Mike just posted some excellent photos of soon to be gone brownfields and industrial sites in Greenwich:

«There's a little-used but really interesting walk that runs from the Millennium Dome (or 'The O2' or whatever it's now called) along a riverside path into Greenwich. The walk breezes past acres of empty, deserted land and disused quays that will, no doubt, soon be sprouting ghastly developments galore.»

www.urban75.org

Congratulations to our dear friend and colleague Uwe Wittwer for landing a spot on the top 50 "most important Swiss artists" list published in today's Bilanz magazine.

Uwe Wittwer is represented by Haunch of Venison Zurich, Cohan and Leslie New York and Nolan Judin Berlin.

Uwe Wittwer: «Shepherds after Poussin», 2007, Watercolour, 179.5 x 304.5 cm

www.uwewittwer.com

Another example of great suffering caused by military governments after the great pain already inflicted by a natural disaster... Here's an extract from Avaaz.org, - they do great direct action. Makes sense to donate via Avaaz if you want to help.

«The cyclone that ripped through Burma left tens of thousands dead and a million homeless--a natural disaster made much worse by the failure of the military junta to warn or evacuate its people.

Now, the government has slowed the urgent process of providing humanitarian relief--so Avaaz is raising funds for the International Burmese Monks Organization and related groups, which will transmit funds directly to monasteries in affected areas.

In many of the worst-hit areas, the monasteries are the only source of shelter and food for Burma's poorest people. They have been on the front lines of the aid effort since the storm struck. Other forms of aid could be delayed, diverted or manipulated by the Burmese government--but the monks are the most trusted and reliable institution in the country.»

Visit Avaaz.org for more information

April 4 - May 3, 2008
The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 6pm
www.cohanandleslie.com

138 Tenth Avenue
New York, New York 10011

«... the US debut exhibition of Swiss artist Uwe Wittwer, including large scale watercolors, paintings and unique inkjet prints.
While the works are figurative, Wittwer is more accurately a painter of images. His source material is chosen from the overwhelming sea of digital representations - images of images - found on the internet. Wittwer’s dominant interests are old master paintings and vernacular photographs of families and soldiers.

The show is centered on two massive watercolors based on 17th Century paintings by Nicolas Poussin. Their size and strength upend the typical prejudice towards watercolors as small and delicate. Across the gallery a group of 5 medium sized watercolors are based on photographs from family albums dating from the 1940s-60s, which suggest subtle narratives when seen as a whole.

The back gallery will feature large scale, black and white inkjet prints based on photographs by American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Although entirely digital from beginning to end they are undeniably painterly, and rely on formal conventions similar to those of the watercolors. Usually rendered in negative, the watercolors and inkjet prints share a sinister sense of confronting memories or a history that may be difficult to face.

Wittwer denies the conventional hierarchy of media in favor of his engagement with images. Similarly, through the filter of the internet a painting by Poussin enjoys no hierarchy over an anonymous snapshot. The compositions found in a soldier’s photograph are as valid as the classical structure of the Old Masters. Both are representations of history with blurred, and possibly irrelevant, distinctions between ‘reality’ and fabrication.

Uwe Wittwer was born in 1954 and is based in Zurich. His work has recently been the focus of solo exhibitions and publications by Haunch of Venison Zurich, the Ludwigforum Aachen, and the Kunstmuseum Solothurn.»

We've been touring New York's Art Fairs and Galleries for a bit and here's the roundup of what caught our eye.
Coming into the Armory Show, one of the first things that caught our attention was the UK artist Greyson Perry's cast iron sculpture titled «Our Father», displayed alongside his fantastic vases at Victoria Miro's stand. Wicked, witty, naughty and beautiful work, hard to top.

A brilliant large-scale boat painting by Thoralf Knobloch (Wilkinson Gallery), a great smaller painting by Neil Tait (Acme) for a reasonable $ 4'500 and great work by Sam Windett (The Approach).

Galerie Schöttle had an impressive little stand with the great UK artist Andrew Palmer and another favourite of ours, Slawomir Elsner.
Rumanian gallery Plan B has some really good work by Adrian Ghenie, very good work was to be seen by Tony Swain (at the Herald St booth) and a rather strange but impressive fantasy/sci-fi drawing by Duncan Marquiss at Dicksmith Gallery. An "elderly" beauty we found in a excellent painting by Pieter Doig, a version of the Ooty Boathouse Study (depicted below).

At the Volta Show we stopped by our friends at Hamish Morrison Gallery with the solo booth by Ronald de Bloeme, and on to the Cosar booth with another favourite: Martin Klimas.

In Chelsea we went to see the great Katy Moran at Andrea Rosen Gallery. Her small oil paintings are still very, very good. It will be interesting to see, where Moran's work will go, as it is a very painterly position without apparent overall concept.

