CURATORIAL
Launch of The Sunderland Collection Art Programme
with Beth Greenacre as Curator
“I have always gravitated to art as a way of understanding the world around us, as a means of looking at the world from different perspectives, so when I was invited to devise an art programme in response to The Sunderland Collection of maps, atlases and books of knowledge I was immensely excited: who better to engage with a world-class collection of maps, that by definition enable the understanding of things, concepts, or conditions in the human world, than artists.
The Sunderland Collection Art Programme invites artists to engage with and respond to the objects that have been collected with care and integrity for over 35 years. Timing is everything, and today we find ourselves in a moment when intercultural understanding and respect is of crucial importance. The decision to provide access to the collection and open up conversations around globalisation, identity, and nationhood is vital. Similarly it has been incredibly exciting to watch artists’ responses when first viewing the maps: to the artistry and processes, to the materials, or the historical moments in which they were made. As the art programme unfolds I am excited to work with emerging and established artists alike, working across mediums and processes and to support their enquiries into the treasures within the collection.
The experience, we hope, will not only build capacity for cultural awareness, but also our own understanding of the collection. I am excited about sharing the content with as wide an audience as possible on the digital home of the collection and through partnerships with others. Similarly I hope that the artists’ responses to the collection enable us to consider the outstanding objects of cultural and historical importance and the legacy of the collection afresh.” - Beth Greenacre
Link to the Sunderland Collection
with Beth Greenacre as Curator
“I have always gravitated to art as a way of understanding the world around us, as a means of looking at the world from different perspectives, so when I was invited to devise an art programme in response to The Sunderland Collection of maps, atlases and books of knowledge I was immensely excited: who better to engage with a world-class collection of maps, that by definition enable the understanding of things, concepts, or conditions in the human world, than artists.
The Sunderland Collection Art Programme invites artists to engage with and respond to the objects that have been collected with care and integrity for over 35 years. Timing is everything, and today we find ourselves in a moment when intercultural understanding and respect is of crucial importance. The decision to provide access to the collection and open up conversations around globalisation, identity, and nationhood is vital. Similarly it has been incredibly exciting to watch artists’ responses when first viewing the maps: to the artistry and processes, to the materials, or the historical moments in which they were made. As the art programme unfolds I am excited to work with emerging and established artists alike, working across mediums and processes and to support their enquiries into the treasures within the collection.
The experience, we hope, will not only build capacity for cultural awareness, but also our own understanding of the collection. I am excited about sharing the content with as wide an audience as possible on the digital home of the collection and through partnerships with others. Similarly I hope that the artists’ responses to the collection enable us to consider the outstanding objects of cultural and historical importance and the legacy of the collection afresh.” - Beth Greenacre
Link to the Sunderland Collection
Fathi Hassan: Shifting Sands
The inaugural exhibition of The Sunderland Collection Art Programme
Curated by Beth Greenacre
31st May - 15th June
Frieze No. 9 Cork Street, Gallery 3, London, W1S 3LL
Fathi Hassan: Shifting Sands opened during London Gallery Weekend at Frieze’s No.9 Cork Street gallery showing a new body of work alongside historic works selected by the artist in response to the collection.
Born in Cairo in 1957 to Egyptian and Nubian parents, Hassan moved from Egypt to study at the Naples Art School, graduating in 1984. He spent decades living and working in Italy, becoming an active participant in an avant-garde art scene which attracted international figures including Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol and Hermann Nitsch. Hassan gained prominence in this time and in 1988 became one of the first artists of African heritage to be included in the Venice Art Biennale. Now based in Edinburgh, he works across photography, painting, drawing, and installation. During his immersion in The Sunderland Collection, Hassan contemplated the global confluence of ideas and peoples, the tides of cultural encounters, and his own personal history. Moving back and forth in time, the body of work that he has produced comprises a visually arresting, richly coloured tapestry of memories, concepts, historical figures, and Hassan’s distinctive artistic expression.
Fathi Hassan said: “In creating a work of art or inventing something, we enter into a state of pure spiritual reciprocity – cheating time, geographical borders, and physical space. I feel I belong to nothing and nothing belongs to me. Like the
characters in my works in response to these ancient maps, I am passing through time and place.”
