Latest Ocula Conversation Artist Taloi Havini and Ruth McDougall, curator of Pacific art at Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, discuss Havini's first Australian solo exhibition, Reclamation .
Latest Ocula Report Armory Week Lowdown: Art Shows to See By Casey Carsel, New York After structural issues forced The Armory Show into last-minute relocation pirouettes last year, the fair returns between 5 and 8 March 2020 with a flourishing programme, complemented by stand-out shows across New York City.
Ocula Insight Ella Kruglyanskaya Steals from Art History, Takes Back Gaze By Tessa Moldan, London For her second solo exhibition at Thomas Dane Gallery in London, Ella Kruglyanskaya's compositions signal the many possibilities of paint.
Nan Goldin is an American photographer famous for her intimate photographs of herself and a circle of friends that include members of the LGBTQ community. Her works convey empathy for this group in a time when such individuals were widely ostracised or treated with hostility by mainstream media. After leaving home at 13, Goldin attended Satya Community School in Massachusetts where a teacher introduced her to photography. At the time of this introduction she was recovering from the suicide of an older sibling and experimenting with drugs.
Read MoreExcited after discovering the counter-cultural worlds of film-makers Andy Warhol, Federico Fellini and Jack Smith, Goldin went to Boston and began documenting the lives of the gay and trans communities in intimate domestic surroundings. Her first solo show was in 1973. In 1974 she studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Later, she began The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, where hundreds of slides were given a musical soundtrack and projected in nightclubs. The slides were later turned into a book (1986). From the 1980s on she did similar projects while living in Berlin, Bangkok, Tokyo, Paris and New York. She created suites of photographs that included her own coterie of lovers and friends that by then had become a large extended family. By the 1990s, however, many of her subjects had died from AIDS or drug overdoses. Goldin's work is now considered decades ahead of its time, especially considering the current political shifts in the art world and wider global communities.
When she documents drag queens putting on their makeup, friends shooting up or herself embracing a lover, Goldin introduces a sense of participation to her snapshots—an inclusiveness into the work that theoretically involves the viewer empathetically, instead of treating the viewer as an outsider voyeuristically looking in. She arguably mixes a non-judgemental viewpoint with a feeling of alienation, sensitively revealing what is normally kept private or hidden.
Goldin has had numerous international solo and group exhibitions. Solo shows include: Weekend Plans, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2017); blood on my hands, Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (2016); Recent Photographs, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (1999); The Other Side 1972–1993, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York (1993); The Cookie Portfolio 1976–89, Photographic Resource Center, Boston (1990). Goldin has also had solo exhibitions at Whitney Museum of American Art (1996), Poste Restante, C/O Berlin (2009), Fantastic Tales: The Photography of Nan Goldin, Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania (2005); The Devil's Playground, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2001); Le Feu Follet, Centre Pompidou (2001); and Nan Goldin, Portland Museum of Art (2017). Her books include Tokyo Love: Spring Fever 1994 (1995). She has also made a film for the BBC with Edmund Coulthard, I'll Be Your Mirror (1995), and in 2007 received the Hasselblad Award.
John Hurrell | Ocula | 2018
Ocula Conversation Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo By Stephanie Bailey, Turin Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo started collecting contemporary art in 1992, after graduating from Torino University, where she studied business and economics. She began her collection with four works from the late-1950s and early-1960s by Italian artists: Carla Accardi, Tano Festa, Mario Merz and Salvatore Scarpitta . 'I enjoyed the idea of...
Related Press Nan Goldin review–Gut-wrenching, brilliant and beautiful. I cannot turn away 26 November 2019, The Guardian Nan Goldin photographs her life, her friendships and loves, her losses and addictions, good times and bad times. Little, if anything, is off-limits. The first large show of Goldin's work in the UK in almost two decades might be accused of raking over old ground. But Goldin often returns to her past, reincorporating older images in new work...
Related Press NAN GOLDIN AND P.A.I.N. GROUP PROTEST SACKLER FAMILY AT THE GUGGENHEIM 10 February 2019, ArtForum Photographer Nan Goldin, her group P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), and dozens of activists flooded the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York on Saturday night in protest of the institution's history with the Sackler family. The action, which began as a surprise demonstration in the museum's rotunda, culminated at the steps...
Related Press How Ed van der Elsken Influenced Other Artists 3 March 2017, The New York Times Ed van der Elsken may not have become a household name, but his art has influenced a broad range of photographers, filmmakers and other contemporary artists. Here are three who expressed a direct connection to his art. Nan Goldin The contemporary American photographer Nan Goldin, known for her deeply personal snapshot-like portraits, and her...
Related Press Refuge or trap? Female artists explore the concept of a room at Sadie Coles 3 February 2017, The Telegraph This exceptional show gathers together a clutch of stand-alone installations and photographic works by some of the great female artists of the 20th and 21st century, all of which revolve in some way around the traditionally feminine domain of the domestic space. As we see here, the idea of the room can assume a multitude of forms and meanings...
