Holly Hendry @ BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead

Holly Hendry: Wrot
BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead
18 February – 4 June 2017

HOLLY HENDRY

Gut Feelings, 2016.

Plaster, steel, aluminium, cement, Jesmonite, polyurethane foam, marble, birch ply, soap, chewing gum, rawhide dog chew, motor

Courtesy the artist and Limoncello, London.

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead presents the first major institutional exhibition by emerging British artist Holly Hendry.

Holly Hendry (b. London, 1990) presents an entirely new body of work for her exhibition Wrot for the BALTIC level 2 space. Using a variety of materials, from Jesmonite and plaster to foam, wood, steel and water-jet cut marble, she creates a geology of oozy forms peppered with comic elements, such as dog chew bones and spinning plaster teeth. She investigates the underneath and backsides of things, using cross-sectional cuts that make insides become edges, revealing their dirty innards. Her works talk about absence through presence and offer intimacy without proximity. Her sugary colours and cartoon content examine the very human aspects of laughter and death.

The works in the exhibition, including an archaeology of layered fragments like a museum diorama, resist the flatness of surface, pulling us underneath to see the details. Holly Hendry says ‘like the grimy surface of the street at ground level - a striation of all the debris, layers, fragments and time we’ve stomped down’ the layered structure offers a cartoonish impression of the layers of sediment that we usually overlook, under our feet. Surfaces are important in the work - primed, polished and finished - the applications we use to protect and conserve materials and what we use to cover things up or conceal. The title of the show itself Wrot is a definition used in the building trade to refer to timber with one or more sides planed smooth. It also references rotting, decay or breakdown and things happening under the surface that Holly Hendry’s cross sections or slices allow us to explore. Layering, reconstitution of materials, agglomerates and new materials made from old are referenced and how these materials are displaced, dug out and filled, giving rise to the build-up and break down of entire biological and industrial systems.

The works in the exhibition, as is typical of the artist, draw attention to the spatial, material and structural qualities of the architecture and how space is experienced. Her large-scale sculptures are built specifically for BALTIC’s Level 2 gallery space, without referring directly to it. Rather, they rely on the architecture as a framework. They connect to it, as Holly Hendry states, with ‘spatial ligaments, like necklace to neck’.

Holly Hendry’s interest in the architectural qualities of the body itself - our internal structure of bones that supports the surface skin is explored in the exhibition. She considers the physicality of the human body and our attempts through medical science, from prostheses to intimate sutures, to arrest its inevitable decline. Teeth, the body part that is lost more often, appear blown up and looming in the space. Emblematic of the fact that our bodies never remain intact, they are both markers of people and a way to identify remains. More broadly, Holly Hendry is interested in sculpture’s relationship to the memorial. Grave-like cavities puncture Holly Hendry’s surfaces – places where bone and skin turn to dust and where matter changes: the body returning to its material substances, becoming ‘stuff’ again. The exhibition reminds us of the permeability of the body’s periphery and our coagulation as bodies and objects.

HOLLY HENDRY (b. 1990, based in London, UK) gained her BA Fine Art at The Slade School of Fine Art (2013) and her MA Sculpture at the Royal College of Art (2016). Exhibitions include Limoncello Cork St, London (2016) with Kate Owens; Rice + Toye, London, UK (2016); Bosse & Baum, London, UK (2015); The Oval, London, UK; and Gallery North, Newcastle upon Tyne (both 2014). Recent group shows include GL Strand, Copenhagen; Belmacz Mayfair, London, UK; VITRINE, London, UK; The Royal Standard, Liverpool, UK; CBS Gallery, Liverpool, UK; Cowley Manor, Cotswolds, UK (all 2016); Turf Projects Space, Croydon, UK; Chesterfield House, London, UK; Salt + Powell, York, UK (all 2015), S1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK; and Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, AE (both 2014). 

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Gateshead Quays, South Shore Road, Gateshead NE8 3BA UK
balticmill.com

Yoko Ono: Between the Sky and my Head, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

YOKO ONO 

BETWEEN THE SKY AND MY HEAD 

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 

14 December 2008 – 15 March 2009 

Yoko Ono is one of the pioneers of conceptual art and has an international exhibition career spanning nearly 50 years. BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art presents YOKO ONO BETWEEN THE SKY AND MY HEAD, comprising work by Yoko Ono from the 1950s to the present day.

This is one of the largest exhibitions of Yoko Ono’s work to date and is a major collaborative project with Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany curated by Thomas Kellein and Jon Hendricks. BETWEEN THE SKY AND MY HEAD occupies two gallery floors of BALTIC with additional works located outside the building.

The exterior artworks form part of the 2008 NewcastleGateshead Winter Festival and are located in prominent locations around NewcastleGateshead. ONOCHORD uses light to form a code spelling out “I Love You” or “•, ••, •••” and is presented as a large projection of light from the top of Castle Keep, Newcastle. ONOCHORD takes place daily from Sunday 14 December to Wednesday 31 December from 3.30pm until 8.00pm. A special participatory event incorporating ONOCHORD happens outside BALTIC on Sunday 14 December at 6.00pm. Visitors to BALTIC Square are invited to send and receive “I Love You” messages to and from each other and the Castle Keep.

