European Commission

Antigravitation

Vidas Biveinis and Ugnius Gelguda

17 - 27 November 2009

This exhibition presents works by two young (both born in 1977), award winning Lithuanian photographers, Vidas Biveinis and Ugnius Gelguda. Their backgrounds signify the divide between the city and the country, the two constant polarities of the Lithuanian cultural landscape. Both photographers offer a take on these polarities from the point of view of the younger generation.

Vidas Biveinis comes from a part of Lithuania covered with forests and lakes, and it seems no coincidence that water is the most important element in his photographs. In his series Fears (2006), water is the substance of emotions and unconscious drives because its texture blurs outlines, distorts bodies and slows time. Yet the other two series, 6^th Day (2005) and 7^th Day (2006), show the countryside as the space of freedom and a simple joy of being, a complete abandonment of culture for the sake of physical perceptions.

Meanwhile, Ugnius Gelguda is based in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. With his series Gravitation (2007), he goes ‘underground’, to the chaos of hot night clubs or a kind of ‘unconscious’ of the city. Gelguda’s camera has focused on faces – flashed out of darkness, stopped and frozen into sculptures of emotion. Emotions here are extremely intensive, but they have no purpose, no obvious reason, thus escaping the reality of cause and effect and leading to an uncertain territory.

Although representing opposing cultural identities, both photographers focus on detachment, the sense of freedom available in any background or environment. In their hands, photography helps to imagine the physical and the mental flight as two ways of defying gravitation.

Exhibition organised together with the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania to the UK, London and the Lithuanian Photographers’ Union, Vilnius

PAST EXHIBITIONS

Home from Home

20 - 30 October 2009

Voice is organizing this exhibition to mark Care Leavers’ Week 2009; it will explore young people’s experiences of care and their aspirations for the future. Children and young people looked after by the state include children in foster homes, children’s homes and those who are locked up. Some have fled their home countries due to political violence. This exhibition is an opportunity for these young people to exhibit their talents in art and poetry, celebrate their diverse experiences and backgrounds and share their experiences and aspirations with a wider audience. 

About Voice

Voice is a national charity committed to empowering children and young people in public care by providing information, advice and advocacy and campaigning for changes in law, policy and practice to improve their lives. We exist to make sure the wishes and feelings of children and young people in public care are heard; that they are the focal point of any decision affecting their lives.

In almost every area of their lives young people growing up in care in England and Wales face obstacles and disadvantages that their more fortunate peers will never face. 65% are taken into care as a result of abuse or neglect, yet many are then let down by the very system charged with protecting and supporting them. The outcomes for young people in care and leaving care can be disheartening and yet, with the right support, can make it. For example, only 6% will go to university, compared with 43% of all young people. 

Care leavers are far less likely to become financially independent, healthy and socially connected with the rest of their community. They must learn to live independently from around 17 years of age, where the average young person leaves home at around 24. They are 60 times more likely to become homeless and are far more likely to be excluded from school or end up in prison. Yet all have the potential to succeed if we believe in them and give them the encouragement and support that all children need.

www.voiceyp.org

Aspects of Ireland

Paintings by Moira McCaffery, Roderick Moynihan and Harry Durdin Robertson

22 September - 2 October 2009

‘Aspects of Ireland’ features the work of three artists and reflects the different facets of a shared perspective of living and working in a country that is at once totally modern and yet steeped in tradition.

Moira McCaffery

Born in Genoa, Moira has lived in Ireland since the mid-seventies. Based now in Co. Wexford, she studied art in Madrid doing her foundation year, followed by one years' drawing course in Munich. After that she attended the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris and the Sir John Cass College of Art in Whitechapel in London where she also painted at the Kathleen Browne Studios in Fulham. It was while in London that she was introduced to the dance world and was able to sketch and paint classical ballet dancers Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Spanish flamenco ballet dancer Antonio Gades. One of her sketches (at Nureyev's request) was included in John Percival's book on "Nureyev, Aspects of a Dancer.

