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For the first time KSGoW and Maker Press present a portfolio of limited edition Heliographs (a solar exposure process used in the production of limited edition prints) by renowned Australian artist Idris Murphy.

Accompanied by a series of drawings completed over the last two years following the trail of Idris’ recent residencies and travels throughout Australia and Europe.

In this body of work, Christopher Walters takes the empty landscape to new limits, pushing the boundaries of the idea of emptiness in both place as well as the photo medium. Pushing photography to its limits Chris experiments between the border between nothingness and minute detail.

At first encounter the soft Minimalist compositions appear to be boundless but on closer inspection these horizontal vistas are underpinned by a strict geometry. They fly in the face of the Australian obsession with figures in the landscape. Although there is nothing that could be identified as figurative, the images themselves pulsate with human presence. They are empty of all things human yet their glowing, tingling surfaces are unified by the horizontal.

Christopher Walters is a commercial photographer with origins in Fine Art Photo Media having studied at the Sydney College of the Arts. His love of Architecture and Fine Art Photography has led him to his professional career in Architectural representation and also as a film director. In the past decade, Chris’ focus has been concentrated on his commercial work and developing his highly successful media company. Fine Art has always been at the core of Christopher’s practice and although the rigidity of Architecture has been a constant.

As the world grapples with waves of migrants and the resulting refugee crisis, a sharp-spirited non-profit art space in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, has curated a thoughtful show on immigration from the vantage point of a nation with more than 75 resident nationalities. Al Haraka Baraka, literally translated as in movement there is blessing, examines foreign populations that settle in a land in perpetual flux.

All of the participating artists are based in the UAE and most are Emirati. Works range from the Emirati photographer Ammar al-Attars He Who Possesses a Skill Will Never Go Hungry (2016), an August Sander-like cataloguing of the Pakistani, Indian and Arab expat doctors, grocers and sundry professionals who peopled his childhood, to the deeply personal and complex three-act video narratives of Sharjah-born Palestinian Walid al-Wawi. A special trans-generational appearance is made by the pioneering Emirati land artist Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim (b. 1962), whose sculptural work Fresh and Salt (1991) binds together coral from his native Khorfakkan in Sharjah with stone from the Caspian Sea, all wrapped in copper wire.

Al Haraka Baraka was commissioned by Unlimited Arab Exploration, an initiative founded and spearheaded by H.H. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan bin Khalifa al-Nahyan, the grandson of the current President of the UAE. A formidable local contemporary art collector, Sheikh Zayed, lamenting the sporadic nature of most shows open to young UAE-based artists, founded his platform to give [these] artists exposure, and the opportunity to work with an experienced curator to a theme.

Al Haraka Baraka runs at Sharjahs Maraya Art Centre until 6 July 2016. 

Qubec City has a very special gift to celebrate this years Fte nationale (national holiday) on 24 June: the opening of the new Pierre Lassonde pavilion of the Muse nationale des beaux-arts de Qubec, an art museum in the centre of the Francophone city that focusses on collecting historic and contemporary works by Qubcois artists. The world heritage site that is Qubec City has just added a new emblem, Line Ouellet, the museums executive director and chief curator, said in a statement.

Construction began in 2013 on the building, named for the museums chairmanwho funded the institutions $3.9m purchase of the site in 2007and designed by the New York bureau of Rem Koolhaass Rotterdam-based architectural firm OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture). The project had a total budget of C$103.4m, with $41.5m in funding coming from Qubecs government and $33.7m from the Canadian government and private fundraising.

Spread over five storeysincluding two undergroundthe 15,000sq. m pavilion doubles the museums exhibition space and also includes an auditorium, a caf and an eco-friendly rooftop garden. The glass faade was designed to connect the structure with its surroundings, the Parc des Champs-de-Bataille, and it both allows natural light into the spaces and keeps out the harsh cold of Qubecs winters.

One special feature is an underground passageway that links the new pavilion to the museums three existing buildingswhich include a converted 1867 prisonthat doubles as an exhibition space for a work from the permanent collection the museum has never been able to display in its entirety. This is the late Montral-born Jean-Paul Riopelles LHommage Rosa Luxemburg (Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg) (1992), a 40m-long spray-painted piece on 30 individual canvases.

The museum has organised seven exhibitions drawn from its permanent collection to inaugurate the new galleries, including Decorative Arts and Design in Qubec, which looks back at the provinces contributions in craft and design since the 1950s, and Contemporary Art in Qubec: from Ferron to BGL (both until 5 September).

