Exhibitions

Larry Achiampong: Wayfinder

10am – 5pm

British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong works in film, sculpture, installation, sound, collage, music and performance. His work draws on popular culture and his communal and personal heritage.

Included in his first major UK solo show to date is Achiampong’s debut feature length film Wayfinder, as well as a large presentation of his Pan African flags, life-sized Relic Traveller figures and Glyth collages. It also reveals some of his influences from video games to the landscape paintings of JMW Turner.

Exhibition events

Related

£0.00

Inside Out: Investigating Drawing

Exhibiting artists: Jack Duplock, Laurence Elliott, Stephen Groom, Andrew Mania, Jamie Shovlin, Mari Sunna, Julie Verhoveven & Roxy Walsh Inside Out has drawing as its focus. The selected artists, whilst all very different, share an interest in the human form or their work includes figurative elements. Much of the work has the quality of ‘fragmented dreams’, and explores the mental landscape of the artist’s psyche. Some of it is mysterious, some autobiographical, some humorous or even nightmarish, and many create intriguing narratives for the viewer to explore personal visions and alternative ways of looking around the world. The appropriation of imagery from horror films, comics and memories of stories and places visited to create environments, is also inspiration for some works. The exhibition reveals how artists can use a combination of collage and non-art materials such as glitter and felt tip pens to create imagery with a low budget, but compelling aesthetic.

£0.00

Giuseppe Penone: The Imprint of Drawing

The Imprint of Drawing was the first solo exhibition in a British public gallery for fifteen years by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone. Penone (b.1947) first achieved recognition for his work associated with the Arte Povera movement in Italy in the 1960s, in which artists worked using materials from daily life such as sand, earth, stones, fabric and newspapers. They used these simple materials in order to push the boundaries between art and nature, and to show connections among all organic life, in a process of open-ended experimentation. The Imprint of Drawing featured around twelve of Penone's impressive large-scale drawings and a selection of the artists' sketches made between 1968 and 2003. The exhibition focused on Penone's impressive contributions to drawing over his 35-year career. Penone's ambitious, yet understated drawings magnify the delicate sensory surfaces of the artists' body, such as his eyelids and fingertips, to landscape-like proportions, reflecting upon the body's relationship to physical space. His work simultaneously refers to the visual and tactile, and creates formal and conceptual connections between drawing and sculpture. Penone is inspired by the quiet slowness, growth, and time of the natural world. For example, several of his series of drawings are imprints of his own skin, magnified so that their patterns take on characteristics similar to those within nature such as leaves or tree trunks, that continue to change and grow. As a result of the deliberately slow pace of his artistic process, Penone's work suggests a sense of time much larger than our own existence, and an awareness of the union of his own body and nature found in even its smallest parts.

£0.00

Michael Craig-Martin: Surfacing

In the gallery Craig-Martin presented a selection of new work made specifically for the exhibition. Known for his sweeping, brightly coloured canvases that depict a repertoire of everyday objects, his art is one of maximum economy and maximum impact. Central to his work is the act of drawing and an investigation of line, space and form. Transcribing these images onto the painting’s surface using a distinctive black tape, the painted objects flicker between foreground and background, between line and image. The everyday objects, invariably have a practical use; a drawer that opens, a chair to be sat on or a shoe awaiting its owner’s foot. All suggest a form of human interaction which is forever absent. In an intriguing new departure, Craig-Martin showed works based on two major paintings in Western art history – Piero della Francesca’s The Flagellation (1452) and Georges Seurat’s The Bathers at Asnières (1884). Here he deconstructed and redrew them in order to create new paintings, replacing the original colour with his familiar vivid palette. A striking new work that took the form of specially printed black and white wallpaper was also shown. This pull towards the domestic was echoed in the selection of images that erupted across the wall surface, such as chairs, light bulbs, and shoes. Colour was introduced through the placement of eleven smaller canvases that mapped the same motif as the wallpaper, and transformed the plane of the wall into a three-dimensional relief.

