New Singapore art fair ART SG has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic
The inaugural edition will now take place 5–7 November 2021, at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre. Originally slated to launch in October 2019, the fair pushed back its start date to this November, before rescheduling for next year. In the meantime, the fair ‘will continue to work with partners on a number of physical and digital activations’, organisers promised.
Artist Emma Amos has died at the age of 83
The news was announced by her gallery Ryan Lee. Amos was born in 1937 in Atlanta, Georgia. She later studied at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and the Central School of Art in London. Her work across painting, printmaking and weaving was heavily impacted by the civil rights and black arts movements of the time. ‘Every time I think about colour, it’s a political statement,’ she once observed. Amos was involved in the influential group of black artists Spiral, formed in 1963, as well as the feminist collective Guerrilla Girls. Her work had received renewed attention in recent years, including being featured in the Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power exhibition at London’s Tate Modern in 2016. ‘She will be remembered as a dynamic painter and masterful colorist whose commitment to interrogating the art-historical status quo yielded a body of vibrant, sumptuous and intellectually rigorous work,’ her gallery said.
Etel Adnan has been awarded the 2020 Griffin International Poetry Prize for her collection Time (2019)
The artist and writer will share the reward of CAD65,000 with translator Sarah Riggs. Judges praised Adnan for ‘how she manages to give weariness its own relentless energy.’
Nicholas Serota joins UK government task force, as union makes demands
The Arts Council England chair and former Tate director has joined a task force set up by British culture secretary Oliver Dowden to develop a strategy for how and when closed businesses and venues can reopen safely following the COVID-19 lockdown. Serota will be joined by Tamara Rojo of the English National Ballet; former England international and Arsenal footballer Alex Scott; Edward Mellors of events company Mellors Group; Michael Grade, the former chair of both the BBC and ITV; Martha Lane-Fox, the founder of LastMinute.com; and Mark Cornell of the Ambassador Theatre Group. It will be headed by philanthropist and entrepreneur Neil Mendoza, who has been appointed commissioner for cultural recovery and renewal. The convening of the committee comes as the culture group at the Public and Commercial Services Union issued three campaign demands: 1) no reopening of culture institutions before it is safe; 2) emergency funding for culture to help society recover from the crisis; 3) a reversal of privatisation in the culture sector.
Faith in the art market plummets, new report finds
ArtTactic surveyed 125 industry insiders and found an 85 percent drop in confidence of outlook in the market since last September. In a rating out of 100, interviewees provided an average indicator of 6.4. The survey has been made twice yearly since 2005 and this score marks the lowest-ever forecast, below even the gloomy outlook found during the 2008 financial crash, when, in November that year, interviewees gave an indicator of 11.
Norway’s second largest museum faces bankruptcy
KODE, which runs four museums in Bergen, as well as maintaining three composers’ homes, is facing bankruptcy. KODE’s Marte Mjøs Persen told The Local, ‘The situation for KODE is quite serious, because due to the corona crisis, we have no tourists going to Bergen at this time.’ KODE 1, 2, 3 and 4, and the homes of the composers Ole Bull, Harald Sæverud and Edvard Grieg, show almost 50,000 objects ranging from paintings, works on paper, sculptures, videos, musical instruments and furniture, including substantial collections of work by Edvard Munch, J.C. Dahl and Nikolai Astrup. The museums receive NOK 27 million (circa GBP 2.25m) from the state budget.
Rothko Chapel to reopen following renovation
The nondenominational chapel owned by collectors John and Dominique de Menil and housing 14 paintings by Mark Rothko has been undergoing a renovation and expansion since March last year. As well as updating various conservation systems, New York-based Architecture Research Office has overseen a new skylight, lighting design and entryway for the chapel to ‘more closely align the building with the original vision’ of the artist and his patrons. Rothko’s original plans went through several revisions and architects, and the artist died a few months before its completion, in 1971. It will reopen in September.
Sharjah Art Foundation production grants announced
Ten artists are to receive grants from the Sharjah Art Foundation to make new work. Sharing $200,000 (£163,000) are Jumana Emil Abboud, Mohamed Abdelkarim, Noor Abuarafeh, Basma al-Sharif, Abdessamad El Montassir, Köken Ergun, Pak Khawateen Painting Club, Moad Musbahi, Philip Rizk and Subversive Film. They responded to an open call and were picked by a jury featuring Iftikhar Dadi, Lara Khaldi and Agustín Pérez Rubio. Originally just two artists were to be given cash, but recognising the economic pressure faced by artists in the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, the foundation increased its scope.
