Pianist and composer Lola Perrin: Seven Fridays performance project

Lola Perrin photographed by Nazarin Montag

Lola’s Perrin’s Seven Fridays is a new concert series that begins on Friday April 8th at 6.30pm at the Saint Mary Madgalene church, Munster Square, London NW1 3PL. Perrin will be performing her piano suites - on a beautiful Bosendorfer - at this venue one Friday per month from April to October. Each concert is introduced by a guest speaker who is invited to give a short talk inspired by the triggers Perrin used to write the suites: everything from science and cities to contemporary art, fashion, photography and painting. Each concert also marks the launch of the piano suite manuscript books.

To kick the series off, on Friday 8th April Perrin will be playing Suite I, Early One Sunday Morning, (after a painting by Edward Hopper) and Suite II, Nine Images for Piano (inspired by Ansel Adams photographs). The concert will be introduced by John Bryson, photographer and co-founder of Bicha Gallery.

Tickets are available on entrance for £6 (£3 concessions). Phone 020 7935 8682 for more details.

Seven Fridays will be happening on Friday April 8, Friday May 6, Friday June 3, Friday July 8, Friday Aug 5, Friday Sept 16, Friday Oct 14 and guest speakers will be John Bryson, Marcia Teusink, Nazarin Montag, Dr Alida Gersie, Dr Martin Coath, Antonio Capelao and Sue Hubbard respectively. Visuals will accompany some performances.

Lola’s music has drawn comparisons with the music of Ravel, Debussy, Satie, Keith Jarrett, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Michael Nyman. Seven Fridays marks the release this year of Lola Perrin sheet music by Spartan Press and comes on the heels of Lola’s highly acclaimed shows at BFI Southbank and Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall. Said the BBC:

Lola Perrin's inspirations seem to lie somewhere between the ecstasies of Keith Jarrett's early 70s solo improvisations and the delicate proto-minimalism of Cage's "In a Landscape": even Philip Glass' solo piano works come to mind.

Brief biographies of the other guest speakers can be found below:

Marcia Teusink is an London-based visual artist whose paintings, drawings, and photographic images investigate everyday objects and impermanence. Marcia has also been teaching art to children and adults for over twenty years, in the USA, Switzerland, Italy, and now the UK. She completed her MFA in Visual Arts at the City University of New York at Queens College and is currently doing post-graduate studies in Museum & Gallery Education at the Institute of Education in London.

Nazarin Montag’s work is concerned with exploring the ‘surface’ of digital media. Working with photographic images and employing a painstaking process of cutting and re-constructing a surface, new works are created that provide an illusion of depth and density that were perhaps absent in the original image. Her work offers an imaginary development of the still image; “In an age of advanced technology it has become a normal part of everyday life to interact with the virtual world, where the boundaries between reality and fantasy are blurred.”

Dr Alida Gersie is a dramatherapist/supervisor, workshop-leader and organisational consultant in private practice. Since the 1970s she has specialised in the uses of story to facilitate beneficial change in distressed individuals, institutions and communities. She held a directorship at the Postgraduate Arts Therapies Programme at the University of Hertfordshire until 2000. Her research and writings focus on change-oriented story-work. Throughout her work the principles of sustainability have been of important concern. She is the author of acclaimed and translated books, including Storymaking in Education and Therapy (with Nancy King), Storymaking in Bereavement, Reflections on Therapeutic Storymaking: the use of stories in groups and Earthtales, storytelling in times of change.

Dr Martin Coath builds computer models that reflect the way our senses adapt to the environment in which we find ourselves. The aim is to understand how we acquire the tools to make sense of the world through our experience of it, which involves examining what is meant by learning, even down to the changes that occur at the gaps (synapses) between pairs of neurons. We build our internal world using just hints from our external world, fleshed out with what is embodied in our experience. These two unequal streams combine in patterns of events, flashes of synaptic activity, which are the raw material from which our percepts are constructed.

Antonio Capelao, DipArch RIBA II, is of Portuguese descent and runs Bicha Gallery, an art gallery located at the London’s South Bank ,which he opened in 2009 with partner John Bryson. The gallery represents living contemporary artists from Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, the US and the UK – working in ceramics, drawing, installation, metal work, mixed media, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. Antonio’s other career as an architect has taken him to architectural practices in Ahmedabad, India.

Sue Hubbard is a freelance art critic, novelist and poet. Twice winner of the London Writers competition she was the Poetry Society's first-ever Public Art Poet and created a number of site-specific poems as part of a visual arts project in Birmingham's jewellery quarter. She was also commissioned by the Arts Council and the BFI to create London's biggest art poem that leads from Waterloo to the IMAX and was writer-in-residence at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill during ArchiTEXT week. Her first collection, Everything Begins with the Skin, was published by Enitharmon in 1994 and a number of her poems appeared in Oxford Poets 2000 published by Carcanet. Her latest collection Ghost Station was published by Salt Publishing in 2004. Depth of Field, her first novel, was published in 2000. Sue Hubbard is a regular contributor to The Independent and The New Statesman where she writes on contemporary art. In 2006 she was awarded a major Arts Council Literary Award.