£0.00

Keith Wilson: Galvanised

Best known for his playful sculptural interventions in the fabric of everyday life, for his exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery UK artist Keith Wilson made a series of sculptures or performative structures that directly engage the body. These large, galvanised steel structures, influenced by cattle markets and animal pens, retained a distinct agricultural character. Previously exhibited in outside locations, at Milton Keynes Gallery they were displayed inside, engaging the specific architecture of the gallery. The Gallery also placed a number of Wilson's sculptures offsite at The Open University Campus, Milton Keynes.

£0.00

Boyd & Evans: Landmarks

Residents of Milton Keynes for almost thirty years, Fionnuala Boyd and Les Evans began working together in 1968 and have exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Their practice incorporates traditional drawing and painting techniques, colour and black and white photography, and more recently digital imaging. Sometimes painting is dominant, sometimes photography, their subjects ranging from the personal to the epic. For the past five years they have created images broadly inspired by the abundance of natural wonders in the American landscape. For their exhibition at MK Gallery, Boyd & Evans showed new images drawn from a six week research trip in the USA, alongside a selection of earlier work. The exhibition featured examples of Boyd & Evans' 'colour in black and white process'. This process, using computer-imaging software, involves the removal of colour from all but the chosen area of focus. The reworking of the photograph intensifies the subjects' natural colour and we are prompted to experience a revival of the sensation of 'looking for the first time' at something extraordinary.

£0.00

Phil Collins: yeah…..you, baby you

UK artist Phil Collins' exhibition for Milton Keynes Gallery was his most comprehensive to date and comprised a selection of video and photographic projects and a new commission for Milton Keynes. The show included the UK première of Collins' remarkable two-screen video installation they shoot horses, 2004. For this work Collins went to Ramallah, Palestine, where he auditioned a number of young people to participate in an 8 hour 'disco-dance marathon'. The resulting film was by turns energetic, amusing, beguiling and moving. The work is about survivalism and collapse, heroism and exploitation and the cabin fever mentality generated by eight hours of repetitive action. Also shown was the world won't listen, (2005), a karaoke machine made for fans of The Smiths in Bogotá. Working with local musicians, Collins re-recorded the backing tracks of the entire album and after a city-wide campaign filmed sixty singers over three days. This exhibition was organised by Milton Keynes Gallery and subsequently toured to The National Gallery of Arts, Tirana, Albania; firstsite, Colchester; Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea, and Neue Kunst Halle, St.Gallen, Switzerland.

£0.00

Folk Archive: Contemporary Popular Art from the UK

Produced by Alan Kane and Jeremy Deller From our two small collections of modest objects and pictures and an ensuing conversation about the Millenium Dome's corporate representation of the UK, the question arose for us as to what might constitute present day folk art. Some seven years later, 'Folk Archive' is our response to this question and our celebration of the creative life of Britain. (Kane & Deller) Artists Alan Kane and 2004 Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller presented a selection of works from their contemporary Folk Archive. Kane and Deller's ongoing research has explored and documented both traditional and contemporary forms of popular creativity, that brings works from one of public display to the more traditional presentation of art in a gallery. From gurning to graffiti, and tapestry to sculptures made from vegetables, Kane and Deller's project is testament to the enduring compulsion for people to find creative forms of community and individual expression. The variety of their collection was reflected in MK G's exhibition, which presented video, drawings, paintings along with objects including Snowdrop, a working, life size mechanical elephant. Energetic and engaging, this exhibition suggested how popular art has developed and questions what might constitute present day folk art.