The first major survey in 15 years of the British artist Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) opens at the Hepworth Wakefield this month. Of Angels and Dirt (24 June-5 October) marks the 125th anniversary of Spencers birth and includes a number of his excruciatingly honest self-portraits, his monumental Shipbuilding on the Clyde series made during the Second World War and reunites, for the first time in 35 years, four of the five Empire Marketing Board (1929) works. It also includes a sketchbook of the earliest known drawings made by a teenage Spencer, which has never been exhibited, shining a light on his lifelong obsession with his hometown of Cookham on the River Thames.

Focus groups are not just for makeup and snack food any more. Museums are increasingly using the popular market research tool to gather input from the public and refine exhibitions and programmes. Originally developed to gauge the effectiveness of propaganda during the Second World War, focus groups are a new trend among art institutions, says Louise Mirrer, the president of the New-York Historical Society.Before its exhibition Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation (30 October 2016-15 January 2017), the Minneapolis Institute of Art ran six 90-minute focus groups: two with Lutherans, two with other religious audiences and two with non-religious visitors. Curators, educators and communications staff watched on a live feed in another room.

We wanted to understand where our different audiences are coming from, says Kristin Prestegaard, the museums chief engagement officer. Changes were made to exhibition materials after the focus groups revealed that non-Lutherans know little about the Reformation while Lutherans are less familiar with Luthers anti-Semitism late in life.

The museum plans to hire a full-time evaluator to run focus groups later this year. We really want to be visitor and audience-focused. Were all in on that, Prestegaard says.

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has run focus groups since reinstalling its collection in 2007. When consulted about the exhibition Dance! American Art 1830-1960 (until 12 June), some participants felt that Native American ghost dances were too sacred to depict. In the end, the two works that showed the ritual remained in the exhibition, but wall labels gave a respectful explanation of the spiritual meaning of the dances. Now, the museum is taking public consultation even further by reserving four spots for community members on a brainstorming team dedicated to the reinstallation of its Asian collection.

A dangerous precedent?
Some feel that the use of focus groups to develop exhibitionsa practice pioneered by science and history museumsencourages institutions to act more like for-profit businesses than mission-driven entities. Museums have visitors, not customers, and serve communities, not markets, the Sydney-based former museum director Des Griffin writes on his website. A 2012 article in the New Criterion review quotes Philippe de Montebello, the former director of New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art: When art museums rush to be commercial or seek to titillate their visitors, we see a lamentable failure of nerve.

The obsession with mass appeal also runs the risk of eroding academic rigour. One museum director recently told Laura Lott, the president of the American Alliance of Museums, that his institution was toying with allowing the community to vote on future acquisitions. If museums go overboard, they may end up narrowing their focus to only van Goghs and Monets, and things the public is familiar with, she says.

For better or worse, many say that museums can no longer afford to ignore the opinions of their constituents. Adam Rozan, the director of audience engagement at the Worcester Art Museum, says: Gone are the days of the lone curator, working for years in isolation producing exhibitions for themselvesor, worse, their peer groups.

Behind the two-way mirror: five common focus group questions
1. What does this object mean to you?

2. Does the object make you excited enough to come see the show?

3. When you picture yourself in an art museum, is there any dissonance in viewing both art and historical objects in context with one another?

4. Which of the shows themes do you find most interesting?

5. Are you confused by any of the themes?

Displays and rare books were urgently evacuated from the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam overnight as unusually high rainfall caused water and sewage to seep into the basement. The threat of flooding to the museum early this morning was very serious, the deputy director, Ina Klaassen, told The Art Newspaper. Klaassen asked the fire brigade to pump water out of an overflowing pool in the museums garden, which abuts the building, but this proved impossible because the surrounding ground is too saturated with water.

The basement display in the pavilion building, which houses a collection of archaeological artefacts and design objects from 1300 to 1900, had to be moved to a higher floor, while the library storage, which includes some rare books, was also evacuated. None of the objects are believed to have been damaged. Only the areas directly affected by the flooding were closed off and most of the art museum remained open to visitors. But there are concerns that if further heavy rain falls over the weekend, the situation could get worse. Even the museums ground floor lies two metres below sea level.

The main galleries date from 1935, when there were fewer buildings in the area, which allowed for better drainage. There are already plans afoot for a new storage facility that would withstand flooding to be built on the museum grounds. Construction is due to start this autumn, to be completed in two years.

The First Quiz

The leading German art collector Heiner Pietzsch has said he will make new loans to Scotland rather than England in the event of a Brexit vote in the latest signal of the art worlds strong opposition to Britains leaving the European Union.

Heiner and Ulla Pietzsch have lent nearly 60 works from their Modern art collection to the Scottish National Gallery of Art for its summer exhibition Surreal Encounters, staged in collaboration with museums in Rotterdam and Hamburg.

