An interview with Lucca Hue-Williams on curating boundary-pushing art, global narratives, and the future of London’s creative landscape

Mark Leckey, Inflatable Felix (2014) at Galerie Bucholz

The doors have opened on Frieze 2015 in London, bringing the art world en masse to Regent’s Park for the 13th edition of one of the fall’s biggest selling events.  The exhibition, which capped its “VIP” day last evening, saw viewers flocking to its long, loping hallways to browse the works on view. (more…)

Artist Charles Pétillon has been commissioned to fill London’s Covent Garden market with 100,000 balloons, the first installation the artist has created outside of France.  “I want to change people’s point of view, their perspective of a place they see every day and never really look at,” he says. “A swimming pool, a field: if I suddenly put something strange in it like these balloons you will see it differently. I don’t want my works to be seen just as decoration, there is always something they are trying to draw out or question.” (more…)

London’s gallery scene, art districts and theatre have resulted in the British capital being named the most Googled cultural center in the world, the BBC reports.  “London is without a doubt the cultural capital of the world,” said Mayor Boris Johnson of the news. (more…)

As a new wave of strikes start outside the National Gallery, the museum has been forced to close a substantial portion of its galleries.  The protests also come as Gabriele Finaldi prepares to take over for Sir Nicholas Penny as museum president. (more…)

Thomas Hirschhorn, In-Between (2015), Photo by Mark Blower Courtesy of South London Gallery

Thomas Hirschhorn has returned to London for his first solo show in the British capital is some time, bringing a new, site-specific work that continues the artist’s interest in crisis, temporality and mediation as necessary components in the understanding and mitigation of trauma.  Borrowing from the aesthetic languages of installation and sculpture, the artist maps a fictitious moment of violence across the South London Gallery, bringing with it a state of suspended aftermath. (more…)

Following a number of walkouts and week-long protests, the staff at London’s National Gallery has announced its first full strike this August.  “Our members in the National Gallery have been engaged in a heroic struggle to defend the functions of a national institution,” PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said in a statement. “They have taken 52 days strike action so far and are prepared to take more. Accordingly, we have served the employer with notice today of more sustained action in August.” (more…)

The Whitechapel Gallery has announced the London Open 2015, a Triennial open to all artists living and working in the British capital over the age of 26.  “The London Open 2015 received the greatest number of applications in the history of the Whitechapel Gallery’s open submission exhibition,” says Daniel F. Herrmann, Eisler Curator and Head of Curatorial Studies.  “The entries were of exceptionally high quality – their level of execution, creativity and critical sense are testament to London’s status as the art capital of the world and we are delighted to present some of the most interesting artists working in the city today” (more…)

Michael Borremans, Black Mould / Pogo (2015), via Art Observed

Belgian painter Michael Borremans has long mined the aesthetic moorings of antiquity for his work, creating meticulously labored paintings that owe much to 17th and 18th century painterly technique.  Originally trained as a photographer, Borremans’s craft is tempered by a notable scholarly, contextual awareness, frequently using his mooring in the present day to offer the occasional critique or inversion of his historical inspirations.  Such is the case with the artist’s most recent body of work at David Zwirner’s 24 Grafton Street gallery in London, a series of dark, occasionally disturbing pieces that use the painter’s signature style to amplify their surrealist aspects.

Michael Borremans, Black Mould / The Badger’s Song (2015), via Art Observed

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London’s Royal Academy has launched a Kickstarter page to fund the £100,000 installation of Ai Weiwei’s Trees at the museum’s London courtyard.  “It is an experiment and a gamble, but a sensible one,” says Tim Marlow, the RA’s artistic director. “If it comes off, brilliant; if not then it was worth trying.” (more…)

Nicholas Serota has reportedly won an additional £6 million in government funding for the Tate Modern expansion set to open next year.  The move is particularly noteworthy, as it comes in the midst of widespread cuts to arts funding around the nation. (more…)

Artist Marc Quinn is interviewed in the Telegraph this week, as he prepares to show new work at White Cube this month.  “I’ve always loved beaches,” he says, noting the connections between the ocean’s form and landscape and his own work.  “I love that we come from the sea. I think that’s where my interest in liquid and solid comes from. The beach is where liquid and solid meet, so it has this incredible sense of possibility.” (more…)

An Auguste Rodin sculpture stolen 24 years ago has been recovered after it was offered for sale to Christie’s, and returned to the owner. “In accordance with the insurance policy to which this work was subject, Young Woman with Serpent was offered back to the theft victim upon its successful recovery,”says Spokesman Jerome Hasler of Art Recovery Group, the company that assisted in the recovery of the piece.  “In this instance, however, the victim has decided that the work should be sold, and it will now be consigned later this year for a new owner to enjoy.” (more…)

