Latest Art

Yep! It’s here. Issue four of Latest Art hit the stands yesterday… so make sure you go out and get your copy before they disappear!

With a specially commissioned cover by former KLF frontman Jimmy Cauty and a feature interview with him inside the magazine, it’s a very special issue indeed.

The whole thing will be available to read online as of tomorrow – let me know what you think!

Issue five is already underway and will be a special bumper Brighton Festival issue coming out on May 1st. Contact us now if you want to be a part of it!

CHRISTOPH BÜCHEL

Last chance to see Simply Botiful

11 October 2006 - 18 March 2007

“Five stars isn’t enough to praise this giant installation. This is the show of the year…Voyeurism goes into overdrive here. All the objects and rooms can be touched and interacted with. There are lots of secret spaces, ladders to climb and holes to crawl through and explore. It would be cruel to reveal their details and ruin the sensation of discovery” Francesca Gavin, BBC

“Simply Botiful says more about the world we live in today than a giant chrome slide, and, in its dark way, it is just as much fun” Matt Lippiatt, The Times

“If the work is disorienting, it is because of this oscillation in attention between the miniscule and the vast, the self-evident and the ungraspably complex.” Paul Myerscough, London Review of Books

A major exhibition by Swiss artist Christoph Büchel at Hauser & Wirth’s gallery’s East London space Coppermill has attracted the highest number of visitors to the space and garnered huge numbers of plaudits from the public and the press.

As the show nears its final month, visitor figures to Simply Botiful have reached 7,000, with thousands more expected to view the interactive installation before the exhibition closes.

Büchel’s work is informed by an explicit political awareness, telling us about new forms of propaganda in an era of mediated war. His complex installations force his audience to participate in scenarios that are physically demanding and psychologically unsettling. Cramped tunnels, claustrophobic chambers and frequent dead-ends induce feelings of panic and paranoia.

Gallery director Gregor Muir said of the work that there is “too much to sum up in one meaning”, but that he sees it as a “twist on global warming.”

Buchel’s hugely successful transformation of the Coppermill space can be seen until March 18th.

CHRISTOPH BüCHEL AT HAUSER & WIRTH COPPERMILL

Opening hours:
Thursday - Sunday, 12-7pm, until 18 March 2007

Address: 92-108 Cheshire Street
Tube: Shoreditch / Whitechapel / Old Street
Prices: Free

For further information and visuals please contact:

Idea Generation : +44(0) 20 7428 4949
Liz Barrett: liz@ideageneration.co.uk

Hauser and Wirth: +44(0) 20 7287 2300
Email: london@hauserwirth.com

Links: Idea Generation Hauser and Wirth

Beyond all reason/ Beyond all my hopes/ Another war zone…
OOh, how lovely. On Valentine’s Day this year, I received a series of artist’s books, ‘visual notebooks’, called ‘Milk and Two Sugars’ from the rather inventive duo Bob Milner and Tom Senior in Wakefield; so big love to them. There’s nothing more pleasing when coming to the end of an issue than to receive unsolicited mail from a couple of fun hipsters; especially when you find the answer to the theme so neatly summed up. If only I’d known about their ‘Take over the world’ issue, I’d have squeezed some of their gems into the mag.

Here’s the opening snippet: -

‘War is the thing. In a world where the West is moving away from manufacturing and more toward a leisure and service sector and with the glut of media coverage of every sneeze and whim of the political class, it would be the hope that war would recede as a viable option.

No-one believes the propoganda anymore. Unless a conflict caused an increase in the need for call centres, how would any country benefit materially?

War as it was is an old fashioned concept. The manner of destruction may change and the type of enemy shifts from a nation to a group of unseen bogeymen but the very heart of the issue is that war is so last century, darling.’

Yes! And after the polemic come the puns…

The Road to World Peace, they offer, could come from these easy steps:

1. Make organised religion, like masturbation, a private obsession. Remove it from society.

2. Abolish money. Money and power are inextricably linked. People in power kill to maintain that position. All government should be voluntary.

3. Establish a global force for good. You are reading it; spread the love!

Let ‘circle jerking’ decide truly sticky international problems.

Make a large floating Israel out of boats and topsoil. Free to drift around the globe and large enough to defy the oceans’ wildest currents, it could become a model for peace and tranquility.

Hurrah! A little bit of sophisticated humour to shed light on the darkest of themes! It did wonders for me, all gloomy and despondent with all this talk of war which just can’t help intruding itself on discussions of love and peace. So keep the mysterious missives coming; they brighten my days…

So you’re itching to see the next issue of the magazine, I know. Me too. It’s not fair to keep you waiting for so long, even though that special day is now only a week away…

In the meantime, how about a couple of Peace and Love-themed hors d’oeuvres to whet the whistle? To oil the mental cogs and keep them a-whirring and a-whinnying? Well, here’s one for starters then!

The article below, from The Guardian last week, neatly answers one of the most significant questions asked during the production of the next issue of Latest Art: – why are there so few prominent artists making work about the War on Terror and taking a stand on the politics of today? I’m not sure that pedestrian petitioning in the form of a peace rally really qualifies as ‘making work’ so much perhaps as making light work of heavy issues, but that’s one for the soapbox probably, innit?

In the face of a failure of positive means to communicate dissent or get one’s voice heard, what is to be done? What to do when rallying cries dissolve into thin air and Brian Haw’s installation of flags, banners and peace paraphernalia formerly outside Westminster is confiscated under the ‘Serious Organised Crime and Police Act’ recently instated by Parliament? Hah! Go and see it re-installed as art by Mark Wallinger in Tate Britain, I suppose…

Duncan Campbell
Friday February 16, 2007
The Guardian

A battalion of writers, actors, artists and comedians went into action yesterday to call for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq and to urge MPs to vote against the replacement of Trident.
Publicising next week’s anti-war marches in London and Glasgow, the group also warned of the increasing dangers of a potential US-led war on Iran.Jessica Lange, the actor who is currently performing in London’s West End in The Glass Menagerie, called for all coalition troops to leave Iraq. “George Bush’s plan to deploy more troops in Iraq was as immoral and criminal as the initial invasion and occupation,” she said in a statement. “The majority of the American people are held hostage by an administration which not only does not represent but arrogantly denies the will of the people.”Mark Thomas, the comedian, said that it was bizarre that the government appeared to take more notice of a million motorists opposing road pricing in an online petition than of the million who had marched against the Iraq war in February 2003.

The novelist China Miéville attacked the “craven set of backbenchers” who failed to oppose the war. “This is a disgrace, they have forgotten who works for whom. This is a march to reclaim democracy.”

Among those attending the gathering or sending messages of support yesterday were the actors Richard Wilson and Timothy West, the designers Katherine Hamnett and Vivienne Westwood, the musician Dave Randall from Faithless, artists David Gentleman and Peter Kennard, the cartoonist Leon Kuhn and the playwright Caryl Churchill.

MPs are due to vote next month on the future of Trident, Kate Hudson, chair of the CND, reminded the gathering. She said that more than 120 MPs had already indicated that they would oppose it and she said that opposition to Trident among the general public was increasing daily.

The marches will be on February 24 and assemble at noon at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London, and in George Square in Glasgow.

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