January 2012
Catherine Ince
Curator, Barbican Art Gallery
January gets off to a flying start in what promises to be a bumper year on the cultural front. One of the first ‘Olympic’ commissions has just been hoisted into place on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the Southbank. Architect David Kohn in collaboration with artist Fiona Banner have created a Room for London, a full-size boat-cum-living space that will play host to a number of ‘thinkers-in-residence’ and nocturnal guests throughout the year. I suspect Room for London may be fully booked by now, so you could take the opportunity to welcome home the splendid David Hockney instead. He takes over the main galleries at the Royal Academy from the 21st with a series of new monumental landscape paintings. Building the Revolution is in its final few weeks, and a talk on Tatlin’s Tower by John Milner concludes what has been an excellent architecture talks programme at the RA this season (next time Jean-Louis Cohen is in town, you shouldn’t miss out).
Over in the east, you can feast on a plethora of delights at Whitechapel Gallery — from Josiah McElheny’s beautiful, hypnotic installation The Past Was A Mirage I Had Left Far Behind and the delightful archive display celebrating Rothko in Britain (fashions don’t change, it seems) to a new exhibition by artist Zarina Bhimji, who captures the complex and layered histories of buildings and landscape through photography and film. At Victoria Miro artist Alex Hartley explores ideas of habitation and refuge in his exhibition The World is Still Big. Taking inspiration from the 1960s American rural commune Drop City, Hartley has constructed his own Drop City dome – all nicely rusted and weather-beaten - outside the gallery, where he has been living since the show opened. For those of you (me included) who missed Musarc’s Christmas concert, you can catch the London Met’s architecture and sound research group holding a salon, Being the Building, at Barbican Art Gallery as part of the OMA: Progress programme.
If none of this tickles your fancy, you can always try your hand at curating the British Pavilion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. Join Vicky Richardson and Vanessa Norwood at the AA on Tuesday 10th January as they explain the concept for 2012 and invite you to participate in Venice Takeaway: Ideas to Change British Architecture.
