CURRENT|不合时宜: Contemporary Art From Scotland /// Phase One launches at Shanghai Himalayas Museum

CURRENT |不合时宜: Contemporary Art From Scotland is now underway at Shanghai Himalayas Museum, China with Phase One Exhibitions by Poster Club and Edgar Schmitz. The launch, which took place this weekend on Saturday 27th June, also saw the inaugural Shanghai Forum Series, part of the international touring forum Hubs and Fictions: On Current Art and Imported Nearness.

A poster for CURRENT being installed in Shanghai at the museum. 

Co-curator Sophia Hao at the launch of CURRENT at Shanghai Himalayas Museum

For their exhibition Wheat, Mud, Machine, the collaborative artist group Poster Club have made a new body of work in the form of posters, stickers and garments. The exhibition invites audience members to engage with the exhibition by creating their own mementos from the show, utilising the on-site printing station and stamps made by the artists to make new images of slogans. In keeping with the ethos of the exhibition poster, Poster Club created the CURRENT poster announcing Phase One of the programme, using their specially designed 'finger font'. 

Members of Poster Club leading a tour of their exhibition Wheat, Mud, Machine

Yesterday on Sunday 28 June, Poster Club members Anne-Marie Copestake, Nicolas Party, Ciara Phillips and Michael Stumpf travelled to Shanghai Himalayas Museum's residency venue at Zhujiajiao Town, a picturesque watertown in the southeast of Shanghai, to begin their week-long residency.

Poster Club's Michael Stumpf, Anne-Marie Copestake and Nicolas Party at Zhujiajiao Art Museum. 

Edgar Schmitz has reconfigured a body of works first conceived for Cooper Gallery in 2012 with a new set of sculptural works, sound pieces and architectural interventions. Recasting debris from arthouse cinema, future infrastructures and derelict resort architectures, Schmitz' works populate galleries with sprawling motifs of conjured-up remoteness and projected 'elsewheres'. Like his 2012 Cooper Gallery exhibition, Surplus Cameo Decor: Sindanao 2 will be interspersed with live cameo appearances from art world protagonists developed for this new context. This weekend award winning film-maker Zhao Da Yong performed a cameo appearance of himself as himself in the gallery as cinematic set.

Edgar Schmitz: Surplus Cameo Decor: Sindanao 2

Co-curated by Sophia Hao and Edgar Schmitz, the first of the Hubs and Fictions Shanghai Series took place on Saturday 27th June. The forum titled Settings – Nearness as A Utopian Proposition saw a diverse line-up of figures from the contemporary art world examine the promise of institutionality and discuss the limitations of contemporary art infrastructures.

Audience at Shanghai Series Forum #1 with speakers WHW, Simon Groom, Wang Nanming and Terry Smith

A slide from What, How and For Whom/ WHW's presentation during Shanghai Forum Series #1

The morning session featured the all-female curatorial collective What, When and for Whom/ WHW and Director of The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Simon Groom, both of whom referred to past examples of their own curatorial projects including Meeting Points 7 and GENERATION: 25 years of Contemporary Art In Scotland. Co-curator of CURRENT, Wang Nanming started the afternoon session with his presentation Metavant-garde, followed by Professor Terry Smith who joined the other speakers remotely to present Defining Contemporaneity; Reorienting Experimentality; Reimagining the World. 

CURRENT|不合时宜: Contemporary Art From Scotland is on until 9 August 2015.

For more information about CURRENT visit our website.

   

International Project/// This week marks the launch of CURRENT|不合时宜: Contemporary Art from Scotland at Shanghai Himalayas Museum

Installation is now underway for Cooper Gallery’s major international project CURRENT |不合时宜: Contemporary Art from Scotland, a four-phase eighteen-month exhibition and forum programme taking place at Shanghai Himalayas Museum that will showcase for the first time in China the distinctiveness of contemporary art made in Scotland.

Shanghai Himalayas Museum, Shanghai

Opening on Saturday 27^th June, Phase One of CURRENT will present exhibitions by Edgar Schmitz and Poster Club, and the first instalment of On Current Art And Imported Nearness, the latest incarnation of the Hubs and Fictions series that first took place at Cooper Gallery in 2012. Speakers participating in the inaugural Shanghai forum, Settings – Nearness as A Utopian Proposition, are distinguished figures in the art world, Simon Groom, Terry Smith, Wang Nanming and What, How & for Whom/ WHW.

Installation photo: Edgar Schmitz, Suplus Cameo Decor: Sindanao 2

In addition to the CURRENT Phase One exhibitions, three residencies will take place during the exhibition period in June/July 2015 at Shanghai Himalayas Museum’s Residency Venue Zhujiajiao Art Museum located at Zhujiajiao town, a picturesque watertown in the southeast of Shanghai. 

Zhujiajiao town, Shanghai

From 28 June – 5 July, Poster Club members Ciara Phillips, Michael Stumpf, Nicolas Party and Anne-Marie Copestake will undertake a week-long residency to recalibrate the group’s ideals “to make posters and to collaborate”, throughout July Glasgow-based artist Anne-Marie Copestake will be in residence and developing her work with local musicians in Shanghai, then from 15 – 31 July, art writer and member of Cooper Gallery’s Group Critical Writing initiative, Frances Davis will be the Art Writer in Residence, reflecting and annotating upon CURRENT. 

View from inside Zhujiajiao Art Museum

The origins of CURRENT go back to 2012 when Shanghai-based curator and critic Wang Nanming was invited to participate in Edgar Schmitz' Cooper Gallery exhibition Surplus Cameo Decor as a 'cameo appearance' and to present a keynote talk at the exhibition's satellite strand Hubs and Fictions: A Touring Forum on Current Art and Imported Remoteness. Wang Nanming's enthusiasm for the exhibition and support of the curatorial vision of Cooper Gallery led him to invite Cooper Gallery to curate CURRENT for Shanghai Himalayas Museum where he holds the post of Head of Research.

Continue reading about the origins of CURRENT here.