LONGITUDES

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

Report: Trip to London and Oxford in pictures


 (Above and four below) Cinthia Marcelle's "The Family in Disorder" (2018) at Museum and Modern Art Oxford.


(Above and below) The magnificent main hall of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

 An example of Micronesian currency – we're reminded of our extended conversation with Melbourne-based artist Nicholas Mangan published in his 2016 Sternberg Press publication "Limits to growth" (and also during Chisenhale's live conversation and while chasing Ancient Lights).


(Above and below) These column capitals are the main reasons we visited Oxford. They were carved for the Oxford Museum of Natural History in 1859-60 by Irish brothers James and John O'Shea, along with their nephew Edward Whelan. Commissioned by John Ruskin, all the works were carved freestyle, without previous sketches, using only plant specimens from the botanical garden, and their sheer imagination, as references.

They are the protagonists of Sean Lynch's 2013 piece "A Blow by Blow Account of Stonecarving in Oxford", which we have been discussing with Sean for a while and finally saw in 2015 in Bordeaux. We continued learning more about this piece and its making during our joint adventure in Banff's "Geologic Time" residency programme last Fall. 


 (Above) Apostolos Georgiou, "FROM MY HEART" at Rodeo Gallery.

 (Above and 3 below) Leonor Antunes's "a thousand realities from an original mark" at Marian Goodman.
 Polycarbonate and brass screens and rope sculptures. Each screen corresponds to the exact measurements of one of the glass panels in the Upper Lawn Pavilion in Wiltshire, built between 1959 and 1962 by the British architects Alison and Peter Smithson (1928-1993 and 1923-2003).


(Above) Tacita Dean's "Landscape" exhibition premiered "Antigone", a new 1-hour long film and cloud paintings at The Royal Academy. Part 2 and 3 in the National Portrait Gallery (a retrospective of portrait films works) and at the National Gallery a two-room exhibition curated by the artist presents a selection of historical and contemporary still lives. 

 Fantastic assembly of square-format paintings by Markus Lüperz at Michael Werner Gallery, which the artist painted at age 24 using distemper on canvas.

 (Above and below) Batia Suter's work at The Photographers' Gallery. One of the nominees for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2018.

(Above) The 2018 awardee was Luke Willis Thompson with his striking film "Autoportrait" (also nominated for this year's Turner Prize).

 Nicolas Lamas (above and immediately below) and Petra Feriancová (two following) two-person show "Becoming animal" at Tenderpixel
(Above) "Pregnant Landscape" by Phoebe Unwin at Amanda Wilkinson Gallery in SoHo.

 (Above and below) Wilhelm Sasnal at Sadie Coles.

  (Above and below) August Sander's "Men without masks" at Hauser & Wirth included an extensive selection of rare large-scale photographs made between 1910 and 1931. The photographs were printed in a unique oversize format for inclusion in an exhibition at the Mannheimer Kunstverein in 1973.
  (Above) Group exhibition curated by Gianni Jetzer at Hauser & Wirth. 


  (Above and detail below) Rose Wiley's "Lolita's House"three-floor solo show at David Zwirner.

  (Above and below) 1960s vinyl sculptures by South Korean Seung-taek Lee at White Cube (Mayfair). Works have been recreated for the exhibition using urethane vinyl to achieve greater durability whilst retaining a similar visual quality.

  (Above and below) Abigail Reynolds mid-career survey at Peer.

  (Above) Visiting Ian White and Sadie Benning (photographed) at Camden Art Center with Antoni Hervàs.


  (Above and 2 below) Last day to see Magali Reus solo show at South London Gallery. 

   (Above and two below) Osías Yanov's "Orphan Dance" at Gasworks.

   (Above and below) Antoni Hervàs studio at Gasworks, his 3-month residency is supported by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)
   (Above and 2 below) Joan Jonas exhibition at Tate Modern.

   (Above) View of Trafalgar Square with Michael Rakowitz's "The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist" featuring on the Fourth Plinth commission.


On the way to see Tacita Dean's-curated exhibition "STILL LIFE" at the National Gallery, a much-obliged stop in the room with Vermeer and Dutch still life. Jacob van Walscapelle (1644-1727) and Jan van Huysum (1682–1749) masters in flower painting.


