CURRENT| 不合时宜: Contemporary Art from Scotland, Shanghai Himalayas Museum.

CURRENT demonstrates the excellence and distinctiveness of contemporary art made in Scotland for the first time in China, its grassroots spirit and its keen engagement with social and political debates. The programme will showcase new and existing works by artists including Bruce McLean, Poster Club, Edgar Schmitz, Ross Sinclair, Lucy Skaer and Corin Sworn.

Over its 18 months, 50 artists will be presented in 8 exhibitions, 4 artists’ and writers’ residencies will run alongside and international speakers forums with 12 speakers from Scotland and around the world will discuss the contemporary and transnational global aspects of the arts today.

Cooper Gallery curator Sophia Hao speaks at the launch of CURRENT| 不合时宜: Contemporary Art from Scotland at Shanghai Himalayas Museum.

CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland launched Phase One last weekend with exhibitions by artists’ collaborative group Poster Club and German artist Edgar Schmitz.

Edgar Schmitz’s exhibition Surplus Cameo Decor: Sindanao 2 sees the artist reconfigure a body of works first conceived for Cooper Gallery in Dundee in 2012 with a new set of sculptural works, sound pieces and architectural interventions interspersed with live cameo appearances by art world protagonists developed for its new context at Shanghai Himalayas Museum. Surplus Cameo Decor is an ongoing episodic series of ambient backdrops and cameo appearances which animate gallery settings as semi-fictional hubs for cinematic plots and atmospheres. Recasting the debris of arthouse cinema, future infrastructures and derelict resort architectures, Schmitz’ works populate galleries with the sprawling motifs of conjured-up remoteness and projected ‘elsewheres’.

The artist Edgar Schmitz photographing his work as part of CURRENT| 不合时宜: Contemporary Art from Scotland at Shanghai Himalayas Museum.

Award winning film director Zhao Da Yong making a cameo appearance of himself for Edgar Schmitz’s exhibition Surplus Cameo Decor: Sindanao 2, 2015, CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland, Shanghai Himalayas Museum.

Edgar Schmitz is an artist who is interested in the relationships between contemporary art and cinematic productions. He uses images, storylines as well as soundtracks from films in order to produce installations in art gallery spaces that are over-saturated with the promises of the multiple invoked elsewhere. His works operate as backdrops which turn the gallery into a film set for movies always yet to be made, and investigate how to best withdraw from the here and now of the present.

Poster Club’s exhibition Wheat, Mud, Machine presents a new body of work in the form of posters, stickers and garments. The title quite literally references the material properties of the objects represented in the works on exhibition, but also more obliquely to the digital and analogue technologies employed in Poster Club’s production of their art works. At the heart of Poster Club’s practice is a particular relationship with the manual and mechanic processes of screen-printing, block printing and digital print. Artist Peter Philips who was employed by Poster Club for an exhibition in 2011 (Eastside Projects, UK) succinctly captured this relationship when he declared,  “I don’t want to be a machine like Warhol, but I like the idea of using one”.

Installation view, Poster Club, Wheat, Mud, Machine, 2015, CURRENT| 不合时宜: Contemporary Art from Scotland, Shanghai Himalayas Museum.

Poster Club is a group of artists who collaborate on designing and printing posters. Using the poster format as an open-ended starting point for their projects, Poster Club’s primary interest is in using the medium of print as a site for experimental collaborative practice. Poster Club are Anne-Marie Copestake, Charlie Hammond, Tom O’Sullivan, Nicolas Party, Ciara Phillips and Michael Stumpf.

Poster Club are Artists in Residence for CURRENT| 不合时宜: Contemporary Art from Scotland at Shanghai Himalayas Museum’s residency venue Zhujiajiao Art Museum located at Zhujiajiao town.

Poster Club are currently undertaking a residency at Shanghai Himalayas Museum’s Residency Venue Zhujiajiao Art Museum located at Zhujiajiao town, a picturesque watertown in the southeast of Shanghai. Following on from Poster Club’s residency, Glasgow-based artist Anne-Marie Copestake will be in residence throughout July developing her work with local musicians in Shanghai, then from 15 – 31 July, art writer and member of Cooper Gallery’s Group Critical Writing initiative, Frances Davis will be the Art Writer in Residence, reflecting and annotating upon CURRENT |不合时宜 in Shanghai.

Panel Discussion at Hubs and Fictions: On Current Art and Imported Nearness Shanghai Forum Series #1, part of CURRENT| 不合时宜: Contemporary Art from Scotland at Shanghai Himalayas Museum.

The launch also saw the return of Cooper Gallery’s Hubs & Fictions with On Current Art & Imported Nearness, Shanghai Forum Series #1 with speakers including National Gallery of Modern Art Director Simon Groom, esteemed writer and theorist Terry Smith, the influential Shanghai-based artist and critic Wang Nanming and curatorial collective What, How & for Whom/WHW.

This project has been a long-time in the making and comes from 3 years of collaboration and development between Cooper Gallery and Shanghai Himalayas Museum. Find our more about the development of the project on the Cooper Gallery Notes blog here.

CURRENT |不合时宜: Contemporary Art from Scotland will take place at Shanghai Himalayas Museum in China. Keep updated on the Cooper Gallery website here.

All images courtesy of Shanghai Himalayas Museum and Cooper Gallery DJCAD.

More: Website | Twitter

//////

Find more events in our weekly bulletin here.