Moira has exhibited widely in Ireland in both mixed and solo shows and has recently painted with her son Harry Durdin Robertson at the Rebecca Harp studio in Florence.

Roderick Moynihan

Roderick was born in Dublin in 1966. He began painting as a result of research for a Master's Degree in Archaeology, on the Horse in Early Christian Ireland. He studied with renowned artists Kenneth Webb and Clare Cryan in the late '80s and early '90s. He has exhibited in a wide variety of venues and galleries throughout Ireland.

He is best known for his work based on the prehistoric cave paintings of Europe and the early Christian carved stone crosses of Ireland. “With a background in Archaeology, I am conscious of the vast length of tradition of art, from modern day, back, not just to the Renaissance, but further, to the Early Christian carvings, the prehistoric cave paintings and beyond to the earliest painted pebbles and incised bone and stone artifacts of the Palaeolithic. It is from these very early periods that my chief source of inspiration comes.”

Roderick's work is primarily texture based, combining oil and acrylic, light and colour, to produce paintings that are both weathered and new, always emotive in expression.

Harry Durdin Robertson

Harry was born in Co. Wexford, Ireland where he continues to live for a part of the year mainly working on portrait commissions. He spends the rest of his time working in Florence, Italy on other works. He studied in the realist tradition under the instruction of Rebecca Harp from 2005 - 2008 where students generally study portraiture supplemented by still-life and figure studies. Harry writes: "My aim in painting is not just to try my best to represent my subject as accurately as I can, whether it be a portrait, landscape or still-life, but to create a sense of place and an atmosphere so that when people view my work they can enter in to that atmosphere in the same way people may be absorbed in to the world of a film."

"In a landscape I always try to convey how the location was and felt. I especially like painting forgotten and abandoned things and places and imagining how they were to be when they were in use, and I want the viewer to see these things too. In portrait and figure work I always try to know the person I'm painting and to know what's going on in their lives and what they’re thinking about whilst they're posing - that way I like the paintings more because you can feel like you've captured the personality of the person and not just a pose."

Organised together with the Embassy of Ireland to Great Britain

The Baltic Way

Video installation
Curated and presented by: Giedra Grakauskienė, Ingutė Sorakaitė, Liudas Grakauskas, Andrius Kasparavičius, Mantas Sauja

26 August - 4 September 2009

On August 23, 1989, far behind the Iron Curtain, and still two months prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, more than one million Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians joined hands to create a 600 km long human chain from the foot of Toompea in Tallinn to the foot of the Gediminas Tower in Vilnius, crossing Riga and the Daugava river on the way, showing a formerly unseen solidarity and drive for freedom that united the three countries. They named it Baltic Way.  

It was the Baltic way to remind the world about the 50^th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet-Nazi agreement instigated by Stalin and Hitler that sealed the fate of Europe, and affected the entire world. This pact, and the secret clauses it contained, divided Europe in two spheres of influence: USSR and Germany, which led to the World War II. As a result, the three Baltic States - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - were erased from the maps.

The Baltic Way as an impressive act of non-violent protest and solidarity whilst calling for sovereignty is a living example of the culture of peace, opening up access to information and leading to the acknowledgement of the secret treaty and its tragic consequences for the whole world. Public mobilization to break free peacefully from Soviet occupation was a principal desire of the Baltic people and was successfully implemented with firmness and patience in the course of the next few years. Perceptions of this historical time and the extraordinary events that took place do not change in the context of ideological modifications, failed utopian ideals and unavoidable social processes.  

The video installation includes footage from various sources (official and private, some of them shown for the first time) documenting the Baltic Way from Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian perspectives. The material is edited in three sequences, which document not only different views of this impressive human chain, but also close-ups of the people, rituals, life-style, and firm political determination. This is an exceptional opportunity to see and explore the momentous time of challenges and opportunities that the Baltic countries lived through 20 years ago. 

