Blog Archives

My work Ladder (I), 2009 is included in The Book of Ladders: 100 Contemporary Artworks by Adeline de Monseignat and Paul Carey-Kent.

The piece was made for, and first shown in, my solo show ‘Or Some Other Time’ at the Kitchen in NYC, curated by Matthew Lyons. Install images of the show are here.

A great text by Giovanna Manzotti on Tim Etchells’s and my show at Renata Fabri in Milano in Mousse Magazine.

Happy to announce that Tim Etchells and I are doing a 2-person show at Renata Fabbri in Milano, opening 29 March. The show, titled Same River Twice, will run until 3 June 2023 – put it on your list if you are coming to Milano for MiArt in April…

From the press release:

Stemming from a long-lasting collaboration between the two artists – both work and life partners – the show is structured as a close dialogue between Horvat’s new sculptural works and works on paper and Etchells’s new neon pieces.

Linked by their reciprocal interest in the processes of repetition and in the exploration of structures that both produce and eschew variation, the artists employ a range of different media, such as sculpture, performance, writing, drawing, photography and video. The title of the exhibition, Same River Twice, is a fragment of the expression “You can’t step in the same river twice” and speaks to Horvat and Etchells’s shared preoccupation with ideas around change, transformation and instability. It also evokes the flow and movement of nature, bodies, time and language, explored in different ways by the works on show.

Through the interaction of various materials, such as paper, textiles, ceramic, wood and cork, Horvat’s sculptural works refer to gestures of holding, joining and cradling and raise questions around protection, containment and mobility. In several of the works on paper she reworks the page as an object, dismantling and repairing it while materially recording the passing of time. Etchells’s new neon pieces extend his ongoing work on contradictory aspects of language, drawing attention to the speed, clarity and vividness with which it communicates narrative, image and ideas, and its simultaneous propensity to create rich fields of uncertainty and ambiguity.

The show will run until 3 June 2023.

This past week I’ve been in Milano, working with the amazing master ceramicist Massimiliano Pipolo in his Fornace Ceramics Lab.

Massimiliano is an incredible maker, expert technician and teacher and I had the best time working alongside him and his studio assistant Claudia on some new ceramic pieces that will form a part of a new body of work loosely based on the phases of the moon.

This new series is one of several new pieces I’ve been busy making for my upcoming show at Renata Fabbri in Milan. The show, titled Same River Twice, is a two-person exhibition with the most wonderful Tim Etchells 🙂 opening on 29th March.

The pieces are now in the drying stage… Looking forward to going back to Milano in a couple of weeks.

Tomorrow! Friday, 10 June at 6pm at the ICA London:

I’m convening the opening session of Choreographic Devices – a 3-day symposium developed by Murat Adash, Ofri Cnaani, and Edgar Schmitz, in dialogue with the ICA.

For my session I will be joined by 7 other artists looking at instances of dysfunctional spatial (and social) relations – in art and in life.

With these wonderful people: Augusto Corrieri, Critical Interruptions (Diana Damian Martin & Bojana Janković), Edwina Ashton, Florian Roithmayr, Harun Morrison, Lara Pawson, Rebecca Moss.

—
Around Apart Under Behind Through Ahead: A Partial Lexicon of Spatial Dysfunction
(Vlatka Horvat and invited guests)

Focused on rethinking built and social space as an inherently choreographic act, Vlatka Horvat’s A Partial Lexicon of Spatial Dysfunction brings the artist into dialogue with seven invited guests – artists, writers, performance makers – in an event that shifts dynamically between talks, readings, discursive presentations and performative actions. Interrogating the relation between space, objects and human interactions, especially at the point where spatial relations collapse or transform unexpectedly, Horvat’s unruly reflection on the spatial/choreographic in daily life both performs and at the same time elaborates theoretically on the ways in which normative spatial practice might be reordered to create new social, artistic and political possibilities.

Full symposium programme and booking here.

My solo show at PEER closed recently. Thank you to all who visited, and extra thanks to all who left comments in the gallery book – it was really heartening to read.

Here’s the press roundup:

Interviews
Studio International (link) – Vlatka Horvat in conversation with Veronica Simpson
recessed.space (link) – Vlatka Horvat in conversation with Will Jennings

Reviews
artforum (link) – Review (critic’s pick) by Jonah Goldman Kay
Camera Austria (pdf) – Review by Orit Gat
Era Journal (link) – Reviewby Romilly Schulte

Featured lists
Artforum (link): MUST SEE
FAD magazine (link): The top 5 exhibitions by female artists – Micro feature by Tabish Khan
Evening Standard (link): “Culture in London: the faces to watch in 2022 – Visual art” – Feature by Ben Luke
a-n newsletter (link): “This month’s must-see exhibitions and events” – Feature by Ellen Wilkinson 
FAD magazine (link): The top 6 art books to read in spring 2022

Evenings with WHW Akademija

Thinking Back to What You Said, Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat

Tim and I are in conversation as part of the public programme Evenings with WHW Akademija.

Details below and at this link, where you can also find the Zoom link. Today, Monday, 25 April, 7pm CET / 6pm UK time.

https://akademija.whw.hr/posts/thinking-back-to-what-you-said

The series of public events Evenings with WHW Akademija is continuing with the public online conversation Thinking Back to What You Said in which Tim Etchells and Vlatka Horvat exchange a series of fragmentary reflections on their own practice and that of other artists.

Conceived as a dialogue improvised inside a rule-based structure, the presentation involves the two artists speaking about their own and about each other’s projects, as well as about select works by other artists that continue to inspire or inform their own work. Thinking Back to What You Said is a conversation and an improvised essay, an attempt to speak about art practice in a form born out of it. It’s also a glimpse of the ongoing conversation between Etchells and Horvat, whose occasional collaborations on exhibitions, publications, and other kinds of projects are buttressed by a longstanding and continually evolving shared discourse about processes, art works and their relation to viewers.

You can watch the whole program here:

The second evening of artist conversations around seeing the city ‘otherwise’.

By Hand on Foot conversations, Part 2
Thursday, 24 March 6-8pm
at PEER
97-99 Hoxton Street, London N1 6QL

with Andy Field & Beckie Darlington, Maria Mahfooz, Rebecca Moss and Graeme Miller.

By Hand, on Foot has been selected a Critics’ Pick on artforum.com. A great review of the show by Jonah Goldman Kay – in the press section here and on artforum.com.

By Hand, on Foot is reviewed in the new issue of Camera Austria. A generous reading of the show by Orit Gat – in the press section – here.

Join us tomorrow, Thursday 10 March at PEER, for the first of two artist conversations around seeing the city ‘otherwise’. 6pm start.

By Hand on Foot conversations, Part 1
with Jemima Yong, Lucy Joyce, Tara Fatehi Irani and me.

PEER is at 97-99 Hoxton Street, London N1 6QL.

Book here.