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.