Longitudes

Longitudes cuts across Latitudes’ projects and research with news, updates, and reportage.

Latitudes hosts the MA Curating Contemporary Art students of the Royal College of Art in Barcelona


Photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).

This morning we had an informal discussion with second-year students of the Royal College of Art's MA Curating Contemporary Art programme to present and reflect on our collaborations with three Barcelona-based artists – Martí Anson, Ignasi Aballí and Francesc Ruiz. It was an opportune moment to reconsider the old chestnut of "the artist-curator relationship" and the important role of artist advocacy and friendship in curatorial work.

Our first case study was with Martí Anson and was in the context of our participation in the 2010 iteration of 'No Soul for Sale – A Festival of Independents' at Tate Modern, coinciding with Tate's 10th anniversary. In our presentation we discussed how Martí's project "Mataró Chauffeur Service" began by the simple need for us to get to London and present our projects in the festival context, how we worked together with Martí in thinking which was the best format for the project to develop considering all the budget would have to be raised and that the invitation was limited to offering 25m2 at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

A year later, we invited Martí to present Joaquimandson, a project centred on researching and recuperating the fabrication of 1960s low-budget furniture designs his father produced for friends, family and clients in Mataró. A selection of the furniture was exhibited at Meessen de Clercq, Brussels, alongside works by Sarah Ortmeyer, Kasper Akhoj, Maria Loboda and Charlotte Moth


In the summer of 2009, Carol Yinghua Lu invited us to curate a new commission by Ignasi Aballí at the SUITCASE Art Project, the then project space of the Today Art Museum in Beijing. The resulting interventions in the eight display cases of the Yintai Centre, focused on absence, nothingness and invisibility, recurring concerns in Aballí's practice. A year after, we interviewed Ignasi for 'The Last Star-Ledger', the yellow issue of 'The Last Newspaper' publication we edited in the context of the New Museum show in 2010. The interview 'Rank and File' focused on his series of newspaper-cut outs from El País newspaper that he has been doing since 1997.

After a short presentation on the context of the 2009 exhibition "Sequelism part 3: Possible, Probable or Preferable Futures" at Arnolfini in Bristol, and Francesc Ruiz's stair-barrier commission, Ruiz discussed his Yayoi, Sukia and "The Green Detour" commission for Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo, and of course Francesc's weekly cartoons for the ten 'The Last Newspaper'. Here an interview with Francesc published in the third issue, 'The Last Register" and a profile of his work included in frieze magazine.

Thank you Galeria Estrany · de la Mota for the temporary gallery take over!

Related content:

  • Ignasi Aballí's exhibition catalogue 'Nothing, or Something' available now, 26 October 2009
  • flickr gallery with installation shots of "Sequelism Part 3..." 
  • Publication release: 'Mataró Chauffeur Service', a project by Martí Anson & Latitudes for 'No Soul for Sale', Tate Modern, London, May 2010, 11 March 2011
  • Ignasi Aballí at ARTIUM and Latitudes' archive (Beijing & New York),20 May 2012


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All photos: Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Exhibition views: 'Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes & des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne', until 16 April

'Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes & des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne', February 25 – April 16, 2011, Meessen de Clercq, Brussels, Belgium

'EXPOSITION INTERNATIONALE DES ARTS DÉCORATIFS ET INDUSTRIELS MODERNES & DES ARTS ET TECHNIQUES DANS LA VIE MODERNE' With works by: Kasper AKHØJ, Martí ANSON, Maria LOBODA, Charlotte MOTH and Sarah ORTMEYER
25 February–16 April 2011
 

Meessen de Clercq, Rue de l’Abbaye 2a
B-1000 Brussels, Belgium

The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts & Art and Technology in Modern Life) presents projects by five contemporary visual artists which engage with specific instances of modernity as represented through industrial or domestic design. A world-famous tower, a street, a range of furniture, a modular display system, and textile patterns, have been metaphorically taken apart before being reconstituted, sometimes literally, through artistic practices and personal affiliations which incorporate historical research, travel, tribute and scenography, for example.

Running counter to the modernist spirit of rationality, clarity and empiricism, the artists’ often playful engagements deal with anecdotal, subjective, and frequently deliberately imprecise applications. Their projects engage with disciplines traditionally outside of the domain of the visual arts, and in doing so they invite a renegotiation of a design’s intended use, and an interest in the point at which apparent aesthetic surplus or redundancy modifies or reconstructs an object’s meaning or efficacy. The artists’ works furthermore operate with a heightened awareness or awkwardness of their being exhibited (and alongside a synthesized ‘period’ exhibition title taken from conjoining the names of the Paris Worlds’ Fairs from 1925 and 1937). Theatricality and commercial or museological display strategies are the restraints and releases, or the actual subject, of the artists’ articulations. (+ info...)

All photos: Philippe de Gobert
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Installing 'Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne' at Meessen De Clercq


Opening: Thursday 24 February 2011, 6–9pm.
With works by Kasper Akhøj (1976, Copenhagen, Denmark. Lives in New York, US); Martí Anson (1967, Mataró, Spain. Lives there); Maria Loboda (1979, Kraków, Poland. Lives in London, UK); Charlotte Moth (1975, Carshalton, UK. Lives in Paris, France) and Sarah Ortmeyer (1980, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Lives there).

The Exposition International des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes & des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts & Art and Technology in Modern Life) presents projects by five contemporary visual artists which engage with specific instances of modernity as represented through industrial or domestic design. A world-famous tower, a street, a range of furniture, a modular display system, and textile patterns, have been metaphorically taken apart before being reconstituted, sometimes literally, through artistic practices and personal affiliations which incorporate historical research, travel, tribute and scenography, for example. (+ info...)


Meessen De Clerq
Abdijstraat 2a Rue de l'Abbaye
1000 Brussels, BELGIUM
Tuesday to Saturday 11am – 6pm
T: +32 (0) 2 644 34 54
E: [email protected]
W: www.meessendeclercq.be


Installation pictures: Latitudes | www.lttds.org
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