Yoko Ono’s Film No. 5 (Smile), made in 1968, is projected onto Gateshead Quay on Saturday 13 December from 5.30pm – 9.30pm and on the west face of the Newcastle Civic Centre tower on Thursday 18 December from 4.00pm to 8.30pm. The film, shot with a high-speed camera, records a single smile of John Lennon that evolves over the course of fifty-one minutes. 

From Wednesday 17 December visitors to BALTIC will be able to book a ride in Coffin Car, a work originally titled Riding Piece in 1962. The car, (a classic English Daimler hearse) will be located adjacent to BALTIC on South Shore Road and will take visitors for journeys throughout Gateshead and Newcastle. Coffin Car will be available on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays between 11.00am - 4.00pm. Yoko Ono has a strong and irrepressible desire for peace. This desire can be immediately recognised in her Imagine Peace billboards; BALTIC is presenting an Imagine Peace banner measuring an impressive 14.5 metres by 18 metres situated on the north face of BALTIC’s landmark building throughout the exhibition.

Wish Trees, where visitors are invited to express their hopes and dreams by writing wishes on paper and hanging them on one of the trees, are located on Level 4. Wishes from all the trees will be gathered at the end of the exhibition, and sent to the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on Videy Island, Iceland, to join the rest of the wishes Yoko Ono has collected from around the world.

Inside BALTIC, the exhibition covers more than 1400m² of gallery space containing sculpture, paintings, drawing, photography, films and sound installations, as well as participation works. For the first time in four years the large picture window at the rear of the Level 3 gallery is uncovered to bathe the floor in natural light.

Among the 50 works featured in the exhibition is Play it by Trust, a conceptual chess set, made from white Italian Carrara marble. A version of the work was first exhibited in London at Yoko Ono’s legendary exhibition at the Indica Gallery in 1966.

Another work, SkyLadder, may be read as an allegory for the exhibition’s title, BETWEEN THE SKY AND MY HEAD as it invites us to consider an imaginary, spiritual space centred between the sky and earth. The 29 Skyladders situated on Level 4 were originally seen at the Liverpool Biennial earlier this year; each donated ladder is accompanied by a hand written note and personal wishes from its contributor.

My Mommy is Beautiful, is a participatory piece in which visitors to BALTIC are invited to bring photographs, along with thoughts and memories about their mothers, to be permanently attached to the blank canvases. At the conclusion of the exhibition, the filled canvases will be sent to the artist in New York. 

Two film representations of the legendary Cut Piece (1966 and 2003) where Yoko Ono allowed an audience to cut items of her clothing are shown side by side on Level 3. Within Quay, BALTIC’s learning space, visitors are invited to use ‘IMAGINE PEACE’ and ‘I LOVE YOU’ ink stamps to send positive messages to other countries around the globe in Map Peace. Finally moving up to Level 5 visitors can take time to participate in Mend Piece (1966) where hundreds of smashed white cups and saucers can be reconstructed using glue and string. 

YOKO ONO: BETWEEN THE SKY AND MY HEAD is accompanied by a 208-page exhibition catalogue edited by Thomas Kellein, director of the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne

YOKO ONO BIOGRAPHY 

Yoko Ono, born in 1933 in Tokyo, is one of the pioneers of Conceptual Art. In 1952, she became one of the first women in Japan to study philosophy. In 1953 she took composition courses at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY, and studied creative writing at Harvard. In the mid-1950s, Yoko Ono lived in New York City, where she knew John Cage, and many other artists and composers. In 1960, she rented a loft on Chambers Street, and together with La Monte Young, organized a series of concerts, attended not only by young musicians and artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Fluxus founder George Maciunas, but also by Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, and Isamu Noguchi. 

As a young artist, Ono left New York in 1962 in order to return to Japan. During this period she performed several concerts with John Cage and the pianist David Tudor. In the same year at the Sōgetsu Art Center in Tokyo, she began hanging texts as artworks, instead of the pictures she had shown in 1961 at the AG Gallery in New York. Her work in conceptual art manifested in the famous collection of works, Grapefruit, which she first published herself on July 4, 1964 in Tokyo. It went on to be published in numerous editions. Some of the works in it date back to the early 1950s. The book divided her oeuvre into chapters dealing with music, painting, happenings, poetry, and objects, documenting her affinity for all categories of art. To this day, she continues to move forward in unexplored territories in her art. 

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art 

Gateshead Quays, South Shore Road, Gateshead NE8 3BA 

www.balticmill.com

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George Maciunas: The Dream of Fluxus, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead - Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, Detroit

George Maciunas: The Dream of Fluxus 

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead 

25 November 2008 – 15 February 2009

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art explores the history and works of Fluxus through the renowned Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, Detroit. This unprecedented exhibition of over three-hundred and fifty works from 1961 – 1978 is the largest display of Fluxus ever mounted in Britain. 

