure of him and his and his affable, coonskin-cap wearing sidekick Harry.

 

2011 3rd prize, annual juried exhibition at Viridian artists, curated by Elisabeth Sussman, Curator at the Whitney Museum, NYC

 

EBBING

14.07.11 – 15.08.11

La Scatola Gallery is pleased to present EBBING, Sarah Tew’s first solo show in London.

Sarah Tew grew up in Cumbria and now lives and works in London. She studied at Byam Shaw School of Art, Central St Martins. Her work allows materials to become an active part of the artistic process, frequently resulting in site-specific and/or performative pieces.

Ebbing consists of a number of recent works including Untitled (Ebbing), where large-scale sheets of paper are hung within the gallery into containers filled with varying pigment, to be left until all liquids have been absorbed. This process can take days, if not weeks, to reach a point of stasis. As such the work evolves on its own, detached from the artist to a certain extent, and presenting to the viewer an unknown moment. Here the passage of time is key; the work is transitory, each encounter unique.

The physicality of Tew’s work, owing much to the lakes were she frequently returns, manifests itself here as a sense of movement, the ebb and flow of the tide. She delivers an artwork much dependent on chance, at once monumental and subtle, constantly in flux. The artist thus embraces chaos, exploring the function of different materials whilst acknowledging that their development is ultimately outside of her control; she becomes one element among many.

This is a new project for La Scatola Gallery, a work that will evolve over the duration of the show. It will be displayed alongside a number of other works, including Untitled, 2011, shown previously at La Scatola’s inaugural exhibition, The Time Is Now.

An exhibition curated by Valentina Fois.
Words: Valentina Fois and Lucy Lopez

PRIVATE VIEW
Thursday 14.07.11
6 – 9pm