UPDATED: “British avant-garde” to come to Shanghai this month
Jan 6th, 2010 | By Chris | Category: News and events, Random Shanghai stuff..., Recommended ReadingWell, maybe not the artists themselves, who knows, but the Minsheng Art Museum in Red Town is holding an exhibition of senior British artists, such as Gilbert and George, Damien Hirst, et al, on Jan 28th Feb 9th.
Details here (in Chinese)
UPDATE: Rumour has it this show maybe delayed, due to some of the works being controversial.
nb amended spelling of avant guarde to avant-garde, hmm
[...] The exhibition of the British Council Collection at Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai is definitely worth a visit if you are in town during the holidays. Here are the official details. In fact, it would be shame to miss it. The show is the biggest ever to date of the British Council collection. There was an interesting seminar alongside the opening. Alan Kane, one of the artists behind the collection of folk art in the main hall, with various cultural ephemera from a motorbike hearse to collections of tat from Blackpool pleasure beach, saidthe original intention of his work was to create something local for a UK audience, and was surprised the work made its way to China. The main hall also has a great collection of trade union banners, and an anti-nazi league banner. He showed a slideshow of various photos he has taken with his collaborator Jeremy Deller, such a the ‘Pizza Rut’ in Blackpool, crop circles, his video of young men carrying around flaming tar barrels in the south of england, and a weird tatoo. Kane was also the brains behind the life class television series, which got middle England outraged as the were presented with naked people on Channel 4 at tea time. Mark Titchner created the word art work used for the show’s title. He explained he used to be a painter but gave up on that when he discovered computers. His first piece was “why is there something instead of nothing,” on a billboard in London. Since then he has gone on to show work in town centers in New York and Mexico. He also represented Ukraine at the Venice Biennale with the work “We are all Ukranians what else matters?” It is all about the politics of the location he explained. He also attempted to give his work away on the London underground, but London commuters were in too much of a hurry to take many, he said. [...]