Ocula Report ART X Lagos: Nigeria’s Art Renaissance 17 Nov 2018 : Jareh Das for Ocula Nigeria's art scene has flourished over the last decade, leading to a renewed interest in cultivating and supporting modern and contemporary art in the country. Ranked Africa's largest economy in 2017, making up 0.8 percent of the world's GDP, a surge in wealth amongst some individuals has led to a developing collector base (not to mention rising...
Ocula Conversation Cao Fei Artist Cao Fei's first large-scale institutional exhibition in Asia, A hollow in a world too full (8 September 2018–4 January 2019), is taking place at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, the city's new non-profit art centre housed in a former colonial police and prison complex in Central. Organised in collaboration with Ullens Center for Contemporary Art...
Ocula Report Shanghai's West Bund and Art021 fairs overlap in 2018 17 Nov 2018 : Diana d’Arenberg for Ocula The last time I visited West Bund Art & Design was four years ago, when the fair was in its first year of operation: a small, boutique offering held in a cavernous hangar that seemed too big for it. Much has changed since then. Mirroring the rapid development of the city itself, West Bund has grown from 25 galleries in 2014 to a fair that...
Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke was established in Mumbai in 2006 by Usha Mirchandani and Ranjana Steinruecke. It has played a key role in discovering and nurturing new positions in contemporary Indian art ever since and building up a young collectors’ circle. The gallery has been a forerunner in contextualizing international artists within its program, having brought artists such as Leiko Ikemura, Kiki Smith and Jonathan Meese to India for the first time. Projects that led to the opening of the gallery include the showcasing of positions of art historical relevance such as the retrospective of Bhupen Khakhar (1934–2003) at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai in 2003. Mirchandani + Steinruecke also put together a sterling collection of Indian Modern and Contemporary Art for the Deutsche Bank and were instrumental in organizing solo exhibitions in Berlin by seminal artists from the subcontinent.
Ocula Conversation NS Harsha and Tiffany Chung Artists On the occasion of the 21st Biennale of Sydney, SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement (16 March–11 June 2018), the Victorian College of the Arts and University of Melbourne partnered with the Biennale to facilitate the visit of artists Tiffany Chung, NS Harsha and curator David Elliott to Melbourne. The following discussion is an edited...
Ocula Conversation Serge Tiroche Co-founder, the Tiroche DeLeon Collection With an ultra slick website that enables easy navigation of its 400 plus artworks from many of the leading artists of today, the Tiroche DeLeon Collection is unique in its focus and ownership structure. Established in 2011 by Serge Tiroche and Russ DeLeon, the collection is focused on artworks by both recognised masters, and emerging talent from...
Ocula Conversation Melissa Chiu Senior Vice President, Global Arts & Cultural Programs, Asia Society Asia Society recently played host to some of the most significant institutional figures in the art world, including Glenn D. Lowry (Director of The MoMA New York), Caroline Collier (Director, Tate Modern), Yuko Hasegawa (Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo) and Lars Nittve (Executive Director, M+, Hong Kong). These figures...
Ocula Conversation Richard Armstrong Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York Richard Armstrong is the Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. As well as managing the foundation he oversees the Guggenheim Museum in New York as well as the Peggy Guggenheim collection in Venice, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Deutsche Guggenheim and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi due for completion in 2017. Prior to this...
Related Press Feminist artist Kiki Smith: 'Getting older, certain things quiet' The Sydney Morning Herald : 30 August 2018 The female body. Its bones and limbs, its emotions, its animal instinct, its bodily functions, its secrets and anxieties, its sexuality, its illnesses and pain.There is no part of it that has been left unexplored by the fearless American artist Kiki Smith, a pioneer of contemporary feminist art who has grappled with female beauty, shame, mortality...
Related Press Kiki Smith Takes Over the Eldridge Street Synagogue with 50 Artworks Hyperallergic : 5 June 2018 Before the restoration of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, birds flew in through holes in the roof. The animals roosted in the 19th-century structure that was once a haven for Eastern European Jews on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, but it had fallen into a decline because of a shrinking membership and its leaking sanctuary was closed off half a century...
Related Press KIKI SMITH: Below the Horizon The Brooklyn Rail : 5 June 2018 Stars are again on Smith’s mind. Her unassuming new show of fifty works at the synagogue, now a museum, is titled Below the Horizon, in recognition, according to the exhibition, of the fact that we only see the stars once the sun has gone down. Sunsets are a fine metaphor for the museum’s extended period of decline.
Related Press Indian Art in Paris Frieze : 27 November 2017 In the film I am Twenty (1967) by Indian filmmaker S. N. S. Sastry, the narrator asks a group of young men and women – all of whom were born on 15 August 1947 (the day of Indian Independence) – how they feel about the 20-year-old nation state of India. A young man with a mop-top, unimpressed by the question, replies: 'I don't have any love for the...
