The Last Days: A new film by Liane Lang

London-based artist Liane Lang, much of whose video, installation and photographic work is grounded in a sculptural sensibility, has just completed a new video work entitled The Last Days which is currently showing at the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

15 Fontanepromenade in Berlin Kreuzberg was built in 1906 as an administrative building. In 1936 it became the Jewish Job Centre, a euphemism for the administration of Jewish forced labour and later a registration point for deportation. After the war it was given to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who used it for many decades. Now the building stands empty, awaiting developments.

Lang's new film uses the building's interiors to construct a poetic meditation on memory and loss. Her ability to breathe quirky life into the most humble discarded objects and to suggest a lingering human presence within the building's crumbling plaster walls combine to deliver a sense of the Unheimlich that runs through much of her video work. 

For more information visit Liane's website at www.lianelang.com

Steve Russell's book of Africa photographs with an introductory text by Tom Flynn will be launched at Pangolin Laonon on Thursday February 28th

This month sees the launch of Katonda Wenge, Steve Russell's new book of photographs of Africa, for which Sculpture Agency founder Tom Flynn wrote the introductory essay. Steve has built an international reputation as the most sensitive and intuitive photographer of sculpture, a notoriously difficult thing to photograph due the vagaries of ambient light on variably reflecting surfaces and the fact that sculptures invariably offer multiple possible viewpoints.

Steve has collaborated on numerous occasions with the Pangolin bronze foundry in Chalford, Stroud. In recent years he has made a number of visits to Uganda to photograph the foundry and workshops set up there by the Ruwenzori Sculpture Foundation, a charitable body established by Pangolin founders Rungwe Kingdon and Claude Koenig that promotes creative dialogue and skill-sharing between African and UK sculptors and craftspeople.

Thus it is appropriate that Steve's book launch will take place at Pangolin's London gallery at King's Place, Kings Cross on February 28th. The publication is altogether well-timed given the current popularity of David Attenborough's stunning TV series on Africa (still available on the BBC iPlayer). Steve has titled his book Katonda Wenge, which means "Oh My God!" in the Luganda language of Uganda. That was how one of Steve's portrait subjects responded when he showed her the photo he'd taken of her.

For more infotrmation, visit Steve's website at SteveRussellStudios.com and Pangolin London's website here.

Sculptor Tom Hackett shows new work at the National Shoe Collection, Northampton, Museum and Art Gallery

Once is an accident, twice is a revolution comprises 1000 pink silicone jelly shoe forms placed to form a large floor sculpture to dominate the visual field with a bright slightly undulating circular mass of colour. "Reading initially as factory made, or direct casts, a closer inspection reveals them as duplicates from observational studies of the artist’s collection of found single children’s jellies. Individually viewed they function as curious and intriguing objects, collectively they generate an extraordinary and displaced entity", writes the exhibition's curator.

"Once is an accident, twice is a revolution is a meditation on repetition and workmanship in art. The duplication of the iconic children’s shoe form en masse the work offers potential for further narrative associations. Launched at the National Shoe Collection, Northampton, Museum and Art Gallery, the work connects to the town's rich shoe heritage and current shoe industry, which includes contemporary fashion jelly shoes."

Hackett will also be showing 20 new text and image works under the sub title ‘flip charts from the therapy room’. These contain various text fragments and 'sound bites' gathered from personal encounters, gleaned conversations and self -generated musings taking on at times the visual devices of absurd mind maps from fictional staff development events.
A 24-page artist's publication also accompanies the project.

Tom Hackett has been described by Robert Clark in The Guardian as an artist who: "systematically transforms banalities into deceptively simple moments of bemused and amused wonderment teasing us with a disarming mix of deceptive technical simplicity and a creative spirit as wild and ranging as the stars."

Tom Hackett has shown extensively across the UK and internationally, his key solo shows include: Firstsite Colchester, MAC Birmingham, UH Galleries, Aberdeen Art Gallery, and PM Gallery London.

Once is an accident, twice is a revolution has been project-funded by Grants for the Arts, Arts Council England.
For further information, contact:enquiries@tomhackett.org

British sculptor Peter Burke's TED talk on the use of technology by sculptors ancient and modern

Peter Burke recently delivered a most interesting talk on 'Sculpture and Reproductive Technology' at TEDx in Bradford-on-Avon. It offers a fascinating insight into his innovative use of traditional fabricating processes as well as contemporary technologies in the making of his work.

