If you haven't had a chance to see Southern Press: Prints from Brazil, Paraguay and Chile yet at firstsite in Colchester then we've got great news for you! We have extended the exhibition dates to Sunday 12 February 2012. We are happy to say that over 16,000 people have visited ESCALA's inaugural exhibition in firstsite and have enjoyed a great selection of works from the Collection.
The selection, from the ESCALA Collection, focuses on the works of thirteen printmakers, including Oswaldo Goeldi, Lívio Abramo, Antonio Henrique Amaral, Olga Blinder, Nemesio Antúnez and other key practitioners from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. It showcases work from a period when printing enjoyed a prominent position in art education, as well as in national and international exhibition circuits, and when debates about the medium's artistic status, and the uptake of abstraction by printers, were hotly contested.
Over 17,000 people have visited ESCALA's inaugural exhibition Southern Press: Prints from Brazil, Paraguay and Chile since firstsite opened on 25 September 2011. The selection, from the ESCALA Collection, focuses on the works of thirteen printmakers, including Oswaldo Goeldi, Lívio Abramo, Antonio Henrique Amaral, Olga Blinder, Nemesio Antúnez and other key practitioners from the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Meeting Margins a research between the Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Essex, and TrAIN, the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation. Southern Press reflects the project's focus on contact, exchange and collaboration between artists from Latin America and Europe.
Dr Rebecca Breen, a specialist in contemporary Latin American art, has joined the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex and is associated with the School's Centre for Curatorial Studies. Dr Breen started in October 2011 and will continue to develop the research and teaching of art from Latin America at the University as Professor Valerie Fraser retires.
Rebecca Breen specializes in contemporary art from Latin America and completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge (2011). Her research focuses on the intersections between conceptualist art practice by women artists and testimonio, or testimonial narrative literature from twentieth-century Latin America. She is currently interested in a testimonial art practice for the present day and for a global context. Rebecca further holds an MPhil from the University of Cambridge (2003), for which she wrote a dissertation on the visual work of Frida Kahlo. Rebecca has previously lectured at the University of Limerick, Éire, from which university she also received her primary degree (2002).
Professor Valerie Fraser, from the School of Philosophy and Art History (SPAH), has retired after 32 years at the University of Essex. Professor Fraser specialises in the art and architecture ofLatin America and Spain with particular emphasis on the early colonial period and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In retirement she will continue to be a visiting fellow of SPAH and Chair of ESCALA, of which she was co-Director from 1993 to 2010. We look forward to continuing to work with Professor Fraser and thank her for her inspiration and tireless support of ESCALA over the last two decades.
The Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA) is delighted to be involved again this year in Pinta, the Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art show, when it comes to London for the third time.
This year we have been invited again to participate in the Pinta Museums Acquisition Programme alongside the Centre Georges Pompidou, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA) and Tate Modern.
We are also working in association with England & Co. Gallery to organize a performance and talks to complement the gallery’s display of works and archival material relating to Latin American art in London and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.
The performance, on Saturday 9 June, will be by aruma (Sandra De Berduccy), an emerging artist from Bolivia whose work we recently acquired for Unravelling Threads, our current exhibition at firstsite (until 17 June 2012). The performance has also been supported by the Bolivian Embassy in London.
England & Co. Gallery’s display will include contemporary works by aruma and historical works and documentary material on Cecilia Vicuña, Lygia Clark, Mira Schendel and U.S. artist John Dugger. Dugger’s original ‘Chile Vencerá’ banner, which was hung in Trafalgar Square in 1974, will be installed at Earl’s Court and he and aruma will both be ‘in conversation’ on Saturday 9 as part of a talks programme that begins on Friday 8.
Pinta provides a unique opportunity to engage with art and artists from Latin America and we are very pleased to support the show through the exchange of knowledge and ideas.
ESCALA has lent Juan Carlos Stekelman's Mujer saludando to the exhibition Juan Carlos Stekelman: Early Works (1965-1975) at the Frankendael Foundation in Amsterdam. It is the first exhibition of the Argentinian artist Juan Carlos Stekelman in the Netherlands. The exhibition has been curated by collectors Stuart and John Evans, who also donated the Stekelman to ESCALA, and will show works by the artist from their private collection.
The exhibition runs until 30 September 2012.