New Manifesta dates; Marseille’s art fair cancels
Manifesta has shifted its opening dates back two months in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The itinerant biennial, hosted this year by the French city of Marseille, was supposed to open to the public on 7 June. It will now take place from 8 August through 29 November, with a new ticketing system in place to ensure social distancing. Programmed by Katerina Chuchalina, Stefan Kalmár, Marina Otero Verzier and Alya Sebti under the title Trait d’union.s, the exhibition, say its curators, will address the following questions: ‘What knowledge is born out of a society facing fundamental cultural, and environmental, transformations? And what do we learn from the plural roots of a city informed by several generations of migration?’
While the biennial might be going ahead, the city’s art fair will not. Art-o-rama, which was supposed to open its 14th edition at the end of August, has been cancelled. Its directors, Véronique Collard-Bovy and Jérôme Pantalacci, said in a statement that ‘despite improvements in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic that is affecting us, too many uncertainties to be clarified and constraints to be respected remain, to guarantee our meeting between audiences and works, between collectors and gallery owners, between professionals and artists. It seems to us that not all the conditions necessary for the smooth running of the exhibition are met.’
Art UK has launched a new digital tool, Curations, which allows people to create their own ‘digital exhibition’
The toolkit uses the charity’s online collection, drawing on the digitisation of nearly 250,000 paintings and other artworks from more than 3,000 institutions. ‘Curations is an example of what is possible when you digitally connect the national art collection. It means museums and public alike can now bring together artworks from institutions across the country, tell the stories behind the art, and share their Curations with others,’ Art UK director Andrew Ellis said. The project aims to aid online teaching, incorporating artworks from public collections into lesson plans and class presentations. You can find out more here.
The Serendipity Arts Foundation and photography festival Rencontres d’Arles have announced a new grant for lens-based artists in South Asia
Practitioners in photography, video and new media across South Asian countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are eligible for the Serendipity Arles Grant, which will award an artist INR 1,200,000 (EUR 15,000) and the opportunity to develop a project at the 2022 edition of Rencontres d’Arles in France. An initial shortlist of 10 artists will each receive INR 70,000 (EUR 800) and the opportunity to show at the upcoming Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, India, later this year. The award seeks ‘not only to empower artists from the region, but also further a spirit of regional cooperation and representation,’ according to the organisers. Applications close on 7 July 2020. For more information click here.
The Italian artist and architect Nanda Vigo has died, at the age of eighty-three
Vigo was born in Milan in 1936, and later studied architecture at Lausanne’s Institut Polytechnique. Vigo worked closely with the Zero Group and figures such as Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni and Gio Ponti. She was best known for her experiments with the use of light, from designs including the Golden Gate Floor Lamp (1969–70) to her ‘Chronotops’ glass and aluminium sculptures marked in neon – as well as her projects in interior architecture, including the ZERO House (1959). ‘Light is crucial for me in how it shapes objects, creating an atmosphere. It both has and does not have dimension but it can travel far away,’ she once said.
Milan galleries pull together online project
A group of five galleries in Milan has come together under the banner RISORGIMENTO Milan Virtual Art Summer to stage a series of online exhibitions hosted by Massimo De Carlo. Fanta-MLN, ICA Milano, Francesca Minini, Galleria Federica Schiavo and Galleria Federico Vavassori will each organise a two-week show, presented consecutively through the summer on the MDC website. At the weekend Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte announced a further loosening of Italy’s lockdown, with galleries permitted to open from this week.
Future Generation Art Prize extends deadline
The open prize, one of the richest in the world, has extended its deadline for applications to 3 June. Twenty artists aged thirty-five or younger will be shortlisted for the USD 100,000 award (USD 60,000 cash prize and a USD 40,000 commission), with newly commissioned work exhibited at the PinchukArtCentre in Kiev and during the Venice Biennale. Lauren Cornell, director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, will be sifting through the applications, joined by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, curator of the Bienal de São Paulo this year, Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of The Showroom, London, Bjorn Geldhof, artistic director PinchukArtCentre, artist Shilpa Gupta, Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery, London, and Eugene Tan, director of National Gallery Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum. Lithuanian artist Emilija Škarnulytė won the prize last year.
