Read Our Interview Of Ceri Hand: The Art Mentor Fostering A More Inclusive Art World →

Ceri Hand, Photo by Lorna Milburn

From running a successful commercial art gallery to becoming Associate Director at Simon Lee Gallery and director of programs at Somerset House Trust, London, Ceri Hand, also known as the Artist Mentor, is championing a more holistic support framework for creative practitioners and professionals through her mentoring and coaching services. 

Lara Monro spoke with Hand about how her own experiences in the arts shaped her approach to mentoring and coaching, and why her upbringing instilled a level of responsibility in championing a more inclusive art world.  

Growing up in the Midlands, Hand was introduced to the importance of social justice and the need to support others from a young age. Her mother established and ran women's refuges and her father taught children with learning disabilities. While Hand came from a multi-racial family who combatted racism by achieving great success in business and embracing family, music and dance, she was confronted by the realities of prejudice from a young age. Read more.

Read Our Interview of Daniel Richter On the Occasion of His Solo Exhibition Opening @ Regen Projects In Los Angeles →

a painting with various figures across, bigger and smaller in inverted colors. In the background is a gas station/buildings.

Daniel Richter
Fun de Siecle
2002
Oil on Canvas
115.75 x 151.18 inches (294 x 384 cm)


interview by Oliver Kupper

Artist Daniel Richter cut his teeth designing music posters and album covers in the antifascist, squatter punk scene of Hamburg in the 1980s and ‘90s. Now based in Berlin, the spirit of rebellion is wielded by the knife blade of his paintbrush in works that cross violently across the threshold between abstraction and figuration. With inspiration from early French symbolists, his work holds a mirror to a society pervaded by chaos and perversity. His show, Limbo, which coincides with the 59th Biennale di Venezia, was presented in a palazzo where a Catholic brotherhood once provided spiritual benediction to those sentenced to brutal public executions. Today marks the opening of his solo exhibition, Furor II, at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. We caught up with Richter while he was on vacation in Trieste, Italy where an oligarch’s seized Philippe Starck-designed superyacht was moored just outside his hotel window. Read more.

Watch Barbara Kruger's "In Violence" (2011) On The Occasion Of Her Survey @ LACMA & Solo Exhibition @ Sprüth Magers In Los Angeles

In Violence (2011) was presented in Commercial Break, a group exhibition curated by Neville Wakefield at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art during the opening week of the 54th Venice Biennial. Eleven years later, in the midst of a continuing war in Ukraine and numerous global humanitarian crises, Kruger’s use of novelist, critic and political activist, Mary McCarthy’s quote: “In violence we forget who we are” is an increasingly potent reminder.

Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You is on view through July 17 @ LACMA 5905 Wilshire Blvd. Her solo exhibition, Barbara Kruger, is on view across the street through July 16 @ Sprüth Magers 5900 Wilshire Blvd.

Yayoi Kusama "Narcissus Garden" At the Glass House in Connecticut

The Glass House is pleased to present Yayoi Kusama: Narcissus Garden, a landscape installation that will be on view throughout the 2016 tour season to celebrate the 110th anniversary of Philip Johnson’s birth and the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Glass House site to the public. First created fifty years ago in 1966 for the 33rd Venice Biennale, this iteration of Narcissus Garden will be incorporated into the Glass House’s 49-acre landscape. Narcissus Garden, comprising 1,300 floating steel spheres, each approximately 12 inches in diameter (30 cm) will be installed in the Lower Meadow and forest, creating a dramatic view to the west of the Glass House. Drifting in the newly restored pond, the spheres will move with the wind and follow the pond’s natural currents, forming a kinetic sculpture. Their mirrored surfaces will reflect the surrounding Pond Pavilion (1962), wooded landscape, and sky.  Yayoi Kusama "Narcissus Garden" will be on view until November 30, 2016 at The Glass House, click here to schedule a tour. text by Adam Lehrer

Read Our Exclusive Conversation With Artist Annina Roescheisen Who Is Currently Featured At the Venice Biennale And Whose Solo Show Opens Tonight In New York →

Artist Annina Roescheisen is making her name known in the art world. Right now, you can see her formative series What Are You Fishing For? at the Venice Biennale, in the context of the European Pavilion. Starting today, the German-born artist who received her degree in art, philosophy and folklore from the elite Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in 2008, will see her first solo gallery show in New York. Her series What Are You Fishing For? is emblematic of her work: rife with symbolism and metaphor, and dripping, literally, in pictorial beauty. Later this month, Roescheisen’s other series, La Pietà, which features the artist as a sort of erotic Virgin Mary, will be shown as part of a group show exploring divinity. In the following interview, Annina talks about the use of metaphor in her work, her experience getting to know New York and the meaning behind her self-designed tattoos. Click here to read the interview. 