(Above) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian Peter Gabriel during the internet interspecies symposium "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish" curated by Lucia Pietroiusti and Filipa Ramos for the Serpentine Gallery at the London Zoo.

Not photographed but also visited: Chisenhale Gallery, Matt's Gallery, Spruth Magers, Blain Southern, Pilar Corrias, Frith Street Gallery (both locations), Hollybush Gardens, Josh Liley Gallery, Kate McGarry, Mother's Tankstation, Modern Art (unexpectedly closed when it should have been open!, and so was Project Native Informant – which had a broken lift so had to go up 3 flights of stairs). 

RELATED CONTENT:
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Reviews of the exhibition "4.543 billion. The matter of matter" at the CAPC musée, Bordeaux

As the ‘4.543 billion. The matter of matter’ exhibition concluded on January 7, 2018, at the CAPC musée in Bordeaux, we finished archiving all the social media posts visitors, the museum and ourselves have published – see our Wakelet feed below – since research phase to the exhibition itself, and below share the most relevant print and online reviews.
Wakelet collection of the "4.543 billion" exhibition.

December 8, 2017: Tom Jeffreys highlighted the exhibition in his "Looking Back: Paris" roundup for frieze magazine – illustrated with two works included in the show by Nicholas Mangan and Alexandra Navratil.

"A little less academic, but no less rigorous, was ‘4,543 milliards’ (4,543 billion), curated by the Barcelona-based Latitudes (co-founded by frieze contributing editor Max Andrews) at CAPC, Bordeaux. Subtitled ‘The matter of matter’, the exhibition provided a material, geological and political response to the building’s former life as a warehouse for colonial commodities and, by extension, the complex entanglement of culture, money, politics and ecological impact. Marble from Trump Tower (Amie Siegel’s "Strata", 2017) was exhibited alongside partially-burnt documents rescued from a fire at the Bordeaux municipal archives and a 1939 mock invitation to the ‘Museum of Standard Oil’, actually MoMA’s new building, issued by the then-publications director, Frances Collins (unsurprisingly fired soon after). Combining archival materials with work by 30 artists, big ideas with specificity and nuance, this was exactly the kind of exhibition I would want to return to again and again. If the selection of the next artistic director the Venice Biennale were a democratic process, I’d be voting for Latitudes."


November 28, 2017Frank Browning, Paris-based Contributor to the Huffington Post author, and former NPR Correspondent, reviewed the recently opened retrospective of Beatriz González and concluded his article with a short mention:

"Meanwhile, around the corner at CAPC there’s an intriguing assembly of stones, papers, paintings, photographs and projections that unite geo-physics, sculpture, and art history, including the conversion of the building itself from a one-time commodities warehouse into its current life as a museum.

Entitled “The Matter of Matter,” [missing "4.543 billion" years, the age of the Earth, and the first part of the exhibition title] it includes the work of 30 artists, assembled and mounted by a Spanish team, Max Andrews and Mariana Cánepa Luna. They call themselves Latitudes [wrongly published with two "T"]; they aim to excavate the world we inhabit daily, be it through the history indigo mining in Mexico and southern France (vital for fine pottery and coloring bluejeans) or oil extraction in Venezuela, gas infused sculptures or open pit diamond mining in southern Africa. All that we do, all that we eat, all that we create derives from one form of excavation or another. Simple truism as it may seem, Latitudes takes us into the intimacies of our relation with this earth and calls us to meditate on our physical and aesthetic relation to the steadily warming round rock that is our home."




September 20, 2017: Emmanuel Labails of RCF Radio did a 9-minute interview with Pedro Jiménez Morras, Head of Press of CAPC, who discussed the premises of the exhibition and some of its works. (Listen between minute 4:39 and 13:36).

