Ocula Report Aesthetic Radicalism in ‘Awakenings’ at Singapore’s National Gallery 21 Jun 2019 : Sam Gaskin for Ocula Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s–1990s, a major retrospective at Singapore's National Gallery (14 June–15 September 2019), opens emphatically in flames. At the exhibition's entrance, viewers encounter a wall-sized image from 1964 titled Burning Canvases Floating on the River. The photograph captures a performance by Lee Seung-taek, in which...
Ocula Conversation Thomas J Price: Reframing Classical Sculpture When the London-born artist Thomas J Price graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Arts in 2004, the school's college art prize was by no means his most notable accomplishment as an emerging artist. In 2001, Price presented his much-talked-about work Licked, a daring performance, later profiled on the BBC 4 television...
Ocula Report 'Sites Encountered': A Chorus of Five Artists at M+ Pavilion 21 Jun 2019 : Emily Verla Bovino for Ocula Without punctuation, She Said Why Me, the title of May Fung's 1989 video presents itself as a statement, rather than a question. It suggests a subject who expects no response, a person prepared to make what she can from being chosen though perplexed by the attention. The video follows a blindfolded woman, then unmasked, through late colonial-era...
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, or TAMA as it is colloquially known, was founded in 1932 by the first Mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, and was originally located in Dizengoff's own home. As the collection of art grew, it became apparent that the museum required a larger space and in 1959 it moved to its current location. In addition to the main building, the museum also built the Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art which is home to many temporary exhibitions, and the new Hert and Paul Amir Building, which was designed by Preston Scott Cohen and opened in 2011.
In addition to these three main buildings, the TAMA complex also includes the Lola Beer Ebner Sculpture Garden, Nata's Garden and the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Art Education Centre. These additional spaces host many temporary exhibitions and community based workshops, focused on engaging visitors with the art on show.
TAMA's permanent art collection is divided into six departments which include: the Department of Israeli Art, the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Department of Prints and Drawings, the Department of Photography, the Department of Architecture and Design and the Old Masters Department.Among this vast collection, prominent artists include Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Gustav Klimt, Jackson Pollock and Wassily Kandinsky.
The importance of the museum in the context of Israel contemporary art is recognised in the numerous art prizes awarded to local emerging artists each year. These prizes include the Rappaport Prize for an Establised Israeli Painter, the Rappaport Prize for a Young Israeli Painter, the Eugen Kolb Prize for Israeli Graphic Art and the Shmuel Givon Prize.These prizes hosted by TAMA, exemplify the status of the museum as one of the most important public institutions in Tel Aviv, the self-proclaimed cultural capital of Israel.
