Ed Clark @ Turner Contemporary, Margate

Ed Clark

Turner Contemporary, Margate

25 May - 1 September 2024

Turner Contemporary presents the first institutional exhibition in Europe dedicated to pioneering artist ED CLARK (1926-2019). The exhibition unites paintings and works on paper from the 1940s to 2000s, including loans from The Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum and Detroit Institute of Arts, many of which have not been seen outside the USA.

Though late to receive international acclaim, Clark’s contributions to contemporary art were significant, notably through his innovative push broom technique and shaped canvases. Today, Ed Clark is recognised as a groundbreaking figure within the New York School of Abstraction.

Born in New Orleans and raised in Chicago, Ed Clark used credits from his G.I. Bill to attend the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago from 1947 to 1951. In 1952, he furthered his studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where he would return to make work for the rest of his life. Clark’s experiences in the bohemian quarter of Montparnasse and, later, New York’s downtown scene deeply influenced his shift towards abstraction and working on a large scale. In 1956, he adopted the use of a 48-inch push broom to allow him to drive paint across the canvas with great force, a technique known as 'the big sweep' and exemplified in works such as Locomotion 1963. On his return to the US that year, Ed Clark settled in New York, where he co-founded the influential Brata Gallery and created Untitled 1957, a seminal piece in the evolution of shaped painting and a highlight of the exhibition’s section devoted to Clark’s early canvases.

Travel and how a sense of place profoundly influenced Clark’s work are at the heart of the exhibition. In 1971, visiting artist Jack Whitten in Crete proved transformative. As the Mediterranean light inspired a new colour palette, so it motivated him to seek out different lights and atmospheres, including in Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, China and Japan, as well as across the US. This theme is explored in depth throughout the exhibition with works on paper and paintings including Untitled 1970 – an example of his oval-shaped canvases first made in Vétheuil, France – Untitled from Louisiana Series 1978-80 and the dazzling Ife Rose 1974.

Set against the expansive North Sea, Turner Contemporary is uniquely placed to explore how, as one contemporary critic observed, Clark’s canvases registered his “sensitivity to the pigmentation of the earth and the colour of the skies.”

The exhibition concludes with key examples of paintings from the mid-1980s to 2000s, a period when Ed Clark brought new structures to his compositions with sweeping rainbows, tubes, and waves of colour. Seen together, these works will underscore Clark’s enduring fascination with his material. In his own words, “The paint is the subject."

We are delighted to host Ed Clark's first European exhibition at Turner Contemporary. His pioneering work from the 1950s, marked using unconventional tools like the push broom, has redefined American abstraction. The natural light of our galleries will uniquely accentuate Clark's vibrant exploration of colour and form. Just as the varied landscapes from Chicago to Paris and Brazil to Greece shaped his vision, we anticipate his work will resonate profoundly within the luminous spaces of our gallery, complemented by the ever-changing sea and sky beyond. -- Clarrie Wallis, Director of Turner Contemporary

TURNER CONTEMPORARY

Rendezvous, Margate, CT9 1HG

www.turnercontemporary.org

Lynda Benglis @ Turner Contemporary, Margate

Lynda Benglis 

Turner Contemporary, Margate

3 February – 1 September 2024

Lynda Benglis 

Striking Cobra, 2020 

Everdur bronze (golden) 

Photo: Davin Lavikka

To coincide with Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950 - 1970 Turner Contemporary presents three recent sculptures by LYDA BENGLIS in the Sunley Gallery. 

Born in 1941, Lynda Benglis is celebrated for carving out a unique space within the male-dominated art world, earning acclaim for her pioneering use of wax and poured latex. Her latest polished bronze sculptures, with their dynamic and fluid forms, continue to challenge perceptions of space. These evolved from her Elephant Necklaces, clay sculptures, digitally enlarged into bronze, underscoring her deep exploration of materiality and the transformative process of form.

