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Preview Sep 14 2009 « | »
The Week Ahead Jerwood Drawing Prize, Time is a Sausage, Project Space 176 and Open House

Tom Wright

CONTINUING

First and foremost, if you did not get down to Elephant and Castle to see Roger Hiorns's Seizure last summer, Artangel have kindly re-opened the condemned crystal flat for another go. The submersed copper sulphate cavern is not to be missed.

TUESDAY

On Tuesday, the Camden based Monkey Chews Gallery presents the private view of their latest photography exhibition Still Within. Lilian Wilkie, Sarah McClean, and Sanna Berger all demonstrate their own individual talents at traditional photography. Straddling themes of travel and urban beauty these artists eschew elaborate technological manipulation in favour of a contemporary eye for angle, light and shadow.

WEDNESDAY

'John Pickering has been described as a modern-day alchemist', this is standard press-release fodder but what this exhibition at the SW1 Gallery lacks in cash4gold tips it makes up for in stunning, mathematically conceived spatial constructs. Pickering intricately casts spatial models from numerical sequences producing architectural volumes to rival Zaha. What is unique and intriguing about these models is documented in the bold oil paintings by the up-and-coming painter Rebecca Ivatts. These large canvases powerfully document the rheumatoid arthritis that debilitates the determined sculptor. Deformed - Transformed runs from 16 September until 3rd October.

THURSDAY

This Thursday sees a great opportunity to experience some of Anita Zabludowicz's extensive collection of contemporary art. Pete and Repeat at Project Space 176 (http://www.projectspace176.com/) is a thoroughly international exhibition featuring the likes of Ai Weiwei, Ulrich Gebert and Paul Pfeiffer, exploring the notions of repetition. Punishing assumptions about 'originality, authenticity and creation' the many works in Pete and Repeat all speak of a unifying strategy used by the artists and how a variation in media and subject can serve to explore it more deeply. The exhibition, which runs until 13th December, is accompanied by a series of talks, debates and publications.

SATURDAY

The coming weekend welcomes the glorious return of the capitals most ambitious architecture festival. Open House 2009 presents 700 of London's most innovative, intriguing and inaccessible buildings, open to the public, completely free of charge. A digital or print programme of the venues on offer can be ordered here. Alternatively, the full listings can be searched online here.

For a little help in narrowing down your choices of which smart houses to snoop around, murmurART can recommend the following architectural beauties. Eds Shed/Sunken House by architect David Adjaye, Shoreditch Prototype House by Cox Bulleid Architects, 120 Mapledene Road by Platform 5 Architects and, for something a little more monumental, try the Lloyd's of London building by Richard Rogers.

Donald Eastwood

TUESDAY

Pretty much the last MA show to come around, the Byam Shaw School of Art, which is part of Central St Martin's did you know, opens this evening in the busy and vibrant area of Archway (the northern line). Typically the University of the Arts BA's are the best and the other London Colleges MA's are the better, but Byam Shaw, which has been running since 1910, is the sort of curious outsider that could surprise.

WEDNESDAY

The Jerwood Drawing prize - probably the most respected drawing accolade around - opens on Wednesday at the Jerwood space on Union Street, though rather than shout about the opening and wait for the crowds to gradually thin out, they have organised a series of events to focus attention along the way. So for the next three Mondays there will be free talks at 6pm providing background to the exhibition - beginning with a discussion and talk with members of this year's selection panel: Roger Malbert and Nicholas Usherwood.

THURSDAY

What shape is the universe? I once asked my father, who is an Doctor of Physics. It is a four-dimensional sphere, apparently - the fourth dimension being time.

And while you are confused by this invitation to geometrically visualise time, consider Domobaal's exhibition Time is a Sausage. The title is taken from a poem called A Poem reasoning what is Time which stopped / Making Sense when i made It Rhyme, which prefaces the publicity along with the brilliant image of a TV watching some empty chairs.

In the interests of my own circularity, I add that the ambitious show - which runs until Christmas - includes 8 autonomous satellite exhibitions which will show sequentially and in some way return to the theme of the central show, like time extending away from the origin of the universe only to bend around and return towards it.

SUNDAY

Several of the easiest places to see the much-discussed relationship between art and money are the daily output of inane antique 'hunter' shows, spearheaded by the original Antiques Roadshow. People bumble up, drawn by the carrot of selling junk for real money, scarcely able to keep their unusual ornament within the grasp of their greedy sweating fingers and finally find it won't earn them as much money as they allowed themselves to imagine.

Beneath the entertaining schardenfreude and razzle-dazzle of 'potential revenue', there is actually an expert talking about a rare piece of artistry. Boring, you might say - but if not you may be interested in the British Library's Conservation Clinic, where rather than deal out hypothetical prizes, their team of conservators tell you how best to care for these objects and to protect your own family archive for future generations.

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