CAROL RAMA | DANH VO | NOTTINGHAM CONTEMPORARY

NOTTINGHAM CONTEMPORARY  |  19 Jul 2014 - 28 Sep 2014

Carol Rama, Untitled. 1971 – 2004. Private Collection © Archivio Carol Rama, Turin

Carol Rama’s expressive work is a direct result of the personal tragedies in her life. “I paint to heal myself,” she has said. Her autobiographical, explicitly female approach mirrors that of other artists of her time, such as Louise Bourgeois. Considered too radical for the fascist dominated Italy she grew up in, her work didn’t receive international attention until the end of the 90s. She received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2003, and her work is now shown in major art galleries around the world.

A self-taught artist, she began painting watercolours as a form of therapy. In 1933, when Rama was 15, her mother was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. She has stated that she began her “vulgar” drawings then, fascinated by the female patients who wandered the wards half naked. These transgressive, psychosexual images challenged state censorship, and her first exhibition, held in Turin in 1945, was shut down.

In the 60s she began to use psychologically charged objects in her work, including animal claws and doll’s eyes. This led to her celebrated paintings made from bicycle tyres in the 70s. Elegant, abstract and minimal, they were related to other important art of the time. Rama has said that she was attracted to the sensual, flesh like quality of rubber. The tyres also refer to the bicycle factory that her father owned. In 1942 he committed suicide after the factory failed and he was declared bankrupt.

This exhibition precedes a large touring retrospective of Carol Rama’s work initiated by MACBA in Barcelona and co-produced with the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Finland and the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino (GAM). This smaller selection of work at Nottingham Contemporary, which focuses on the early watercolours, the bricolages, the tyre paintings and the most recent works on diagrams and plans, is presented in close dialogue with Danh Vo’s exhibition, and a few of Vo’s works are presented amongst Rama’s.

Danh Võ, installation view, Nottingham Contemporary 2014. Photo Andy Keate

This summer we present the first major UK exhibition of the work of Danh Võ. Võ’s work explores the intersections of personal experience and major historical events, including the impact and mutations of Catholicism as it spread through colonisation.

His artworks reflect on the paradoxes inherent in the construction of identity. His use of objects evokes the historical circumstances that shape contemporary life.

“I don’t believe that things come from within you. To me things come out of the continuous dialogue you have with your surroundings,” he has said.

Danh Võ was born on the island of Phu Quoc, in South Vietnam in 1975 and eventually granted political asylum in Denmark, where he was raised. Since 2009 Võ has been collaborating with his father, Phung Võ, a skilled calligrapher, who has made new works for the exhibition.

Danh Võ and Carol Rama review - poignant relics of family and friendship. Laura Cumming, The Observer >>

Dazed and Confused: Danh Võ's Cinderella story >>

Danh Võ, The Great Paradox. Port Magazine >>

View Exhibition notes >>

Inside Carol Rama (detail), 2012 – 2014 © Bepi Ghiotti

Inside Carol Rama is a series of 90 photographs taken by Bepi Ghiotti over the last two years in the legendary studio-home of Carol Rama. A selection of these works will be shown in The Study for the duration of her exhibition.Photographs of her legendary studio, taken by Bepi Ghiotti, will be shown in The Study, off Gallery 1.

In addition, Italian artist Chiara Fumai will present a new performance in homage to Carol Rama within the exhibition on Saturday 19 July, Wednesday 27 August and Sunday 28 September.