TURNER CONTEMPORARY

Rendezvous, Margate, Kent CT9 1HG

turnercontemporary.org

Beyond Form Lines of Abstraction, 1950 - 1970 @ Turner Contemporary, Margate - Guest curated by Dr Flavia Frigeri

Beyond Form 

Lines of Abstraction, 1950 - 1970

Guest curated by Dr Flavia Frigeri

Turner Contemporary, Margate

3 February - 6 May 2024

Lenore Tawney At Work In Studio, New York, USA 

Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Turner Contemporary presents Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950 - 1970, a group exhibition presenting abstraction as a radical global language shared by women artists in the twenty years following World War II. Guest curated by Dr Flavia Frigeri, the exhibition brings together the works of more than 50 artists to examine how, through abstract forms, materials and modes, women pushed the boundaries of artmaking while tackling seismic cultural, social and political shifts. Comprising over 80 artworks, predominantly sculpture, the exhibition traces how the language of abstraction developed on a global scale. 

Beyond Form re-evaluates how art, gender and the act of making intersected in the postWWII period, when men often eclipsed women’s artistic contributions. It highlights the pioneering efforts of women artists in the development of abstraction, asserting their vital role in the discourse of the times.

In the 1950s and 1960s, women actively resisted the pressure to return to domestic roles, instead capitalising on their substantial wartime work experiences. By embracing abstraction, these artists leveraged a form of expression that resonated with the era’s protofeminist sentiments. Through employing techniques like hanging, stacking and weaving they subverted established art-craft hierarchies and challenged entrenched gender norms. Their innovative use of sculptural materials allowed them to investigate critical social topics and explore themes concerning the human form, political discourse and more.

Looking beyond the Western canon, Beyond Form presents abstraction as a constellation of interconnected stories. It celebrates artists from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, positioning them as central figures in the history of abstraction and brings to light many works that have previously gone unseen.

The exhibition includes sculptures by Mária Bartuszová, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse and Hannah Wilke. It highlights Marisa Merz’s Living Sculpture (1966), a piece realised within the intimate confines of a domestic space before the artist had a studio. It also explores Carla Accardi and Marta Pan’s innovative use of modern materials to redefine space and perception. The fibre art of Maria Teresa Chojnacka and Ewa Pachucka is also featured, symbolising resistance and liberation from state censorship or monitoring. Complementing the sculptural focus of the exhibition are select paintings and reliefs, such as Carmen Herrera’s East (1965) and Agnes Martin’s Morning (1965), enriching the understanding of this artistic period.

Together, the works included in Beyond Form map a constellation that speaks to the global, collective language of abstraction that transcends geographical and cultural boundaries through the universal medium of sculpture.

Beyond Form is guest curated by Dr Flavia Frigeri, art historian and 'Chanel Curator for the Collection' at the National Portrait Gallery, London. At Turner Contemporary the exhibition is realised with Sarah Martin, Head of Exhibitions.

Dr Flavia Frigeri said: “There have been other exhibitions bringing together art by women from the post-war era, but what makes Beyond Form unique is connecting artists from across the globe through radical abstraction using forms and materials most recognisable in other contexts. We see a collection of artists who, at a surface level, are working in disparate locations, but are connected by a universal desire to express their personal, cultural, and political perspectives in ways that subvert the canon of the time.”

A publication with a new essay by Dr Flavia Frigeri accompanies the exhibition, published by Eiderdown Books.

Clarrie Wallis, Director of Turner Contemporary said: “Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950 - 1970 stands as a crucial global exploration of post-war abstraction, showcasing its multifaceted nature and its transformative impact on the language of sculpture. By liberating themselves from traditional constraints and embracing new materials, women artists were revolutionising the way they conveyed ideas through sculpture and ushering in a new era of creative expression.”

