Ocula Conversation Hito Steyerl: How To Build a Sustainable Art World 'A Picture of War is Not War', we read in Hito Steyerl's iconic film November (2004), an essayistic Super 8 film tackling the definition of terrorism constructed around the figure of the artist's best friend Andrea Wolf, who was killed as a terrorist in 1998 in Eastern Anatolia after she joined the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). Mixing documentary...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future 11 Oct 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. The Aichi Triennale opened in Nagoya this August, sparking a national debate about the shutting down of a display of formerly censored works—the result of public backlash against a burnt image of Emperor Hirohito and a statue commemorating the women forced into...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
The gallery programme began in 1984 in a Victorian terraced house in London’s East End. Initially named Interim Art the gallery changed its name to Maureen Paley in 2004 as a celebration of its 20th anniversary. Since September 1999 the gallery has been situated in its present location in Herald Street, Bethnal Green. From its inception the gallery’s aim has remained consistent: to promote great and innovative artists in all media.
Maureen Paley was one of the first to present contemporary art in London’s East End and has been a pioneer of the current scene promoting and showing art from the USA and continental Europe as well as launching new talent from the UK. Gallery artists include Turner prize winners Wolfgang Tillmans, 2000, and Gillian Wearing, 1997, and Turner Prize nominees Liam Gillick, 2002, and Rebecca Warren, 2006. AA Bronson, General Idea and Peter Hujar have recently been added to the gallery’s roster along with Morgan Fisher and Tim Rollins and K.O.S. All of the gallery artists have exhibited widely in the UK and abroad.
Maureen Paley, the gallery’s founder and director, was born in New York, studied at Sarah Lawrence College, and graduated from Brown University before coming to the UK in 1977 where she completed her Masters at The Royal College of Art from 1978–1980.
Together with running the gallery Maureen Paley has also curated a number of large-scale public exhibitions. In 1994 she organised an exhibition of works by Felix Gonzales Torres, Joseph Kosuth and Ad Reinhardt at the Camden Arts Centre. In 1995 Wall to Wall was presented for the National Touring Exhibitions and appeared at the Serpentine Gallery, London, Southampton City Art Gallery and Leeds City Art Gallery showing wall drawings by international artists including Daniel Buren, Michael Craig-Martin, Douglas Gordon, Barbara Kruger, Sol Lewitt, and Lawrence Weiner. Maureen Paley also selected an exhibition of work by young British artists in 1996 called The Cauldron featuring Christine Borland, Angela Bulloch, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Steven Pippin, Georgina Starr and Gillian Wearing for the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust which was installed in their Studio space in Dean Clough, Halifax.
Ocula Conversation RoseLee Goldberg: Performance Then and Now RoseLee Goldberg had long been invested in contemporary performance art before her founding of the inter-disciplinary arts organisation Performa in New York in 2004. Born in Durban, South Africa, Goldberg studied political science and fine arts at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and then art history at the Courtauld Institute...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future 11 Oct 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. The Aichi Triennale opened in Nagoya this August, sparking a national debate about the shutting down of a display of formerly censored works—the result of public backlash against a burnt image of Emperor Hirohito and a statue commemorating the women forced into...
Ocula Report 58th Venice Biennale: May You Live In Interesting Times 24 May 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula The 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times (11 May–24 November 2019), certainly benefitted from low expectations, given the lacklustre curatorial of the previous edition, when different segments of the show were conceptually framed with titles like 'Pavilion of Joys and Fears' and 'Pavilion of Colours'. Add to this the...
Ocula Photolog Frieze New York 2019 6 May 2019 'Building on Frieze's history as a platform for discovery and challenging the traditional art fair format, the eighth edition introduces new curators and collaborations with leading museum directors; including two exhibitions exploring virtual reality and the significance of self-taught artists, and two new sections celebrating Latin American art...
Related Press Turner Prize 2019 Review: The Roots of Our Political Crisis Go Far Beyond Brexit Frieze : 27 September 2019 All four artists nominated for this year's Turner Prize draw on political histories: some wide-ranging, others highly localized; one contained within the last decade, another drawing on a text from the early 15th century. With one subtle exception, none of them are directly exploring the themes that emerged after the electoral shocks of 2016, which...
Related Press Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Earwitness Theatre The Brooklyn Rail : 1 August 2019 We primacy vision: what we see, we take as truth. It may be cliché but clichés are colloquial truths, developed through relatable experiences that come to structure experience. When first drafting this review, I had begun: 'Imagine a silence...' but what is an image of silence? How can we even conceive of an image of an absent sense?
Related Press Five Turner winners call on National Portrait Gallery to cut ties with BP The Guardian : 5 July 2019 Five winners of the Turner prize are demanding an end to BP's sponsorship of the National Portrait Gallery, stepping up the campaign against big oil's involvement in the arts.Antony Gormley, Rachel Whiteread, Anish Kapoor, Gillian Wearing and Mark Wallinger are among a group of almost 80 leading artists, including winners of the BP portrait award,...
Related Press The Art Newspaper's pick of the 2019 Venice Biennale The Art Newspaper : 30 April 2019 There are hundreds of exhibitions in Venice during the Biennale. Alongside the main exhibition in the Giardini and Arsenale, there are 90 national presentations, many in nearby pavilions in the Giardini and in spaces around the Arsenale, but also dotted throughout Venice. Then there are the official collateral exhibitions in museums and galleries,...
Related Video & Audio /Dialogues: Visibility | Invisibility — Sculpture in Everyday Space EXPO CHICAGO : 14 September 2017 Nina Beier (Artist, STANDARD (OSLO), joségarcía, mx), Tom Burr (Artist, Bortolami Gallery). Moderated by Stephanie Cristello, Director of Programming, EXPO CHICAGO and Editor-in-Chief, THE SEENWhat is the responsibility of formalism in the twenty-first century? This panel will trace the work of contemporary artists whose diverse sculptural...
