LITHUANIAN ARTIST DARIUS MIKŠYS TAKES PART AT WALES INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION AND PRIZE 2012-2013
Artes Mundi 5 is delighted to present the work of seven groundbreaking contemporary artists of growing international importance, at the National Museum of Art under the roof of National Museum Cardiff from 6 October 2012. The artists are nominated for the £40,000 Artes Mundi Prize, the largest cash prize awarded in theUKand one of the most significant in the world for recognising international contemporary artists. The Prize will be presented on 29 November 2012.
This must-see show provides a rare overview for UKaudiences of the international art scene. Occurring every two years since 2004, Artes Mundi is committed to supporting contemporary visual artists from around the world whose work engages with social reality, lived experience and the human condition. Artes Mundi’s nominee artists are already well known in their home country or region with growing international careers. Each artist will exhibit at least one major work and some projects will be new for the exhibition or not previously exhibited in theUK. Artists have been nominated for their body of work over the past 5-8 years and tackle a diverse range of ideas relating to contemporary life. The work included in Artes Mundi 5 explores subjects as varied as drug violence in Mexico, reality television, the condition of workers in India and the social and political nature of urban living environments.
The 2012 nominated artists include: Miriam Bäckström (Sweden), Tania Bruguera (Cuba), Phil Collins (England), Sheela Gowda (India), Teresa Margolles (Mexico), Darius Mikšys (Lithuania) and Apolonija Šušteršič (Slovenia).
As an organisation, Artes Mundi celebrates its 10th anniversary this year and will be including several new features for the fifth edition. For Artes Mundi 5, all shortlisted artists will receive £4,000 each and one of the artists will be selected for a 12 week solo exhibition to be presented in 2014 in the build up to Artes Mundi 6 at the recently refurbished Mostyn Gallery in Llandudno,Wales. This year will also welcome the inclusion of a people’s choice poll for the prize, allowing the public to vote for their favourite artist and work in the exhibition. The results of the poll will be revealed at the close of the exhibition in January 2013. It will be the first time this international contemporary art exhibition will be shown in the new dedicated contemporary art spaces at the National Museum of Art, which opened in July 2011. Artes Mundi 5 will also be the first prize and exhibition under the leadership of Ben Borthwick, announced as Chief Executive and Artistic Director in 2010 after working for seven years at Tate Modern.
Swedish artist Miriam Bäckström first emerged as a conceptual photographer in the 1990s. Her ongoing practice explores the way stories are told, and processes of creating and recreating memory using photography, text, theatre and video. At the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, she representedSweden in collaboration with Carsten Höller. This resulted in the production of a sound installation entitled ‘Amplified Pavilion’ in which external sounds were transmitted inside the space of the empty pavilion in real time aiming to emphasise the experience of presence for the audience.
Through an interdisciplinary practice spanning installation, social intervention and performance, Cuban artist Tania Bruguera explores the role art can play in daily political life, shedding light on the individual’s conception of self as part of collective social memory. She is known toUK audiences for a seemingly spontaneous performance project in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall involving riot police on horses who employed crowd control techniques to move the audience around the space. In 2010, she began a five year project ‘Immigrant Movement International,’ based in Queen’s, NY, which seeks to redefine the immigrant as a global citizen and to stimulate artists to create works that actively engage with social, political, and scientific issues. Bruguera will be presenting work based on this project in a residency at Tate Modern from 30 July – 15 August 2012 and running workshops on 4-8 July 2012 as part of the Hayward Gallery’s ‘Wide Open School’.
In his practice, which includes film, photography, installation and live events, Berlin-based British artist Phil Collins explores the nuances of social relations in a range of locations and global communities. He often subverts the conventions of video art and documentary to focus on the inherent contradictions of individual and collective systems of representation. For his contribution to the Turner Prize exhibition of 2006 he created a fully functioning studio in the galleries at Tate Britain to house his production company, ‘Shady Lane Productions.’ Within these studios workers produced ‘The Return of the Real,’ a documentary about people whose lives were ruined by their appearances on reality TV shows.
Indian artist Sheela Gowda’s practice focuses on the current social and cultural reality of India. Originally trained as a painter, Gowda has developed a sculptural practice that explores materials and traditions located within a network of production and distribution and framed in relation to India’s socio-political legacy. In her sculptural work ‘Behold,’ for the 2009 Venice Biennale, she explored the exploited economic and cultural role of local women through materials. Black ropes hanging down the gallery wall were constructed out of human hair that had been shaved off of the heads of women as part of a ritual offering at Tirupati’s temples inSouthern India and tied to disused car bumpers.
