From Charles Atlas’ ICA Milano exhibition to browsing photographs in Magnum’s latest Square Print Sale
- TextBelle Hutton
Take a virtual tour of Charles Atlas’ new exhibition
Video art pioneer Charles Atlas’ ICA Milano show, Ominous, Glamorous, Momentous, Ridiculous, was due to be staged this month, and the institution has moved the exhibition online for visitors to enjoy during isolation. Alongside new work, the show features some of Atlas’ seminal work with the likes of Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. “I’m interested in innovation ... I try to learn something new on every project,” the artist tells AnOther. “If you want to push yourself and not just repeat things, then you have to do something new. Now that I’m in lockdown that means learning new software.”
Andy Warhol at Tate Modern
Tate Modern’s much-anticipated Andy Warhol exhibition had been open for just under two weeks when the UK was put into lockdown on March 23, meaning Tate’s galleries had to close. A comprehensive, room-by-room video guide to the exhibition launched online this week, where you can discover Warhol’s superstars, storied Silver Factory, and a lesser-known series spotlighting black and Latinx drag queens and trans women from home. (Tim Blanks also recommends reading Blake Gopnik’s “doorstop of a biography” of Warhol while isolation continues.)
Buy a photo from the Magnum Square Print Sale
‘Turning Points’ is the theme for the latest edition of the Magnum Square Print Sale, which is staged by the mammoth photographic agency twice a year and sees museum-quality prints by some of the world’s finest image-makers available to buy for just $100. From Alec Soth and Chris Steele-Perkins to Susan Meiselas and Elliott Erwitt, the sale counts over 120 participating photographers, and is held in collaboration with The Everyday Projects. Plus, Magnum photographers are donating 50 per cent of sale profits to Médecins Sans Frontières’ Covid-19 emergency response. (See the AnOther Magazine team’s favourite photos from the sale here.)
Listen to Alexander McQueen show soundtracks
Alexander McQueen has launched on Spotify with McQueen Music, a playlist curated by John Gosling – who has devised music for the house’s shows for 20 years – full of previous show soundtracks. Gosling’s current selection amounts to nine hours of music, from Mozart to Philip Glass.
Read Tales from the Colony Room: Soho’s Last Bohemia
Forthcoming book Tales from the Colony Room (published on April 16 by Unbound) details stories from Soho haunt The Colony Room Club, which for 50 years drew in some of the city’s greatest artists as longtime members – think Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk and Damien Hirst. Founded by Muriel Belcher in 1948, the notorious Dean Street club closed in 2008. Darren Coffield’s history of the club – which was due to accompany an exhibition of work by its most notable artist members – presents fascinating stories from ‘Soho’s last bohemia’.
See new art everyday on Free Wall Space
Artists Henry Kitcher and George Stuart have set up Free Wall Space, an ever-evolving digital platform on which contributors can showcase artworks for the day – the ‘wall space’ of the project’s title is updated daily at 3pm. “George and I were discussing contemporary art in the age of quarantine,” Kitcher explains. “We wanted to create a platform where artists could share their work that wasn’t Instagram or their personal websites – a space that felt curated for artists and art-lovers alike to come to once a day to provide creative sustenance and inspiration. The rather simple idea of an exhibition that never ends featuring a diverse selection of artists from around the world felt fresh, and our friend Clarke Rudick came up with the term ‘infinite group show’ to describe the concept.”
Read Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation
A now-postponed exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, looks back to the art world of the 1980s, and the influence of hip-hop and graffiti on seminal artist Basquiat and many of his contemporaries and collaborators. The exhibition’s catalogue offers a look inside the show, detailing Basquiat’s painting, sculpture, drawing, video, music and fashion works that took influence from his interest in New York’s street art. Plus, the Boston museum has published a playlist on Spotify put together by Writing the Future’s co-curator Greg Tate, featuring music from New York’s post-graffiti era.
Watch BFI Flare online
Like so many other festivals and exhibitions due to take place this month, the British Film Institute’s Flare LGBT Festival has been cancelled. The BFI, however, has moved the extensive Flare programme online, where both new releases due to premiere at the festival – including Levan Akin’s And Then We Danced – and storied LGBT films are available to view online with a BFI Player subscription (the institution also houses a large selection films to watch centring on LGBT history in Britain in its free collections too). For more film recommendations, see Deeper Into Movies’ Steven T. Hanley’s ultimate self-isolation list – helpfully broken down by streaming platform.