Link to the page for the physical exhibition: https://oculi-mundi.com/fathi-hassan-shifting-sands
Online exhibition: https://oculi-mundi.com/exhibitions/online/fathi-hassan-shifting-sands
The inaugural exhibition of The Sunderland Collection Art Programme
Curated by Beth Greenacre
31st May - 15th June
Frieze No. 9 Cork Street, Gallery 3, London, W1S 3LL
Fathi Hassan: Shifting Sands opened during London Gallery Weekend at Frieze’s No.9 Cork Street gallery showing a new body of work alongside historic works selected by the artist in response to the collection.
Born in Cairo in 1957 to Egyptian and Nubian parents, Hassan moved from Egypt to study at the Naples Art School, graduating in 1984. He spent decades living and working in Italy, becoming an active participant in an avant-garde art scene which attracted international figures including Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol and Hermann Nitsch. Hassan gained prominence in this time and in 1988 became one of the first artists of African heritage to be included in the Venice Art Biennale. Now based in Edinburgh, he works across photography, painting, drawing, and installation. During his immersion in The Sunderland Collection, Hassan contemplated the global confluence of ideas and peoples, the tides of cultural encounters, and his own personal history. Moving back and forth in time, the body of work that he has produced comprises a visually arresting, richly coloured tapestry of memories, concepts, historical figures, and Hassan’s distinctive artistic expression.
Fathi Hassan said: “In creating a work of art or inventing something, we enter into a state of pure spiritual reciprocity – cheating time, geographical borders, and physical space. I feel I belong to nothing and nothing belongs to me. Like the
characters in my works in response to these ancient maps, I am passing through time and place.”
Link to the page for the physical exhibition: https://oculi-mundi.com/fathi-hassan-shifting-sands
Online exhibition: https://oculi-mundi.com/exhibitions/online/fathi-hassan-shifting-sands
Past
Medium and Memory: Griselda Pollock and Gilane Tawadros, chaired by Beth Greenacre
Wednesday 1st November 2023 at Christie’s London
Organised by AWITA, in partnership with The Courtauld
A conversation moderated by Beth between two renowned art historians, writers and practitioners exploring why medium still matters to artists engaging with memory - personal, historical, cultural, forgotten, discovered, restored.
Voicing the Sisterly Acts: a conversation with the Revd. Dr Ayla Lepine, Nerissa Taysom and Beth Greenacre, organised and chaired by Charlotte de Mille, The Courtauld.
Friday 27th October at The All Saints Chapel, 82-83 Margaret Street, London
This in-conversation concluded the events programme organised to coincide with the exhibition Living Memory, which brought together three pivotal sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, a brand-new sound intervention by Nicolas Godin and paintings by Gideon Rubin made in response to the Chapel of All Saints, Margaret St.
The conversation contemplated site specificity in curatorial practice; the ways we are physically moved round or through a structured architectural space, and moved emotionally by it; the relation of liturgy to movement to practice in faith, and art; absence as potential presence; and sound as a conduit between the psychological and visceral.
Medium and Memory: Griselda Pollock and Gilane Tawadros, chaired by Beth Greenacre
Wednesday 1st November 2023 at Christie’s London
Organised by AWITA, in partnership with The Courtauld
A conversation moderated by Beth between two renowned art historians, writers and practitioners exploring why medium still matters to artists engaging with memory - personal, historical, cultural, forgotten, discovered, restored.
Voicing the Sisterly Acts: a conversation with the Revd. Dr Ayla Lepine, Nerissa Taysom and Beth Greenacre, organised and chaired by Charlotte de Mille, The Courtauld.
Friday 27th October at The All Saints Chapel, 82-83 Margaret Street, London
This in-conversation concluded the events programme organised to coincide with the exhibition Living Memory, which brought together three pivotal sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, a brand-new sound intervention by Nicolas Godin and paintings by Gideon Rubin made in response to the Chapel of All Saints, Margaret St.
The conversation contemplated site specificity in curatorial practice; the ways we are physically moved round or through a structured architectural space, and moved emotionally by it; the relation of liturgy to movement to practice in faith, and art; absence as potential presence; and sound as a conduit between the psychological and visceral.