Kelsey Lee Offield of Gusford Gallery Shares Her Highlights and Adventures from the 2015 Venice Biennale

Kelsey Lee Offield, art collector and owner/director of Los Angeles based Gusford Gallery, shares with Autre her highlights and adventures from the 2015 Venice Biennale, which include the multi-room international pavilions to smaller satellite exhibitions - some that literally float on the canals, like Maurizio Cattelan's gigantic cactus, which is flanked between two white eggs (see if you can catch it in the distance of one of the photographs above). photographs by Kelsey Lee Offield

The 2015 Venice Biennale Central Exhibition 'All the World’s Futures' At The Giardini

Jeremy Deller's jukebox plays nothing but 7-inch records, which emit factory machine noise. 

Curated by Nigerian curator and the director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich Okwui Enwezor, 'All the World's Futures' is the central exhibition held at the Giardini during the 2015 Venice Biennale, which opens to the public tomorrow. Over 140 artists have been asked to be a part of this exhibition - from Oscar Murrilo to Glenn Ligon. The exhibition is a brutal statement exploring violence and pain, global catastrophe and mass anxieties, and the psychic and physical destruction caused by global capitalism. All the World's Future's will be on view from May 9 to November 22, 2015 at the 2015 Venice Biennale. 

Pamela Rosenkranz 'Our Product' @ The Swiss Pavilion

Curated by Susanne Pfeffer, Pamela Rosenkranz’s exhibition for the 2015 Venice Biennale transmutes the Pavilion of Switzerland into a body of a local skin color through fluid, sound and movement. A pigment that originally emerged as the specific product of migration, sun-exposure, nutrition, and any number of other contingent factors is resynthesized as a stock formula, composed of unknown ingredients. You can see Pamela Rosenkranz 'Our Product' until November 22, 2015 at the Swiss Pavilion

10 Exhibitions You Need to See at the 56th Venice Biennale

What is the Venice Biennale and why is everyone talking about it? – The Venice Biennale is largely considered one of the most important art exhibitions in the world. Located in Venice, Italy, the exhibition is sort of like the art world's Olympics - each country chooses a single artist as a representative and that artist is given a "pavilion" to show their work. This year, there are over 136 artists and 53 countries showing. There are also many satellite and pop up exhibitions.  Here are Autre's picks for the top exhibitions. 1. U.K. artist Sarah Lucas presents 'I Scream Daddio' for the British Pavilion 2. The late Mario Merz will be holding an exhibition, entitled 'Unreal City,' at the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia 3. The late, great Cy Twombly will have an exhibition entitled 'Paradise' at Ca'Pesaro 4. New York based artist Aurel Schmidt will be showing her series 'New Gods' at Cannaregio 5. Part of the unique Vanhaerents Collection will be on display for an exhibition entitled Heartbreak Hotel at the Zuecca Projects Space 6. Jonas Mekas: Internet Saga at the Palazzo Foscari Contarini 7. Artist Rob Pruitt's unique Flea Market in Venice will be on display at A Plus A gallery 8. Pamela Rosenkranz has been nominated by her country to exhibit at the Swiss Pavilion with an exhibition that averages European skin color 9. At the age of 78, Joan Jonas represents the United States at the 56th Venice Biennale with They Come To Us Without A Word 10. Frontiers Reimagined, a major group exhibition with 44 artists will be on view at Museo di Palazzo Grimani

AMIE DICKE: Infinitely Suffering Thing

Dissolving floors of memory, 2007

Artist Amie Dicke, from Rotterdam, transforms magazine pictures into intriguing works of art and so much more. On view now at the Venice Bienalle see close to 27 gallons of foundation get dumped and sprayed over an environ specially constructed by the artist. 

Detail Destruction of Memory, Infinitely Suffering Thing, 2008

Violent Contradiction, 2008

Effacement, 2008

Infallible, Close-Up

"One hundred liters of foundation (make-up) is going to be sprayed automatically by spray-guns that hang above an interior I have set up in the middle of the industrial environment of the former AkzoNobel factory. This room mirrors my private memories. Most of the objects which I have (re-)used would normally be thrown away, but some stuff just tends to stay, because you keep carrying them with you either mentally or physically. In a way they have become physical reminders of our inability to let go of life. The many layers of foundation will cover up the original colors or patterns of the objects and eventually the whole room will be in one tone, concealed under a thick layer of foundation, like a strange make-up. The interior will be changed into a skin colored "flesh", like a radical makeover that will turn the dead objects into a self-portrait."

www.amiedicke.com