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...
American artist Agnes Martin was known for her unique abstract style of painting that was informed by Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. The artist, who was born in Canada in 1912 and moved to the United States in 1932, was celebrated for her understated compositions and large monochrome grids.
Agnes MartinOn a Clear Day #22, 1973 Screenprint on Japanese Rag paper
Related Press An alternative history of abstract art Apollo Magazine : 25 May 2018 Surface Work, a survey show of women abstract artists across Victoria Miro’s Mayfair and Wharf Road galleries, reveals an alternative history of how much women have already achieved.From the examples of the more than 50 artists in this show–some relatively unknown and others household names–it is obvious that women approached abstraction with just...
Related Press Interview with Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern ArtAsiaPacific : 31 January 2017 Did you have aspirations to be an artist?Oh yes, drawing was my thing rather than painting. I used a Rotring pen with sepia ink, I loved these pens. I always thought I was going to go to art school and do graphics.What happened to make you switch from the idea of practicing art to studying theory?I was beginning to paint and became interested in...
Related Press 'Mystery is everything': John Zorn makes music for Agnes Martin ARTNews : 1 December 2016 Quietude might be better suited than music for the art of Agnes Martin, but as the post-punks used to say: silence is a rhythm too. Certainly it is in the realm of Martin’s lines and grids, where hushed demarcations of empty space suggest so much, and in the context of her decades-long career, which was guided by a muted devotion to...
Related Press Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim Whitewall Magazine : 22 November 2016 Known for her soothing color palette, grids, and geometric lines, Martin was a visionary artist that bridged the Abstract Expressionist and Minimalist movements. Tracey Bashkof, curator at the Guggenheim, New York, discusses Martin's work and her current exhibition. WHITEWALL: Why did the Guggenheim decide on showing Martin’s...
