ARTES MUNDI 6
Laura Riley eyes up the artists on the nominee list for
the Wales based international arts prize: Artes Mundi.
ISSUE
FOUNDED in 2002 by Welsh artist William Wilkins,
Artes Mundi has become one of Wales’ most exciting
contemporary visual art show, so don’t expect to see
any safe watercolours or pretty pastoral landscapes
on display. Teresa Margolles created 2012’s winning
exhibit, which used Plancha water (used to cleanse
dead bodies in Mexican morgues) dripping from
the ceiling onto hotplates to represent death and
decomposition.
Nominations come from all over the world for the
£40,000 Artes Mundi Prize (the largest prize in the
UK) and are submitted by curators, directors of
museums and galleries, other cultural organisations
and members of the public. The term artes mundi is
Latin for ‘arts of the world’ and reflects the electic
and international edge of the festival.
The nominees work will be exhibited in Cardiff
starting this month, and right up into the new year
but there are talks of bringing the art and ideas of
Artes Mundi out of the capital and into other Welsh
cities next summer.
For the here and now, however, here’s a rundown of
the 2014 nominees.
Sharon Lockhart
CARLOS BUNGA
RENATA LUCAS
Imagine a decaying construction site created on an
architectural model scale and you’ll have an idea of
Bunga’s work. He works with mass-produced materials
– cardboard, packing tape, household paint – to create
temporary shelters and colourful urban interiors.
Best known for her work in which she considers
public or architectural spaces and alters or changes
them in some way, Renata highlights how individuals
are controlled both physically and psychologically by
the surrounding environment.
OMER FAST
His layered film installations play with visual
storytelling to reconstruct the past – re-examining key
events in history by manipulating recorded images and
speech to highlight how memories can be recounted,
narratives retold and events re-represented. He blurs
the lines of the actual reality of situations to pose the
question: “where do we seek truth?”
THEASTER GATES
Sculpture meets installation, performance and urban
interventions in Theaster Gates work, which aims
to bridge the gap between art and life. Gates works
with architects, researchers and performers to create
works that stretch our concept of visual art.
ART
The
KAREN MIRZA + BRAD BUTLER
Renata Lucas
Mirza and Butler’s work consists of film, installation,
performance, publishing and curation – layered upon
each other to challenge the concept of participation,
collaboration and the traditional roles of artists and
their audiences.
SANJA IVEKOVIC
Over the last four decades, Croatian artist Sanja
Ivekovićhas developed a pioneering practice that
tackles issues of female identity, the politics of
power, consumerism and the paradoxes inherent in
society's collective memory.
RAGNAR KJARTANSSON
Kjartansson work