» LIBERATE TATE COMMUNIQUE No1
Here is the full text that I quoted the other day, regarding trying to get the Tate Britain to cut ties with BP, a long time sponsor, because of recent events.
hyde or die
“…every time we step inside the museum Tate makes us complicit with acts that are harming people and creating environmental destruction and climate change, acts that will one day seem as archaic as the slave trade.”
— A group calling themselves “Liberate Tate” regarding Tate’s keeping on BP as a sponsor.
To celebrate Tate Modern’s 10th anniversary, the gallery will host No Soul For Sale – A Festival of Independents. For this free arts festival, Tate Modern is inviting 70 of the world’s most innovative independent art spaces to take over the Turbine Hall. The festival will fill the iconic space with an eclectic mix of cutting-edge arts events, performances, music and film on 14-16 May 2010.
The gallery will stay open until midnight on Friday 14 and Saturday 15 May for free late night performances by artists and musicians including Cosey Fanni Tutti, DJ Spooky, Jeffrey Lewis, Kaffe Matthews, Long Meg, patten, Martin Creed and his Band, Skin Jobs, Temperatures, and Thurston Moore and Eva Prinz.
No Soul For Sale is a festival that brings together the most exciting non-profit centres, alternative institutions, artists’ collectives and underground enterprises from around the world. The participants are encouraged to show whatever they choose, be it art, performance, video, publications, or simply themselves. Neither a fair nor an exhibition, No Soul For Sale is a convention of individuals and groups who devote their energies to art they believe in, beyond the limits of the market and other logistical constraints – it is a celebration of the independent forces that animate contemporary art. The festival is an exercise in coexistence: organisations exhibit alongside one another without partitions or walls, creating a pop-up art village.
Why don’t I live in London?
» Dexter Dalwood is bookie's favourite for Turner Prize
Tate has announced the finalists for its prestigious and often contentious Turner Prize. The four UK artists shortlisted for the £25,000 include Glaswegian Susan Philipsz, best known for singing over a supermarket PA system; London-based Angela de la Cruz, who displays her torn and folded paintings in the corners and doorways of galleries; Bristol-born painter Dexter Dalwood, who depicts famous death scenes; and the artist team the Otolith Group, aka Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, whose work includes a film investigating Mumbai’s sweatshops. They all sound like strong contenders, but if you’re a betting man (or woman) bookmaker William Hill has already come out with odds in favour of one artist, Dexter Dalwood, who has been installed as their 2/1 “obvious favourite” to win “as his work is well know and easy on the eye,” according to Hill’s spokesman Rupert Adams.
I get the Dalwood favoritism, but I am going to go with Angela De La Cruz this year. Hey, I was right last year.
Tomás Saraceno Biospheres, 2009
If you are in London later this month, I think this is way worth checking out:
Tate and the Royal Society collaborate to bring together scientists and artists to imagine the social and psychological impacts of climate change.
The event begins on Friday 19 March at 18.30 with a screening of drama-documentary The Age of Stupid (2009), which is followed by a discussion.
The symposium programme starts at 10.30 on Saturday 20 March and includes presentations, panel discussions and a public forum following a series of break up sessions where the audience will have the opportunity to formulate propositions and questions to the speakers with the help of a group of facilitators.
The first discussion is on March 19th at 6:30 pm and then again on the 20th at 10:30am. Buy tickets here, I have a feeling it will sell out quickly.
Congratulations to Tacita Dean for creating the most underwhelming, yet appropriate, Christmas tree for the Tate.