LIVING MEMORY: Louise Bourgeois, Nicolas Godin and Gideon Rubin
Curated by Beth Greenacre
28th September - 27th October
The All Saints Chapel, 82-83 Margaret Street, London
https://www.livingmemoryexhibition.co.uk/
LIVING MEMORY: Louise Bourgeois, Nicolas Godin and Gideon Rubin is housed in a building of significance that provides a meaningful contribution to each artist’s practice as well as the viewer’s experience.
Originally constructed as a convent in 1914, 82–83 Margaret Street and the All Saints Chapel at its rear, was the first purpose-built place of worship for the Society of All Saints Sisters of the Poor. Rich in cultural and historic interest, the chapel houses a wall painting from 1861 of the Crucifixion by John Richard Clayton, who chose to depict all the attendant saints as women. The content of the fresco, along with the convent’s purposeful legacy of care – it not only accommodated the first women’s order, but also served as a space for women – provides a poignant context in which to house the work of all three artists.
Louise Bourgeois, Nicolas Godin and Gideon Rubin explore the materiality of their chosen media, the role that memory plays in the creative process and the transformative effects of art. And while Bourgeois and Rubin are united in examining the human form throughout their practices, it is the existential questions we ask ourselves beyond the physical body that also interest them. In particular both artists investigate the important role that remembrance and time play, not only in the creation of art, but also in how we understand ourselves, the world and our surroundings.
A PDF report on Living Memory can be found here.
Curated by Beth Greenacre
28th September - 27th October
The All Saints Chapel, 82-83 Margaret Street, London
https://www.livingmemoryexhibition.co.uk/
LIVING MEMORY: Louise Bourgeois, Nicolas Godin and Gideon Rubin is housed in a building of significance that provides a meaningful contribution to each artist’s practice as well as the viewer’s experience.
Originally constructed as a convent in 1914, 82–83 Margaret Street and the All Saints Chapel at its rear, was the first purpose-built place of worship for the Society of All Saints Sisters of the Poor. Rich in cultural and historic interest, the chapel houses a wall painting from 1861 of the Crucifixion by John Richard Clayton, who chose to depict all the attendant saints as women. The content of the fresco, along with the convent’s purposeful legacy of care – it not only accommodated the first women’s order, but also served as a space for women – provides a poignant context in which to house the work of all three artists.
Louise Bourgeois, Nicolas Godin and Gideon Rubin explore the materiality of their chosen media, the role that memory plays in the creative process and the transformative effects of art. And while Bourgeois and Rubin are united in examining the human form throughout their practices, it is the existential questions we ask ourselves beyond the physical body that also interest them. In particular both artists investigate the important role that remembrance and time play, not only in the creation of art, but also in how we understand ourselves, the world and our surroundings.
A PDF report on Living Memory can be found here.
Image credit: Magnolia, 2023, oil on linen, 30.5 x 25.5 cm
Gideon Rubin: Yōga
Co-curated by Beth Greenacre and Fraser Brough.
Co-curated with Fraser Brough at CASSIUS&Co., London. Yōga, is an exhibition of new paintings by Gideon Rubin, opening on 14th September 2023 in which the artist turns the tradition of European oil painting to a subject with which it is largely unfamiliar, the image of Japan. The new body of works are based on the rich history of postwar Japanese literature and photography and will be presented alongside a bookshelf exhibition of rare Japanese photo-books, some of which provided source material for the paintings in the exhibition.
Unlike the painters of ‘Japonisme’ in late 19th century France, who looked to printmakers like Hokusai and Hiroshige for their flattened surfaces and sense of perspective, Rubin has made paintings that look to Japan more for its literature than its printmaking. In works like Kawabata’s Snow Country, or Tanizaki’s Naomi, it is the sparsity of language, the elimination of description, that gives the writing its elegance. For his Yōga paintings, Rubin has stripped his figures of their faces and removed the most overt signs of place-ness that might have more obviously identified his subject. Flowers here sit only in emptiness, rowing boats on lakes of nothing. Japan appears mostly as sparsity, as gesture, as form reduced almost to its element.
14th September - 11th November 2023
CASSIUS & Co., London
https://www.cassiusandco.com/gideon-rubin-yoga
Co-curated by Beth Greenacre and Fraser Brough.