At the end of July 2009 the Baltic Way was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

Surfacing

Questions of identity by Swedish photographers from the Royal College of Art

8 - 31 July 2009

The photographs and video works by a group of young Swedish artists,all graduates of the Photography Department at the Royal College of Art, share a common preoccupation with questions of who we are, and who we are perceived to be in the eyes of others. Portraiture in its broadest sense is the working methodology of choice, whether investigating gendered identity, national identity, work identity or the unconscious. In Homeland, a photographic series by Nina Mangalanayagam, Swedish national identity is investigated through the artist’s collaborative self-portraits with her father, who immigrated to Sweden from SriLanka. Åsa Johanneson also sees her photographic work The Boy as a continual self-portrait, where aspects of her own identity and that ofthe depicted overlaps, and the portrait becomes a space formed by perception, both dismantling and creating identity. In the video installation På Kontoret (At the office), Cecilia Järdemar examines the everyday, raising questions about how our surroundings impact on our actions and behavior. The photographs and installations by Karin Gunnarsson deal with the flow between contrasting states of experience and representation, such as absence-presence, construction-rupture and inside-outside.

Surfacing is part of the cultural programme of the 2009 Swedish EU Presidency

The mind reads what the eye can't see

Alessandro Algardi

9 - 19 June 2009

The art work of Alessandro Algardi is alive. It is easy to write about, as in his calligraphic works on canvas the elegance of his unreadable words is dominated by the hidden expression of his ideas. In his petrified writing you can find the echo and sediment coming from centuries of written cultures.

The language of these works of art conveys an universal message open to everybody. All can read Algardi’s texts with their own idiom and meaning whilst staring at his subtly crafted things of beauty.

A canvas by Algardi writes about writing through its congealed snowfield of ideas. His works of art never could have been conceived before the day he decided to make an allegory of the digital information which is the hallmark of our computer age.

Extracts from Algardi’s illegible manuscript (2005) by Ubeir Peeter

Organised together with the Italian Cultural Institute, London

Propositions

New and recent works by Susan Butler

13 - 22 May 2009

Susan Butler’s work explores moments of subjective fantasy within the public space of the gallery or museum. It is often focused on individual paintings or sculptures, and at times on forms of display. The pieces in Propositions use sculptural, pictorial and textual elements to draw out meanings latent in familiar forms or images.

For the 12 Star Gallery, the artist has configured a new version of Aurum, originally devised for Harewood House, Yorkshire. Using the form of the closed frame, this work insinuates a feminine signature into the traditional means of display of old master paintings. Here it responds to the architectural detail in the gallery at Storey’s Gate.

Other works propose a re-reading of Fragonard’s The Swing, turning upon the detail of the slipper flying into the treetops above the would-be lovers. In airy suspension, the slipper also suspends the assumed binary narrative of the picture in favour of something more ambiguous. The series includes a new text-based piece alongside objects made for the exhibition Le Spectre des jardins, at the Chateau de Coubertin near Paris in 2006.

Susan Butler has recently exhibited in France and Canada as well as the UK. A year long artist’s intervention at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, culminated in the artists’ book Elsewhere, published in 2006. She has published and lectured widely on photography in Britain and abroad, and is currently a Visiting Tutor in Photography at the Royal College of Art.

Watch This Space

Photographs by Ludovic des Cognets

14 - 24 April 2009

Watch This Space, the National’s free outdoor summer festival is an artistic smorgasbord featuring the best of European street theatre, bands from across the globe, breathtaking circus, new work, installations, dance, cabaret, club nights and magnificent spectacle.

Ludovic des Cognets’s photographs of Watch This Space illustrate the breadth of work presented during the season as well as the inclusive atmosphere of the festival which has been instrumental in introducing new audiences to the National. Watch This Space is committed to programming and commissioning the best in British and mainland European street arts.

Since 2007, Watch This Space has been supported by the European Commission Representation in the UK, a partnership which has enabled an amplification of the creative programme.

