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Preview Dec 14 2009 « | »
What's on until the New Year The last preview of the year as Christmas and New Year approach and exhibition schedules go on holiday

Donald Eastwood

The lead up to Christmas and with it the winding down of most exhibition schedules until late January. So here is our last preview until next month.

TUESDAY

Two show openings on Tuesday evening that look good. Those heading off to their neglected families for Christmas might want to pass by the Crypt of St Pancras Parish Church for Magic Carpet, a group show of 12 artists exploring the theme of displacement:

"As our eyes open wider, our experiences increase, and the our visual memory gets ever more full, the connections between people, events, objects and emotions becomes harder and harder to distinguish."
The Crypt gallery website is here.

Also that night at Maverik Showroom in Shoreditch is what looks to be an entertaining show of works by the artist Sam Wibberley. While the artist does a strong line in photo-collage derivatives - my favourites are the jigsaws - and photography of found patterns, his better work is surely the objects, such as the corner book, tipping chequebook, and lamp that counts the mundane occasions you turn it on. See his website here and the Maverik showroom site here.

THURSDAY

Christmas is also the time for the ritual presentation of computer games to children. FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) in Liverpool opens Space Invaders: Art and the Computer Game Environment as part of a season of gaming that intends to take computer games out of the dark, junk-food littered bedroom and into a place where it might be considered seriously and played publicly. The big surprise is that games have been previously used as medium or subject by artists including Blast Theory, Aram Bartholl, Bill Viola, Cao Fei, Ludic Society and more. The FACT website is here.

FRIDAY

In Brighton's Fabrica at 40 Duke Street on Friday another fringe medium of the art world is explored in another former Church. Organised by Grey Area, 1-2-3-4 is a show that presents five artists who use music performance as an integral component of their practice. This is not grandiloquence for your typical art school band though, as the night comprises performances by Martin Creed, Bob & Roberta Smith, David Blandy, the Coolness and Plastique Fantique. See the Grey Area blog here.

NEXT TUESDAY

The last stop on the Christmas is about Church express before the day itself is Viewfinder's Kelly McGann solo show Shop Front Churches, documenting churches in South London that inhabit ex-commercial, industrial or residential buildings. The introductory text looks interesting, avoiding as it does the simplistic comment on the commercialistion of belief in favour of a sympathetic treatment. Read more about it here.

Rob Dingle

This weeks preview focuses on the exhibitions coming to close that simply cant be missed. As the year draws to an end we also take a look at the week ahead and towards a few shows that are opening, bucking the trend and giving you something to do over the seasonal break.

TUESDAY

Staying fixed to its ordered schedule of exhibition commissions Comma presents new work by Ian Kiaer & Dorothy Cross. Kiaer creates installations from predominantly found and discarded objects 'that recall architectural models, painterly compositions and run down domestic spaces'. Being given the vertiginous front gallery at Bloomberg SPACE, Kiaer has been commissioned to produce a new body of work. Dorothy Cross has brought together video and sculpture to continue her ongoing interest in pearls, both in their accepted monetary and aesthetic value.

FRIDAY

This is the last chance to see the work by Phil Colins soy mi madre. Collins' multifaceted practice is based on a close engagement with place and community, and has addressed issues of ethnicity, gender, and political and linguistic identity through participatory events often organised in regions of social upheaval. soy mi madre was initially commissioned in 2008 by the Aspen Art Museum as part of the Jane and Marc Nathanson Dintiguished Artist in Residency Program and focuses on the Latino and immigrant populations of Colorado.

SATURDAY

Another exhibition drawing to a close this evening is Sculpture of The Space Age at the David Roberts Foundation. The title refers to a purely fictional exhibition mentioned in J. G. Ballard's short story The Object of the Attack (1984), which was supposedly held at the Serpentine gallery in the late 70's. Four artists had been invited to be part of the project. Gintaras Didziapetris, Ryan Gander, Mario Garcia Torres and Rosalind Nashashibi will work collectively with the invited curator and the David Roberts Art Foundation to make a fiction real. Earth: Art of a changing world opening earlier this month at the Royal Academy continues until the end of January is a must see exhibition for over the Christmas period. The exhibition sets out to consider the impact of climate change, and our transition to a new world, on the practice of a broad range of contemporary artists, working in a wide-variety of media. Earth: Art of a changing world presents new and recent work from more than 30 leading international contemporary artists, including commissions and new works from the best emerging talent.

SUNDAY

Two shows both worth a visit and closing on Sunday are newcontemporaries and Duncan Campbell.

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