Exhibiting artists: Carla Accardi; Novera Ahmed; Anthea Alley; Ruth Asawa; Mária Bartuszová; Lynda Benglis; Margaret Benyon; Anna-Eva Bergman; Sandra Blow; Lee Bontecou; Louise Bourgeois; Rosemarie Castoro; Jocelyn Chewett; Maria Teresa Chojnacka; Lygia Clark; Saloua Raouda Choucair; Dadamaino; Dorothy Dehner; Claire Falkenstein; Habuba Farah; Maria Freire; Elisabeth Frink; Sue Fuller; Barbara Hepworth; Carmen Herrera; Eva Hesse; Sheila Hicks; Ilona Keserü; Bice Lazzari; Felicia Leirner; Kim Lim; Agnes Martin; Mary Martin; Marisa Merz; Yuko Nasaka; Louise Nevelson; Ewa Pachucka; Marta Pan; Howardina Pindell; Pilloo Pochkhanawala; Bridget Riley; Meg Rutherford; Ana Sacerdote; Behjat Sadr; Nasreen Mohamedi; Mona Saudi; Hedde Sterne; Arpita Singh; Jean Spencer; Hedda Sterne; Lenore Tawney; Marilia Gianetti Torres; Paule Vézelay; Daniela Vinopalová; Hannah Wilke; Gillian Wise.

TURNER CONTEMPORARY

Rendezvous, Margate, Kent CT9 1HG

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Homage to Martin Luther King Jr. @ James Barron Art, Kent, CT

Direct Action / Homage to Martin Luther King Jr. 

James Barron Art, Kent, CT  

Through April 24, 2021 

James Barron Art Gallery 

Exhibition view 

© and Courtesy of James Barron Art 

In his eminent 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “You may ask: ‘Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches, and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?’ You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action… to foster such a tension that a community… is forced to confront the issue. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent register may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ …There is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”

James Barron Art presents an exhibition of works by Black artists, ranging from 1949 through the present, that encompass the spirit of Dr. King’s call to action. The exhibition featured works by Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Beauford Delaney, Awol Erizku, Vanessa German, Sam Gilliam, Lonnie Holley, Clementine Hunter, Norman Lewis, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Zanele Muholi, Faith Ringgold, Winfred Rembert, Bob Thompson, Mose Tolliver.

“Our current exhibition is the logical follow up to our show Fifty Years After: Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Mickalene Thomas, LaToya Ruby Frazier in the summer of 2016,” says James Barron. “Tragically, in the past four years, we have erased many of the gains made towards a more just world with civil rights. This show marks a new beginning. We hope to highlight the direct action in art that has been a consequence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s remarkable ‘Letter From a Birmingham City Jail.’ Our show not only pays tribute to the achievement of Black American artists, but is a call to action and an opening of the door for further equality in the arts.” 

This exhibition highlights works created contemporaneously with the Civil Rights movement, as well as contemporary works that embrace the spirit of alternative action. Faith Ringgold’s 2007 portfolio and accompanying book illustrate Dr. King’s letter with scenes of protests, segregation, and racial injustice alongside daily tableaux, bringing the inequalities King describes into sharp focus. Self-taught artists Clementine Hunter, Mose Tolliver, Lonnie Holley and Winfred Rembert used their artistic practices to record memories of Southern life prior to, and during, the Civil Rights Movement.

Abstract expressionists Norman Lewis, Beauford Delaney, and Charles Alston were founding members of Spiral, a New York collective of Black artists formed in 1963 to explore their artistic relationship to the Civil Rights movement and American politics and culture. The group’s members worked in a variety of styles, though often within the tradition of modernist abstraction, and often held varying viewpoints on the merging of art and politics, which contributed to a lasting dialogue that is still relevant today.

Vanessa German uses unconventional materials to create her sculptural compositions, which use historical references to communicate the contemporary Black experience in America. Similarly, photographers Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Awol Erizku, and Zanele Muholi take inspiration from art historical canon, particularly portraiture, to inform their compositions. Erizku riffs on Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring to create a work that is wholly unique. Identifying as a ‘visual activist,’ Zanele Muholi creates portraits of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people living in their native South Africa, which serve to promote King’s legacy across the globe.