Also really beautiful, is Michael Schmidt's photography at Mitchell-Innes, Nash. Some deep work there.

All in all, a very rewarding tour.

About the book:
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the world is faced with an unprecedented challenge. It must address a fundamental shift in the world's population towards the cities, and away from mankind's rural roots. Today, for the first time in history, more than half of the global population resides in urban areas - a number likely to reach a staggering 75 per cent by 2050.

The Endless City: The Urban Age Project by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society is an unparalleled investigation into the world’s urban future.  Taking six major world cities as its focal point, the book examines the key social, structural and economic factors that are critical to creating a thriving modern city.

Authoritatively edited by Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, with essays by internationally renowned contributors from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, The Endless City presents a pioneering initiative on the future of cities.

Interesting discussions are currently going on in the UK raised by the uncertain future of Robin Hood Gardens estate in London (built by the Smithsons).
One of the more interesting quotes is from Stephen Bayley in the Observer in his rather good piece on "brutal architecture", titled "You want the brutal truth? Concrete can be beautiful" :

"...Worse, the unintelligent housing policies of Tower Hamlets populated Robin Hood Gardens with the tenants least likely to be able to make sensible use of the accommodation. We have to whisper it, but the Unité d'Habitation works because it is populated by teachers, psychologists, doctors, graphic designers, not by single mothers struggling with buggies."

Bayley is somewhat harsh on the tennents there, and I doubt he's been speaking to them. Yet I think there may be some truth in his statement.
Dan Hill has a good and thorough post on the issue, highlighting different aspects and oppinions on city of sound: "Robin Hood Gardens is not the same as a digital model of Robin Hood Gardens..." read on.

Picture by John Levett

City of Sound and Russel Davies are gathering photos for their Best Urban Spaces and Places project:

... We're using a Flickr group, so you join that and then send appropriate photos of great urban spaces or places to the group. (Once you've joined our group, use the 'Send to group' function above your photo. If you don't have a Flickr account, you can sign up for free.) Once we've a suitably rich set, we'll filter it down, and publish the best in a free downloadable pamphlet form, with a more stylish printed offering for sale (though free to successful contributors).

For the purposes of this project, I'm not overly worried about the knotty definitions of 'place' or 'space' - or even how you choose to interpret 'best' (the academic within will worry over that, but really, you shouldn't). It'll just be interesting to see what emerges. And I'm also aware that a photo-centric project will not allow much in the way of sound or other sensory information, or memory, but it'll do. Yahoo's maps integration is so clunky that it's not going to be worth fully exploiting that layer, at least initially, but we do ask that you use photo's caption area to describe the place a bit. That would be both useful and informative.

The places and spaces don't all have to have the perceived gravitas of a Piazza San Marco or a Greenwich Village, either. It could simply be a bench, a garden, a market, a tram stop, a library ... it's your call.

Read City of Sound for more information.

At least a dozen British towns and cities will have no single ethnic group in a majority within the next 30 years. Leicester will become the first 'super-diverse' city in 2020, then Birmingham in 2024, followed by Slough and Luton, according to a new study of population trends in the UK. The report reveals that Leicester has seen the proportion of its white population fall (...)

Guardian Unlimited, Sunday December 23 2007
Amelia Hill, social affairs correspondent

Lustfaust & Schneider TM are playing an exclusive gig for the opening of the Haunch of Venison Berlin space on September 13th from 21h (CEST). The event will be streamed live on www.lustfaust-live.de. This is part of the Jamie Shovlin Lustfaust retrospective (first shown at the I.C.A. in London early 2006).

Lustfaust was an experimental noise band active in West Berlin during the late seventies and early 1980s composed of a group of session musicians. Featuring a Japanese jazz drummer, Matsushita ‘Bobby’ Kazuki, a Belgian guitarist/multi-instrumentalist, Guido van Baelen, a German bassist, Hans Berger, and the California-born, German/American Peter Kruger, the band was a curiously international mixture, initially formed through a mutual distaste for the inoffensive music that it was for the most part their job to produce. Their combination of an aggressive on-stage presence, instrumentation through found objects such as cement mixers and pneumatic drills, and the use of an anti-capitalist community-based model of distribution (if you sent the band a blank cassette, they would return it with their latest release) spawned the Dadaist Geniale Dilettanten movement of the early 1980s and pioneered the burgeoning cassette culture of the late seventies.

There will be a Lustfaust & Schneider TM 7" record released at this event, put out by MirrorWorldMusic (MWM), which is the label of Dirk Dresselhaus (aka Schneider TM) and Michael Beckett (aka kptmichigan).

The cover was designed by Mick Larkin who was responsible for a series of Lustfaust tape covers in the late 70`s.

This is some exciting news! Also check out Lustfaust on myspace.com/lustfaust