Upcoming Exhibitions at MOSTYN

Shezad Dawood Leviathan Cycle, Episode 1: Ben (production still) 2017 HD Video, 12’52”. Courtesy of the artist and UBIK Productions
Shezad Dawood
Leviathan is an episodic narrative around notions of borders, mental health and marine welfare issues of foremost concern, resonating profoundly with both coastal locations and contemporary life.
A ten-part film cycle that will unfold over the next three years, the work draws connections between human activity and marine ecology. Three films have already been premiered in Venice, in conjunction with the 57th Art Biennale, with a fourth to be released in early September 2018.
In dialogue with a wide range of marine biologists, oceanographers, political scientists, neurologists and trauma specialists, Leviathan explores interconnections between these fields of work and will be presented through sculpture, textiles, museum specimens, films, conversations and online resource material.
As part of the first iteration of Leviathan after its Venice debut, Dawood will also show a newly commissioned painting drawing upon this specific context, and work with community groups based on the coastal location asking questions about how these issues might come to evolve in a future 20 to 50 years from now, and what that future might look like.
The exhibition is curated by Alfredo Cramerotti, MOSTYN Director, in dialogue with the artist.
Shoe 22, Playa Santa Maria, Havana, Cuba 2014. Fencing, Treadog Bay, Llŷn Peninsula, Wales 2016.
Mike Perry
Mike Perry’s work engages with significant and pressing environmental issues, in particular the tension between human activity and interventions in the natural environment, and the fragility of the planet’s ecosystems.
This major new exhibition brings together recent bodies of work addressing how the natural biodiversity of landscapes and marine environments is undermined and made toxic by human neglect, agricultural mismanagement and the pursuit of short-term profit at the expense of long-term sustainability.
Combining conceptual aesthetics with a pressing concern for the marine environment, Perry’s images shed a different light on the health of the seascapes one might see in tourist brochures.
Môr Plastig (welsh for ‘Plastic Sea’) is an ongoing body of work that classifies objects washed up by the sea into groupings; bottles, shoes, grids, abstracts, and others. By using a high-resolution camera to capture the surface detail, the artist allows the viewer to ‘read’ markings and scars etched into the objects by the ocean over months and, in some cases, years. The viewer is intrigued and challenged by how a polluting object can be so aesthetically appealing.
In Perry’s words, “in addition to seeing these pieces as symbols of over-consumption and disregard for the environment, I also see them as evidence of the beauty and power of nature to sculpt our world”.
Land/Sea is originally produced by Ffotogallery, Cardiff, and curated by David Drake, Ffotogallery, and Ben Borthwick, Plymouth Arts Centre. The exhibition in MOSTYN has been developed in dialogue with Adam Carr, Visual Arts Programme Curator, and Alfredo Cramerotti, Director. The accompanying publication includes contributions from the writers George Monbiot and Skye Sherwin.

