www.danishcrafts.org/visArtikel.uk.asp?artikelID=2504
(text below from Danish Crafts website)
Ole Jensen
Born in 1958, ceramist/designer. He graduated as a ceramic designer from the Kolding College of Danish Design in 1985 and from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1990.
Hot Water Bottle is a soft container that can be filled with hot water and placed on or near the body. It is typically used to ease stomach or muscle pain. “Or if you just feel under the weather and need some warmth,” says Ole Jensen, adding that the product is probably “particularly relevant in cold climates and difficult times.”
The product is made in natural rubber and metal by repeatedly dipping a clay shape into liquid rubber. The rubber is treated with a thin layer of silicone for durability. The stopper is handmade in gold-plated brass with a screw thread closure. The hot water bottles are made in five different shapes in brown or red.
Hot Water Bottles are produced by Latex One and Lars Glad in collaboration with Rasha Sager & Saxenfelt Natural Rubber Products.
Since then, Ole Jensen has exhibited in a number of places, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Danish Museum of Art & Design in Copenhagen. At last year’s Mindcraft, Ole Jensen presented The Rubber Tub – an oversize version of his rubber washing-up bowl, which is manufactured by Normann Copenhagen, and which is in use in the restaurant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among many other places.
The long list of manufacturers that Ole has worked with over the years, in addition to Normann Copenhagen, includes Muuto and Royal Copenhagen.
The main source of inspiration for Ole Jensen’s products is his attention to everyday life and his close surroundings. This is reflected, among other things, in his preference for working with practical objects that relate to everyday life and the body. He develops these things almost as if they were craft objects: by hand, in clay and other readily available materials. Always mindful of whether the process gives rise to a rationale or a phenomenon that might later be transformed with a view to serial production.
As part of the project Disclosures, Gasworks is launching its new Reading Area. Disclosures started as a two-day seminar, residencies and commissions in March 2008, and continues with various events and projects.
The Reading Area is composed of the Disclosures Library, Pipeline and selected publications reflecting upon Gasworks’ past, current and future programmes of activities. All are available for browsing during gallery opening hours.
The Disclosures Library originated as a research archive informing the seminar and was shared onsite in reading and screening spaces during April-May 2008. It has constantly expanded since its inception and has now been relocated to the lobby area as a permanent resource. The library gives visitors access to printed, film and audio material themed around issues of openness and connecting fields encompassing critical media and visual art practice, social history studies and urban sociology.
The catalogue can be viewed online, with many texts available as links. Content is added on a regular basis, and is organised according to four different but overlapping categories:
FROM THE GROUND UP
The lived, embodied and situated realities of networked information culture, resistance to globalisation, activism in the network era, relations between land and information enclosure.
THE POLITICS OF INFORMATION AND ITS FORMS
The politics of organising forms of information and its cultural corollaries; corporate ownership, file sharing, intellectual property; enclosure of information; regulatory, political, corporate, governmental instrumentalisation and control of information.
NEW AND NON AUTHORSHIP
The diffused author, platforms for collaboration in networked media.
ART, NEW MEDIA AND THEIR INSTITUTIONS
Cultural institutions’ responses/co-optation; transfer of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) into cultural operation; labour conditions and art world precarity.
The Disclosures Library is edited by Anna Colin (Exhibitions Curator) and Mia Jankowicz (formerly Residencies Curator at Gasworks) and is coordinated by Christine Takengny (Curatorial Assistant). More texts relating to projects beyond Disclosures at Gasworks are also available through Pipeline.
Gasworks
155 Vauxhall Street
London SE11 5RH
UK
T:+44 (0)20 7587 5202
F:+44 (0)20 7582 0159
info@gasworks.org.uk
www.gasworks.org.uk
Tube: Vauxhall/Oval
Bus: 2, 36, 88, 133, 185, 436
Admission is free
Gasworks’ ground floor has full wheelchair access
See news from ICA below:
The ICA is now Free
From September 1, entry to our galleries and Bar Café before 11pm is free to the public.