Speaking at the opening of the exhibition, which includes major works by Dal, Picasso, Magritte and Mir, Pietzsch said: We will give pictures to Scotland because Scotland will stay within the EU. His translator and curator, Francisca Cruz, clarified that he meant loans to Scotland.

Pietzsch said: "It is very important for the whole world that England is European, that we stay together. Not only for Germany, for Englandbut for the whole world."

The exhibition was held up as an example of European co-operation. Drawn together by the veteran art curator Keith Hartley, it includes major loans from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Hamburger Kunsthalle, and will tour on to both museums after Edinburgh.

Heiner Pietzsch dates his interest in collecting back to an exhibition of degenerate art in Germany that fascinated him as a schoolboy in 1946. The couple have promised to bequeath around 150 works from their Modernist collection to the national museums of Berlin.

Around 60 works in the Edinburgh exhibition have been handled by the London dealer James Mayor. He says the impact of a Brexit vote would be disastrous, adding: It wont affect sales to America but it will affect sales to Europe because they will then have to import the painting into Europe, subject to varying import taxes, which can go up to 27% in Hungary.

British dealers at European art fairs would also suffer, according to Mayor. You would have to post bonds, the bureaucracy would be a nightmare and eventually it will have drastic effects on the London art trade because people wont want to consign work to people in England because they know that theres going to be a further tax if they sell it on to Europe, he says.

One possible advantage would be that Britain would relax EU regulations on artist resale rights, imposing royalties on the resale of artists work until 70 years after their death.    

Private British galleries holding foreign artists work among their stock might see a temporary gain if the pound devalued, but when it came to replacing that stock the price would be correspondingly higher, he says.

Completing the digitization of American Craft through 1990...

The MITT Mrkt. is a new concept space based off the men’s street style blog Men In This Town, in collaboration with Burton Metal Depository.

Located in Darlinghurst, it will be a retail destination to discover quality, locally designed lifestyle goods ranging from fashion, accessories, grooming and homewares. The space will also be home to MITT Studio Talks, a monthly series of talks about fashion, lifestyle and careers.

The space is set to open later in 2016 but you can visit our pop-up in the meantime to get a little taste of what is to come.

In this clip, workers assemble the cubes that undergird the artist Christo's latest project, The Floating Piers, which is open until 3 July on Italy's Lake Iseo.

Christies may have felt the ramifications of the impending Brexit vote as its Impressionist and Modern art sale on the eve of Britains EU referendum failed to reach its lower estimate. The sale total of 21.8m hammer (25.6m with fees) came in well below the expected 32.8m-48.7m, with a sell-through rate of 64%. Twelve of the 33 lots failed to sell, and only four fetched hammer prices above their higher estimates.

It was an uphill battle from the start, as three big lots were withdrawn at the last minute. Two were works by Picasso: Nature Morte and Nature Morte aux volets verts (both 1946), estimated at 2m-3m each. The third was Ren Magrittes Le temps jadis (1966), priced at 1.4m-1.8m.

Further disappointment came when the evenings cover lot, Monets LAncienne rue de la Chausse, Argenteuil (1872), failed to attract any bids. Estimated at 4.5m-6.5m, it was the only lot with a house guarantee.

Its a thin market, said the adviser Thomas Seydoux as he walked out of the room. Its hard to establish price points for many of the works tonight.

Modiglianis market, however, appears to be in rude health. Aided perhaps by the high price a Modigliani portrait fetched at Sothebys the night before, the artists portrait of Madame Hanka Zborowska (1917) saw multiple bidders from Asia, the US and Italy. The work sold for 7.3m (8.3m with fees), past its upper estimate of 7m.

Two records were set on the night. Ernst Ludwig Kirchners striking pastel on paper work, Blaue Artisten (1914), sold within estimate for 900,000 (1.1m with fees), the highest auction price for the artists works on paper. And Bernard Buffets Les clowns musiciens, le saxophoniste (1991) saw multiple bidders from Asia, most likely Japan, where the artist is particularly popular. But the work finally sold within estimate to a non-Asian buyer for 850,000 (1m with fees), narrowly beating the previous record.

At the press conference after the sale, the president of Christies Europe, Jussi Pylkkanen, spoke of the lack of stellar consignments. The gathering period of January and February was tough. There was uncertainty in other markets and, as you saw, volumes are generally down across the board.

Christies will now be turning its attention to its 250th anniversary celebrations. A curated sale to mark the occasion, Defining British Art, will take place on 30 June. There is more confidence now than before, and there are still auctions to come, Pylkkanen said.

Andrey Filatov, the Russian art collector who has been promoting Soviet-era art internationally, has signed a 12-year agreement to open a permanent exhibition of his Art Russe foundations holdings in the UK at Beaulieu Palace House, the Hampshire estate of Lord Montegu.

