Mike Kelley | | atractivoquenobello

A Weekend of Weird @ Martin Hall, Nov 26 – 27

23 November 2016

news

The A Weekend of Weird event is on at Loughborough’s Martin Hall, running November 26 to 27.

Organised by Radar in collaboration with Nick Freeman and Dan Watt, the programme will be host to a range of “writers, performers, filmmakers, artists, publishers, academics, enthusiasts and celebrants to ask: what is the Weird? Where did it come from? Where is it going?”.

There will be a number of panel discussions, including ‘Welcome to the Weird’, ‘European Weird’, a look at the ‘Weird World of Sarban’ and ‘Where are we? Being Weird Now’ among others. The three performances will feature Ben Judd‘s ‘Who Can Separate Us Now?’, artist collective Reactor‘s ‘The Gold Ones’, and Tai Shani‘s ‘Phantasmagoregasm’.

Joey Holder will present her ‘Weird World’ installation in the institutional foyer of the building for the duration of the event, showing “‘cyclopean’ imagery of strange aquatic creatures and beasties.”

Reactor have curated ‘Day Is Done’: a selection of films looking at the “interpretation and regurgitation” of culture, including a selection of YouTube videos by An0nymooose, Carmen Argote‘s ‘Everything is in its place, but Everything is everywhere’ (2016) Mike Kelley‘s carnivalesque ‘Day is Done’ (2005-6) and three video works from Simon Raven, among others.

See the FB event page for details.**

Mike Kelley @ Hauser & Wirth, Sep 23 – Nov 19

20 September 2016

news

The Mike Kelley Foundation presents solo exhibition Framed and Frame at London’s Hauser & Wirth, opening September 23 running to November 19.

This will be the gallery’s first UK exhibition devoted to the Los Angeles artist and presents the 1999 installation ‘Framed and Frame (Miniature Reproduction ‘Chinatown Wishing Well’ built by Kelley after ‘Miniature Reproduction ‘Seven Star Cavern’ Built by Prof. H.K. Lu’)’.

The installation “takes Los Angeles’ marginalised Chinese American community as its inspiration” and explores “the conceptual space between real and imagined places” by recreating a local landmark in the Chinatown of downtown LA. It consists of two separate sculptures divided by a wall and is a ‘wishing well’ in “the form of a biomorphic, concrete, grotto-like landscape, covered with spots of spray-painted colour and cheap religious statuary and tossed coins on its ledges and niches”.

For Kelley, the wishing well “projects the narrative of the Chinese-American community in Los Angeles, a story of persecution and exclusion, but also of cultural resilience and exchange”.

See the Hauser & Wirth website for more details.**

Mike Kelley @ Hauser & Wirth, Sep 23 - Nov 19

Mike Kelley, ‘Framed and Frame (Miniature Reproduction “Chinatown Wishing Well”)’ (1999), Installation detail. Courtesy Hauser and Wirth.

Dead Among the Dead! @ Ellis King, Mar 16 – Apr 23

14 March 2016

news

Dublin’s Ellis King is hosting group show Dead Among the Dead!, opening March 16 and running April 23.

Dead and alive, the artists participating in the show are: Nora Berman, Tina Braegger, Matt Copson (whose work ‘A Woodland Trust’ kicked off The Magazine Series at the Serpentine Sackler last month), Albrecht Dürer, Inka Essenhigh, Mike Kelley, Veit Laurent Kurz whose work recently showed at Chewdays, which aqnb reviewed earlier this year, and The Duck, Lazaros, Peter Wächtler and Pedro Wirz.

Ellis King have put on a string of large group shows that address the nature of exhibition organising in itself, like putting a plan of a Cathedral over the plan of the space and making new imaginary rooms, or hosting 32 works in show, Cookie Gate that all think about their own consumption.

Dead Among the Dead! comes with very little information and should be an interesting one, given its combination of artists and the opaque, lurking nature of what is holding their works all together.

See the Ellis King exhibition page for (limited details)**

Mike Kelley, 'City 15' (2011). Courtesy Hauser and Wirth. — Mike Kelley, ‘City 15’ (2011). Courtesy Hauser and Wirth.

Mike Kelley: Single Channel Videos @ REDCAT, Dec 14

14 December 2015

news

A screening of videos by Mike Kelley is taking place at Los Angeles’ REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) on December 14.

A hugely influential artist who passed away in 2012, the event will present a selection of the then California-based artist’s legacy with “innovative work mining American popular culture and both modernist and alternative traditions.”

The list of films to show include ‘Superman Recites Selections from The Bell Jar and Other Works by Sylvia Plath’ (1999), ‘Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #1 (Domestic Scene)’ (2000), and collaborative pieces, ‘100 Reasons’ (1991) plus more.

See the REDCAT website for details.**

Mike Kelley: Educational Complex @ Pro qm, Aug 26

25 August 2015

news

John Miller explores the lifework of great American artist Mike Kelley with a book presentation of Mike Kelley: Educational Complex at Berlin’s Pro qm bookstore on August 26.

Educational Complex, published by Afterall Books in 2015, examines Kelley’s striking body of work and the Detroit-born artist’s tongue-in-cheek mining of American pop culture —what the event’s press release calls his “relentless examinations of subjectivity and of society that are both sinister and ecstatic”.

Miller is joined by German author, music journalist and cultural critic Diedrich Diederichsen as well as writer John Beeson for a discussion on Kelley’s work as it relates to “post-punk politics, religious systems, social class, and repressed memory”.

See the event page for details. **