The ICA is delighted to announce that from 1 September 2008 it will no longer be charging a day admission charge. You can now access a wide range of innovative arts, ideas and culture on the Mall for free.
This change to admission policy extends to all exhibitions and the ICA Bar Café before 11pm but not to ticketed events in the cinemas, theatre and Nash and Brandon Rooms. It has been made possible through the continued and generous support of ICA Members and Westminster Council. As we move into our 61st year we are taking an inclusive and embracing direction to bring together new artists and new audiences.
The first exhibition to benefit from this significant and historic step, is the ICA Auction Exhibition, a finale to the ICA’s 60th anniversary celebrations showcasing works generously donated from 36 of the most important and influential artists from the ICA’s history.
Other unmissable free highlights from the ICA’s September programme include Nobel Textiles, a brilliant week of exhibitions and events where five Nobel-winning scientists have been paired with five textile designers to extraordinary effect.
And with no entry charge until 11pm each evening, everyone is free to indulge in café culture with attractive food and cocktail menus at the ICA Bar Café, a stylish haven in the bustle of central London.
Going free: FAQ
Why Now?
Before 2008, because of our location on the Mall, we were bound to a complex licensing agreement which meant that we had to charge a day admission fee. Following the recent changes to licensing laws, the authority for the licence was transferred to Westminster City Council and the ICA is extremely grateful that they have now granted us permission to vary the terms of our license so that admission charge now only applies after 11pm.
What does this mean for visitors?
This means that all visitors have free entrance to all public spaces of the ICA including unlimited access to exhibitions and the café/bar area before 11pm. Admission charges only apply to ticketed events in the cinemas, theatre and Nash and Brandon Rooms.
What does this mean for members?
In addition to receiving the usual benefits including advance notice of events via e-mails, advance bulletin delivery to door, priority and discount booking on tickets and in the bookshop, free entrance at all times, private views and other special events, ICA members will now receive the additional benefit of a 10% discount at the ICA Bar Café as a special thank you for supporting us.
How can you afford to go free?
Our Members, funders and sponsors, including Westminster Council and Arts Council England have generously supported us in taking this step.
Free Range graduate exhibitions at The Old Truman Brewery until 21st July.
See events calendar here.
The exhibition for the Photography graduates opened last night with some impressive work from the University of Westminster. See Sarah Chamberlain’s project below..
Sarah Chamberlain, University of Westminster
life guards, 2007
The series, Life Guards, investigates psychological representations of boredom and social detachment. Utilising photography and video installation this series is a survey of lifeguards observing pool activity, waiting for a scenario we hope will never happen. While the lifeguards are doing their job, their ‘looks’, framed before the camera, often appear detached from their surroundings and lost in their own internal worlds unobtainable to those around them.
As a portrait series Life Guards illustrates the ongoing predicament of the portrait photographs inability to communicate the ‘whole’ of a person. Instead their state of being and their represented form are defined by a predetermined scenario of observing from the confinement of a chair and of being confined in front of a camera.
Essentially ‘guardians of life’, the subjects ironically portray an internal psychological state, resembling boredom that, we as viewers, cannot touch. This irony is further parodied when we consider Barthes1 description of the photograph as ‘little deaths’ – a deceased moment in time .
Don’t miss the World Press Photo Awards 2008 exhibition tour – details here. Well worth a look, the exhibition showcases incredible work from photojournalists around the globe. The complete collection is also available to view online at the World Press Photo Awards 2008 online gallery.
1st prize Contemporary Issues Stories, Jean Revillard
Makeshift immigrant hut in Calais, France, taken by Swiss photographer Jean Revillard for Rezo.ch
See press release below for more info..
PSYCHO BUILDINGS
28 May – 25 August 2008
The Hayward
As the highlight of the Hayward’s 40th anniversary season,
ten artists from around the world will transform the entire
gallery in PSYCHO BUILDINGS, running from 28 May –
25 August 2008.
The Hayward’s huge spaces will be filled with artist-designed architectural environments, which will spill onto the three outdoor sculpture terraces, radically altering the interior and exterior of the gallery. Inside a village made from over 200 dollhouses and a room frozen in a moment of explosive disaster are amongst the installations that will both enchant and disconcert visitors. Outside on the Gallery’s sculpture terraces, installations including a huge iridescent observatory and a working cinema will alter the exterior face of The Hayward. Visible from the surrounding area and across the Thames and illuminated by night, they add a significant public dimension to this major exhibition.
