Art Weekly Digest: London 25 September - 01 October, 2017

Every week The Art Partners post a carefully curated selection of cultural events to see in London.

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Opening Of The Week

Ann Veronica Janssens

This autumn, the White Cube gallery hosts the first solo exhibition by Ann Veronica Janssens, a UK-born artist. The show brings together her recent minimal sculpture and precise installation featuring her special way of using different coloured lights, which bring an effect of specific atmospheres and psychological ‘moods’ (last time we had chance to experience her powerful installation yellowbluepink as part of States of Mind: Tracing the edges of consciousness at Welcome collection). The artist herself perceives her installations as a form of hypnosis; she covers some of her works in gold to add disconnection from the surroundings. “This is how her art performs – by requiring us to perform it.”

The exhibition will be on view until 12 November 2017 at the White Cube, 144 – 152 Bermondsey Street, London, SE1 3TQ

Hymn For The Weekend

Boom for Real

This 1982 artwork by Jean-Michel Basquiat was sold for a record $110.5 million at auction in New York in May 2017. It hadn't been shown in public since a private collector bought it for $19,000 in 1984.

Just when all the buzz around Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting Untitled 1982 shattered world-records in May (it was sold for $110.5 million sailing past its high-estimate of $60 million), we have another reason to be excited about. The Barbican Art centre prepares something special with Basquiat’s first large-scale exhibition in the UK, featuring rare film, photography and archive material. Putting on a Basquiat show like this – and it will have more than 100 works – is a particular challenge because most of his work is owned privately. The show promises to capture the spirit of this self-taught artist, poet, DJ and musician whose influence, since his death at 27 in 1988, has been enormous. This will be #BoomForReal.

The show runs until 28 January 2018 at the Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, EC2Y 8DS

In Focus

Pietro Consagra & Marine Hugonnier

Pietro Consagra Il Sole, 1966 . Courtesy of Artuner

ARTUNER, an innovative art platform, in cooperation with the Italian Cultural Institute are delighted to exhibit iconic sculptures from the 1960-80s of an Italian past-war sculptor Pietro Consagra in dialogue with new works by French artist Marine Hugonnier. The show explores how both artists challenge cultural and historical frameworks and embraces a new relationship between the audience and the environment. A special feature of Consagra’s practice is his rejection from the three-dimensionality: he preferred to emphasise the frontal outlook, which later became his artistic credo. In her turn, Marine Hugonnier is famous for her special way of looking at history and her works on paper, films and photography have been exhibited worldwide during the last two decades.

The exhibition is on view at the Italian Cultural Institute(39, Belgrave Square SW1X 8NX) until 26 November, 2017.

Art Discourse

Fashion Illustration in Britain: Amber Butchart

Amber Butchart. Photography Anthony Lycett

Fashion photography plays a very important role for today’s society. People relay on the fashion trends that they see there and bring them into their every-day life. But how did it work before photography was invented? Amber Butchart, a fashion historian and author of numerous books on fashion charts the story of fashion and the social calendar in Britain through the fashion plates of the most important periodicals, offering a visually stunning record of two centuries of fashion illustration. Find out how the fashion illustrations became an art form in themselves.

This talk takes place on Thursday, 5 October 19:30 pm at the British Library, 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB

Last Chance To See

Vaughan James: Water the Essential

Vaughan James, 'Liquid Gold Zurich Switzerland' (2015) Courtesy of Shapero Modern.

This photographic exhibition by Vaughan James is all about water. Taking into consideration the fact that 80% of the human body consists of water, it is very important to raise awareness for water issues and for what water means for our environment and us nowadays. The exhibition “Water the Essential” presents the photos of water in its simplicity and awakes the spiritual relationship between a man and water.

The exhibition will be on view until 30 September 2017 at the Shapero, Modern Gallery, 32 St. George Street, London W1S 2EA