August 19, 2017: Bea Espejo's ‘Cambio de tiempo’, on the Spanish national cultural supplement Babelia, in El País newspaper begins:

˝A ese pensamiento geológico del tiempo conduce la exposición 4.543 millones. La cuestión de la materia en el CAPC de Burdeos. La muestra aborda obras de arte, colecciones e historias culturales con relación a procesos ecológicos y la escala geológica del tiempo. En total, más de 35 artistas que dan valor a las discontinuidades, a las derivas y a las ausencias. La muestra almacena el tiempo como una batería almacena la energía. Y lo hace en varias capas de lectura. Una de ellas es el tiempo que lleva Latitudes, la oficina curatorial de Mariana Cánepa Luna y Max Andrews, trabajando en este proyecto, seguramente el más complejo y ambicioso, aunque esta investigación en torno a las complejas relaciones entre la ecología y el arte contemporáneo está en la base de todos sus proyectos desde 2005. Aquí no pueden ser más rotundos. Abordan la cuestión de la materia desde el lado más inmaterial, que es la memoria. Para ello, estudiaron a fondo el contexto de la ciudad bajo un programa de residencias del museo. Hablamos, pues, de un proyecto de investigación, algo que se traduce en cada pequeño gesto que recoge la muestra, y que lo expande todo. De ahí las relaciones de algunas obras con el departamento de zoología de la universidad (Ilana Halperin), el Museo de Bellas Artes (Stuart Whipps, o el préstamo de Alfred Roll), así como los muchos documentos y objetos que se incluyen de los archivos Métropole, de la Gironde y la colección geológica de la UFR Sciences de la Terre et de la Mer, de la Universidad de Burdeos.˝




July 12, 2017: Catherine Darfay's ‘Le CAPC remonte le temps’ on the local newspaper "Sudouest", was the first feature. The article was illustrated with a with an image showing Amy Balkin's ‘Today’s CO2 Spot Price’ (2009) chartering the daily price of carbon dioxide emissions allowances in the world’s largest carbon market —a changing value documented in this blog post.


RELATED CONTENT:
  • 4.543 billion. The Matter of Matter” exhibition
  • Archive of social networks posts related to "4.543 billion"
  • Photo gallery of the exhibition 
  • CAPC website (French, English, Spanish) http://www.capc-bordeaux.fr/programme/4543-milliards
  • Cover Story—December 2017: "Tabet's Tapline trajectory" 4 December 2017
  • Alfred Roll's 1878 "The Old Quarryman" exchanged with Alfred Smith's "The Grave Docks" (1884) in the exhibition "4.543 billion" at the CAPC musée 3 November 2017
  • Cover Story—November 2017: "Mining negative monuments: Ângela Ferreira, Stone Free, and The Return of the Earth" 1 November 2017 
  • 15 November 2017, 4:30–8pm: 'The Return of the Earth. Ecologising art history in the Anthropocene' study day at the CAPC musée, Bordeaux 24 October 201
  • Cover Story – July 2017: 4.543 billion 3 July 2017
  • Cover Story – May 2017: S is for Shale, or Stuart; W is for Waterfall, or Whipps 1 May 2017
  • SAVE THE DATE: 29 June, 19h. Private view of the exhibition "4.543 billion. The matter of matter" at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux 30 May 2017
  • Cover Story – May 2016: Material histories – spilling the beans at the CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux 10 May 2016.
  • Second research trip to Bordeaux 16 July 2016
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In conversation for the exhibition catalogue "Limits to Growth" by Nicholas Mangan (Sternberg Press, 2016)

Photos: Latitudes.

After much anticipation, we are elated to see (and touch!) Latitudes' five-part interview with Nicholas Mangan as part of his exhibition catalogue "Nicholas Mangan. Limits to Growth" (Sternberg Press, 2016). The publication is designed by Žiga Testen and includes newly commissioned texts by Ana Teixeira Pinto and Helen Hughes, alongside illustrations of Mangan's work and historical source material.

The five-part interview weaves together a discussion around five of his recent works ‘Nauru, Notes from a Cretaceous World’ (2009), ‘A World Undone’ (2012), ‘Progress in Action’ (2013), ‘Ancient Lights’ (2015) and his newest piece ‘Limits to Growth’ (2016) commissioned for this exhibition survey. Latitudes’ dialogue with Mangan, began around a research trip to Melbourne in 2014 and continued in the form of the public conversation event that took place at the Chisenhale Gallery, London, in 2015, as well as over Skype, email, snail mail and walks.