Co-curated with Fraser Brough at CASSIUS&Co., London. Yōga, is an exhibition of new paintings by Gideon Rubin, opening on 14th September 2023 in which the artist turns the tradition of European oil painting to a subject with which it is largely unfamiliar, the image of Japan. The new body of works are based on the rich history of postwar Japanese literature and photography and will be presented alongside a bookshelf exhibition of rare Japanese photo-books, some of which provided source material for the paintings in the exhibition.
Unlike the painters of ‘Japonisme’ in late 19th century France, who looked to printmakers like Hokusai and Hiroshige for their flattened surfaces and sense of perspective, Rubin has made paintings that look to Japan more for its literature than its printmaking. In works like Kawabata’s Snow Country, or Tanizaki’s Naomi, it is the sparsity of language, the elimination of description, that gives the writing its elegance. For his Yōga paintings, Rubin has stripped his figures of their faces and removed the most overt signs of place-ness that might have more obviously identified his subject. Flowers here sit only in emptiness, rowing boats on lakes of nothing. Japan appears mostly as sparsity, as gesture, as form reduced almost to its element.
14th September - 11th November 2023
CASSIUS & Co., London
https://www.cassiusandco.com/gideon-rubin-yoga
I’ll Be Your Mirror
18th April - 9th July 2023
Vortic Curated in partnership with The Courtauld
Practically, mirror’s refractive quality enables artists to paint themselves and explore perspective. Allegorically, the inclusion of a mirror in art can depict an obsession with physical appearance and beauty, warn against vanity, remind us of the transience of life or give rise to inner reflection.
At the centre of the exhibition is one of the most mysterious and compelling works in recent Western art history, Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) alongside twelve artists who reference and utilise the mirror to grapple with complex ideas of identity and the gaze, presence and absence, subject and object, paintings relationship to reality and illusion and more.
https://vortic.art/exhibitions/6201
Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings & Shadi Al-Atallah
AWITA x JW Anderson, Curated by Beth Greenacre and Madeleine Martin
6th - 15th July 2022
JW Anderson flagship store Soho, London https://www.awita.london/jwanderson-collaboration-hannah-quinlan-and-rosie-hastings-shadi-al-atallah
The curators brought the duo Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings and Shadi Al-Atallah together for the first time in an installation that responded to JW Anderson as a brand and to the context of Soho. By the 1990’s Soho had established itself as the centre of London's - white, macho - gay scene. Alternatively Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings and Shadi Al-Atallah explore queer communities, politics, histories and aesthetics of queer spaces and identities: via Shadi Al-Atallah’s non-binary mixed-race background, whilst Quinlan and Hastings examine and document the male sex clubs and men-only gay bars to disrupt identity categories and a broader culture of male dominance.
Fair Art Fair Curated II - Womxn
Curated by Beth Greenacre and Jo Baring
6th May - 11th June 2022
Unit 1 Gallery, London
https://unit1gallery-workshop.com/fairartfair-curated-ii-womxn/
The AllBright Club in Maddox Street, London
Curated by Beth Greenacre, opened in 2019
Over 80 female-identifying artists, spanning 60 years of practice, across 5 floors of the AllBright club, Mayfair.
https://www.dezeen.com/2019/05/23/allbright-maddox-street-interiors/
Link to PDF of the AllBright Art Book
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jsjcppzuzag9cbo/ALLBRIGHT%20ART%20BOOK%20edit%20version%202.pdf?dl=0
Beth Greenacre + David Bowie
As curator of the David Bowie collection, David Bowie and Beth Greenacre co-curated numerous exhibitions including:
BLOC
County Hall Gallery
10th March - 22nd May 2005, London
Artists exhibited included: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Raul Ortega Ayala, Doug Fishbone and more.
https://www.davidbowie.com/2005/2005/02/05/bowieart-and-bloc-present-new-london-exhibition
The Window Pane Project
Various sites, launched 2001, London
Long before the word Pop-up was an everyday term David Bowie and Beth Greenacre were taking over disused window spaces across the capital in a series of exhibitions that gave visibility to recent graduates.