Jonathan Monk, Picture Postcard Posted From Post Box Pictured, 2014.
In Addition
Participating artists from March 2018:
Nina Beier, Sol Calero, Gabriele de Santis, Alek O., Jonathan Monk, and Marinella Senatore
We are pleased to present ‘In Addition’, a new edition series of works, by internationally renowned artists, available to purchase at an affordable price.
MOSTYN is a charity registered in the UK and proceeds from the sales of the editions will be invested back into the gallery’s exhibition and engagement programme.
Each participating artist has produced work using paper and has been asked to reconsider the traditional model of producing an edition, where each version of a work is identical. Although appearing formally similar, each In Addition piece will offer deviations and nuances that set apart each edition as a unique work, thereby playing with ideas of the original, the copy and work made in series.
In Addition will be permanently installed as an exhibition in MOSTYN’s Gallery 2 from March 2018, and will change shape over time as editions are purchased and as further artists participate in the future.
In Addition has been curated by Adam Carr (Visual Arts Programme Curator, MOSTYN).
Matteo Fato (SOMERSAULT) | curated by Alfredo Cramerotti | Opening: 22.07.2017 h.18.30 | Galleria Michela Rizzo
Matteo Fato
(SOMERSAULT)
Curated by Alfredo Cramerotti
Galleria Michela Rizzo | Venice, Italy
Opening: 22.07.2017, h.18.30
23.07 – 09.09.2017
In the past our technologically conceived artifacts structured living patterns. We are now in transition from an object-oriented to a systems-oriented culture. Here change emanates, not from things, but from the way things are done.
(Jack Burnham, System Esthetics, 1968)
Burnham, an art critic and curator, wrote the passage above for an essay in Artforum magazine back in 1968; processes of change take time indeed. In the case of visual culture, and the physical environment underpinning it, the system is both the space (for work) and the material (of the work); concerning with method and form together.
A “visual system” sits at the crossroad between image, thought, word and time; it exemplifies the mutability (and complexity) of life. A visual medium then brings about not only the message, but the psychic state that enable us to understand that message: “A mental structure, a way of thinking and feeling that expresses itself in everything we say, write, build and develop, from architecture and advertising to film and fine art.”
The presumed coherence of visual practice is constantly called into question by coupling with other system of visual fabrication, communication or representation (text, painting, impression, graphic design, photography, light projection, object construction and oral commentary). It is an environment made of relation-building amongst sign and signal, people and objects. Our visual actions extract meaning upon which build further relations and effects, either autonomously or through conscious arrangements. In Burnham’s words, “Where the object almost always has a fixed shape and boundaries, the consistency of a system may be altered in time and space, its behavior determined both by external conditions and its mechanisms of control.”
We live now according to a system of visual editing; we became a wider, complex “system” in which users double as creators.
On systems, Alfredo Cramerotti
Friday | 12 May No Way Out. Notes on the Philosophical Implications of the Concept of Anthropocene with Franco “Bifo” Berardi in conversation with Sandro Carniel (CNR – ISMAR)
Friday | 12 May 2017
5pm
No Way Out. Notes on the Philosophical Implications of the Concept of Anthropocene with Franco “Bifo” Berardi in conversation with Sandro Carniel (CNR – ISMAR). Introduced and moderated by Alfredo Cramerotti.
Palazzina Canonica
Riva dei Sette Martiri, 1364
Vaporetto Giardini
See full schedule below
Friday | 12 May My Art Guides Venice Meeting Point “An Ocean Archive” Symposium
Friday | 12 May 2017
3pm
My Art Guides Venice Meeting Point “An Ocean Archive” Symposium
NAVY OFFICER’S CLUB
ARSENALE, VENICE
Thursday | 11 May Lost Identities Cristina Cattaneo (Labanof) with Prefetto Vittorio Piscitelli (Commissario Straordinario per le Persone Scomparse)
Thursday | 11 May 2017
3:30pm
Lost Identities Cristina Cattaneo (Labanof) with Prefetto Vittorio Piscitelli (Commissario Straordinario per le Persone Scomparse). Introduced and moderated by Alfredo Cramerotti
Palazzina Canonica
Riva dei Sette Martiri, 1364
Vaporetto Giardini
See full schedule below
Thursday | 11 May Leviathan: A Beginning. Shezad Dawood in conversation with Alfredo Cramerotti
Thursday | 11 May 2017
2pm
Leviathan: A Beginning. Shezad Dawood in conversation with Alfredo Cramerotti
Palazzina Canonica
Riva dei Sette Martiri, 1364
Vaporetto Giardini
Shezad Dawood, Leviathan Cycle (production stills), 2017. HD video. Courtesy of the artist and UBIK Productions.
Shezad Dawood | Leviathan
Shezad Dawood, Leviathan Cycle (production stills), 2017. HD video. Courtesy of the artist and UBIK Productions.
May 7–September 24, 2017
Shezad Dawood
Leviathan
An episodic narrative
Palazzina Canonica
Riva dei Sette Martiri 1364A, Castello
30122 Venice
Italy
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm
Fortuny Factory
Giudecca 805
30133 Venice
Italy
Hours: Monday–Friday 10am-1pm, 2pm-6pm
An exhibition of a new and ambitious body of work by artist Shezad Dawood will open in May 2017 to coincide with the 57th Venice Biennale. The show will mark the launch of Leviathan, a ten-part film cycle conceived and directed by the artist that will unfold over the next three years. Leviathan is also being released as a series of written fictions. Episode 1 is available to read at www.leviathan-cycle.com.
The first two episodes of the film will be presented alongside a new series of textile and sculptural works in the newly-restored Palazzina Canonica, the former headquarters of the Institute of Marine Sciences in Venice, which is opening to the public for the first time since the 1970’s. The two-part exhibition will also feature a site-specific intervention in the Fortuny Factory in the island of Giudecca.
Curated by Alfredo Cramerotti, Leviathan is being presented by the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in collaboration with the Institute of Marine Sciences (CNR-ISMAR) and Fortuny in Venice. Following the launch in May, the project will embark on a three-year UK and international tour, culminating in a final presentation of all ten episodes in 2020.
Leviathan is set in an imaginary future whose inhabitants are the survivors of a cataclysmic solar event. Each episode is told from the point of view of a different character and follows them as they drift across Europe, Asia and North Africa, encountering a series of idiosyncratic communities. Filming locations include the Institute of Marine Sciences’ oceanographic platform in the Adriatic Sea, the Natural History Museum in London and an abandoned island in the Venetian lagoon.
In dialogue with a wide range of marine biologists, oceanographers, political scientists, neurologists and trauma specialists, Dawood has been exploring some key fault lines of the present and their possible interconnections. Taking a global and collective approach, Leviathan is a reflection on where we could be if a deeper understanding of trauma and climate erosion is not found, looking at what is not only a humanitarian crisis, but a wider crisis within our biosphere.
The new series of textile paintings has been developed in dialogue with the renowned textile manufacturer Fortuny, and will incorporate several of their hand-made fabrics. Dawood has furthermore been working closely with the Labanof in Milan, an institute that conducts research on personal effects lost by migrants during sea crossings to Lampedusa, in order to help families identify missing relatives. A series of artefacts and objects from the Labanof archive will provide the visual references for the new textile works.
The paintings will be installed in the library of the Palazzina Canonica, as well as in the showroom of the Fortuny factory in the Giudecca, established in 1919 and still operational today. In addition, a large-scale outdoor neon work titled Island Pattern, developed especially for the Fortuny Factory, will be unveiled within the garden façade of the building.
The exhibition in Venice will be accompanied by a lively public programme that will bring together specialists involved in the project for a series of informal discussions akin to the philosophical “agora” in Ancient Greece. These discussions will also be available in digital form through the project’s web platform, creating an archive aimed at scientists, researchers, students and the general public. In addition, a special film programme curated by Shezad Dawood in collaboration with streaming platform MUBI will run throughout the duration of the exhibition, with free film screenings taking place at the Palazzina Canonica.
The third film episode will be released in September 2017 and incorporated into the exhibition. Subsequent episodes will be co-commissioned and presented in partnership with a series of international venues, culminating in the presentation of all ten episodes in 2020.
The project is being developed with the support of Timothy Taylor, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Galerie Gabriel Rolt, CREAM – University of Westminster, University of Salford Art Collection with support from The Contemporary Art Society and a circle of private patrons.
Furla Award 2011
VOGUE ITALIA
by Fabiana Gilardi
Published:
11/18/2010
The names of the five finalists and of the curators, protagonists of the eighth edition of one of the Italian excellence awards that support young contemporary artists, were announced

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