By Abdi Ali
Published August 27, 2015
As August ends art lovers shall be delighted to know that their senses shall feast on African cultural paintings in Nairobi (Kenya), music played with clay in Goodwood (West Sussex, UK) and photographs and more photographs across UK’s East London.
RELATED: Here’s Your Nairobi Arts Diary for August 2015
So, here we go. Nairobi’s Karen Blixen Museum has an exhibition titled African Cultural Paintings that ends on September 15, 2015. The show, by Joseph Muchina, runs 10.00AM-4.30PM daily.
Over the course of August 27–November 8, 2015, Cass Sculpture Foundation in Goodwood, West Sussex, United Kingdom, shall unveil an exhibition of new works produced through a new, open-source sculpture in the form of a wood-burning outdoor kiln. Intended to provide a permanent resource for artists and ceramicists, as well as acting as an artwork in itself, the kiln’s first project will be to fire new ceramic works by a group of 10 of the UK’s most talented artists: Aaron Angell, Mark Essen, Alex Hoda and Robert Rush, Paulina Michnowska, Laure Prouvost, Giles Round, Jackson Sprague, Adam Sutherland, Bedwyr Williams and Jesse Wine.
RELATED: Nomad Turkana-Inspired Art Exhibition Comes to Nairobi National Museum
Cass invited artists Alex Hoda and Robert Rush to guest-curate an exhibition of contemporary artists working in ceramics. The new works, each commissioned by Cass, will be fired on site, and exhibited in the organisation’s Main Gallery.
Each work will explore the theme of Rough Music. The term refers to the English folk practice, common in the 18th and 19th centuries, whereby individuals who had offended the community through some domestic misdemeanour were publicly ridiculed by rowdy and cacophonous performances conducted by mobs outside their homes. Effigies were often involved, as were rhymes, songs, insults, crude theatre and the banging of pots and pans. In many ways, rough music was a vernacular form of vigilante satire and equivalent rituals existed in many other countries.
RELATED: Kenyan Artists’ Protest Forces Closure of ‘Kenyan’ Pavilion at 56th Venice Biennale
Following this theme, and with the intention of exploring ‘Ëœthe expressive, aesthetic or conceptual potential available within failure, accident and the arbitrary’, each of the selected artists will be responding to the theme in their own personal way, participating in the rough-music tradition by producing new ceramic works that bear the marks of domesticity and absurdity.
Alongside their new works for Rough Music, each artist will also fire wasters in the kiln at Cass Sculpture Foundation. These wasters will be the subject of an exhibition at London-based gallery Edel Assanti (September 8-October 3, 2015). Wasters are items that fail in the firing and are therefore regarded as waste items. However, in the common parlance of wood firing, the term has now come to refer to any piece of ceramic whose primary function is utilitarian, to keep the chamber temperature even. These wasters often have a secondary function as an amusement to their maker.
Matter, a new initiative from artist and designer Seetal Solanki dedicated to exploring the properties and processes concerning the materials that surround humans, shall be launched with a six-day exhibition during the London Design Festival: Living in a Material World, on September 22, 2015.
RELATED: Nairobi’s Public Court Over-rules Gate-keepers, Pulls down Offensive ‘Artwork’
After the official launch at One Good Deed Today, 73 Kingsland Road, London E2, Matter shall present six days of talks, demonstrations and events themed around the relationship between materials and the five human senses.
Come October 1-November 30, 2015, galleries and venues across East London shall mark the Photomonth with exhibitions of photographs.Since 2001 photomonth has become one of the largest and most inclusive festivals in the UK with well over 100 exhibitions and events involving more than 500 artists.
In 2015 photomonth includes the photobook weekend and the photoblock at the Old Truman Brewery, the photo-open and portfolio review at the Rich Mix, and a wide-ranging programme of exhibitions, events, artists talks, seminars, workshops & courses providing opportunities for everyone to engage in and enjoy photography.
Photomonth opens on October 1, 2015 at theprintspace with Harrodsburg, a remarkable body of work by Glaswegian photographer Dougie Wallace who continues to push the boundaries of the social documentary genre. Harrodsburg tells a story of glut, greed and the widening wealth gap playing out on the streets of a city that is going through unprecedented social change.
RELATED: Stolen African Art Possesses and Revolutionises Western Creativity