Fluxus is often historically regarded as a global network of influential and vibrant artists who shared a unique, if not united, aspiration to revolutionise the avant-garde. Through the introduction of concept art, intermedia, and radical performance practices, Fluxus pioneered an aesthetic appreciation for the everyday. By intentionally confusing the boundaries of how and when an artwork could begin or end, exiting a room, making a salad, or ending a war were transformed into performative works of art. 

Reflecting its international network of artists, Fluxus began in many places from as many creative perspectives. The origins of this network have been traced to the teachings of John Cage, the serial compositions of German composer Karl Heinz Stockhausen, and the organisational talents of graphic designer, architect, and artist George Maciunas. Maciunas was the self-appointed chairman of Fluxus. His political and agitprop approach to Fluxus aspired to a complete overhaul of the complacent bourgeois art world. George Maciunas dreamed of a Fluxus whose collective spirit enabled the availability of Fluxkits, Fluxfeasts, Fluxfests, and Fluxfilms for the price of a paperback. Having coined the phrase Fluxus in 1961, Maciunas organised a series of groundbreaking European performance festivals beginning in 1962 that set the tone for countless Fluxus events that continue throughout the world in theatres, galleries, and on the street. 

Centring on George Maciunas’s contributions to Fluxus until his death in 1978, The Dream of Fluxus is curated by Thomas Kellein of Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany in collaboration with Jon Hendricks, curator of the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection. 

This collection of works, many of which were acquired directly from the George Maciunas estate in 1984, began with Gilbert Silverman’s interest in the work of Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks in the early 1970s. Silverman adds: “You have to understand that real collectors are on a major ego trip and that the idea of collecting something is to have something more than someone else, that if I worked very hard and really fast I could put together the biggest Fluxus collection in the world.”

Artists whose works feature in George Maciunas, The Dream of Fluxus include: Genpei Akasegawa, Eric Andersen, Ay-O, Jeff Berner, George Brecht, Gieseppe Chiari, John Chick, Jack Coke’s Farmer’s Co-op, Robert Filliou, Albert Fine, Ken Friedman, Henry Flynt, Geoffrey Hendricks, Hi Red Center, Dick Higgins, Alice Hutchins, Joe Jones, Per Kirkeby, Jane Knizak, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Takehisa Kosugi, Shigeko Kubota, John Lennon, Carla Liss, George Maciunas, Jackson Mac Low, Larry Miller, Peter Moore, Olivier Mosset, Claes Oldenburg, Serge Oldenbourg, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Benjamin Patterson, Jock Reynolds, Willem de Ridder, James Riddle, Takako Saito, Paul Sharits, Tomas Schmit, Mieko Shiomi, Daniel Spoerri, Ben Vautier, Wolf Vostell, Yoshi Wada, Robert Watts, Emmett Williams, and La Monte Young.

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art 

Gateshead Quays, South Shore Road, Gateshead NE8 3BA

www.balticmill.com

Keith Haring - BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead

Keith Haring
BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art, Gateshead
21 October, 2006 - 7 January 2007

BALTIC presents an exhibition by seminal artist Keith Haring. Haring’s work responded to the street culture of New York in the 1980s, and he used the directness of graffiti art to make his signature style known. Powerfully combining the voice of the street and the voice of the gallery system, he created a visual language which has become universally recognised.

BALTIC will display a series of drawings created during an extremely immersive time when the artist returned to drawing after his time as a student at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), New York when he experimented widely with video, performance and installation. Though he always maintained a strong commitment to drawing, in 1980 the longing to devote more time, energy and focus upon this medium became overwhelming, and it was during this period that he developed his unique visual language. This is the first time these drawings have been displayed in the UK.

The exhibition consists of 3 series of early drawings, a total of 27 individual works. One of the series was created specifically for the magazine P.I.M - Public Illumination Magazine, ‘the world's smallest magazine of its kind’ (7 cm x 11 cm). Independently produced in New York and still published, each issue has a theme and Haring contributed to issue #13, in 1981, on the theme of Civilization. Here, we see a continuation of his signature vocabulary in these surreal and engaging visual narratives with their direct and appealing comic strip style.

Drawing was Keith Haring’s passion from an early age; the abstract language gave space to more complex and figurative visual language that would characterise the rest of his career. He used a very personal language and style, to communicate basic emotions through creating timeless images. A greatly influential artist, he was able to communicate to many generations and across many cultural boundaries. He was also highly committed to social causes, putting his art to the service of the community to make a contribution towards the arrest of the spread of AIDS, drug addictions, fighting for gay rights and against racial discrimination, but most of all acting on behalf of children.

During a brief but intense career Keith Haring’s work was featured in over 100 solo and group exhibitions. He was highly sought after to participate in special projects and collaborated with artists and performers such as Madonna, Grace Jones, Bill T. Jones, William Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Jenny Holzer and Andy Warhol. By expressing universal concepts of birth, death, love, sex and war, using a primacy of line and directness of message, Haring was able to attract a wide audience and assure the accessibility and staying power of his imagery, which has become a universally recognised visual language of the 20th century.

Exhibition supported by Embassy of United States of America, London

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Gateshead Quays, South Shore Road, Gateshead NE8 3BA
balticmill.com