Galleries - April 2016

A photograph isn’t a moment in time. Planning, presentation and production: that’s a photograph. This is the key lesson in ‘Performing for the Camera’, ( Tate Modern ) which traces the history of photography and performance as joint disciplines. Throughout the photographs, bodies fly and fall through the air, covered in paint or playing with fire, demonstrating how people have used the camera since its earliest days to grab attention. It’s an extensive collection, featuring some familiar faces. Andy Warhol shows up on both sides of the camera, and there is a small series of Cindy Sherman’s ‘Untitled Film Stills’. Ai Weiwei, who spent 2015charming the London art world is there destroying a Ming vase, and Marcel Duchamp mugs for the camera as his female alter ego Rrose Sélavy. 44 GALLERIES APRIL 2016 Businesses operating principally on the Internet THE ART ROOM Painting, sculpture and ceramics by major artists working in SW England. Services: Art sourcing, Exhibitions, Sales, Presentation, Advice. theartroom@eclipse.co.uk www.theartroomtopsham.co.uk GALERIE D’ART 64 Old High Street, Folkestone, Kent CT20 1RN Fine Art Gallery by the harbour at the centre of a thriving art community. Exhibiting and Dealing. magnus.h@sfr.fr www.avignonfineart.com ONLINE GALLERIES GALLERY JKL Modern and Contemporary French Art. T 07739 596826. jkl@galleryjkl.com www.galleryjkl.com ILLUSTRATION ART GALLERY Original illustration art from books, magazines, newspapers and comics at affordable prices. t 020 8768 0022 art@illustrationartgallery.com www.illustrationartgallery.com THE INFINITE GALLERY Rosemary Clunie. rosemaryclunieart@gmail.com www.rosemaryclunie.com Performance art At times, the exhibition feels jumbled – if jubilant – meandering through themes and chronology in no particular order. But the size of it means it weaves the unusual alongside the recognisable. For example, just to the left of the Rrose Sélavy portraits is another of Duchamp in which he and a woman stand nude before a painted set of the Garden of Eden. The image, ‘Ciné-Sketch: Adam and Eve (Marcel Duchamp and Bronia Perlmutter)’ by Man Ray, recasts them not only as biblical characters, but as figures in a Lucas Cranach painting, with their slender, pale limbs bright against the darkened backdrop. ‘Ciné-Sketch’ may not be crucial in the history of photography, but its inclusion in the exhibition is a demonstration of the ways that artists have thought about, presented and redefined their subjects. And it’s a reminder that self-fashioning is nothing new. Frances Allit With photographs from the mid- 1930s to the present day, the Barbican Art Gallery’s ‘Strange and Familiar: Britain as Revealed by International Photographers’ is a thought-provoking examination of a nation which is much more used to looking than being looked at. Curator Martin Parr has selected 23 photographers from outside the UK, to “reveal a very different take on British life than that produced by British photographers.” From the outset, Parr asks us to consider Britain through the lens of other cultures. The selection however is biased towards American and Western European photographers, although two from Japan, Shinro Ohtake and Akihiko Okamura, do feature, as well as Sergio Larrain from Chile. This Western focus begs the question in general – how different is life in Britain? Probably photography CODA Outside in

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