The Skinny Recommends: International Art events 2009

798 Art District, Beijing

Colin Chinnery, in a recent Artforum article, described the Beijing grassroots scene’s swift evolution from reactive underground in the 798 Art District to state-approved “Base for Artistic Industry”, pumped full of money and, by implication, state-sanctioned creativity. The result? Stifled creativity and the birth of further strata of the underground, artists on the edge making art exploring “miscommunication and illegible symbols instead of common accord”.

 

I went to Beijing once, briefly, in 2000. I was entranced by the city, by all its fascinating contradictions and conflicting planes of reality. Preserved Imperial China jarring with Communist China jarring with the invading Capitalism of the KFC on Tiananmen Square, the sheer beauty of whose wide open space peopled with kite flying children juxtaposed insanely with the Western perspective of the epitome of the totalitarian regime. I remember a land of cherry blossom and concrete, temples and choking pollution through which marched battalions of soldiers, a constant reminder that the state was close and mighty.

40 years after the end of the cultural revolution, the state accidentally stifles creativity by embracing it too warmly upon realising its economic potential. I’d like to see that. I like contradiction.

Rosamund West is The Skinny's Art Editor

Venice Biennale 09: 7 Jun - 22 Nov

Every other year Venice plays host to what is described by some cynics as the Euro Vision Art Contest, with artists representing their respective countries going head to head in an all-out 5 month long art battle. There are medals and everything.

Quite literally taking over the city, filling teetering palazzos, abandoned breweries and the odd island in the lagoon, the Venice Biennale is the swimming-pool bully of all the Biennales, showing off with its celebrity-stuffed parties, its helicopter-accessorised yachts, generally making all the other Biennales feel a bit crap. There is so much to see in Venice during the Biennale that if you go for just a few days you will undoubtedly spend most of your time getting lost, failing to find the cheap bars and the good art. Go for a few months like me, see some amazing art, but slowly lose the will to live in a city clearly suffocated by its tourism and soaring property prices. I would advise making the trip to Venice this summer: stay in the cheap hostel on Guidecca, hang out in Campo Santa Margherita (the only place open after 10pm), and most importantly wear comfortable shoes - the taxis are even more expensive than in Edinburgh.

Jessica Harrison lives in Edinburgh and is currently working towards a PHD in sculpture at ECA and generally refusing to leave college.

The Armory Show: 5-8 Mar 2009

As I have yet to visit New York, or indeed the continent it sits on, I can’t wait to be in the throng of the Armory Show next year. With the media censoring the word recession like a highly strung yes or no game, it will be interesting to see if a rose by any other name will smell as sweet.

Arguably, with the regulation of banks and pruning of hedge funders it would be odd if the rise and rise of the contemporary art market continued. Downturn-schmownturn, this must be a levelling of sorts. Time will tell if this is a good or bad thing.

The words choke me, but historically the most exciting art has often sprung from commercial galleries. And another thing: I wouldn’t be able to see as many art works in a year of normal life as I will during the three Armory Show days. With the impending changes within our major arts funders in Scotland uncertainty prevails. We may have no choice other than to make our own ways in the art world. If private is the new public and public the new private then I’d rather go for broke this spring, with head firmly inside in the mouth of the lion.

Daniella Watson is a writer based in Edinburgh and a member of the Embassy committee.

Frankfurt Am Main Caribic Residency

So Frankfurt has this massive statue of a yellow Euro and it’s got a really big airport. All this money and through traffic. It’s really a small city for all that. All these art kidz go there too, and say there’s nothing to do cause all there is is the school (Stadelschule), and that’s just space to do something. But the Carbic recently arrived. It invites local and international artists/philosophers and suchlike to come and take over the old Caribbean themed pub. all the folk from the Stadelschule come and talk about life and art and that. It’s like Paris: your room and your vision; existentialism. 

Morag Keil is an artist and writer currently based in London

An interview with Rabiya Choudhry

Where in the world would you like to go in 2009, cost irrelevant? Destinations, events?

Mexico! Frida Kahlo's house. That'd be life affirming, I think.

Do I get a prize for doing this?

No.

Oh well. Also The Butcher Shop Gallery in Canada, I think Vancouver (yep - Ed)? It used to be an abattoir. I met the guy who runs it. Artists can live there, I think. And the most exciting thing is they've got sheep on the roof! And, and, I'd like to go back to the Svankmajer gallery in Prague. What's it called? Gambra gallery! G-A-M-B-R-A.

Cheers.

Can I say I'd like to go to space? Lots of people are going there these days. It might be quite nice to take a sketchbook.

Rabiya Choudhry is an artist

Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009, 3 Feb - 26 Apr

My most exciting art event of early next year has to be Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009 at Tate Britain curated by Nicolas Bourriaud. For the fourth Tate Triennial, which opens in early February, the founding director of Palais de Tokyo is asking a bold question: 'has the post-modernist period come to an end?' Bourriaud's exhibition explores how increased access to travel and communication have transformed our lives, no longer constrained by physical or cultural borders. He talks of living in an 'archipelago of singularities' within a wider global state of culture, artists 'wandering' through this situation, both historically and geographically, building itineraries of their travels. My most exciting inclusions in the list of twenty-eight artists, which for the first time at Tate Britain includes international participants, are Seth Price, Tris Vonna-Michell and David Noonan. Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009 opens at Tate Britain, 3 February until 26 April 2009.

Jamie Kenyon is an artist and curator who works for Tate Modern and SWG3

The Pictoplasma Conference, Berlin 17-21 Mar 2009

I didn’t know whether the scene in front of me was real. In a grand abandoned, 19^th century postal headquarters in Berlin, three giant balloon faces spun slowly around the intricately crumbling domed central ceiling, while, below, a bucking bronco with a serenely simple smiley face was ridden by a man in a white boiler suit, seesawing in time to a saccharine circus mantra.

This surrealist pop fantasy was but a taster of the world of the Pictoplasma at the Animation Festival in 2007. This year sees the return of the Pictoplasma Conference, a 5 day spectacular where hundreds of character-driven exhibitions take over Berlin’s galleries, parks, street corners, warehouses and bespoke spaces, and includes talks from leading international artists and designers, as well as some of the most psychedelic parties you will ever attend. Mickey Mouse is not invited.

For more details www.pictoplasma.com

David Lemm is an illustrator and The Skinny's Production Editor