Ocula Report Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber 15 Mar 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula In Meiro Koizumi's three-channel video installation, The Angels of Testimony (2019), the central frame features an interview with Hajime Kondo about his time as a solider of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The conversation centres on war crimes perpetrated in China, including the beheading of Chinese prisoners for...
Ocula Conversation Diana Campbell Betancourt Diana Campbell Betancourt is a curator working predominantly across South and Southeast Asia. Since 2013 she has been the founding artistic director of the Samdani Art Foundation and chief curator of the Dhaka Art Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a transnational art event that has grown in size and scale ever since its first edition in 2012. Backed by...
Ocula Report Chinternet Ugly at Manchester’s Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art 7 Mar 2019 : Mike Pinnington for Ocula China, home to 802 million internet users, is subject to sophisticated online censorship. This shrouded state of affairs, unsurprisingly perhaps, serves to reinforce stereotypes around conformity elsewhere. Any realm, digital or otherwise, subject to such strict scrutiny must necessarily be bland and uncritical, right? I was mulling over such...
Established in 2000, Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. We focus on developing exhibitions and hosting not-for-profit events that encourage spiritual, social and aesthetic dialogues. In a world where communication is instant and cultures are colliding and melding as never before, our goal is to provide venues for art that transcend boundaries of all sorts. With alliances across the globe, our interest in cross-cultural exchange extends beyond the visual arts into many other disciplines, including poetry, literature, performance art, film and music.
Sebastião SalgadoIceberg moving on the Weddell Sea, Antarctic Peninsula, 2005 Gelatin silver print
Sebastião SalgadoSaunders Island is inhabited by penguins of several different species, notably the chinstrap, South Sandwich Islands, 2009 Gelatin silver print
Ocula Report Sydney Contemporary: Bridging the Gap 20 Sep 2018 : Anna Dickie for Ocula As far as art fair venues go, Sydney Contemporary (13–16 September 2018) has nailed it with Carriageworks, where the fair was once again staged. Formerly a rail yard and now a cultural centre, the space has retained its distinctive 19th-century industrial details, and it offered a striking light-filled backdrop to the fair's crisp white booths, the...
Ocula Photolog Sydney Contemporary 2018 14 September 2018 'With a thriving contemporary art scene, Sydney is a dynamic cultural destination with an international reputation for presenting the very best in visual art through its leading commercial galleries, public institutions, private museums, festivals and Biennale. Defined by the vibrancy of its host city, Sydney Contemporary provides collectors,...
Ocula Report Frieze New York: Running the Course 11 May 2018 : Paul Laster for Ocula There's no better way to kick off a marathon week of art fairs and other related activities than to hear a living artist discuss their new work: a reminder of what's at the very core of the art world, and it's not just the buying and selling, but the opportunity to have a dialogue with art.On Tuesday morning in New York, a day before Frieze opened...
Ocula Report I Taste the Future: Lofoten International Arts Festival 2017 12 Oct 2017 : Cathryn Drake for Ocula 'We are all lichens'. Famously associated with the thinking of feminist theorist Donna Haraway, this declaration—referring to a fungus that grows from algae and cyanobacteria—provided a compelling key to the 2017 Lofoten International Arts Festival (LIAF), I Taste the Future (1 September–1 October 2017), curated by Heidi Ballet and...
Related Press Photographer Lalla Essaydi recasts Arab women in her art The Straits Times : 12 November 2018 SINGAPORE - Morocco-born artist Lalla Essaydi subverts the Western male gaze in her striking photographs of contemporary Arab women, who are swathed in lush fabric and often covered with text in henna. Her photos, some of which are on display at Sundaram Tagore Gallery at Gillman Barracks until Dec 15, can take up to a year or more to stage.
Related Press Seven Artists on the Warhol Influence The New York Times : 1 November 2018 Three decades after Andy Warhol's death, he remains one of America's most provocative artists. His influence on popular culture is so pervasive that each emerging art movement after him has had to grapple with Warhol's focus on surface perfections and his singular celebrity. Despite their complicated feelings, many contemporary artists say they...
Related Press Calder's black steel meets the white cube at a new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles Times : 30 October 2018 The stark white room is punctuated by abstract black forms — jagged, organic, dramatic and playful — that sprout up from the floor or dangle languidly from the ceiling. Glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, they shift ever so slightly as you walk down the long gallery space, a former bank building. Around each corner, a new...
Related Press Singapore artist’s solo Hong Kong show is a feast of colour, mostly one colour: red South China Morning Post : 27 May 2018 You can't help but see red at Jane Lee's first solo exhibition in Hong Kong.The floor outside the Pao Galleries at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in Wan Chai is covered in ribbons of red, stripped canvases, and nearly everything inside is red. It is a colour redolent of so many things that one may assume the Singaporean artist has chosen it for a...
Related Video & Audio Shirin Neshat: the power behind the veil Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art : 11 May 2016 In many middle eastern cultures men are totally restrained from any expression of emotion, says Iranian artist Shirin Neshat (b. 1957) in this interview: "All my photographs are about controlled emotions. They are always a juxtaposition of the dark side of life and the good side of life. Of light and darkness. Pain and joy. Violence and...
Related Video & Audio Art Stage Singapore 2015 Vernissage TV / 21 January 2015 : 22 January 2015 For the 5th time, Art Stage Singapore takes place at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre in Singapore. The fair is known for its special focus on Southeast Asian art scenes (Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar). This year, more than 170 galleries from Asian and Western countries...
