William Kentridge @ Whithechapel Gallery, London - Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek - Museum der Moderne Kunst Salzburg

William Kentridge: Thick Time
Whithechapel Gallery, London
21 September 2016 - 15 January 2017
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
16 February – 18 June 2017
Museum der Moderne Kunst Salzburg
22 July – 5 November 2017
The Whitworth, University of Manchester, 2018

Whitechapel Gallery presents a major exhibition of work by William Kentridge from 21 September 2016 to 15 January 2017. The exhibition titled Thick Time is curated by Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Gallery Director and will be the artist’s first major public solo presentation in the UK in over 15 years.

William Kentridge (b.1955, Johannesburg) is one of South Africa’s pre-eminent artists, globally acclaimed for his drawings, films, lecture performances and opera and theatre productions. His work draws on varied sources, including philosophy, literature and early cinema to create intricate art works and spellbinding environments in which he explores theories of time and relativity, the history of colonialism and the aspirations and failures of revolutionary politics.

William Kentridge: Thick Time will feature six works created between 2003 and 2016 – including two of the artist’s immersive audio-visual installations, The Refusal of Time (2012) and O Sentimental Machine (2003), which have never previously been exhibited in the UK. The exhibition will also feature his flip-book film, Second-hand Reading (2013), a series of mural-scale tapestries based on his opera production of Shostakovich’s The Nose and a set model which reveals his working process on the opera production Lulu (2016), which he will direct at English National Opera this November.

The Refusal of Time (2012) is an all-enveloping, multi-sensory installation that explores the transformation of time into material objects, sound, images and mechanics. Inspired by a series of conversations between Kentridge and American scientist Peter Galison around theories of time, the work is an extraordinary synthesis of moving images, sound and performance. A breathing sculpture or ‘elephant’ at its heart is based on 19th century attempts to measure and control time during the industrial revolution and high point of European colonial expansion. First shown at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany, The Refusal of Time is a collaboration between the artist with composer Philip Miller, projection designer and editor Catherine Meyburgh, and Peter Galison, a scientist from the United States.

The exhibition concludes with O Sentimental Machine (2015), originally commissioned for SALTWATER, 14th Istanbul Biennial, where it was installed in one of Istanbul’s oldest hotels, the Hotel Splendid Palas. In a critique of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s notion that people are ‘sentimental but programmable machines’, subtitled videos of speeches by Trotsky and also his time in exile in Istanbul are projected on to glass doors on either side of the installation, offering the viewer the opportunity to observe what is going on behind the closed doors.

William Kentridge: Thick Time is co-curated by Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Gallery Director and Sabine Breitwieser, Director, Museum der Moderne Salzburg and is organised with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (16 February – 18 June 2017), Museum der Moderne Kunst Salzburg (22 July – 5 November 2017) and the Whitworth, University of Manchester in 2018.

Publication : The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated publication which will include new critical writings on each of the works in the exhibition by curators and thinkers including Homi K. Bhabha, Joseph Leo Koerner and William Kentridge himself, alongside the artist’s chronology and bibliography. £24.99.

Whitechapel Gallery
www.whitechapelgallery.org

Walter Sickert, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester - drawing is the thing

Walter Sickert: drawing is the thing
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
1 October - 5 December 2004

‘Any fool can paint, but drawing is the thing and drawing is the test.’

Walter Sickert (1860-1942) is seen as a major figure within the history of British painting and yet by his own affirmation drawing lay at the core of his creative process. Walter Sickert drew constantly in order to capture new subjects for his paintings – theatrical interiors, the stage, and highly-charged domestic dramas such as The Camden Town Murder. Walter Sickert: ‘drawing is the thing’ examines every form of drawing Walter Sickert made, together with a number of related paintings and prints. Together these works offer an insight into Walter Sickert’s techniques, themes and, most importantly, his reasons for drawing.

Walter Sickert’s earliest, small drawings were made in the semi-darkness of the theatre, and he kept a selection of these in his possession until his death, emphasising their importance to him. He mounted them in an idiosyncratic way, several to a mount. Many are inscribed with details of lighting, colour and costume. They are not only one of the best documents of London’s theatrical interiors and performances of the late 19th century, but also evidence if his daily, or rather nightly, practice of drawing from real-life situations. Their style in the main is one of the quick, evocative sketch, the line which above all must be rapid. Walter Sickert also made more considered drawings of the theatre, some of which were very finished and which were used as preparation for prints and paintings. These he would often square up in an elaborate way, using red ink and numbering the squares to facilitate their transfer.