Those familiar with Peter's wonderful installations at the Cass Foundation in Sussex (above left) and elsewhere will find his TED talk both engaging and instructive. My thanks to Peter for allowing me to circulate it more widely. Click here for the talk.

Tom Flynn's new book on British sculptor Terence Coventry has just been published

Terence Coventry — Hands On is the first biographical study of West Country-based sculptor Terence Coventry. Specially published to accompany a new retrospective exhibition of Coventry's work at Gallery Pangolin in Chalford, Gloucestershire, the book is an in-depth account of an intensely private artist's life and work.

The book traces Coventry's journey over the past twenty-five years from talented art student to successful pig farmer, to the rediscovery of his artistic identity in the mid-eighties and the evolution of his mature, confident and independent sculptural language. The book offers an insight into Coventry's working practice and the ways in which the Cornish landscape and its natural inhabitants have influenced his creative development. (Read a short extract here).

The book could not have been produced without the generous cooperation of Terence and Winifred Coventry and the team at Gallery Pangolin and Pangolin Editions, the internationally-acclaimed bronze foundry and gallery in Chalford, Gloucestershire who have collaborated closely with Coventry for many years.

The book will soon be available to purchase on Amazon here, but meanwhile is available through Pangolin Editions here, via email at: gallery@pangolin-editions.com or contact them by telephone on: +44 (0)1453 889765.

Almuth Tebbenhoff's London Film Festival award hits the red carpet

London-based sculptor Almuth Tebbenhoff's 'Star of London' sculpture — the London Film Festival's equivalent of the Palme d'Or in Cannes or the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival — featured on Channel 4 News this week (see their Arts Correspondent Matthew Cain holding the award on the red carpet, right).

Almuth's sculpture was selected from a shortlist of entries and has been awarded for the past three years. Festival organisers are confident it will soon become as iconic as its Continental counterparts.

Bernard Meadows, Study for Sculpture 2, 1964

Panel discussion: Sculptors' Drawings at Pangolin London

Tom Flynn will be chairing a panel discussion at the Pangolin London gallery at King's Place, Kings Cross on Monday 1st October as part of Pangolin's current exhibition of Sculptors' Drawings and Works on Paper exhibition. The evening starts at 6.30 and the panellists include artists Martin Jennings and Briony Marshall, along with Frances Carey, writer and past curator of the Prints and Drawings department at the British Museum, and Rungwe Kingdon, founder of Pangolin Editions sculpture foundry.

Tickets cost £6.50 and are limited so please book early to avoid disappointment. To book go to: www.kingsplace.co.uk or Tel: 020 7520 1490



Jodie Carey, Elegy, 2012, Digital print from glass plate c1920.

Jodie Carey at the New Art Gallery, Walsall, Oct 6 to Dec 30

Talented young British sculptor Jodie Carey has a new exhibition, entitled Solomon's Knot, opening on 6th October at the New Art Gallery, Walsall.

Jodie works in a wide range of media, exploring ideas of time, memory and materiality, of time passing, memories fading, of absence and loss and ultimately the fragility and vulnerability of human life. Read our review of her last London show at the Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park here.

Her brand new works, commissioned and created especially for this exhibition, include a large-scale sculptural installation, with large plaster works meticulously coloured by hand, and another work suspended from the ceiling which has been hand-crocheted by the artist using thread that has been coloured using dyes created from individual flowers. Solomon's Knot is the name of the stitch used to make this work. As well as being a term deeply rooted in decorative traditions, it also has wide-ranging meanings for different cultures, often related to wisdom, knowledge and immortality as it has no end and no beginning. It is also called the Lover's Knot as the knot can be interpreted as entwined figures.

Jodie Carey studied at Goldsmith's College, London (2002-5) and the Royal College of Art (2005-7). She has since exhibited widely. Recent solo exhibitions include Pump House Gallery, London (2011), Art Forum, Berlin (2009) and Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (2009).

In Conversation
Saturday 24 November, 2pm
Join Jodie for an informal tour of the exhibition. (Book your free place in advance by calling 01922 654400)