The ten artists are: Atelier Bow-Wow (Japan), Michael Beutler (Germany), Los Carpinteros (Cuba), Gelitin (Austria), Mike Nelson (UK), Ernesto Neto (Brazil), Tobias Putrih (Slovenia), Tomas Saraceno (Argentina), Do-Ho Suh (Korea), Rachel Whiteread (UK).
Borrowing its title from a book by the artist Martin Kippenberger, the exhibition brings together the work of artists who create habitat-like structures and architectural spaces that are mental and perceptual spaces as much as physical ones. The exhibition invites visitors to immerse themselves in a series of ten atmospheric, enthralling and unsettling installations. Combining architectural and artistic design with the use of light, colour and smell to trigger responses, these dynamic constructions actively encourage viewers to become adventurous participants. The scale and ambition of the exhibition means many of the artists will be working in the gallery for over a month in order to realise their installations.
Ralph Rugoff, Director of The Hayward and curator of exhibition “This ambitious exhibition takes the unique architecture of The Hayward as its starting point. The Gallery’s ‘brutalist’ concrete exterior and the sculptural quality of its spaces have always proved an inspiration for artists. The extraordinary international artistic response to Psycho Buildings shows just how challenging, exciting and playful the The Hayward can be. It is a fitting way to celebrate our 40th birthday.”
Brazilian artist, Ernesto Neto will create a spatial and sensory labyrinth for visitors to explore. A ceiling of transparent fabric will divide the gallery space into two halves, linked by several openings. By climbing up ladders to elevated viewing platforms, visitors can scan the floating landscape of the upper level and also view the lower level from a different perspective, as if through a layer of translucent skin.
Two artists, Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodriguez, form the Havana-based collective Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters). They are reworking their sculptural installation Frozen Study of a Disaster especially for the exhibition. The sculpture depicts the suspended moment of an explosion ripping through a series of rooms filled with furniture.
Mike Nelson is recreating his little seen installation To the memory of H. P. Lovecraft (1999), which transforms the gallery into a scene of utter rabid devastation, as if an unseen beast had freed himself from the space by violently clawing through the walls.
Slovenian artist Tobias Putrih will present Venetian, Atmospheric (2007), a beautifully created sculpture which is also a working cinema. Designed with curved wooden walls and a ceiling onto which twinkling stars and moving clouds are projected, Venetian, Atmospheric will place the spectator in an ever-changing environment. Situated on the sculpture terrace facing Waterloo Bridge, Putrih’s structure will show a specially-curated programme of films about artists and architecture.
Outside on another of the gallery’s sculpture terraces, the Argentinean artist, Tomas Saraceno will install a large shimmering air-supported observatory made of translucent, iridescent fabric. While completely transforming the facade of The Hayward, his domed sculpture will also provide an immersive experience for visitors who, upon entering the sculpture terrace, will be surrounded by an environment in which to observe the sky.
Korean-born artist Do-Ho Suh will present a major new sculpture, Fallen Star (2008), which features 1:5 scale model of the artist’s childhood home in Korea colliding into the New England apartment where he lived as an art student. He will also recreate Staircase (2004), a ghostly evocation of an apartment staircase that the artist fashioned from vibrant red semi-translucent fabric.
Rachel Whiteread’s will present a new, larger version of her acclaimed installation ‘Village’, which has never been shown in the UK. It brings together more than 200 dollhouses that the artist has collected over the past 20 years and is a radical departure from previous work. The dollhouses are arranged in rows as on a hillside, and each is illuminated by a single light bulb, creating an eerily atmospheric scene of a neglected village.