I want the public to admire the masterpieces of Russian art, rather than keeping my collection in a dedicated warehouse, Filatov told The Art Newspaper by email. The gallery at Beaulieuwhich is also home to the National Motor Museum and the popular attraction the World of Top Gearwill allow hundreds of thousands visitors every year to learn more about the depth of Russian art, Filatov added.


In a press release, Lord Montagu said: In the past, many stately home owners, including my ancestors, collected art from around the world, and so it is entirely appropriate I should be continuing that tradition by hosting this collection at Beaulieu.

Filatov made a fortune in ports and railway transport, and has sponsored exhibitions at Londons Saatchi Gallery and in Abu Dhabi. His foundation Art Russe, which he started in 2012, holds a collection of 200 paintings and sculptures, covering Russian art history from the late 19th century to the 1990s. Among the 25 works to be shown at Beaulieu in the opening exhibition this summer are Alexander Laktionovs Letter from the Front (1951) and Gely Korzhevs Hammer and Sickle (2003). The display is due to change quarterly. Private views of some of Art Russes most prized works, including paintings by Nicolai Fechin and Nicholas Roerich, will be held at Banqueting Hall and the Tower of London in June and July.

The South London Gallery in Peckham is 1m shy of its 4m target to fund the restoration of what may be one of the last, if not the last, remaining purpose-built Victorian fire stations in London. The plan is to transform the Grade II-listed building, which is down the road from the gallery, into a satellite space for shows and events. The gallery hopes to start the work in January 2017, so that the space can open in 2018. The firm 6a Architects, which is behind the extension at the gallerys main site, is working on the project.

Later additions to the Gothic- style structure, which was built in 1867 and converted into a sausage factory in the 1920s, are being stripped away to reveal as much of the original footprint as possible.

The public got its first glimpse of the fire station, which was given to the institution by an anonymous donor in 2014, when Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, organised with the Guggenheim, opened on 10 June (until 4 September). Although the major restoration work has yet to begin, a section of the first floor has already been shored up to prevent it from collapsing, because the wooden floorboards were completely rotten, says Margot Heller, the gallerys director.

Heller says that the new space will take the South London Gallery into a new era. The ground and first floors will be used to mount shows, and two shows a year will be spread throughout the entire four-storey building. There is also space for an archive and a studio for the gallerys artist-in-residency programme.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice is restoring The Studio (1928), its large painting by Pablo Picasso, to its original brightness. The artist added a fresh layer of white to the canvas shortly after completing the work, to simplify the palette and composition.

Acquired by Peggy Guggenheim from a New York-based dealer in 1942, the work was lined with wax and resin in the late 1960s to prevent cracking and flaking. But the white has yellowed as the wax has risen to the surface, while the other colours have dulled. The Swiss bank BSI is sponsoring the project to conserve and research the work.

Film Fridays, Foxfire's 50th, flower sculptures, "Fired Up" opens, and more...

Hauser & Wirths arts complex in Bruton, Somerset, is only ten miles from Glastonbury, home of the famed music festival which opened today (22 June) to revellers and rock fans. In a canny move, the gallery is backing two performances at the five-day music jamboree including an appearance by artist Martin Creed on the Avalon Caf Stage on 26 June. The Turner prizewinner, who is known for his musical acumen, will launch a new album on 8 July entitled Thoughts Lined Up (Creeds latest tracks should bring some light relief for mud-caked Glasto attendees, who can also catch an exhibition dedicated to the artist at H&W Somerset, until 11 September). Hauser & Wirth is also supporting a classical music headliner on the Park Stage on 25 June, when the conductor Charles Hazlewood will lead a performance of Philip Glasss Heroes Symphony in honour of the most influential musician of all, David Bowie. A sonic laser light show by Chris Levine will illuminate the proceedings. 

Learn to safely use and work with hand and power tools to build a lockable box to take home and keep.

This is a part of the Youth in the City school holiday program.

Participants must attend both workshops.

Tetch Gallery wishes to invite you all to the opening night drinks for our July artist Jesse Penfold, and his first solo photographic exhibition.

Jesse’s exhibition runs from 1-23 July and can be viewed within our opening hours from Wednesday-Saturday or via appointment.

Photography makes you want to slow down and really see what’s around you. It’s a chance to re-visit common places and give atmosphere to a subject with composition and timing.

It’s this simple philosophy that Sydney based photographer Jesse Penfold is influenced by, aspiring to capture everyday Sydney in a way that not everyone gets to see through a series of common landscapes and interesting subjects.

Please like Tetch Gallery on Facebook to keep up to date with all the news regarding Jesse’s exhibition.