A catalog is available.

Gallery is open by appointment only.

JAMES BARRON ART

17 Old Barn Road, Kent, CT 06757

jamesbarronart.com

Billy Childish @ Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, Kent - man in the mouth of a cave

Billy Childish: man in the mouth of a cave
Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, Kent
26 May - 25 August, 2019 

Carl Freedman Gallery opens in Margate, Kent on Saturday 25th May with a major solo show of new work by British painter Billy Childish.

After purchasing part of the old Thanet Press building in the centre of town, Carl Freedman’s new HQ spans 10,000 square foot of a concrete 1960s commercial building. The site includes three exhibition spaces, an artist apartment and an upper floor dedicated to Freedman’s print publishing business Counter Editions. ‘This is a fantastic opportunity for us to present larger-scale solo presentations by our artists as well as more expansive curated shows. Margate is going through an amazing transformation, led by a growing art community, and we are excited to be a part of the future of the town’s creative-led regeneration’ – Carl Freedman.

The inaugural exhibition man in the mouth of a cave by Billy Childish introduces new themes in the artist’s oeuvre of swimming and wild uninhibited nature. Free of irony or superficial novelty, these paintings espouse values of authenticity, spirituality, and beauty, conveying a sense of a vivid physical presence. Above all, they express Childish’s earnest engagement with life. Waterfalls, the sea, caves, trees, nudes and the artist himself are recurring motifs. In some works the mouths of caves suggest the religious motif of the empty tomb, in others a dark, Styx-like river.

Present throughout is a quality of quiet melancholy combined with a vibrating, somewhat hallucinatory energy, rendered through Billy Childish’s roiling brushwork. Childish’s canvases clearly bear the marks of the art-historical lineage of which Childish feels himself a part. Interlocking patterns and forms cluster, coalesce, and dissipate, working as vehicles for Childish’s Munch-like preoccupation with colour. Staccato brushstrokes are contained by more flowing, sinuous lines, recalling the visionary intensity of German Expressionism.

Embedded in a tradition stretching back into the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Billy Childish’s work is still – as ever – insistently and idiosyncratically his own. As Billy Childish states: ‘You could say that these paintings are ultrapostmodernist; they’ve absorbed everything, and then decided what’s of value. Each one is an exultation of being a painting.’ Unconcerned with any narrative of progress within his practice each painting – whether a depiction of his nude body or a birch tree – is, for Billy Childish, a form of self-portraiture. In his own words: ‘As I work fluidly from painting to painting, theme to theme, so the cycles develop organically and explain themselves without my prescription. In essence I am painting one painting that is everchanging as if of its own volition – the painting of myself.’

In association with Damaged Good Records, Carl Freedman Gallery presents Wild Billy Childish & CTMF live in concert at Margate’s Theatre Royal on Sunday 16th June 2019, from 7pm. Tickets are on sale now via the Theatre Royal box office and website (click here: http://theatreroyalmargate.com).

Billy Childish is a prolific painter, author, poet, publisher, and musician. Born in 1959 in Chatham, Kent. He has extensively exhibited and performed internationally. Exhibitions include: heaven’s journey, Neugerriemschneider, Berlin (2018); man with jackdaw, Villa Schöningen, Berlin (2017); mountain view house, Goss Michael Foundation, Dallas (2017); Billy Childish: incomprehensible but certainly, Opelvillen, Rüsselsheim, Germany (2016); Billy Childish in Print (A Survey), Rochester Art Gallery, Kent (2016); the house at grass valley, Carl Freedman Gallery, London (2016); flowers, nudes and birch trees, Lehmann Maupin, New York (2015); Billy Childish. Frozen estuary and Other Paintings of the Divine Ordinary, The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, Kent; Billy Childish: Unknowable but Certain, ICA, London (2010). The artist lives and works in Kent, England.