Carol Rama: beautiful, shocking and finally noticed. The Telegraph >>

View Exhibition notes >>

http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/carol-rama

ART MONTHLY ISSUE 378

July–August 2014 www.artmonthly.co.uk

Art Monthly issue 378 SILVER SLIVER Gilda Williams on Andy Warhol's 'Sliver Factory' Labelling Andy Warhol a Pop artist lazily avoids the bulk of his prolific output. Half a century on from his most creative years, it is now time to recognise that his subject was not everyday culture but time itself. LOST & FOUND Mark Wilsher on the fate of artworks The mainstream press is obsessed with stories where art is either mistaken for rubbish and thrown away or, conversely, not recognised as important until an expert attributes it to an established master. What do these tales tell us about the misunderstood nature of art? CIVILISATION Christopher Townsend on Kenneth Clark's legacy The 1969 television series Civilisation is currently being promoted as a defining moment in the UK's cultural life. But doesn't this celebration tell us more about the current quandary of its producer, the BBC, and the sorry state of today's TV than the merits of the programme itself? EDITORIAL 'R' is for Rating The consequences of making higher education a free market includes such delights as the US-centric Rate My Professors website, where students can rate their tutors. This may seem an arbitrary and subjective method of grading, but is it really so different from the star-rating system applied in the UK's Research Excellence Framework process? ARTNOTES The Izolyatsia cultural centre in Ukraine is forcibly occupied by armed pro-Russian militia; Glasgow Art School fundraises towards rebuilding its fire-damaged Charles Rennie Mackintosh building; academic appeals and complaints at UK universities rise with tuition fees; New York's Cooper Union college is taken to court by a collective of current students, staff and alumni over the introduction of fees; graduate unemployment in the US is found to be worst among visual arts majors; the Art Fund launches a crowd-funding service for museums; three-fifths of Xinjiang Biennale artists are rejected on political grounds; Credit Suisse's recent guilty plea and world-record fine for aiding tax evasion reveals the uses and abuses of corporate sponsorship; the BBC/ACE TV channel The Space relaunches as a huge online commissioning platform for online art; the latest news on galleries, events, appointments, prizes and more. OBITUARIES Roger Ackling 1947–2014  Robyn Denny 1930–2014 EXHIBITIONS E-Vapor-8 Site Gallery, Sheffield – Bob Dickinson Jimmie Durham: Traces and Shiny Evidence Parasol unit, London – Mark Prince Terry Bond: Neighbourhood Watch The Minories Galleries, Colchester – Matthew Bowman Paper Museums: Moscow Conceptualism in Transit John Hansard Gallery, Southampton – Paul Carey-Kent Ai Weiwei Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield – David Trigg The Block and Charlotte Prodger: Markets Chelsea Space, London – Chris McCormack Whitstable Biennale various venues – Sophia Phoca 8th Berlin Biennale various venues – Omar Kholeif London Round-up 1 Limoncello • SPACE • Max Wigram • Cole – George Vasey London Round-up 2 Anthony Reynolds • Cubitt • Dilston Grove – Martin Herbert BOOKS Sarah Jacobs: After Nature: Highlights Marie Lund: Drums Michael Hampton samples two books concerned with 'afterness' Round-up: Art, Politics and Play Peter Suchin gathers up a shelf of related recent releases FILM Mareike Bernien & Kerstin Schroedinger: Rainbow's Gravity Colin Perry on loaded film stock RESPONSE & REPLY On Teaching the Unteachable Michael Corris responds to last month's feature by Dave Beech & Dave Beech replies to Michael Corris REPORTS Meanwhile ... History*  JJ Charlesworth finds some talks worth listening to A Thousand Doors Chris Fite-Wassilak encounters cultural optimism in Greece ARTLAW Copyright: Small Claims Henry Lydiate on the UK's new artist-friendly copyright court EVENTS London Art Calendar  Art Monthly's London event calendar can also be viewed online. EXHIBITION  Exhibition Listings  Art Monthly's exhibition listings can also be viewed online. ART MONTHLY AUDIO On iTunes The Art Monthly Talk Show is available as a podcast on iTunes—subscribe for free automatic downloads. Online Audio recordings are available online: www.artmonthly.co.uk/events GET ART MONTHLY Buy online: www.artmonthly.co.uk/buy Digital subscription only 8GBP / 12USD Art Monthly's free newsletter includes art jobs, residencies, competitions, exhibition opportunities etc: www.artmonthly.co.uk/newsletter

CAROL RAMA | DANH VO | NOTTINGHAM CONTEMPORARY

Photo: Danh Võ, 2013. © Danh Võ and Archivio Carol Rama, Turin. Carol Rama Danh Võ 19 July–28 September 2014 Press preview: Friday 18 July, 11am–2pm Opening: Friday 18 July, 6:30–9pm Nottingham Contemporary Weekday Cross Nottingham NG1 2GB www.nottinghamcontemporary.org Winner of the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2003 Venice Biennale, Carol Rama is a self-taught Italian artist whose artistic career began in 1936. She lives in Turin to this day. Much of Rama's work is a direct expression of the personal tragedies in her life. "I paint to heal myself," Rama has said. As a young woman in fascist Italy, Rama began painting watercolours as a form of therapy. Her delicate but transgressive psychosexual images challenged the modernist canon and state censorship. Sheremained underappreciated by the international art world until the 1990s. In the 1960s she began to apply psychologically charged found objects to the painting surface, including animal claws and dolls eyes. This body of work, called Bricolages, led to her celebrated abstract works made from bicycle inner tubes in the 1970s. The strips of black, grey and orange-red rubber have a sensual, flesh-like quality in these elegant and minimal compositions. They also allude to her father's bicycle factory and the hardships that followed its closure. Featuring 50 works, the exhibition presents a selection of her early watercolours and works from the Bricolage series including her tyre paintings. It precedes a large touring retrospective of Carol Rama's work initiated by MACBA in Barcelona and co-produced with the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Finland and the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino (GAM). Alongside Carol Rama, Nottingham Contemporary presents the first major UK exhibition by Danh Vō: The next morning, he (the prince) went with it to the man, and said to him, "No one shall be my wife except for the one whose foot fits this golden shoe." The two sisters were happy to hear this, for they had pretty feet. With her mother standing by, the older one took the shoe into her bedroom to try it on. She could not get her big toe into it, for the shoe was too small for her. Then her mother gave her a knife and said, "Cut off your toe. When you are queen you will no longer have to go on foot." The girl cut off her toe, forced her foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the prince. He took her on his horse as his bride and rode away with her.  (Excerpt from: The Brothers Grimm, Aschenputtel [Cinderella], 1812) Danh Vō was born on the island of Phu Quoc, South Vietnam, in 1975 and eventually granted political asylum in Denmark, where he was raised. Vō, now a Mexican resident, has had solo exhibitions at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago and Kunsthalle Friedericianum in Kassel. In 2012 he won the HUGO BOSS PRIZE.