 

The publication release coincides with Mangan's eponymous exhibition survey which began in July in Melbourne's Monash University Museum of Art and just opened this past weekend in Brisbane's IMA. The show will further tour to Berlin's KW Institute for Contemporary Art in the Summer of 2017.

"Nicholas Mangan. Limits to Growth" 

Publisher: Sternberg Press with the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; and Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne.
Editor: Aileen Burns, Charlotte Day, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Johan Lundh. 
Texts: Latitudes, Helen Hughes, Ana Teixeira Pinto 
Design: Žiga Testen;
October 2016, English;
17 x 24 cm, 246 pages + 2 inserts, edition of 1500; 

40 b/w and 102 colour ill., with colour poster and postcard Softcover;
ISBN 978-3-95679-252-6;
30 Euros.






















RELATED CONTENT:
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Interview with Nicholas Mangan for his forthcoming catalogue ‘Limits to Growth’


Nicholas Mangan, ‘Ancient Lights’ (2015). Installation views, Chisenhale Gallery, 2015. Co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London and Artspace, Sydney. Courtesy the artist; Labor Mexico; Sutton Gallery, Melbourne; and Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland. Photo: Andy Keate.

We have just wrapped up an interview with Melbourne-based artist Nicholas Mangan to be published by Sternberg Press as the catalogue of his forthcoming solo exhibition ‘Limits to Growth’, co-produced by Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne (opening July 20) and Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Brisbane (where it will be on view from October 29), it will later travel to Kunst-Werke Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin (summer 2017)

The five-part interview weaves together a discussion of his recent works ‘Nauru, Notes from a Cretaceous World’ (2009), ‘A World Undone’ (2012), ‘Progress in Action’ (2013), ‘Ancient Lights’ (2015) and his newest piece ‘Limits to Growth’ (2016), to be premiered at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA). Part of an ongoing dialogue with Mangan, it developed from a public conversation event at Chisenhale Gallery, London on 7 July 2015. 

‘Limits to Growth’ references a 1972 report commissioned by the Club of Rome that analysed a computer simulation of the Earth and human systems: the consequences of exponential economic and population growth given finite resource supplies. The overlapping themes and flows of energies in the five of Mangan’s projects discussed in the interview might be read as an echo of the modelling and systems dynamics used by the simulation to try and better understand the limits of the world’s ecosystems. 

Mangan is presenting Ancient Lights’ (2015) at his Mexico City gallery LABOR on April 22, a work co-commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery in London and Artspace in Sydney.


In conversation between Latitudes and Nicholas Mangan, Chisenhale Gallery, 7 July 2015. Photos: Manuela Barczewski.

RELATED CONTENT:

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Latitudes' "out of office" 2014–2015 season

It's that end-of-the-season time of the year again. It has become a tradition for Latitudes (see the 2008-9, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012–13, 2013–14 posts) to mark the summer break, not by presenting a written memo of activities or a financial statement, but with a 'behind the scenes' post filled with photos revisiting moments from the year gone by. So here are some glimpses from September 2014 to August 2015.

Slowing down is rather relative this Summer, as at the end of July we embarked on a two-week trip to The Banff Centre in Canada to be Guest Faculty of one of its thematic residencies, 'Blueprint for Happiness' led by British artists Heather & Ivan Morison. At the end of August, we will be in residency at Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco for another two weeks. 

Milestones during the first part of 2015 were two-fold: after months of technical tweaking and editorial wrangling, we launched our newly designed website in February and secondly, this Spring Latitudes celebrated its 10th anniversary.

Have a great holiday, más en septiembre! 

7 October 2014: Latitudes hosted the second year students of the MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London, and took the opportunity of presenting and reflecting on our collaborations with three Catalan artists – Martí Anson, Ignasi Aballí and Francesc Ruiz

 Francesc Ruiz presenting his work to the RCA students.

