Brainard Carey

Michelle Lai

October 11, 2017 By Brainard Carey Leave a Comment

Michelle Shiu-lin Lai is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary performance artist whose work transitions between movement, text, and image. Lai investigates the primal poetics of space through a process-based extraction of text through body memory/history, & butoh influenced sensitivity training. Lai recently performed her work in the debut of band Linear Ghost at the Bluewhale, Downtown LA- a collaboration with artist musicians Robert Jacobson, Breeze Smith, Darryl Tewes, & Tim Maher. Lai performed solo work “This Mouth and the Space of Nothing” at A+D Museum downtown LA (2016) and frequently collaborates with a range of artists across different media including film/ video, visual, sculpture, & sound. Lai has created works in performance art trio PO1 with Heyward Bracey and Kio Griffith, presenting a series of multi-media explorations of body, self, time, & identity. She has performed in works at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, the UCLA Fowler Museum, the John Paul Getty Museum, Hammer Museum, Grand Park, among other institutions and sites in California, the Eastern United States, & in temple ceremony abroad at Junjungan Village, Ubud, Bali. Lai practices architecture and continues to train and perform with Oguri & Roxanne Steinberg’s Venice-based Body Weather Laboratory (2009-present). Excerpts of Linear Ghost @ the Bluewhale: Improvisatory collaboration of artist/musicians: Robert Jacobson: guitar & bulgarian tambura. Breeze Smith: drums. Darryl Tewes: bass. Tim Maher: drums. Michelle Lai: poetry & movement (Michelle Lai performing her original poetic texts: This Mouth & the Space of Nothing & 5 million Dollar Chandelier in a Cave)

A-Stigmatism, Diavolo Brewery, multi-media collab poetic narratvie titled “Stigmatic Mountains: Sleeping Position 2″ by Michelle Lai

16 Faces, ARC Pasadena, multi-media collab (comm. 25th anniversary Tiananman massacre)

The book mentioned in the interview was The Peregrine, here is a link to book The Peregrine by J.A. Baker.

A multi-media collaboration by PO1: dance/choreography Michelle Lai, dance/choreography Heyward Bracey and video artist Kio Griffith. photography: Stella Chong 16 Faces was developed as a part of the 2014 “T Memorial” event (a commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing China) at ARC in Pasadena, California.

Kimberly Brooks

October 5, 2017 By Brainard Carey Leave a Comment

Kimberly Brooks is a contemporary American painter whose work integrates figuration and abstraction to explore a variety of subjects dealing with history, memory and identity.

Brooks has solo exhibitions throughout the United States and her work has been showcased in juried exhibitions including curators from the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Brooks received her BA at UC Berkeley and studied painting at Otis and UCLA. Brooks lives in Los Angeles and works out of her studio in Venice, A coffee table book of her work will be available Spring 2018 (Vivant Publishing).

Brooks current exhibition “Brazen” is on view at the Zevitas Marcus in Los Angeles until Oct 28, 2018.

The book mentioned at the end of the interview is Leonardo’s Brain.

“Lightness of Being” Oil, Silver on Linen

“Remembrance” Oil, Silver, Gold on Linen

Cheryl McGinnis

October 2, 2017 By Brainard Carey Leave a Comment

In 1995 Cheryl McGinnis began looking at Chinese contemporary artists. Having become entranced and excited about the work of Zhang Hongtu, Zhang Huan, Gu Wenda, Ai Wei Wei, to name a few. Neither these artists nor she wanted to be apart of the traditional gallery system. Her vision was to create a space in which the artists would be present in exhibiting their works and engage with the viewers in a conversation about the work.

Cheryl McGinnis Gallery, a contemporary salon became an exciting space in which many artist’s careers were born, nurtured and thrived. Zhang Hongtu, Emma Amos, Donna Sharret, Lin Yan, Wei Jia, Cui Fei and others. In doing so and following her vision, she was instrumental in creating the Chinese contemporary market today. As well, the salon exhibited more women artists than any other gallery or alternative space at that time. It was a great success.

