Ocula Report Havana Biennial 2019: Constructing the Possible 17 Apr 2019 : Federica Bueti for Ocula I first visited Havana in November 2016, a few days after Fidel Castro died, and just under a year before Hurricane Irma hit Cuba in September 2017. Since then, much has changed, including the hand-painted signs that punctuate the journey from the airport to the city centre, which today do not celebrate the revolution so much as the 'Unidad y...
Ocula Conversation Andrew Stahl and Guo Xiaohui The exhibition Beyond Boundaries at Somerset House in London (12 March–2 April 2019) marked the historic contributions of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (CAFA) and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, on the occasion of their 100th and 150th anniversaries, respectively. Spread across several rooms of Somerset House's...
Ocula Report The National 2019: New Australian Art 13 Apr 2019 : Elyse Goldfinch for Ocula The National 2019: New Australian Art features work by 70 contemporary Australia-based artists split across three venues: the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) (29 March–21 July 2019), as curated by Isobel Parker Philip, curator of photographs at AGNSW; Daniel Mudie Cunningham,...
The gallery was founded by Kate MacGarry in 2002 on Redchurch Street, London, where some of our represented artists, including Goshka Macuga (Poland), Francis Upritchard (New Zealand), Ben Rivers (UK) and Dr Lakra (Mexico) had their first commercial gallery exhibition. Our current gallery space, originally designed by architect Tony Fretton, is close by on Old Nichol Street where we present six exhibitions a year. The gallery participates in international art fairs including Art Basel (Galleries) and Frieze London where we have presented solo projects since 2010. The gallery represents 22 emerging and established artists; most recently adding The Estate of J.B. Blunk (USA), Laura Gannon (Ireland), Samson Kambalu (Malawi) and Bernard Piffaretti (France) to the roster.
The gallery has a special interest in film, representing John Smith, Marcus Coates, Ben Rivers, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Samson Kambalu and the estate of Jeff Keen. Rivers and Forsyth & Pollard have made feature films with worldwide cinema distribution and received awards from Sundance, Venice and Locarno Film Festivals.
Ocula Conversation Renee So Renee So's first institutional solo exhibition in Europe, Bellarmines and Bootlegs (8 March–2 June 2019) at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, centres on a long-standing motif in her work: the eponymous Bellarmine—a domestic jug used in the Rhineland in the 16th and 17th centuries to carry wine and beer from barrel to table. Following its...
Ocula Conversation Rana Begum Artist, United Kingdom and Bangladesh Rana Begum, winner of the Abraaj Group Art Prize 2017, is an Anglo-Bangladeshi artist whose conversation with the historical legacy of minimalism is textured by childhood memories of reading the Quran inside a mosque in Bangladesh. Her union of styles and influences, which combine references ranging from Donald Judd and Agnes Martin to Islamic art...
Ocula Conversation Francis Upritchard Artist, New Zealand Francis Upritchard’s artistic lexicon is perhaps best known for her curious, and at times disconcerting, small-scale figurative sculptures which in their fantastical forms also embody a constellation of historical and contemporary references. These figures inhabit a universe whereby imagination and the ancient and contemporary collide....
Ocula Report 'Freedom Farmers' At The Auckland Art Gallery 4 Dec 2013 : Kate Brettkelly-Chalmers for Ocula Occupying the lion’s share of exhibition space at the Auckland Art Gallery, Freedom Farmers is said to be the museum’s largest survey of contemporary art in the last twenty-five years. Curated by the gallery’s own Natasha Conland, the exhibition looks at how the utopian energy of the 1970s is being artistically deployed in...
Related Press Frieze Sculpture 2018: the highlights Wallpaper* : 4 July 2018 Between Wimbledon and the FIFA World Cup, there's been plenty of distractions from London's unusually Mediterranean weather of late.
Related Press Fields of Light and Colour The Art Newspaper : 21 March 2017 The London-based Bangladeshi artist, an alum of Chelsea College of Art & Design and the Slade School of Fine Art, was awarded the coveted prize last October, receiving a bursary of $100,000 to realise a site-specific project at Art Dubai, working with curator Omar Berrada. And the prize-winning work, which was unveiled near the Abraaj lounge on...
Related Press Rana Begum: Cultural conversations Aesthetica : 15 November 2016 A new and innovative outdoor work by Bangladeshi-British artist Rana Begum is currently installed at King’s Cross, marking the start of a new series of public commissions for the area. No.700 Reflectors, Cubitt Sq. 2016 occupies the full length of Lewis Cubitt Square, measuring 50 metres long and three and a half metres high.The sculpture...
Related Press Frieze's Abby Bangser on the 2016 edition of the London fairs Whitewall : 6 October 2016 Joining Frieze in January 2015 as the Artistic Director for the Americas and Asia, Abby Bangser has brought over 10 years of experience in the art industry (at institutions like the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California) to assist in the global success of the fairs, particularly with...