Trip reporting: We reported from the field including at Madrid's Apertura in September, London's Frieze week in October, David Jablonowski's "Hype Cycle" at Fons Welters during Amsterdam's Art Weekend in November, and from Bordeaux in January, to Bari in May.

Writing: This year Max Andrews has joined frieze as Contributing Editor – where he has been writing since 2004. His writing has been more frequent in recent months as frieze have published reviews on Maria Thereza Alves at CAAC in Sevilla, the group show "What cannot be used is forgotten" at CAPC Bordeaux, a profile of Nicholas Mangan and a review of the Spanish and Latin American Pavilions at the Venice Biennale. Mariana Cánepa Luna also published an interview with Mangan in Mousse Magazine last February.

New website: Our homemade website finally saw the light of day in February. As explained in this post, the website features new elements such as the 'Cover Story' (more on that in the next paragraph), sliding photo galleries, a tidied-up sidebar with a calendar of events, tags to filter projects by 'year' or 'exhibition', etc.

'Cover Story': More writing has emerged through the new monthly section "Cover Story" on our home page (check out the archive of this section):

March 2015: Focused on a single artwork: Wilfredo Prieto's ‘Grasa, jabón y plátano’ (2006); 

April 2015: Revisited a peculiar site: the Connaught Road West flyover, in Hong Kong;


April 2015 Cover Story.

May 2015: Honoured two artistazos: Lawrence Weiner and Sergi Aguilar and a whisky-enhanced chat on the Barcelona shore in October 2008; 


June 2015: Visited Ignasi Aballí at his Raval studio.

Summer 2015: Orbited around Australian artist Nicholas Mangan, an artist with whom Latitudes just did an in conversation in the context of his solo exhibition "Ancient Lights" at Chisenhale, London and whose work has been the focus in Max Andrews' Frieze text as well as in Mariana Cánepa Luna's interview in the February-March issue of Mousse Magazine


 Summer 2015 Cover Story (plus the archive here).

26 February, ARCOmadrid: On jury duty visiting the galleries participating in the #Opening section of the art fair, in order to select its best stand. The award was given to Barcelona-based gallery etHALL which presented works by Martin Vitaliti and Sergio Prego.

 

Spring, celebration time! Later in May we celebrated our 10th anniversary (well, officially it was in April!) launching a series of limited editions in the form of tote bags by four artists that have a special place in our hearts and with whom we have collaborated with in the past: Lawrence Weiner (New York, 1942), Haegue Yang (Seoul, 1971), Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, 1958) and Mariana Castillo Deball (Mexico City, 1975). Below is a glimpse from the making of the tote bags at Print Workers Barcelona, and here's where you can place your order.

 Photolith design for the tote bag by Haegue Yang – realised in collaboration with OK-RM. 
 Silkscreen process of Lawrence Weiner's design. Photo: Print Workers.
 Silkscreening Ignasi Aballí's tote. Photo: Print Workers.
 Silkscreening Mariana Castillo Deball tote. Photo: Print Workers.
 Silkscreening the credit for each bag in the inside pocket. Photo: Print Workers.
Homemade photo studio documenting the totes. Results of the photo shoot here.

9–13 May 2015: After an intense week of Biennale overdose in Venice, we traveled to Bari to join Vessel and MADA's 2015 International Curatorial Retreat as two of its tutors. The week was far from being a retreat, it was more like an "intensive" – though it certainly was a "treat". Highly interesting debates and conversations on-and-off the scheduled activities of lectures and break-out sessions emerged in places such as a cave or in the nearby town Monopoli – no direct link to the property trading board game. Here a report from fellow tutor Dr. Alexandra Ross
  
 Visiting the market. Photo: Piero Percoco.
Market stall selling tomatoes of all kinds and origins.
 Chef Boris Portnoy doing some dinner prep at Doppelgaenger gallery/home.
 Due to a fire in Rome's airport, our flight was cancelled and we had to rearrange our travel, spending another day in Bari. We therefore visited (we were in fact their only visitors) the Palazzo dell'Acquedotto Pugliese di Bari, decorated by roman designer Duilio Cambellotti
A food detour to purchase delightful spicy rucola in the Mercato ex Manifattura Bari, in the Quartiere Libertà.