Walter Sickert’s depictions of couples in an interior are rightly recognised as his major achievement, and this body of work forms the central part of the exhibition. Just as many of Walter Sickert’s theatrical interiors featured the dynamic tension between audience and performer so his domestic dramas are full of psychological tension with couples engaged in the whole gamut of enigmatic confrontation. Drawings like A Weak Defence (Arts Council of England), The Prevaricator(The British Council) and The Conversation (Royal College of Art) have given rise to recent speculation on the relevance of the Jack The Ripper crimes to Walter Sickert and his work. A central feature of the exhibition is a section assembling all the known drawings for his famous composition Ennui, together with the paintings and prints they inspired.

The unusual nature of Walter Sickert’s subject-matter extends to his choice of unconventional models, both architectural and human. He rejected professional models and preferred unglamorous, working-class parts of town. The exhibition also explores the relationship between Walter Sickert and one of his models, Cicely Hey, or ‘Kikely’ as he chose to call her. The sixty-two year old Sickert and Cicely, a young art student, met in 1923 and they became firm friends. He made a series of works featuring her ‘dear little face’, which she eventually bequeathed to The Whitworth Art Gallery. They show the artist using drawing to record a relationship – in contrast to his invention of relationships in his domestic fictions.

Walter Sickert taught drawing and painting, and examples of his drawings were obviously used for teaching purposes. His system of developing a painting is exemplified by unfinished works including My Awful Dad (Private Collection). Works by pupils Sylvia Gosse and Harry Rutherford, show the influence of Walter Sickert and exemplify the methods he advocated as a teacher when, for example he conducted an evening class in Manchester in the late 1920s.

Walter Sickert stopped drawing at about the age of seventy, around 1930, and employed a new range of sources, including engravings, newspaper cuttings or photographs. On occasions, Walter Sickert would square up a photograph for transfer, exactly as he had done drawings earlier in this life.

This loan exhibition comprises about 150 works, drawn from the UK’s most prominent collections, both public and private. This most extensive exhibition of Walte Sickert’s drawings ever be exhibited is supported by a fully illustrated catalogue features essays by prominent scholars in the field. Following the showing at The Whitworth Art Gallery, it will travel to Southampton City Art Gallery and then to The Ulster Museum, Belfast.

The exhibition is supported by The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

THE WHITWORTH ART GALLERY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER
www.whitworth.man.ac.uk

Ben Nicholson, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester - chasing out something alive

Ben Nicholson: chasing out something alive
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
4 October - 15 December 2002

Ben Nicholson is recognised as one of the most important British artists of the twentieth century. By bringing together his late drawings and painted reliefs, this exhibition shows the range of Ben Nicholson’s imagination and artistic achievement.

The drawings and painted reliefs made between 1950 and 1975 represent the culmination of Ben Nicholson’s career. The artist felt that it was through these works, and the seminal white reliefs of the 1930s, that he wished his art to be judged. In his work, Ben Nicholson aimed to represent the inner life of things rather than their outward and material appearance. ‘A painting or a carving’, he said, ‘is quite simply the expression of an idea’. This interest in the ‘spirit in painting’ led Nicholson towards abstraction, his painted reliefs expressing an experience of time and place.

While the reliefs show Ben Nicholson at his most abstract and austere, his drawings are much more approachable. His studies of landscape, architecture and still life have a spontaneity, wit and virtuosity that make them his most personal expressions. Many chronicle his travels through Britain, Italy and Greece. Like the reliefs, the drawings seek to capture the essence of a place as well as the physical reality. The artist creates ‘something alive’ from pencil and paper, paint and board.

Drawings and reliefs are the two poles between which Ben Nicholson’s imagination ranged, from the particular to the universal – the two dimensional drawings representing a single aspect of reality, the three dimensional reliefs exploring a wider whole.

Ben Nicholson: ‘chasing out something alive’ was originated by Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge and has been supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.

THE WHITWORTH ART GALLERY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER
www.whitworth.man.ac.uk

Chris Ofili, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester

Chris Ofili
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
28 November - 24 January 1999

An exhibition of the work of the Turner Prize-nominee Chris Ofili comes to the Whitworth Art Gallery. The show will open just days before the Turner Prize announcement on 1 December with Ofili returning to his home city, having shown his paintings in major exhibitions in Europe and the USA.

Chris Ofili's extraordinary paintings are inspired by a wide range of influences in art and popular culture, including jazz and hip hop, comic book heroes, glamour magazine models, 1970's afro hairdos and Blaxploitation movies. He has also studied the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Philip Guston, George Condo, and William Blake, as well as an inspiring trip to Africa in the early 1990's. His own work featured most strongly in the recent Sensation exhibition of highlights from the Saatchi collection shown at the Royal Academy last year.

