Simon Bill: 'Odd'
Modern Art
Until 5 August
Last chance to catch Bill's egg-shaped painterly investigation into elements as diverse as heraldic geometry, the science of technology and Kaiser Wilhelm. Known for his biomorphic manifestations, Bill has adopted a more formal approach with this series, the simplistic appearance of which is then cancelled out by an obtuse selection of titles. 'Hang the Kaiser', which features a curious helmet motif floating in the apex of the canvas atop a geometric ground, references the simultaneous advent of Cubism and WW1. Stevenson's decorative touch goes some way to closing the gap between the aims of the creator and the interpretive abilities of the viewer, but ultimately the experience smacks of losing at cards - you may know you're going down but will be left fruitlessly questioning by how much.
Simon Bill, 'Sheffield', 2006
oil on panel, 127 x 97 x 5 cm
Slava Mogutin & Brian Kenny: 'SuperM (But her Majesty's roastbeef curtains wouldn't open for him)'
Blow de la Barra
Until 10 August
This materially complex installation by the notorious Russian/American duo SuperM may be dominated by Slava Mogutin's denied entry to the UK (he was unable to attend the opening of the show), but this does not detract from the pair's visually arresting commitment to their wider cause - exposing the media, corporate and governmental ills that cause further disparity between social and ethnic groups. The chaotic collaborative centrepiece and namesake of the exhibition is an explosive monument to petty bureaucracy and over consumption: furniture, sportswear, London tourist trinkets and ERII memorabilia have been indescribably doctored, damaged and reconfigured with hazard tape, with menacing consequence. While on the walls, saucy, yet tender homoerotic photos jostle incongruously with the collaged machismo of American police shooting target posters. 'Send in the 400 Unruly Pigs' reads a headline on one - and for a moment it's possible to become the foreigner imagining that an Orwellian mob of swaggering swine may be launched on an unsuspecting public.
Slava Mogutin & Brian Kenny
Michael Stevenson: 'A few questions about bananas'
Vilma Gold
Until 12 August
Michael Stevenson's take on economics - in this case as the political driver between North and South America - is not a dry or bombastic take on capitalist greed but a sensitive evaluation of the decline of an unwitting nation. The New Zealand artist's sculptural centrepiece is a reconstruction of the Central Bank of Guatemala's lost 'Moniac' - a hydro mechanical device designed by a fellow Kiwi in 1949 to illustrate capital flow - with blood red fluid flowing haphazardly through defunct sluices and worn out valves. Initially available to view from a grilled gallery window, this interpretively poetic construction brings the advertorial sensationalism of an accompanying American government film on the co-dependent trade relationship between the two regions literally down to Earth.
Michael Stevenson, 'The Fountain of Prosperity', 2003
mixed media, 245 x 157 x 111 cm
'Consequence'
Museum 52
Until 18 August
This group show takes the idea of acceptance or resistance to the process of decay as its central theme. And the dissipative quality to the dispersion of energy in each well-selected piece is certainly palpable. The gradual sense of decline into disorder transmutes from the quietly meditative qualities of Corin Hewitt's burning candle and Frank Selby's tentative self-perpetuating blue pencil study of a dead bee, to the poky dynamism of Phillip Hausmeier's arch of broken mirrors that dares you to witness the risk involved in its manufacture while reflecting back any careful navigation of its reconfigured parts.
Sara van der Neek, 'Imperial End', 2007
Kate Terry: 'Empty voluminous'
1000000mph Project Space (T: m +44 (0)7974 174111)
Until 19 August
As an artistic offering, Kate Terry's sculptural manifestation of single red threads is closer to aesthetic entrapment than an invitation to view. From certain angles the two kite-like forms, pinned delicately between walls, net the space with alarming logic-defying precision, from others they seem hardly to exist at all. Terry's post-Minimalist brand of interventional sculpture fuses the accidental physical poetry of maths with the haphazard spatial dynamics of the gallery to great, if rather familiar, effect.
Kate Terry
'Stick*Stamp*Fly'
Gasworks
10 - 26 August
Gasworks are following the success of 'Blink', their first foray into open submission exhibitions all about animation, with an exploration into the messaging power and art historical significance of the poster. With a permanent display of some 80 works selected by a variety of UK practitioners and a series of events, they aim to embody the spirit of posting - as a creative process and physical act. From product placement to potential services rendered and the art and graphic territory in between, the exhibition dialectic promises to be as fluid as the performative sideshows.
'Stick*Stamp*Fly'
'Play yourself'
Gimpel Fils
Until 1 September
The gallery's inviting, almost profane title (borrowed from Jazz musician Charles Mingus) feels ripe for the testing when in front of Juneau Projects' folkishly customised drum kit. This group show loosely draped around art, music and identity steers virtually clear of clichéd rock 'n' roll territory, opting in every sense for alt, improv and the accidental instrumentals that emerge during everyday observation. Mark Dean's multi-screen film 'Band', comprised of child singers and musicians jamming over fragments of their own pre-recorded sounds, provides the sweetly discordant soundtrack to the show, while Lucy Stein's angsty sketches explore the role of pop music in defining the female youth experience from both sides of the 'cool' divide.
Juneau Projects, 'Traditional Grip'
Keith Arnatt: 'I'm a real photographer'
The Photographers' Gallery
Until 2 September
British photographer Keith Arnatt has been using the combination of text and image in his photography to explore conceptual concerns since the early seventies. Long before Gillian Wearing's portraits of labelled strangers Arnatt snapped himself adhered to the note "I'm a real artist" and began an ongoing record of the directions and messages left pinned to the fridge and other places by his wife. Black and white portraits of 'outsiders' (whether holiday makers or people on the move) have an Arbus-like quality, while in the 'Objects from a rubbish tip series' Arnatt creates abject theatre and painterly de Kooning backdrops from urban refuse. When you consider his sublime and humorous means of distilling art from 'real life', it seems strange that Arnatt isn't a name we're more familiar with.
Keith Arnatt, 'Untitled' from the series 'Notes from Jo', 1990 - 1994
'Kenneth Martin & Mary Martin: constructed works'
Camden Arts Centre
Until 16 September
They lived and worked together for much of their lives and shared similar theoretical concerns, but surprisingly, the sculptural works of these key exponents of British Abstraction have only been shown together a handful of times. The structural elegance of Kenneth's ambitious industrial mobiles and kinetic sculptures and Mary's innovative wall-based works is in no small part due to the mathematical principles they rigorously adhered to and a lack of available materials in the wake of WW11. The Utopian beliefs at the centre of the Martin's dovetailed practices may bear little relevance to current socio-architectural thought but it's a hard heart that remains untouched by the purity of their expression.
Kenneth Martin & Mary Martin
Warhol vs. Banksy
The Hospital with Pollock Fine Art
10 August - 1 September
It seems rather unfair that this two-person show is being pitched with all the hype of a boxing match when one of the artists is already dead. Yet when you witness for an instant, side by side on the galleries' webpage Warhol's 'Marilyn' and Banksy's Kate Moss as 'Marilyn' it seems clear that the latter's contemporary critique will be given a serious run for its money. This graphic face-off will feature old favourites such as Warhol's elegiac portrait and Banksy's bestial rendering of the Queen, with the UK premiere of Warhol's drawings of the Beatles and Banksy's strident painted response to the defacement of the Churchill monument during the anarchist London riots of 2004. As the cults of celebrity and politics move ever closer just who will be the icons of the age?
Banksy, 'Kate (original colourway)', 2005 |
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Rebecca Geldard is a freelance writer and critic living in London. 