CARL FREEDMAN GALLERY
28 Union Crescent, Margate, Kent, CT9 1NS, England
carlfreedman.com

Rose Wylie @ Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent

Rose Wylie
Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent
12 January - 31 March 2016

Rose Wylie 

Pink Table Cloth (Close-up) (Film Notes), 2013. 

Oil on Canvas 207 x 330 cm. 

Image courtesy of the artist and UNION Gallery, London.

To open 2016 in Turner Contemporary’s ground floor Sunley Gallery, the world-class gallery is showing a group of paintings and works on paper by celebrated Kent-based artist Rose Wylie.

Wylie’s bold, large-scale figurative paintings draw on ancient and folk art, such as Mexican street art and contemporary Egyptian Hajj painting, as well as art history and film. Their deliberate awkwardness, closer to the unselfconscious art of children, includes a collage-like approach in which mistakes are simply covered up with patches of cut-up canvas or paper.

This display, the first time the Sunley gallery has been used for painting, includes seven large-scale paintings, which can be viewed at balcony and ground floor level, as well as eight works on paper.

The inspiration for Wylie’s paintings often comes from a particular sight or visual moment that strikes her with a “special quality” that she tries to capture through her own language of painting. The Manufacturers, for example, originated from a newspaper photograph of a public apology by toy company Mattel, whose particular symmetry and formality reminded Wylie of Spanish 16th century still-life painting.

Rose Wylie 

Theatre Painting (Black Spots), 2015. 

Oil on Canvas 183 x 322 cm. 

Image courtesy of the artist and UNION Gallery, London.

The display also includes four works from Film Notes, a series of paintings inspired by remembered images from contemporary films. An avid and discerning film fan, her recent paintings and drawings have paid homage to directors as diverse as François Ozon, Werner Herzog, Claudia Llosa and Quentin Tarantino. Drawn to theatricality and fascinated by costume, Wylie responds to the dramatic and surreal image of a secret meeting in the desert from the film Syriana in Pink Tablecloth (Close Up) and Pink Tablecloth (Long Shot). In Bagdad Café (Film Notes) Wylie uses text to focus attention on the ‘white frock’ which is her equivalent to actor Marianne Sägebrecht’s iconic brown pleated suit and hat in the film.

ARTIST ROSE WYLIE

Rose Wylie was born in Kent, where she still lives and works. She studied at Folkestone and Dover School of Art (1952-6) and the Royal College of Art, London (1979-81) and now, in her early eighties, is enjoying renewed interest in her work in the UK and internationally with recent exhibitions at the Jerwood, Hastings (2012) and Tate Britain (BP Spotlight, 2013), as well as winning the prestigious John Moores painting prize in 2014. In 2010, Wylie was described by Germaine Greer as ‘Britain’s hottest new artist’.

TURNER CONTEMPORARY 
Rendezvous, Margate, CT9 1HG
www.turnercontemporary.org

Sol LeWitt at Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent, UK

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1136 
Turner Contemporary, Margate, Kent 
3 December 2013 - 8 June 2014

Turner Contemporary in UK showcases work by the prolific and influential American artist SOL LEWITT (1928-2007), presenting his spectacular Wall Drawing #1136 in the gallery’s Clore Learning Studio.

The work is one of a number of vibrant drawings Sol LeWitt made in the last years of his life, following his earlier works in pencil and ink. Curved and vertical bands of brightly coloured acrylic paint (every primary and secondary colour plus grey) are applied by hand directly onto the walls to create a dazzling environment that surrounds the viewer.

Sol LeWitt is particularly associated with the development of Conceptual art in the 1960s. Like other conceptual art works by Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #1136 is concerned with ideas of geometry, repetition and mathematical precision and exists as a set of instructions written by the artist and accompanied by an illustrated diagram. Designed to be physically executed by others (only the very first Wall Drawing was produced by LeWitt himself) the works can be endlessly repeated in different locations at different times, generally only existing for the period of the exhibition.