Model for Ideology VI, Nicola Dale, 2015

In 2013 I was awarded a month-long residency in Shanghai, China, courtesy of Metal Liverpool and Shanghai College of Fine Arts. I undertook a research and development trip that would inspire new artworks around the theme of knowledge and how our relationship to it is changing. As the ancient birthplace of paper, ink and books, and as the supreme manufacturer of electronic devices, China seemed the perfect place to go for someone wishing to learn more about the shift from the former to the latter.

Untitled, Nicola Dale, 2013

My overriding and lasting impression is that China is a double-edged place, simultaneously full of constraint and potential. There is a ferocious drive to tear down, start again, build and expand. The state channels the energy of millions of Chinese citizens into a devastatingly effective work ethic, but this comes at a cost: the unbelievably heavy burden of top-down work crushes creativity. Over there, perspiration is not inspiration. “Ideas” are not encouraged. “Imagination” is not in evidence. What a different world to ours – we Westerners wouldn’t know hard work if it booted us in the jaw, but we’re up to our necks in blue-sky thinking…

Photograph taken in Shanghai, Nicola Dale, 2013

My experience of China encouraged me to reflect on the path that my work takes. When I think about my process, I see that it can be broken down into three parts: the first is the most exciting – the ping of an unexpected connection, the thrill of the idea; the second is the most draining – making the work, dealing with its physicality; and the third is the most mysterious – the moment of understanding that comes once you see your work reflected in the eyes of others. With luck, the first and second parts of this process do a little dance together: they wiggle back and forth happily between idea and practical decision-making. However, this dance is easily destabilised: wallowing in ideas without realising them is an insult to your practical skills; becoming slave to a technique is offensive to your imagination and both are forms of cowardice. Being in China helped me to understand that my practice feeds off a BALANCE between constraint and potential, between letting my mind wander and hard work, between imagination and technique and that this balance is, above all else, what I should aim for with my process.

Kexy, Nicola Dale, 2014

Nicola Dale will be showing new work inspired by her residency in Shanghai as part of her forthcoming touring solo exhibition, Not so firm as faded ink. Commissioned and curated by Mark Devereux Projects, the exhibition will visit Centrespace Gallery (Bristol) from 11 – 22 April before moving on to Arcadecardiff (Cardiff) 15 – 23 May.

More: Website

//////

Want to read more blogs by artists? Look here.

No Man’s Art Gallery was founded by Dutch ex-lawyer, Emmelie Koster in 2010. In a very unusual career move, Koster suddenly decided to take up painting whilst in the second year of her masters degree in law. Unhappy with her paintings, she sold them online under a different name (Bob Koster) and set up an a fake art gallery to promote them. Soon afterwards, real artists began sending Emmelie their portfolios looking for representation. By the time she finished her studies and started her job as a lawyer, she realised that the gallery had become a project with serious potential and quit her legal career to focus on realising that potential.

© Max & Charlotte, Ou est Charlie, Piscine Pontoise, Paris V, 2009

The name ‘No Man’s Art Gallery’ refers to No Man’s Land, the land that has no laws and no set boundaries. No Man’s Art Gallery now provides an international platform for young artists by organising pop up galleries all over the world. Every three months they take on a different city to find local young artists with great talent. They exhibit the new-found artists’ work in their local city and travel with No Man’s Gallery to the next city. The exhibitions always show a wide variety of young artists, coming from all over the world. Previous exhibitions have been in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Mumbai, Paris, Copenhagen, and most recently in Shanghai.

Works by Sarah Wijzenbeek at the Mumbai Exhibition

The gallery has its headquarters in Amsterdam as well as a recently opened office in Copenhagen. They aim to promote artistic collaborations between the Netherlands and Denmark in addition to organising their pop-up galleries worldwide. No Man’s Art Gallery is the first art gallery to organise pop up galleries in a different country every few months. The exhibitions are open for a week before they are gone again and are always an adventure to visit. The location is secret, and only disclosed to those who sign up beforehand. So far, they’ve exhibited in special locations worldwide; the ruins of a cotton mill compound in Mumbai, a chapel on Vestre Kirkegaard in Copenhagen, a harbor building in Hamburg, an atomic shelter in Amsterdam.

© Daniel van der Noon, Mertropolis, 2012

In the three months preparation for a pop up gallery, they face the challenge of finding a location and setting up a complete network of artists, art lovers and buyers, members of the press, sponsors and local partners. They select their artists in a new city by contacting all art schools and visiting young ateliers to find the talents that the city has to offer. Everyone in No Man’s Art Gallery gets a say in the selection, and the final decisions are made by Emmelie Koster and Emma Sofie Jensen.

© Participant of the No Man’s Art Slum Photography Contest, Black Sludge, 2011

They also hope to be able to organise the No Man’s Art Slum Photography Contest annually. In 2011, private sponsorship for analogue cameras and film rolls was organised for 45 children from Dharavi, Mumbai, the biggest slum in Asia. The children were taught how to use the cameras in a short workshop and sent off to capture the moments in life that they enjoy the most. The results were absolutely amazing. All the children received the prints of their photos and a selection of the photos are now exhibited and for sale at No Man’s pop up galleries. The proceeds go directly back into buying new film and development of the film.

Mumbai Exhibition

Lyrical Artist Justus Raapgaarde reads his poetry at the Hamburg Exhibition

No Man’s Art Gallery’s latest pop-up gallery exhibition was in Shanghai. The exhibition featured local Chinese artists alongside the artists that were discovered at previous pop-up galleries in Copenhagen, Paris, Mumbai, Hamburg and Amsterdam. Additionally, three Chinese artists will be chosen to travel with No Man’s to their upcoming future exhibitions. Find out more here.

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter

//////

Browse through more of our Featured Venues.
Contact us to talk about a feature on your venue.