Teresa Margolles’ work focuses on Northern Mexican social experience where drug-related crime has resulted in widespread violence and murder. Since graduating with a diploma in forensic medicine, Margolles has examined the economics of death and her sculptural interventions and performances often bring the physical reality and materiality of death to the fore. For the 2009 Venice Biennale, she created an artistic intervention in which the floor of the Mexican pavilion was mopped with water used to wash dead bodies in the morgue inMexico.
For Lithuanian conceptual artist Darius Mikšys’ the process of curating and installing work, in other words exhibition-making, allows him to re-think the processes that are involved in making, displaying and engaging with art to present new narratives and concepts. For a long time the artist referred to his work as ‘just projects’ as opposed to art and much of his work is based on creating social networks and bringing people together to create performances and shared experiences. For his first solo exhibition – Lithuanian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 - Mikšys invited all Lithuanian artists who had received European grants to submit a work for his project entitled ‘Behind the White Curtain’. Visitors to the pavilion were able to select the works they wished to see on display, enabling them to curate their own displays of Lithuanian art resulting in a continuously changing narrative of collective and individual Lithuanian identity. Mikšys will also be presenting workshops on 29-30 June 2012 as part of the Hayward Gallery’s ‘WideOpenSchool.’
Slovenian artist and architect Apolonija Šušteršič’s cross-disciplinary practice starts with a phenomenological study of space and expands its investigation to the social and political nature of living environments. For the ‘Moderna Exhibition’ at Moderna Museet in 2010 she presented a study she carried out in preparation to create a public art work for a housing estate Hustadt in Bochum, Germany. As part of her study, she developed workshops with members of the diverse local community, leading to the idea to produce a “Community Pavilion” which would form a natural meeting place, and included such elements as an outdoor kitchen, a local cinema and information centre.
Artes Mundi has worked with artists, galleries, art institutions, curators and the British Council to invite nominations as part of an open call. Artes Mundi 5 received more than 750 nominations. These were then reviewed by two independent selectors Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy and Anders Kreuger to narrow the list down to the final seven artists. An international judging panel made up of five judges, to be announced in September 2012, will award the £40,000 prize on 29 November 2012 at an evening ceremony at National Museum Cardiff.
Ben Borthwick, Artistic Director and Chief Executive, Artes Mundi said:
“I am very excited by a number of new initiatives for the first Artes Mundi under my direction. These will include new artworks, commissioned for the exhibition, alongside important pieces that have not been widely seen before. Performance plays an important role in the practices of many of the shortlisted artists, and will be central to the exhibition in the new galleries at the National Museum of Art. These new directions will enrich the exhibition and the experience of audiences.”
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is principal sponsor of the Artes Mundi 5 Exhibition and Prize this year. As a company with employees and clients in more than 100 markets around the world, Bank of America Merrill Lynch is committed to a diverse programme of cultural support. Its art and culture platform is a key element of the company’s broader corporate responsibility strategy which seeks to develop substantive solutions for social and environmental challenges.
Rena De Sisto, Global Arts and Culture Executive at Bank of America Merrill Lynch commented:
“We wish to congratulate Artes Mundi for attracting a significant number of high calibre artists and for facilitating this exhibition against the backdrop of a tough economic year. Our involvement in the arts is designed to engage communities in creative ways in order to build mutual respect and understanding; to strengthen institutions that contribute to local economies; and to fulfil our responsibilities as a major corporation with global reach.”
Nicholas Thornton, Head of Modern and Contemporary Art, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales said:
"Amgueddfa Cymru is delighted to have been involved with Artes Mundi since its inception, working in partnership to bring this internationally important exhibition to Wales. The seven artists selected for Artes Mundi 5 and the themes explored in their work promises to deliver a very exciting exhibition for visitors to the Museum. Our partnership with Artes Mundi is instrumental in developing new audiences for contemporary art in Wales and helping to raise the international profile of National Museum Cardiff.”
Exhibition: 6 October 2012 – 13 January 2013 at Wales’ National Museum of Art
Prize Awarded: 29 November 2012