3–5 June 2015: Max Andrews participated in the annual 'Invest Conference 2015' organised by Stroom den Haag, in The Hague, consisting of "an incentive for the artistic development of recently graduated artists who have received the PRO Invest subsidy in the year before. A group of ten international curators is asked to visit these artists in their studios and meet with the art scene of The Hague." 

  Above (visiting Machteld Rullens) and following photographs by Myung Feyen. Courtesy Stroom den Haag.

7 July 2015: For our last public event of the year we joined Melbourne artist Nicholas Mangan for an in conversation in the context of his solo show 'Ancient Lights' that opened a few days earlier at Chisenhale Gallery in London. Mint and Lime Films video documented the talk – watch it from Chisenhale's website / Vimeo.

Vinyl listing the exhibition events.


 (Above) Photos by Manuela Barczewski.


27 July–7 August 2015: Guest Faculty of the Thematic Residency 'Blueprint for Happiness' at The Banff Centre, Canada. We joined the group in the middle two weeks of the six week programme led by British artists Heather and Ivan Morison

View of The Banff Centre from our bedroom in Lloyd Hall.
Banff TV announcing Latitudes' talk on 28 July, 4pm. 

 Blueprint for Happiness' participants.
 Views from Latitudes' studio in the Jeanne & Peter Lougheed Building.
 Studio visit with "Blueprint for Happiness" participant Vanessa Kwan.
 Studio visit with "Blueprint for Happiness" participant Robert Cram.
Inevitable photo of a deer walking around Banff.
Stunning evening sunset over the Bow River after a storm with a double rainbow.

While in Banff, Latitudes led three seminars bringing forward a series of case studies as well as focussing on a number of artists whose practice has dealt with public space in different geographical contexts. We also undertook studio visits with each of the 11 resident artists, and participated in a field trip to Calgary to visit the HQ of art construction company Heavy Industries and the Esker Foundation Contemporary Art Gallery


 (School) Field trip to Calgary to visit Heavy Industries fabricators and the Esker Foundation. 
 Even though the school bus seats were no longer in scale to our adult bodies, interesting chats happened over the 2 hours of each trajectory.

On Sunday 2 August, Latitudes hosted a closed-door evening film programme screening works by Spanish artist Emilio Moreno, Irish artist Sean Lynch and Australian artist Nicholas Mangan. The three films share a focus on public sculptures, monuments or buildings that have been displaced from their original context. 

 Flicking through some of the 4,000 artist books at Banff library.


Most of this past months' activity has been invested in preparing for 2015–16 projects: Firstly, 'Compositions' a series of five artistic interventions by six artists active in the Barcelona art scene: David Bestué (Barcelona, 1980. Lives in Barcelona); Dora García (Valladolid, 1965. Lives in Barcelona), Jordi Mitjà (Figueres, 1970. Lives between Lladó and Banyoles); Rasmus Nilausen (Copenhagen, 1980. Lives in Barcelona) & Pere Llobera (Barcelona, 1970. Lives in Barcelona) and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (Barcelona, 1977. Lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), which will take place in the context of the first Barcelona Gallery Weekend (1–4 October 2015). 

Façade of Cosme Toda in L'Hospitalet municipality (Barcelona) part of a 1920s factory complex where David Bestué will present his intervention in the context of the first Barcelona Gallery Weekend, 1–4 October 2015.
Site visit to the Umbracle with Daniel Steegmann Mangrané.


Secondly, we've been working on the forthcoming solo exhibition of Venezuelan-born, Barcelona-based artist José Antonio Hernández-Díez which will be on view at La Capella MACBA from March 2016. Onwards!


Digging through documentation in MACBA library in preparation for José Antonio Hernández-Díez exhibition.

RELATED CONTENT:

Latitudes 'Out of office' 2013–14, 31 July 2014;
Latitudes' "out of office" photo album, 2012–2013 season, 31 July 2013;
Latitudes' "out of office" photo album 2011–2012, 31 July 2012;
Latitudes 'out of office' photo album 2010–11 season, 1 August 2011;
Latitudes 'out of office' photo album 2009–10 season, 30 July 2010;
Latitudes' "out of office" photo album 2008-9, 30 July 2009.