Mona Hatoum is profiled in The New York Times this week, as the artist prepares for her solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou this month, and reviews the multi-faceted international upbringing that informs much of her work.  “The basis of it is a feeling of wanting to be free of all those restrictions, whether it’s social or political, that are always put on people,” she says, “so I can be whatever I want to be.” (more…)

London’s Whitechapel Gallery has announced plans for an ambitious exhibition of Arab art, pulling more than 100 works from the Barjeel Art Foundation, and noted as “the broadest single overview of Arab art to be shown in the UK to date,” the Art Newspaper reports.  “The Barjeel foundation’s guiding principle is to contribute to the intellectual development of the art scene in the Arab region by building a prominent, publicly accessible art collection in the UAE,” the foundation said in a statement. (more…)

Roni Horn, Hack Wit – chasing blue out (2014), via Hauser and Wirth

Hauser and Wirth is currently devoting both its Saville Row Galleries to a collection of several recent series by Roni Horn, documenting the American artist’s ongoing investigations of language, repetition and meaning that stem from both the viewer and artist’s encounter with the work. (more…)

Damien Hirst has installed his large-scale work, Charity, outside of the Gherkin tower in London this week, a nearly 25-foot high statue of a young girl in a leg brace, holding a vandalized collection tin.  “Charity is an iconic piece of art. It is also a symbol of changing attitudes to disability over the past 50 years, since collection boxes like the one depicted in this sculpture were seen on high streets across the country,” says Alan Gosschalk, fundraising director at Scope, the British disability charity that once used the collection tins depicted in Hirst’s work. (more…)

A group of cleaners protesting Sotheby’s low sick pay rates have been suspended from their posts, following their public demonstration during the auction house’s London sales last week.  “[A service rep] stopped them at the entrance and said ‘give me your passes, you’re no longer welcome at Sotheby’s – we’ve been instructed by Sotheby’s to not allow you on site’” says Petros Elia, the cleaner’s union general secretary. “Our argument is that Sotheby’s is massively, extremely wealthy company. Contractual sick-pay is not a crazy thing.” (more…)

John Waters is the subject of a profile in The Guardian this week, as the filmmaker-turned-artist prepares to open a show of his work in London, and discussing his aims towards his most recent body of work.  “I wanted to be the most despised person imaginable, like I was when I started.  I built a career out of it. I wasn’t hated by the people I wanted to like my work – I was hated by the people it was bait for,” he says.    (more…)

The London Underground has announced a year-long series of artist commissions in the newest iteration of its ongoing arts patronage, including video work from Liam Gillick, and new design commissions from Giles Round and Design Work.  “Gillick has taken his camera, picking out features of the Victoria Line in an unfolding narrative,” says Eleanor Pinfield, the head of Art on the Underground. (more…)

Theaster Gates, White Sky, overcast (2014), All Images Courtesy White Cube Gallery

Now through July 5, the White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey presents an exhibition of new work by Theaster Gates, the installation artist and professor of visual art at the University of Chicago who draws from themes of individual and collective history, place and self, and empowerment in his work.  Freedom of Assembly continues and expands upon the artist’s approach to art as a vehicle for social-justice, communication, and critique.

Theaster Gates, Freedom of Assembly (Installation View)

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Andy Warhol, One Dollar Bill (1962), via Sotheby’s

The results are in for Sotheby’s Evening Sale tonight, drawing the first half of the 2015 market year to a close with a mixed sale that saw impressive strength in unexpected places and a number of major letdowns at the higher end of the sale, ultimately closing on a final tally of £130,376,500, well shy of the £203 million mark the auction house had trumpeted earlier this month, with 9 of the 58 lots going unsold. (more…)

Francis Bacon, Study for Head of Isabel Rawsthorne and George Dyer (1967), via Christie’s

Another auction come and gone for Christie’s tonight in London, and another set of strong results, as the auction house capped a 76 lot sale to the tune of £95,646,500, meeting expectations, and setting several records for non-blue chip artists along the way, with 10 lots going unsold, including a string of Gerhard Richter works that may signal a downturn in the artist’s market popularity. (more…)

Damien Hirst is the subject of a lengthy profile in The Guardian this week, exploring his often overlooked role in curating and presenting the work of the YBA’s in their early years, and his soon to open London gallery.  “I’ve always wanted a gallery like Saatchi, the original Boundary Road,” he says. (more…)