For further details about Seven Fridays and more on Lola Perrin's remarkable work visit http://www.lolaperrin.com/

Lola Perrin photographed by Nazarin Montag

4th MaxMara Art Prize shortlist announced

Last night the Whitechapel Art Gallery and MaxMara announced the names of the five artists who have been shortlisted for the fourth MaxMara Art Prize For Women and launched the exhibition of the most recent winner, Andrea Buttner:

Extract of work by MaxMara Art Prize winner Andrea Buttner, currently on
show at the Whitechapel Gallery.

From drawing and sculpture to filmmaking and performance the MaxMara Prize this year offers real diversity in practice whilst showcasing some of the best work by women artists in the UK today. The short-listed artists are Christina Mackie, Avis Newman, Emily Wardill, Spartacus Chetwynd and Laure Prouvost.  The Judging panel was chaired by Iwona Blazwick, Director of The Whitechapel Gallery and included Gilda Williams, critic and lecturer; Amanda Wilkinson, gallerist; Lisa Milroy, artist and Muriel Salem, collector.

The MaxMara Art Prize for Women is the only UK art prize for women and was set up to promote and nurture female artists based in the United Kingdom, enabling artists to develop their potential and providing an opportunity for them to produce new works of art.  The prize itself will result in a six month residency based in Italy and an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery.

An Evening With Jabba the Hutt, by Spartacus Chetwynd

Spartacus Chetwynd  (b. 1973, London) studied Social Anthropology at UCL before completing a BA in Fine Art at the Slade and an MA in Painting at the RCA.  She works in both performance and painting. Her DIY performances re-enact iconic scenes from literature, cinema and art using handmade costumes, choreography and elaborate stage sets. She has performed at Frieze Art Fair, Art Basel, ICA and Tate Modern and has had solo shows in Milan, Dijon and Zurich.

Christina Mackie  (b.1956, Oxford) studied at Vancouver School of Art and Central St. Martins. Mackie makes sets of sculptures that interlock to form installations. She has had solos shows at the Henry Moore Institute and Tate Britain and will have an exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery in London in 2012. Her work has been included in the British Art Show and the Busan Biennial. In 2005 she was awarded the Becks Futures prize and in 2010 the Hamlyn Award for Artists.

Avis Newman (b. 1946, London) studied at The Central School of Art and Goldsmiths College. Her layered, minimal canvas works, objects and works on paper show a longstanding preoccupation with the fundamental language of marking and inscribing and the initial moment of tracing. She has work in various public collections including Tate, London and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  Solo exhibitions include: Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, de Appel Foundation, Amsterdam. Camden Arts Centre, London, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Laure Prouvost  (b. 1978, Croix-Lille, France ) lives and works in London. She graduated from Central Saint Martins and took part of the Lux Artist Associate Program. Her work includes painting, video, sound and site specific works.  She has exhibited at Tate Britain, ICA, Serpentine and BFI. She opens a solo show at MOT International in April 2011. She was awarded the 56th Oberhausen Short Film Principal Prize (2010), a FLAMIN award  (2011) and the EAST International Award (2009).

Game Keepers Without Game, by Emily Wardill

Emily Wardill  (b. 1977) is a London-based filmmaker and performance artist. She studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and works predominantly in film and video.  She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally with solo shows at the ICA, London and PS1 New York; screenings at the London Film Festival and performances at the Serpentine Gallery. In 2010 she won The Jarman Award and her work is currently on show in The British Art Show at the Hayward.

Each of the artists will now be asked to create a presentation on their plans. The winner will be announced in September 2011 and the project realised during a six-month residency in 2012.  The residency is divided into two locations - the American Academy, Rome and the Pistoletto Foundation, Biella. The resulting work will then be offered to the Maramotti Collection for acquisition, and an exhibition of the resulting work will take place at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 2013.

The Maramotti family, owners of the MaxMara Fashion Group, are major contemporary art collectors. The MaxMara Art Prize for Women is the first time the fashion house has established an arts prize in the UK and reflects the company’s strong association with art and women.  The Max Mara Fashion Group was founded in 1951 by Achille Maramotti and is now run by the next generation. The company is one of the largest women’s prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) manufacturers in the world, with 2082 stores and 23 different brands sold in more than 90 different countries in the world. On 29th September 2007 the Collezione Maramotti opened to the public in Reggio Emilia, Italy. For further information, please visit www.collezionemaramotti.org. The first winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women was Margaret Salmon, the second was Hannah Rickards and the third Andrea Büttner, whose show is currently on at The Whitechapel. For more details click here.

Iwona Blazwick OBE, Director, Whitechapel Gallery said, “The Whitechapel Gallery has a long tradition of premiering female artists and the Max Mara Art Prize is close to our heart as it champions and supports female artists.  The short-listed artists for the next award offer a snapshot of the sheer calibre of art being made by women in Britain today.  The judges very much hope to bring these artists and their work to even wider attention.  For the winner the judges are looking for something exceptional and an artistic practice that is truly fascinating, and look forward to being able to give the winner of the Max Mara Art Prize the gift of time to develop new works of art.”

For more details visit The Whitechapel Gallery website.