Yoko Ono: The learning garden of freedom is a vast exhibition dedicated to the work of the iconic artist Yoko Ono, bringing together objects, works on paper, installations, performances, audio recordings and films, as well as rarely seen archival materials. The exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of the manifold output by this pioneering conceptual and performance artist who, during the first years of her extensive career, moved between New York, Tokyo and London, having played a pioneering role in the international development of conceptual art, performance art and experimental film. Ideas, rather than materials, are the main component of her work. Many of those ideas are poetic, absurd, and utopian, while others are specific and practical. Some are transformed into objects, while others remain immaterial. Often, her work reflects the artist's sense of humour, as well as her pronounced socio-critical attitude. The point of departure for many of Yoko Ono's works is found in her Instructions: oral or written guidelines for viewers, which offer a host of suggestions and assign the audience a much more active role than usually expected in the art world.
Vai no Batalha!, a typical expression of Porto and the motto for this theatrical creation, whose structure is based on the Portuguese revue. In terms of dramaturgical structure, the revue is a kind of bag in which everything can be put. Especially ideas. It is a pity that today, in revue, empty ideas proliferate. And so it loses the sense of the revue that was originally intended to review, with a strong critical sense and plenty of humour, the main events that marked the life of the country for a year. This performance was created “around the table” by all elements of the company, over the course of several delirious sessions. In this big bag we have been putting our ideas, our mocks, our daydreams and follies and also our feelings. Sometimes out of anger at things we don't like; sometimes of love, either by Ti Ana do Bolhão, by the Douro river, by the city at night or by the cafés of Porto that are disappearing. We still think it's worthwhile to be here, to fight against all odds, and living life intensely in the spirit of this beautiful expression. Because boredom, loneliness and sadness, my friends, “Vai no Batalha!”... and at least we have theatre!
The exhibition marks the 30 years of the Foundation and the 20th anniversary of Museu de Serralves, presenting the programme of the Performing Arts Service between 1999 and today. It was born and developed through compromises between seemingly irreconcilable objectives: on the one hand, the need to present concrete data (names, dates, images) that showed where, how and when certain artists performed, and mirrored the pioneering character of the importance given to the performing arts by Serralves; on the other hand, it translates what seems to immediately distinguish these arts: the implication of the spectator, the eminently collaborative spirit, the "here and now" as opposed to "this was". The compromises included by putting on display documentation and letting its visitors know who has performed in Serralves (and when, how and where), while presenting elements that evoked the “here and now.” The documentation was incorporated through a process of collaboration: once the programmers Cristina Grande and Pedro Rocha selected the images and words that best illustrated the last twenty years of their programming (between stage photography and graphic materials that announced and accompanied the activities), it was commissioned to a graphic designer, Luís Teixeira, to create a book that would never be published, whose pages would be exclusively presented on the walls of Biblioteca de Serralves, along with the recordings of shows and props to which these programmers considered to be of special importance. At the same time, it was decided to occupy a considerable area of the library’s mezzanine with an object that would immediately evoke the idea of theatre and could "trigger" the viewer: a small stage waiting to be occupied. The visitor can and should sit down to read (programming texts, key books to understand the performing arts today) and, most importantly, to hear testimonials and memories of spectacles written by people especially attentive to Serralves' performing arts programming - between artists, musicians, writers and current or former directors and programmers of theatres and music and performance festivals - and then read by two actors. These testimonies came to reconcile the irreconcilable: the memories of certain shows, or of concerts and performances - necessarily subjective, incomplete, fragmentary - constitute the necessary counterpoint to data, dates, chronologies, documentation. It is largely thanks to them that this exhibition is not just about "what it was"; it is also now, and it is also here.
Electric is a virtual reality exhibition, curated by Daniel Birnbaum and organised by Acute Art. It presents a selection of works by emerging and established artists, who explore this new medium from radically different angles. Electric opened in May 2019 at Frieze New York as a group exhibition, comprising works by the Städelschule Architecture Class (SAC), R. H. Quaytman, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, and Anish Kapoor. Acute Art is an organisation that brings together international artists, new media and technologies to produce high quality visual artworks and exhibitions in renowned art institutions worldwide. Recently, artworks from Acute Art were exhibited in London, Basel, Moscow and Venice. The goal of Acute Art is to produce and present artworks of virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality that are accessible, intelligible and that can be exhibited without having to resort to complex infrastructures. Anish Kapoor and Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg use virtual reality as a way to take their art to a new dimension. Built upon recurring motifs and techniques from the artists’ oeuvre, these immersive experiences take the viewer on disconcerting journeys through fictional worlds. Adapted for Serralves, the project also includes a work by Olafur Eliasson, an artist whose work is currently on display at the Serralves Museum and Park, and a work in Augmented Reality by Koo Jeong A, at Serralves Park.