Artists exhibited included: Shezad Dawood, Graham Hudson, kr buxey, Luke Oxley, Michael Samuels and many more.
https://www.davidbowie.com/2002/2002/02/03/bowieart-window-pain-project-ii
Meltdown: Sound and Vision
Royal Festival Hall, June 2002, London
Artists included: Gaia Alessi and Richard Bradbury, kr buxey, Tsai-Wei Chen, Anthony Gross, Daniel Howard-Birt, Graham Hudson, Luke Oxley, Seb Patane, Giles Round and Mathew Sawyer.
A Tiny New Nation
2003, Spitalfields, London
Artists exhibited included: Barnaby Hosking, Sam Dargan, Sarah Baker, Damien Roach, Maria von Kholer and more.
18th April - 9th July 2023
Vortic Curated in partnership with The Courtauld
Practically, mirror’s refractive quality enables artists to paint themselves and explore perspective. Allegorically, the inclusion of a mirror in art can depict an obsession with physical appearance and beauty, warn against vanity, remind us of the transience of life or give rise to inner reflection.
At the centre of the exhibition is one of the most mysterious and compelling works in recent Western art history, Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) alongside twelve artists who reference and utilise the mirror to grapple with complex ideas of identity and the gaze, presence and absence, subject and object, paintings relationship to reality and illusion and more.
https://vortic.art/exhibitions/6201
Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings & Shadi Al-Atallah
AWITA x JW Anderson, Curated by Beth Greenacre and Madeleine Martin
6th - 15th July 2022
JW Anderson flagship store Soho, London https://www.awita.london/jwanderson-collaboration-hannah-quinlan-and-rosie-hastings-shadi-al-atallah
The curators brought the duo Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings and Shadi Al-Atallah together for the first time in an installation that responded to JW Anderson as a brand and to the context of Soho. By the 1990’s Soho had established itself as the centre of London's - white, macho - gay scene. Alternatively Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings and Shadi Al-Atallah explore queer communities, politics, histories and aesthetics of queer spaces and identities: via Shadi Al-Atallah’s non-binary mixed-race background, whilst Quinlan and Hastings examine and document the male sex clubs and men-only gay bars to disrupt identity categories and a broader culture of male dominance.
Fair Art Fair Curated II - Womxn
Curated by Beth Greenacre and Jo Baring
6th May - 11th June 2022
Unit 1 Gallery, London
https://unit1gallery-workshop.com/fairartfair-curated-ii-womxn/
The AllBright Club in Maddox Street, London
Curated by Beth Greenacre, opened in 2019
Over 80 female-identifying artists, spanning 60 years of practice, across 5 floors of the AllBright club, Mayfair.
https://www.dezeen.com/2019/05/23/allbright-maddox-street-interiors/
Link to PDF of the AllBright Art Book
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jsjcppzuzag9cbo/ALLBRIGHT%20ART%20BOOK%20edit%20version%202.pdf?dl=0
Beth Greenacre + David Bowie
As curator of the David Bowie collection, David Bowie and Beth Greenacre co-curated numerous exhibitions including:
BLOC
County Hall Gallery
10th March - 22nd May 2005, London
Artists exhibited included: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Raul Ortega Ayala, Doug Fishbone and more.
https://www.davidbowie.com/2005/2005/02/05/bowieart-and-bloc-present-new-london-exhibition
The Window Pane Project
Various sites, launched 2001, London
Long before the word Pop-up was an everyday term David Bowie and Beth Greenacre were taking over disused window spaces across the capital in a series of exhibitions that gave visibility to recent graduates.
Artists exhibited included: Shezad Dawood, Graham Hudson, kr buxey, Luke Oxley, Michael Samuels and many more.
https://www.davidbowie.com/2002/2002/02/03/bowieart-window-pain-project-ii
Meltdown: Sound and Vision
Royal Festival Hall, June 2002, London
Artists included: Gaia Alessi and Richard Bradbury, kr buxey, Tsai-Wei Chen, Anthony Gross, Daniel Howard-Birt, Graham Hudson, Luke Oxley, Seb Patane, Giles Round and Mathew Sawyer.
A Tiny New Nation
2003, Spitalfields, London
Artists exhibited included: Barnaby Hosking, Sam Dargan, Sarah Baker, Damien Roach, Maria von Kholer and more.
