Archive: 2012

Art.Zip magazine, Issue 5. 2012, including ‘Special Feature, Helen Couchman’

20th October, 2012

As a lone traveller, the English artist Helen Couchman arrived in Beijing via Moscow on the Trans-Mongolian railway in 2006. She arrived into a city that was as familiar to her as it was foreign. Taking a small flat near Gulou, she has since made Beijing her home, making work in her flat and using studios around Beijing and in the UK as needs must. In the spirit of the flaneur, Couchman finds herself walking through Beijing at night, lost in the city that found her. Couchman sent us the following photographic essay from Beijing, arranged “as I would pin images up on my studio wall as I work; to serve as references for my drawings and printmaking.” 

Special edition with guest Editors: Dr. Trish Lyons and Monica Chung

Art.Zip Issue 5 also features: Song Dong, Geoff Dyer, Issac Julien, Margarita Gluzberg amongst others. ART.ZIP is the first bilingual contemporary art magazine dedicated to bringing together the world of art in the UK and China. 

page 90

page 91 (UCCA, 798, Beijing, poster feat. ‘Self portrait with long life earrings‘)

page 92

page 93

page 94

page 95

page 96

page 97

page 98

page 99

For the magazine page spreads see here

Art Zip listing RCA library. With Dr Trish Lyons and Helen Couchman

As the first non-Chinese guest editor of the bi-lingual contemporary art magazine Art Zip Lyons compiled and commissioned a selection of texts, interviews and reviews focusing on the theme of translation. The issue was designed to physically and conceptually hinge around a Chinese caligrapic translation of Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘Chinese Curios’, highlighting cultural differences through the context of graphic layout and bi-lingual texts.
As well as overseeing the overall layout of the issue, Lyons guided the translation of‘Chinese Curios’ an essay by Geoff Dyer and an interview with Song Dong. She commissioned the cover art work and a photo essay on Beijing nightlife by Helen Couchman. In addition to her editorial work, Lyons commissioned a special edition fold out print by the artist Margarita Gluzberg and wrote an accompanying essay, ‘Her Dark Materials’. In this essay, Lyons unpacks the artist’s term of the ‘consumystic’, a hybrid concept that conflates, desire, consumption and the mystical. Exploring the dynamic and material processes that drive Gluzberg’s practice, Lyons draws together literary characters to communicate the dynamics at work in Gluzberg’s photographs.
25,000 copies of the special edition of Art Zip were distributed throughout museums in China including Today Art Museum, National Museum of China, National Museum of China, Beijing, Inside-Out Art Museum, Sichuan Art Museum, Tianjin Art Museum, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Guangdong Museum of Arts, Shanghai Doulun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai Zhengda Museum and Minsheng Art Museum. The issue is held in the library collections of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, Academy of Art and Design, Tsinghua University, China Central Academy of Fine Arts, China Academy of Fine Art, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and Luxun Academy of Fine Arts.

WORKERS 工人 on exhibit at Brighton Photo Biennial 2012

18th September, 2012
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6 October – 4 November 2012
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As part of its fifth edition, the Brighton Photo Biennial 2012 invited the submission of self-published, handmade or short run photography books, to be included as part of a photobook Exhibition at Brighton’s Jubilee Library throughout the Biennial (6 October – 4 November 2012) in collaboration with Photobook Show. The only criteria is that the book relates to the Biennial’s theme: ‘Agents of Change: Photography and the Politics of Space.’ All of the books submitted are included here. While the Biennial aims to offer a tightly curated programme of exhibitions, talks and events, the open submission format of this exhibition opens the theme to multiple interpretations.

Each photobook project should focus in some way on the diverse image cultures resulting from recent efforts to reimagine urban spaces through their occupation, and assess a range of historical and contemporary practices in light of the wider discussions they raise. It sets out to probe at the distinctions that separate art and activism, and pose questions as to whether – and in what circumstances – images can serve as agents of social and political change.

BPB12 aims to provide a critical space within which to think about relationships between the political occupation of physical sites and the production and dissemination of images.

BPB 12 will be working in association with Photobook Show (www.photobookshow.co.uk), a Brighton based arts organisation set up to raise the profile of artist-led photobooks, with particular focus on self-published or hand-crafted works. After the BPB12 show all photobooks submitted will become part of Photobook Show’s archive, an ever growing collection of self-published and hand-crafted photobooks that is accessible to the public and forms a part of regular shows and exhibitions held by Photobook Show.

Participants

Activestills Collective
Alessandro Rota
Alexander Brattell
Amelia Shepherd
Anastasia Shpilko
Asim Moeen
Barry W Hughes
Belen Cerezo
Chris Mear
Christopher Gianunzio & Jenny Tondera
Clive Rowe
Craig Atkinson
Daniel Seiffert
Dara mcgrath
David Adams
David Galjaard
David Jackson
David Jakelic
david o’mara
Denise Felkin
Diguerher Benjamin
Edgar Martins
Elayne Jude
Elisavet Tamouridou
Emer Mac Sweeney
Ewen Spencer
George Miles
Harry Watts
Helen Couchman
Helen Flanagan
Irena Siwiak Atamewan
Irene Siragusa
John Clayman
John MacLean
Mahesh Shantaram
Marcus Lyon
Minna Kantonen
Mitch Karunaratne
Niobe Syme
Paula Roush
Peter Mann
Philip Anderson
Rick Pushinsky
Rick Pushinsky
Simona Dell’Agli
Steve Poxson
Stewart Weir
Tamara Hussain
Tim Bowditch
Vincci Huang
Wil van Iersel
Zaliha İnci Karabacak

 

Jubilee Library, Jubilee Street, Brighton , BN1 1GE

Mon/Tues 10am-7pm
Wed 10am-5pm
Thurs 10am-8pm
Fri/Sat 10am-5pm
Sun 11am-4pm


‘WORKERS 工人’ on exhibit in Beijing featured in Accademia Apulia News

17th April, 2012

Helen Couchman’s work on show in Beijing

In December 2007 Helen Couchman, member of Accademia Apulia UK, photographed a large group of Chinese workers engaged in the construction work of the 2008 Olympic park. Couchman chose a specific group of labourers, employed to build the iconic ‘bird’s nest’ stadium and the Olympic swimming pool. 

The 143 portraits that resulted are contained in an amazing book WORKERS. Between 11th of April and 8th May 2012 thirty portraits from the WORKERS series will be on show at swanky Yihe Hotel in the Chaoyang district of Beijing. The portraits will be part of a group exhibition, Heyi 798 Art Project, curated by renowned curatorial duo Wong Jun and He Bing. 

The group exhibition, under the wing of Gabriela Salgado (formerly Curator of Public Programmes at The Tate Modern) will include some one hundred established artists showing an interesting sample of eclectic creativity. 

For more information about the series ‘WORKERS’ see www.helencouchman.com 

For more information about the project in book form see, ‘WORKERS’ see www.soloshowpublishing.com

The Heyi 798 Art Project will be on show until 8th May 2012 at the Yihe Hotel, 9 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Dashanzi, Chaoyang District, Beijing.

 www.accademiapulia.org