Everything she has launched was and is an extension of the salon concept. Although salons are popular today, Cheryl McGinnis Gallery, a contemporary salon was one of the first to take this notion of artist’s discussing their works, studio visits for viewers and a more open and accessible space. The Flatiron Prow Art Space, Cheddar, smART stART and the salon today are all important aspects of the original vision of being a separate entity to the traditional gallery system and ‘to make art accessible to all.’

Hu Bing Shattered Debris, Sheer Transformation Flatiron Prow Art Space curated by: Cheryl McGinnis Projects

Cheryl McGinnis, Art Correspondent, Cheddar -Between Bells, Flatiron Prow Art Space

Welcoming in a school group from Israel to see “From the Razor’s Edge” at the Flatiron Prow Art Space.

Phil Smith

October 2, 2017 By Brainard Carey Leave a Comment

Phil Smith is a performance-maker, writer and ambulatory researcher, specialising in creating performances related to walking, site-specificity, mythogeographies and counter-tourism. He is a core member of site-based arts collective Wrights & Sites, presently working on a new publication: ‘The Architect-Walker’. He is developing a ‘common dance for threatened subjectivities’ with choreographer Melanie Kloetzel (Calgary University). He is also working as a Site Artist for Tracing the Pathway’s ‘Groundwork’ project in Milton Keynes and with Threshold Studios on the Digitalis project in the same city. Phil’s publications include ‘Anywhere’ (2017), ‘A Footbook of Zombie Walking’ and ‘Walking’s New Movement’ (2015), ‘On Walking’ and ‘Enchanted Things’ (2014), ‘Counter-Tourism: The Handbook’ (2012) and ‘Mythogeography’ (2010). Phil is an Associate Professor (Reader) at Plymouth University.

The book mentioned in the interview was the ‘Anywhere’ book.

Here is a link to one of his performance walks, ‘Blazing Worlds Walks’ in Northfield (MN)

Phil Smith performing ‘Crab Steps Aside’

Phil Smith practising counter-tourism at Somerleyton Hall, Suffolk

Barbara London

September 30, 2017 By Brainard Carey Leave a Comment

Barbara London is a curator and writer who founded the video exhibition and collection programs at The Museum of Modern Art, where she worked between 1973 and 2013.

The exhibitions she organized include one-person shows featuring early mavericks Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Steina Vasulka, Joan Jonas, Shigeko Kubota, Peter Campus, Gary Hill, VALIE EXPORT, Steve McQueen, and Laurie Anderson. She was the first curator in the United States to showcase the work of Asian artists Zhang Peili, Song Dong, Teiji Furuhashi, Feng Mengbo, and Yang Fudong. Her thematic projects have included Video from Tokyo to Fukui and Kyoto; New Video from China; Anime!, Stillness (Michael Snow and Sam Taylor-Wood), Automatic Update; Looking at Music, parts 1-3; Through the Weeping Glass: On Consolations of Life Everlasting (Limbos & Afterbreezes in the Mütter Museum) with the Quay Brothers; Music Video: the Industry and Its Fringes; and most recently, Soundings: A Contemporary Score at MoMA.

Ms. London was the first to integrate the Internet as part of curatorial practice. The projects where she put daily dispatches on-line include Stir-fry (1994); Internyet (1998); and dot.jp (http://www.moma.org/dotjp/) (1999.)

Her teaching includes the Yale Graduate Department of Fine Art (current), NYU Department of Film, Graduate Computer Department, School of Visual Arts. Ms. London’s writings have appeared in a range of catalogs and publications, including ArtForum, Yishu, Leonardo, Art Asia Pacific, Art in America, Modern Painter, and Image Forum. She received a Gertrude Contemporary Residency, Melbourne, 2012; and a Dora Maar House Residency, Menerbes, 2010. Through a CEC Artslink award (summer 2003) she investigated media art in Warsaw, Krakow, and Gedansk. She received a Japanese government Bunkacho Fellowship (winter 1992-93) and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (winter 1988-89) to further professional development and investigate new trends in electronic technologies and the effects on the creation and distribution of the arts in Japan.

She teaches in Yale School of Art, consultant to the Kadist Foundation, and currently is working on a book with Phaidon.