Over thirty years it was created a collection of models and other pieces which were used in exhibitions of the Oeuvre of the architect Álvaro Siza. Most of the exhibitions where this exhibition material was used, or exhibited, were curated by the architect Carlos Castanheira who kept it under his care. Many of these pieces, in particular wooden models and cardboard models, were loaned to many other exhibitions held and curated around the world, such as those that are part of the (in)Disciplina exhibition on view at the Serralves Museum. Since the Serralves Museum is creating and holding activities, as well as an Architecture Archive, it seemed to Álvaro Siza and Carlos Castanheira that it is the right time to hand over the safekeeping, restoration and management of all these pieces to the Serralves Museum. In 2019, the material was transported, delivered, evaluated, inventoried and deposited. In early 2020, especially the models, will be cleaned and restored so that they are available to be loaned, consulted and analysed by scholars but also by the general public. With this collection it is intended that it will be possible to create better conditions for the dissemination, interpretation and discussion of Architecture as an Art essential and fundamental to the well-being and evolution of mankind.
This exhibition features works by Lourdes Castro (Funchal, 1930) produced since the 1960s, in various media - publications, drawing, embroidery, plexiglass -, sometimes produced together with other artists, which underline the importance of collaborations and the relationship between art and everyday life, in her artistic practice. Artist originally linked to the French nouveau réalisme movement - which emphasized the relationship between art and reality, namely with the urban visual landscapes, increasingly saturated with signs and objects whose obsolescence had accelerated more and more after the Second World War - Lourdes Castro produced an irreducibly unique oeuvre along her trajectory, linked to silhouettes and shadows. In the exhibition, in addition to the magazine KWY (1958–1963) and the work created together with Francisco Tropa for the 1998 São Paulo Biennale - examples of the importance given to collaborative work -, the exhibition features pieces from the context of nouveau réalisme - collages and assemblages of everyday objects coated with aluminium paint; posters advertising exhibitions and shadow-theatre shows (in close collaboration with Manuel Zimbro) dominated by what would become, from the mid-1960s onwards, her theme of choice - the Shadow; plexiglass works, sheet-embroidered outlines of lying shadows and the series of drawings produced in Paris (1980) and Madeira (1984/87) Sombras à volta de um centro, and featured at the artist's exhibition in 2003 at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. These drawings, in their simplicity depict the shadows of various flowers and plants (camellia, geraniums, lilacs, daisies, forget-me-nots, daffodils, primroses, roses, parsley, tulips, palm leaves, and many more) with such natural ease that no effort, skills are apparent, they reveal the artist's willingness to see "always for the first time and first-hand." These drawings are - in addition to a kind of intimate journal by Lourdes Castro with the plants and flowers - a treatise on attention, on being fully present in the "here and now". That is why they are testimonies of an "ephemeral eternity", and of the relationship between art and Life as it is.
On the day that marks its 23rd anniversary, on 25 June 2020, Centro Português de Fotografia (CPF) opens a new exhibition to the public, the first one after the lockdown. The exhibition named "Jogo de Espelhos: a cidade fragmentada e a fotografia fragmento através da C.N.F." comprises images from Coleção Nacional de Fotografia. "Since the beginning of the nineteen seventies, before the distance shortened and time became instantaneous by technological means, the urban world was already seen as fragmented, shattered and fictional, which refers this perception to a learning definitely restricted by photography." This exhibition is open until 13 September 2020. CPF is housed at the Former Prison and Court of Appeal of Porto.
There are many challenges that cultural managers will have to answer in a pandemic context - challenges that involve teams, artists, and audiences in a triangle of uncertain contours. With regard to human resources, how to establish new working methods, guarantee the safety of workers and maintain the efficient functioning of the institutions? What are the benefits of remote working? How to manage and motivate teams at a distance? How to plan tasks regarding the new needs of family care? As for the artists, how to balance security measures with the specifics of their creative activity? How to guarantee the appreciation of artistic and authorial work in the face of the multiplication of digital content? And finally, the audiences. How to help them overcome the fear of infection? And how to persuade the audiences who do not overcome fear, but want to see online performances, paying to have access to that content? TMP's Facebook Speakers: Carla Bolito; Cláudia Belchior; Cláudia Galhós. Moderated by: Francisca Carneiro Fernandes.
A series of absolutely improbable, yet extraordinary renditions (featuring Ming Smith, Frida Orupabo and Missylanyus). Renowned director of photography and filmmaker, Arthur Jafa presents in this exhibition works that he has been making as a visual artist for the past two decades. In film, photography and sculpture, Jafa's oeuvre reveals the determinant role of race, gender and social class in mainstream popular culture and in the media in the United States and beyond. From Spike Lee and Stanley Kubrick to Beyoncé and Solange, Arthur Jafa has collaborated with many noteworthy filmmakers, artists and musicians. For this exhibition, Jafa invited photographer Ming Smith and visual artist Frida Orupabo, and incorporated materials from Missylanyus’ YouTube channel to create an audiovisual experience that is both a political reflection and a visionary perspective.