The Photographer Ludovic des Cognets is a freelance photographer based in London. Born in France (Angers), he moved to UK in 2003 and graduated from DeMonfort University in 2005 (BA Graphic Design & Illustration). His main interests are performing arts and portraits photography. Over the last couple of years, he has collaborated with various emerging dancers and choreographers, including Teet Kask, Jasmiina Sipilä and Sonja Jokiniemi.

For more information, please visit: www.ldescognets.com

Exhibition organised together with the National Theatre

Czech Republic (Re)Visited

Images of the Czech landscape and Prague by Stanislav Pokorny and Dagmar Pavlikova

6 January – 23 January 2009

Czech Republic (Re)Visited presents views of the Czech landscape in its rich variety and natural beauty as well as the landmark sights of one of Europe's most popular capital cities, Prague. The exhibition celebrates the launch of the Czech Presidency of the EU Council (1-6/2009). The two photographers, Stanislav Pokorny and Dagmar Pavlikova, were selected by the APF, the Association of Professional Photographers, which represent over 200 professional Czech photographers.

Organised together with the Czech Centre in London

and in collaboration with Asociace profesionalnich fotografu Ceske republiky (www.asociacefotografu.com).

Proverbs and other things

Works by Leonard Sash

31 March - 9 April 2009

Leonard Sash is a distinguished doctor and was official physiotherapist to Arsenal FC for over thirty years.

Sash began painting in 1960, when he first came to London from his native South Africa as a medical student and enrolled in night classes at Central School of Art. He developed a unique style, working with cut-outs and painting, creating vivid and colourful collages. They evolved through his frustration with traditional painting. Once working in the studio of his ex-patient Ivor Abrahams RA, Sash was expressing his disappointment with one of his paintings when Abrahams asked: "Aren't the any bits you like about it?" Sash picked out elements, and Abrahams suggested he cut them out.

Thus his work has developed and matured: the graphic figures and animals are represented in a subtle visual 'relief', frozen forever like a snap shot from a dream. There is an inherent theatricality to Sash's work, a sense of heightened comedy and drama created in part by the staging of the various parts to form the whole.

Leonard Sash is obviously a man of many talents, being a physician and an accomplished artist. His work overflows with joy and vitality...ready to jump out of the picture plane and run around in a riot of colour.

Ben Austin

Peter Keizer

Paintings and sculptures

17 - 27 March 2009

‘‘Pure colour…you have to sacrifice everything for it. The Artist may transform as long as his transformations are expressive and beautiful”. - Paul Gauguin

Peter Keizer (1961, Amsterdam) was trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, the National Academy for Visual Arts in Amsterdam and the Royal College of Art in London. Since the mid 1980’s he has exhibited in galleries in The Netherlands, Germany, Japan and elsewhere and at Art Fairs throughout Europe. Curiously, London has not been re-visited and this Exhibition gives a chance for British viewers to make their own assessment of his work.

Peter began his career as a painter. He views the world with an eye for the beauty in the things around him. Lush trees with their wild blossom make the observer a participant in the extraordinarily expressive manifestation of his intense experience of nature. The clear, colourful depictions almost literally sputter from the canvas. He seems to trowel his images on to the canvas in thick splodges. The paste-like, glutinous paintings are constructed layer over layer, colour over colour. They simmer with joie de vivre and are often very nearly three-dimensional.

Therefore, the step that Peter took not so long ago to sculpt appears to be a logical development. The manner in which he moulds and glazes his ceramic sculptures has a clear connection to his paintings. The rough treatment of the materials and the dazzling use of colour allow his fascination for the material with which he works to be expressed in a compelling manner. This decision to find what is exceptional in the everyday objects that surround him also receives the ultimate expression in his sculptures. He achieves this by taking body parts out of their context, by isolating them, literally freeing a fragment from the whole. Thereafter, the fragment is enlarged, so that an alienating effect is created. In this manner, and also because of the substance, structure and colour of the object, it acquires a value in itself.

www.peterkeizer.nl

               Exhibition organised together with the Royal Netherlands E