Wall Drawing #1136 is on loan from ARTIST ROOMS, an inspirational collection of modern and contemporary art acquired for the nation by Tate and The National Galleries of Scotland through the generosity of Anthony d'Offay with additional support from funders, including the Art Fund. The ARTIST ROOMS tour programme, now in its sixth year, is showing at 18 museums and galleries across the UK in 2014. The tour is made possible thanks to the support of Arts Council England and the Art Fund.

To find out more information about ARTIST ROOMS On Tour visit artfund.org/artistrooms. To see the full ARTIST ROOMS collection visit tate.org.uk/artistrooms and nationalgalleries.org/artistrooms.

TURNER CONTEMPORARY 

Rendezvous, Margate, Kent, CT9 1HG, UK

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Sculptor Carl Andre exhibits at Turner Contemporary, 2013

Carl Andre: Mass & Matter
Turner Contemporary, Kent, UK 
1 February - 6 May 2013

CARL ANDRE

Carl Andre building Cedar Piece, 1964 Document #37. 

Photo by Martin Ries / Gannett Ries Digital Designs

Courtesy of Turner Contemporary

Carl Andre: Mass & Matter brings together a group of sculptures and poems by one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. Along with his contemporaries Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Robert Morris and Sol LeWitt, Carl André (American, b. 1935) is a leading artist associated with the emergence of Minimalism in the United States in the mid-1960s. 

Carl Andre is famous for his sculptures made of ordinary industrial materials which are arranged directly on the floor in simple linear arrangements or grids. By reducing sculpture to its most basic elements and re-orientating it from the vertical to the horizontal plane, Carl Andre helped to redefine the possibilities of sculpture for a whole generation of artists. 

CARL ANDRE

Carl Andre, Timber Piece, 1970

Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Courtesy of Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln, rba_c024180

This exhibition, Carl Andre’s first in a UK public gallery for over ten years, brings together eight sculptures made between 1967 and 1983, alongside a collection of his typed poems from the same period. At the heart of the exhibition, and of Carl Andre’s practice, is a concern with materials, which for Andre has always meant the common materials of everyday production – wood, bricks and metals such as aluminium, copper, steel, magnesium and lead. Carl Andre selects standard, commercially available units of these materials for his sculptural arrangements without altering them. He has said, ‘my ambition as an artist is to be the ‘Turner of matter’. As Turner severed colour from depiction, so I attempt to sever matterfrom depiction.’

 

CARL ANDRE

Carl Andre, Weathering Piece, 1970 

Courtesy of stichting kröller-müller museum

Like other artists associated with Minimalism, Carl Andre is concerned with the character of different materials. The artist describes wood as ‘the mother of matter’. Bricks are as valid materials for making art for Carl Andre as oil paint or plaster. The sculptor considers bricklayers to be ‘people of fine craft’.

Carl Andre’s poetry is based on a similar process of reduction. Individual words and phrases, often taken from pre-existing sources, are arranged on the page according to certain criteria, isolated and freed from all grammar. His poems are as concerned with the visual appearance of words on a page as with the content of the language itself. Although some of his earliest poems were handwritten, most of Andre’s text works from the late 1960s were produced on a manual typewriter, which automatically sets letters down in grid-like rows and columns analogous

A number of works in the exhibition date from the 1960s - a key period of Carl Andre’s career -such as 4 x 25 Altstadt Rectangle (1967). Carl Andre has worked with bricks throughout his career and this exhibition includes the more recent 60 x 1 Range Work (1983), a single line of equilateral bricks placed together to form a triangular prism. 

TURNER CONTEMPORARY

Rendezvous, Margate, Kent CT9 1HG, UK

www.turnercontemporary.org

A programme of events will run alongside the exhibition, engaging adults and children with the artworks, materials and the artist.

Carl Andre: Mass & Matter will tour to mima, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art from 14 June until 19 September 2013. 

In the United States, Dia Art Foundation in New York will organize the first North American retrospective of the work of Carl Andre with the exhibition Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place, 1958-2010, May - December 2014.