Atelier Bow-Wow, Michael Beutler, and the artists’ collective Gelitin will be creating major new installations for the exhibition.
The exhibition is curated by Ralph Rugoff, Director of The Hayward, in collaboration with the artists. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue produced by Hayward Publishing.
The exhibition is supported by Outset Contemporary Art Fund.
Psycho Buildings opens on 28 May and runs until 25 August 2008.
The Hayward, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XZ
southbankcentre.co.uk/visual-arts
Information and tickets: 0871 663 2519
Opening hours for The Hayward:
Open daily 10am-6pm, late night opening Fridays until 10pm.
Filed under: ****GO*******, design, exhibition, ideas, urbanism, wanted to go but didn't.. (or couldn't!)
Torino 10122
A project and competition, Torino Geodesign is first and foremost an idea which defines an extraordinarily large and productive field of action: self-determined design, produced in limited series by communities inside huge globalised metropolises.
Design arising from a community of users organising restricted mass production to rapidly meet specific sorts of limited demand destined for instantaneous diffusion.
Vital, energetic and deeply experimental design, produced using poor materials and technology deriving from informal economies, and often full of symbolic content.
Highly creative design, which moves beyond the restrictive boundaries of international luxury production and meets precise needs linked to immediate survival or to lifestyles under constant change.
The project Torino Geodesign revolves around the collaboration between 40 communities in the area and a similar number of international designers and Italian companies.
Focusing attention on people instead of objects, Torino Geodesign aims to trigger off new forms of business enterprise in various local communities by setting up an intricate network of relations in which there is a blurring of the distinctions between customers and users, manufacturers and beneficiaries of design. In a dynamic system, a far cry from the idea of free aid or support, the designer becomes the catalyst of all kinds of experiments and reactions deriving from new forms of interaction.
The challenge behind this complex mechanism, where the traditional division of roles between the commissioning client, the designer and the consumer are tested, subverted and recomposed, is of an obviously political and social nature. The project aims in fact to seek out new energy for the world of design and new models for the relationship between city dwellers and city administration based on activating collective energy.
The designers, artists and architects, chosen through an international idea-seeking competition, work together with the communities in a series of design workshops on varying themes identified through a flexible, experimental process (magazines, packaging, brand images, objects for large-scale production such as clothes horses for council housing, the reorganisation of public areas).
The prototypes – together with sketches, designs, film and photos of the entire process – flow into a major show, the evidence of a new systematic way of organising design.
OPENING HOURS:
Sunday – Wednesday 10-19
Thursday – Saturday 10-23
free entry
Filed under: ****GO*******, art, exhibition, film & video, photography, urbanism
Post-it City. Occasional urbanities exhibition at CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona) until 25th May.
Image: Artificial Arcadia. Bas Princen
‘The Post-it City. Occasional urbanities concept designates different forms of the temporary occupations of public space, be they of a commercial, leisure, sexual or any other kind, that share the common feature of barely leaving a trace and of self-managing their appearance and disappearance.
By using the idea of Post-it City as the crux of this investigation we are trying to underline considerations of two kinds: the political potential the idea in itself has, and its methodological effectiveness for studying very disparate social and urban contexts.
Post-it City phenomena emphasise the reality of the urban territory as the place where distinctive uses and situations legitimately overlap, in opposition to the growing pressures to homogenise public space. In contrast to the ideals of the city as a place of consensus and consumption, temporary occupations of space reaffirm use value, reveal different needs and lacks that affect given collectives, and even promote creativity and the subjective imagination. Behind the reality of Post-it City, the metropolis reappears as a territory traversed by numerous dynamics and processes, but also by numerous subjects with a genuine political dimension thanks to the imaginative strategies of survival of their licit actions?intrusive and parasiticalones that often involve recycling.
From another standpoint, the temporary activities that contaminate public space with numerous para-architectural artefacts enable reflection on urban experience to redirect its attention towards the minuscule, thus correcting the arrogance of traditional architecture.’
Filed under: ****GO*******, architecture, art, book/ magazine, design, exhibition, symposium, talk/ lecture, urbanism
