Aeneas Wilder : Untitled #162

Sat 6 Oct – Sun 2 Dec 2012

This autumn, the Mead Gallery has been transformed through the intervention of artist Aeneas Wilder, who develops complex, extraordinarily beautiful structures in response to any environment in which he’s working.

Constructed only in wood using no fixings, joining or additional materials, Wilder relies upon balance, gravity, his own experience and an intuitive understanding of his chosen material in the creation of structures which alter the way we understand and navigate space; forcing us around their perimeters or inviting us within walls which offer shelter whilst simultaneously threatening to collapse upon us.

The exhibition will culminate in one powerful act of destruction as the artist kicks down the structure – reducing the artwork to the sum of its parts in order for it to be reconstructed in a different form at a later date.

To hear the Mead Gallery’s Assistant Curator, Fiona Venables, interview Aeneas Wilder about his most recent installation, go to the downloads to the right of the screen.

Transitions: drawings from the collection of mima

Sat 6 Oct – Sun 2 Dec 2012

John Ruskin described drawing as the ‘pictorial expression of thought’. In this exhibition of works from the collection of mima (Middlesbrough Institute of the Arts) are presented drawings by several key artists of post war America, many of whom are best known for working in three dimensions – be it in film (Paul Sharits), land art (Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer) or sculpture and installation (Stephen Antonakos, Fred Sandback, Robert Gober). The drawings show evidence of the artists using drawing to develop their ideas, consider the use of space and to mark time.

Shown alongside Aeneas Wilder’s Untitled #162, a structure formed from virtually identical linear sections of wood, the works compel us to consider the continuing importance of drawing to artists’ practice in making the transition from a concept to its realisation in three dimensions.

Other artists represented in the collection are Robert Breer, Nathan Carter, Adrian Piper, Al Taylor, James Lee Byars, Jack Whitten and Horacio Zabala. This collection of American drawings was presented to mima by the Art Fund under Art Fund International.

Maestro: Films by Douglas Gordon

Feature Film / Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
Tue 1 May – Sat 23 Jun 2012

Maestro brings together two acclaimed moving image installations by the Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon. Exhibited for the first time together at the Mead Gallery, both works offer a compelling portrait of virtuoso talent.

In Feature Film (1999) the camera hones in on conductor James Conlon as he leads the Paris Opera Orchestra. Zidane (2006, made with Philippe Parreno) zooms in on a different kind of orchestration, following French footballer Zinedine Zidane through the course of an entire match. For the first time in the UK Zidane is being shown as a multi-screen installation.

In both works the maestros are immersed in their own space, performing with and at the same time abstracted from the players around them.

Feature Film is presented as part of The Artangel Collection, a national initiative in association with Tate, supported by Arts Council England, The Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and The John Ellerman Foundation.

Feature Film was co-produced by Artangel & Centre Georges Pompidou, Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris as The Artangel / Beck’s commission in association with Kolnischer Kunstverein.

The Indiscipline of Painting - International abstraction from the 1960s to now

 

Sat 14 Jan – Sat 10 Mar 2012

The Indiscipline of Painting is an international group exhibition including works by forty-nine artists from the 1960s to now. Selected by British painter Daniel Sturgis, the exhibition considers how abstraction has remained a site of urgent, relevant and critical enquiry for generations of artists over the last 50 years. The exhibition goes on to demonstrate the ways in which the history and legacy of abstract painting continues to inspire artists working today.

The contemporary position of abstract painting is problematic. It can be seen to be synonymous with a moment in modernism that has long since passed, and an ideology which led the medium to stagnate in self-analysis and ideas of historical progression. The Indiscipline of Painting challenges such assumptions. It reveals how painting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued to provoke ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners, even as painting’s decline and death has been routinely and erroneously declared.

The show brings together works by British, American and European artists made over the last five decades and features major new commissions and loans. It includes important works by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Michael Craig-Martin and Bridget Riley alongside younger artists such as Tomma Abts, Tauba Auerbach, Jacob Kassay and Cheyney Thompson.

The exhibition at the Mead Gallery featured new commissions by Swiss artist Francis Baudevin and German artist Katharina Grosse.

The Indiscipline of Painting is a collaborative project between Mead Gallery and Tate St Ives, where it opened on 8 October 2011. The exhibition also draws on the particular context of the significant abstract paintings which the University of Warwick has collected over the last 50 years, and which are on display across campus.

Mead Gallery and Tate St Ives gratefully acknowledge the support of Arts Council England, The Henry Moore Foundation, The Higher Education Funding Council, and the Swiss Cultural Fund.