Despite the large-scale nature of the work, it is in the details that the artist finds real beauty, often in the most unexpected of materials. His dazzlingly innovative works often incorporate coloured resin, glitter, magazine cut-outs, phosphorescent paint, and, most famously, elephant dung with layer upon layer of surface and decoration.

The exhibition shows a selection of his work from the last five years and has been organised by Southampton City Art Gallery and the Serpentine Gallery, London. The accompanying illustrated catalogue is the first publication dedicated to Chris Ofili's work and will be available at the exhibition.

THE WHITWORTH ART GALLERY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER
www.whitworth.man.ac.uk

Anne Desmet, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester - Towers and Transformations. A Retrospective Exhibition

Anne Desmet: Towers and Transformations
A Retrospective Exhibition
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
1 October - 28 November 1999

Anne Desmet is one of the most original talents in contemporary printmaking. Her wood engravings and collages show a unique imagination as well as an abundance of technical skill.

Central to her work is a vision of architecture, often depicted in minute detail. Anne Desmet attributes this partially to prolonged stays in hospital as a child when the artist passed the time making detailed pencil drawings of her surroundings. A year spent in Italy inspired the many prints featuring Roman and Italian buildings. The multi-layered aspect of Italian cities is shown with ancient ruins co-existing with the modern. Anne Desmet explores the themes of change, decay, and regeneration, with some of her subjects undergoing amazing transformations in a series of related images, like looking at a flickbook or a series of film stills.

Anne Desmet was born in Liverpool in 1964, and was a student at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford from 1983-86. Subsequently she studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London and held a scholarship at the British School in Rome.

The exhibition is touring the UK and was organised by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and supported by the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and Southern Arts. An illustrated catalogue is available at Zwemmers, the Gallery Shop.

THE WHITWORTH ART GALLERY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER
www.whitworth.man.ac.uk

Katharine Dowson, The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester - Myriad

Katharine Dowson: Myriad
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
24 July - 8 November 1998

A new exhibition in the Whitworth's Mezzanine Court will provoke visitors to look at the beauty of everyday details and the hidden landscapes within nature and the human body. Katharine Dowson will be showing 'Myriad', a wave curtain of optical lenses, alongside other recent works.

'Myriad' is a curtain made up of lenses of differing focal lengths so that the visitor sees a different view through each lens. The view intensifies details and illuminates the act of seeing as you become aware that what you see is not necessarily the truth. The curtain will bisect the Mezzanine Court in a gentle wave running parallel to the red-brick Victorian facade, providing a unique sensory experience.

Katharine Dowson is also interested in life forces, and the ambiguous response we have to images of our body's biology. Her 'Optic Box' series of fragile organic shapes are both sensual and repulsive at the same time. The boxes hang on the wall and use light from within to illuminate the glass, wax and resin images on display. 'Link', a recent work, involves photographs of belly buttons magnified to such a large size as to be unrecognisable and distorted.

The artist's work seduces the viewer with its surface beauty, but a sense of discomfort remains as we are unsure what lies below.

Katharine Dowson was last at the Gallery as part of Bittersweet last year and previously in Whitworth Young Contemporaries in 1991. She has had solo shows in London and Norwich and her work is included in the Saatchi Collection.

THE WHITWORTH ART GALLERY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER
www.whitworth.man.ac.uk

LS Lowry at Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester - Works on paper

LS Lowry Works on Paper
The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester
13 June - 30 August 1998

LS Lowry and Manchester are forever bound together as people recollect his paintings of industrial scenes and characteristic figures. In this first exhibition of the artist's work at the Whitworth for over 20 years, another side of his work is shown with pencil drawings and a rare selection of watercolours showing a wider range of subjects than is usually revealed.

The drawings are from both public and private collections and stand as complete works in their own right, rather than as preparatory sketches. They cover the whole of LS Lowry's career from the rare early portraits and life drawings, through the industrial scenes, to the unexpected rural landscapes and seascapes.

Born in Stretford, Manchester, in 1887, LS Lowry drifted into an office job whilst studying art at night school for 10 years. On moving to Pendlebury in his 20s, he spent much of his time exploring the more industrialised area, and it was during this period that he developed what has become his most recognisable subject.

LS Lowry's great skill as an observer is obvious in even his most early works. He wrestled with feelings of isolation and depression for much of his life, and his habit of withdrawing from those around him to take a step back is present in his depictions of crowds of anonymous people.

He was a celebrated artist during his lifetime and became a Royal Academician in 1962 at the age of 74. LS Lowry left Salford to retire to the leafy suburbs of Cheshire where he painted occasional watercolours, examples of which are included in the exhibition.

'LS Lowry - Works on Paper' is organised in association with the Crane Kalman Gallery, London.

THE WHITWORTH ART GALLERY
The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER
www.whitworth.man.ac.uk