This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
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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Locating Ancient Lights signs around London with Nicholas Mangan

Nicholas Mangan’s show “Ancient Lights” recently opened at London’s Chisenhale Gallery, where Latitudes had a conversation with the artist on 7 July. The title of the show refers to a long-established English planning law enshrining the “right to light” by restricting the construction of buildings that would block sunlight reaching the windows of neighboring properties. If the sun has shined through a window for more than twenty years, there is legal protection for it not to be blocked. 

In the spirit of our tour project Incidents of Travel (which has involved artist-led explorations of Mexico City, Hong Kong, and soon San Francisco) on 3 July we set out with Nick to track down some of these esoteric signs in central London.


We started with a set of signs that – thanks to Wikipedia’s entry on the Right to light – are probably the best-known examples. The back windows of houses on Albemarle Way are visible from the Memorial Garden of the Priory Church of the Order of Saint John just off the Clerkenwell Road. (Here is a map of some Ancient Lights signs in London, if you know of more let us know!). We made our way on foot to a spot at the south end of Hatton Gardens (an address now notorious for the April 2015 heist) but failed to find the rumored sign there. It was a little early in the day for a pint at the nearby Ye Olde Mitre.



Heading in to Chinatown, we found ourselves scouring the bizarrely-named Horse & Dolphin Yard, a dead-end alleyway with a pagoda-like construction where several restaurants from Gerrard Street and Shaftesbury Avenue have there back entrances. We eventually spotted the sign, which appears to have been moved from its original location as it doesn’t mark any window, just a bare brick wall.



Nearby there is a cute sign above the diminutive Rupert Court, at the back of The Blue Posts pub. (If we were going to stop for a drink it would have to be somewhere far more thematically appropriate – the Sun Tavern in Covent Garden, The Sun and 13 Cantons in Soho or the Rising Sun in Bloomsbury, would hit the spot). 

Later in the week we found the huge and typographically-distinguished Ancient Lights sign in Newman Passage, a little connecting street perhaps most famous for its starring role in the murderous opening scene of the film Peeping Tom (1960).


The more modest sign that can be seen next to the lamp of The Hope pub, just near Goodge Street tube station, is a palimpsest still bearing visible traces of an earlier sign underneath. Thus endeth the tour!


RELATED CONTENT:

Latitudes conversation with Nicholas Mangan on 7 July 2015 at Chisenhale Gallery, London;


Cover Story, July 2015: Nicholas Mangan’s ‘Ancient Lights’;

Max Andrews, Feature on Nicholas Mangan, 'Landscape Artist', Frieze, Issue 172, Summer 2015;

Mariana Cánepa Luna, 'What Lies Underneath', interview with Nicholas Mangan, Mousse Magazine #47, February–March 2015.


This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
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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In conversation with the artist Nicholas Mangan at Chisenhale Gallery, London, 7 July 2015, 19h.

  Nicholas Mangan, Still from 'Ancient Lights', 2014–5. Courtesy LABOR, Mexico City; Sutton Gallery, Melbourne; and Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland.

On July 7 at 19h Latitudes will lead a conversation with the Melbourne-based artist Nicholas Mangan on the occasion of his solo show 'Ancient Lights' (3 July–23 August 2015) at Chisenhale Gallery. They will discuss his ongoing investigations into the relationship between energy and social transformation as well as his latest film installation premiered in the exhibition and powered entirely by on-site solar panels placed on the roof of the gallery building.

'Ancient Lights' is produced in partnership with Artspace, Sydney, where it will be presented as part of his solo exhibition, Other Currents, in September 2015.  

Nicholas Mangan (1979) lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Recent exhibitions include 'Art in the Age of…', Witte de With, Rotterdam; 'Anthropocene Moment', Les Abattoirs, Toulouse (both 2015); 'Octopus', Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; 'Concrete', Monash Museum of Art, Melbourne; 'Melbourne Now', National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (all 2014). He participated in the '2015 New Museum Triennial: Surround Audience', New York; 9th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre; and the 13th Istanbul Biennial (both 2013).


