Rene Matić

08/17/23 • 79 min

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We meet leading artist RENE MATIĆ to discuss current solo exhibition ‘A Girl For The Living Room’ at Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol. This episode includes a special moment with living legend, and focus of Rene’s new show, TRAVIS ALABANZA. We also explore earlier works exhibited at South London Gallery and their solo show at Quench Gallery, Margate. Plus we discuss a series of fifteen photographs that the Tate museum have acquired for their permanent collection - currently on display at Tate Britain's rehang of Modern and Contemporary British Art.

Rene Matić (b. 1997, Peterborough, UK) is a London-based artist and writer whose practice spans across photography, film, and sculpture, converging in a meeting place they describe as "rude(ness)" - an evidencing and honouring of the in-between. Matić draws inspiration from dance and music movements such as Northern soul, Ska, and 2-Tone as a tool to delve into the complex relationship between West Indian and white working-class culture in Britain, whilst privileging queer/ing intimacies, partnerships and pleasure as modes of survival.

In 2022 Martin Parr Foundation commissioned photographic artist Rene Matić to develop a new body of work in Bristol. Rene has created an intimate portrait of their friend Travis Alabanza, a Bristol born and based writer, performer and theatre maker. This new work comprises a mix of portraits alongside diaristic still lifes that document Rene and Travis’s developing relationship as it became “lit by a table lamp instead of a disco ball.”

‘We were excited to discover Rene’s work and started to think about the idea of Rene shooting a project in Bristol and what this might look like. In 2022 we gave them a carte blanche to pursue any subject of their choice for this commission, so long as there was a Bristol connection. In ‘a girl for the living room’ Rene has found a way of capturing and expressing their relationship with Travis Alabanza, a Bristol-born and based artist and performer.’ – Martin Parr

Follow @Rene.Matic on Instagram and their gallery @ArcadiaMissa, 35 Duke Street, London: https://arcadiamissa.com/rene-matic/

A GIRL FOR THE LIVING ROOM BY RENE MATIĆ runs until 17th September 2023 in Bristol.

Visit: @MartinParrFdn and https://www.martinparrfoundation.org/exhibitions/a-girl-for-the-living-room/

Thanks for listening!!!

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Follow @Rene.Matic on Instagram and their gallery @ArcadiaMissa, 35 Duke Street, London: https://arcadiamissa.com/rene-matic/

A GIRL FOR THE LIVING ROOM BY RENE MATIĆ runs until 17th September 2023 in Bristol.

Visit: @MartinParrFdn and https://www.martinparrfoundation.org/exhibitions/a-girl-for-the-living-room/

Thanks for listening!!!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Rana Begum

We meet leading artist Rana Begum to discuss her new public art flag display on London's Piccadilly in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts and Art of London. We also explore her incredible current solo exhibition at The Box in Plymouth titled 'Dappled Light'.

The vibrant designs entitled No.1273 Flag are currently adorning the London skies until 20th August 2023, so make sure you visit if you're in London this month! Each flag showcases intricate geometric patterns, celebrating the multicultural fabric of the city. Rana Begum, a distinguished Royal Academician elected in December of 2019, has skilfully infused the flags with meticulously tiled mosaic patterns, symbolising unity and the diverse community of London. With her mastery of minimalist abstraction, she captures the vibrant essence of the city's world-class culture and entertainment scene, particularly in the iconic West End. Her artwork spills out onto the streets of the West End, bringing vivid colours and vibrancy along London’s iconic Piccadilly.

Part of Art of London's Summer Season, these striking designs give us a glimpse of what's in store for the city's streets. Rana Begum's designs, responding to the "Art of Entertainment" theme, reflect the liveliness and excitement of dance, music, and theatre. Her clever blend of colour and geometry captures the fluidity of movement, resulting in a rhythm that connects with passers-by.

The work of London-based artist Rana Begum distils spatial and visual experience into ordered form. Through her refined language of Minimalist abstraction, Begum blurs the boundaries between sculpture, painting and architecture. Her visual language draws from the urban landscape as well as geometric patterns from traditional Islamic art and architecture. Light is fundamental to her process. Begum’s works absorb and reflect varied densities of light to produce an experience for the viewer that is both temporal and sensorial. In 1999, Begum graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art and Design and, in 2002, gained an MFA in Painting from Slade School of Fine Art. Rana Begum lives and works in London.

Follow @RanaBegumStudio @TheArtofLdn and view image of Rana's new flags at: https://artoflondon.co.uk/events/art-of-london-unveils-new-flags-by-rana-begum-on-piccadilly

and visit @TheBoxPlymouth for her current solo exhibition. @RoyalAcademyArts Summer Exhibition 2023 is open until 20thAugust, for more information visit: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/summer-exhibition-2023

Thanks for listening and happy Summer!!!

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Next Episode

Victoria Cantons

We meet leading artist Victoria Cantons from her London studios!!! We discuss her autobiographical as well as confessional work. Cantons presents a record of trauma and healing, alongside a rigorous inquiry into the social constraints surrounding gender politics. Deeply informed by her own experience of limitation and stigma, her work reverberates with notions of freedom, selfhood, representation, power and aspects of the human condition which she writes, despite our divergent identities and experiences, "connect us all."

While her incisive and inquisitive creative gaze extends across photography, text and video, painting and drawing remain firmly at the centre of her practice, providing a means of, she writes, "clearing the drainpipes" and exploring the question what can paint and painting do? Her 2022 Flowers Gallery exhibition People Trust People Who Look Like Them presented a series of large self-portraits painted from a personal archive of photographs made over a period of more than a decade in the years before, during, and after intensive facial surgery. Luminous and visceral in their depiction of flesh, the paintings capture the shape-shifting bloom of post-surgical bruising, fading scar tissue, greying hair and the mottled lustre of theatrically applied makeup. Cantons describes the importance of accuracy and honesty in the paintings, saying “I needed to show exactly what this woman has been through.”

Cantons is a multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on painting. Her works can be best described as figurative and colourist with political undercurrents. Cantons has a transgender history – having transitioned at thirty-nine – and was an only child, growing up in London with a Catholic mother from Spain and Jewish father of French and Russian descent. Because of this background, Cantons is keenly aware of questions concerning boundaries, stigma and freedom. “What we as individuals present to the world is multifaceted and not always visible, a continuous evolution in response to experience and in relationship to each other.” From its content and imagery to its titles, the human condition, gender, and social identity are at the core of her work.

Cantons’s portraits and still lifes are painted in gestural brushstrokes with a limited, muted, palette that tends to evoke feelings of nostalgia. She often depicts youthful figures who shine their individual light upon the treacherous path to adulthood; much like how the tenderness of Spring paves the way for a scalding summer.

Victoria Cantons (b. 1969) lives and works in London. She studied Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon (UAL); followed by Turps Art School, London; and graduated with an MFA in Painting from Slade, UCL in 2021, where she received the Felix Slade Scholarship (2018). Cantons has exhibited her work internationally, with some of her most recent shows at London's Guts Gallery and Flowers Gallery (both 2023), the Tree Art Museum in Beijing (2021), Nicodim Gallery in Los Angeles (2020) and White Cube in London (2020).

Follow @VictoriaCantons on Instagram and her official website: www.victoriacantons.com

Visit her galleries, Flowers Gallery: https://www.flowersgallery.com/artists/1325-victoria-cantons/

Guts Gallery: https://gutsgallery.co.uk/artists/44-victoria-cantons/

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