£0.00

Daniele Puppi: Fatica n.28

Daniele Puppi is amongst the most exciting young Italian artists of his generation. Using video projection and sound, Puppi's work is a direct response to the architecture of the gallery. His work takes two forms; 'Frammenti' (fragments), photographs that evolve from the artist's engagement with a space and 'Fatiche' (efforts) which take the form of sculptural video installations. Projected large scale and with a startling intensity, Puppi's imagery often comes from the artist's own actions in the gallery; a hand – enormous in size – projected to appear slamming against the gallery wall or the artist's leg – colossal – projected as if 'ploughing' through two storeys of a building. For Puppi, the surroundings are not simply a neutral place that hosts the work of the artist, but the raw material from which the work emerges and takes form. Through the artist's distinctive treatment of his subject matter, he demonstrates that rare ability to elevate the most mundane, everyday action to the most profound.

£0.00

Kristian Ryokan

MK G presented the first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery by the British painter Kristian Ryokan. The exhibition comprised a selection of paintings intricately crafted in oil and acrylic on canvas. Ryokan plunders with an energetic enthusiasm, from the world around him using a range of everyday objects, images and signs such as monopoly boards, star wars toys, telephone cards and racing cars. Informed by the influence of Buddhist teachings, Ryokan’s paintings are often constructed with a visual play in mind. For instance a painting of a flock of pelicans in diamond formation is entitled ‘747’ (2001) and ‘Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki Zen’ (2003) depicts a D-type Jaguar seen head on. The analytical attention to detail is exquisite, the rendering of metallic and painted surfaces reveals a discerning draughtsmanship; everything is convincing until one notices the car manufacturers’ name has been replaced to simply read ‘zen’ referring to Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki the zen master. Ryokan’s subject matter often relates to a contemplation of time and escapism, activities that are removed from the day to day routine; motor racing, sailing or simply playing games. Ryokan’s work can be interpreted as looking for a balance between spirituality and materialism.

£0.00

Pae White: in no particular order

Milton Keynes Gallery presented the first solo exhibition in a British public gallery by Californian- based artist Pae White. The exhibition included new and recent work and served to introduce the varied strands of her artistic practice, that shifts effortlessly across differing genres and media, from fine art and product design to architecture and urban planning, typography and graphics. White's work is often low-tech, comprised, for instance, of repeatedly made cardboard cut-outs, delicate wire constructions, suspended mobiles or evocative ephemeral wall paintings made direct onto the building's surface. Central to her work is the playful exploration of the experience of space and light within a specific architectural setting, that results in a visually engaging experience. Of particular note are White’s papercut mobiles, such as ‘Oroscopo’, 2004. Cascading from scores of nylon threads, these brightly coloured cardboard ovoids perceptually flicker and tantalise the viewer. As ever, there is an in-built responsiveness to the conditions of the gallery space, either through the refraction of light or the passing disruption of air as a viewer walks by. A new installation, specially made for the exhibition, comprised a wall painting featuring White's characteristic 'fading' of one colour into another—at MK G turquoise into black. A selection of White's drawings, designed posters and the display of collaborative artist's books were also included in the exhibition.

£0.00

Shirana Shahbazi

This exhibition by the Iranian artist Shirana Shahbazi consisted of recent and new work including a series of tapestries, photographs and poster installation. Shahbazi uses photography to explore the classic genres of art history; portraiture, still life, landscape and history painting, both from an 'Oriental' and Western perspective. In so doing, she calls into question the exotic clichés that so often arise when engaging work from a Middle Eastern context. The exhibition featured her best known series – Goftare Nik/Good Words (2000-2001). It takes its title from the Zoroastrian maxim 'good thoughts, good words, good deeds'. This series was photographed in and around Tehran and is a compendium of social role models and social phenomena. It is a reflection on Iran, on myth-laden Persia and its portrayal and self-portrayal. Shahbazi's images exist in varying formats and media, from the small to the monumental, and her subject matter ranges from the incidental to the epic. Shahbazi's work engages traditional Iranian craft and artistic practices. This exhibition included some large format paintings made by Iranian painters employed in the advertising industry, and traditional hand woven carpets featuring exquisitely crafted images deriving from Shahbazi's original photographs. The format of Shahbazi's works reconciles the traditional with the contemporary but also questions the very cultural hierarchies on which we so often base our assumptions.

£0.00