This book is published on occasion of the parallel exhibitions Silke Otto-Knapp presented in two markedly different locations: on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, and at the Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, Vienna. The contrasting influences of place—between rural and urban, new and old world—is evident in the selection of works presented and compiled in this catalogue. The partnering of these exhibitions clearly brings into focus questions about art and its contexts. The tensions between nature and culture provide an appropriate figure for the artwork: a context imagined and devised for the circumstances of its own activation.

Continue reading →

Kevin Schmidt’s installation and film EDM House (2013) transforms an abandoned homestead in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, into a meeting place of the urban and rural. His incongruous superimposition of the sounds of EDM (electronic dance music) and coloured Christmas lights onto this remote location, where he also lived for four months, critiques our pioneering expeditions into the natural world. His disorienting camera work recalls Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo, and imbues the scenery with a sense of displacement, at once chilling and exhilarating.

Continue reading →

Kate Newby — Let the other thing in is a catalogue printed to accompany the exhibition same name at Fogo Island Gallery (June 27 – September 8, 2013), copublished by Fogo Island Arts and Sternberg Press (Berlin). The full-colour publication features Kate Newby interviewed by Mami Kataoka, an essay by Jennifer Kabat, and a conversation between Newby, geologist Paul Dean and strategist Daniel Wong. The book also features Newby’s Skim Stone pictures, a series of photos by the artist of people skimming her ceramic stones into various bodies of water, where they presumably take on a different life within a difficult to fathom timeframe.

Continue reading →