This event is free. Reserve a place via Chisenhale's Eventbrite.

   
RELATED CONTENT:

Interview 'What Lies Beneath' between Nicholas Mangan and Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes, Mousse Magazine #47, February–March 2015.  

Max Andrews' of Latitudes feature article 'Landscape Artist', Frieze #172, June–August 2015.


This is the blog of the independent curatorial office Latitudes. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
All photos:
Latitudes | www.lttds.org (except when noted otherwise in the photo caption).
Work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Interview with Nicholas Mangan in Mousse Magazine #47, February–March 2015

The February–March 2015 issue of Mousse Magazine (#47) includes the interview 'What Lies Beneath' between Melbourne-based artist Nicholas Mangan (1979, Geelong) and Mariana Cánepa Luna of Latitudes.  

 Layout of the interview in English and Italian on the pages of Mousse Magazine.

The interview centers primarily on discussing the artists' methodologies through two of Mangan's recent works: 'A World Undone' – currently on view as part of Witte de With's show 'Art in The Age of...Energy' (23 January–3 May 2015) – and his film and sculptural work 'Nauru - Notes From A Cretaceous World' which will soon be featured as part of the New Museum's 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience curated by Lauren Cornell (Curator, 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects and Museum as Hub) and artist Ryan Trecartin.

Read the full review here. Following is an excerpt of the beginning of their conversation: 


'Dowiyogo’s Ancient Coral Coffee Table', 2010. Courtesy of the artist, Sutton gallery Melbourne and Hopkinson Mossman Auckland. 


MCL: Unearthing narratives embedded within matter has been at the very core of your practice for some time now. Your most recent sculptural and film works have inquired into natural materials, their transit and energy flow and how their transformation – be it human-induced or ecological – have a social, political and an economic dimension. I'm particularly thinking of your 2010 project 'Nauru: Notes from a Cretaceous World' – featured at the New Museum 2015 Triennial– which focuses on the story of the tiny Micronesian island Republic of Nauru and its financial collapse as a consequence of a century of corrosive colonial exploitation of its phosphate ore resources. Could you elaborate on how this notion of transformation is explored in your sculpture works (traditionally static) and films (moving image) and how you have come to interrelate the two in the spatial narrative of your installations? 

NM: As transformation is a process occurring in time, the necessity to explore duration has led me to test moving image as a sculptural possibility, to express not only the temporality of the assemblage, but also the forces and drives that produce such aggregations. In the video ‘Nauru: Notes from a Cretaceous World', narration sits over found footage and material that I shot myself, providing an account of Nauru’s material history as shaped by anthropogenic forces. The narration attempts to draw out the various histories that are embedded in material forms. In more recent projects, such as ‘A World Undone’ (2012) and ‘Progress In Action’ (2013), I have attempted to produce an intensified intersection between moving image and sculpture, enabling the materials to narrate themselves.
 
'Nauru - Between A Rock and A Hard Place' installation view at Art Gallery Of New South whales 2009. Courtesy of the artist, Sutton gallery in Melbourne and Hopkinson Mossman in Auckland. Photo: Carley Wright.

'Mined over matter', 2012. C-print on cotton paper, 69 x 103cm. 
Courtesy of the artist and LABOR Mexico.


'Matter over mined (for A World Undone)', 2012. C-print on cotton paper 69 x 103cm. 
Courtesy of the artist and LABOR, Mexico.


'A World Undone', 2012 (video Stills). HD colour, silent, 12min continuous loop. 
Courtesy of the artist and LABOR Mexico.

Mangan works with LABOR (México DF), Sutton Gallery (Melbourne) and Hopkinson Mossman (Auckland).

Related Content:

Visiting Curator Program, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 12 May–7 June 2014 (28 April 2014).

'Nice to Meet You – Erick Beltrán. Some Fundamental Postulates' by Max Andrews on Mousse Magazine #31 (30 November 2011) 

Interview 'Free Forms' with Lauren Cornell part of Latitudes' 2012–13 long-term research #OpenCurating, released on April 2013 via Issuu.



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