A project across two sites

Collection+
Shaun Gladwell

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, 2015 (Installation view)
SCAF Project 25
Photo: silversalt photography

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, 2015 (Installation view)
SCAF Project 25
Photo: silversalt photography

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, 2015 (Installation view)
SCAF Project 25
Photo: silversalt photography

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, 2015 (Installation view)
SCAF Project 25
Photo: silversalt photography

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, 2015 (Installation view)
SCAF Project 25
Photo: silversalt photography

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, 2015 (Installation view)
SCAF Project 25
Photo: silversalt photography

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, 2015 (Installation view)
SCAF Project 25
Photo: silversalt photography

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, 2015 (Installation view)
SCAF Project 25
Photo: silversalt photography

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, 2015 (Installation view)
SCAF Project 25
Photo: silversalt photography

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, 2015 (Installation view)
SCAF Project 25
Photo: silversalt photography

Shaun Gladwell‘s two-part project is exhibited across two sites: SCAF features a major new commission The Lacrima Chair and UNSW Galleries presents Collection+: Shaun Gladwell, a selection of over 20 works drawn from public and private collections worldwide.

Collection+: Shaun Gladwell is the fourth iteration in SCAF’s Collection+ series of exhibitions. The series is conceived as a hybrid project with a specific cross-pollinating purpose. Some 800 works in The Gene & Brian Sherman Collection are scrutinised and assessed by invited curators working in partnership with SCAF’s curatorial team. Each curator selects a single artist from the collection and researches collections nationally and internationally in order to identify significant related works by the same artist.

Curated by Geneva-based Dr Barbara Polla and Paris-based Prof. Paul Ardenne, Collection+: Shaun Gladwell is presented in association with UNSW Art and Design and across all three exhibition spaces of the recently launched UNSW Galleries.

The exhibitions focusses on Gladwell’s interest in ornithology, wider thinking on flight, notions of the ‘double’ and problems with representing conflict. Featuring a selection of over 20 works drawn from public and private collections worldwide, the exhibition includes the paintings Helmet apparition (Taliban hill-fighter), 2011-12 and Helmet apparition (major league infidel), 2011-12, resulting from his time in Afghanistan as one of Australia’s official war artists, the video piece Double Linework, 2000 from the beginning of his career, and The Flying Dutchman in Blue, 2013 – an example of his most recent multi-channel installations – which served as the backdrop to the Rotterdam Philharmonic’s production of this Wagnerian masterpiece.

A comprehensive bilingual English/French catalogue, published by SCAF, accompanies this exhibition.

Shaun Gladwell: The Lacrima Chair (SCAF Project 24) and Collection+: Shaun Gladwell (SCAF Project 25) will be on show at SCAF and UNSW Galleries respectively from 6 March – 25 April 2015.

Watch Gene Sherman, Executive Director of SCAF; Barbara Polla, co-curator of Collection+: Shaun Gladwell; and Shaun Gladwell discuss the projects in this short film.

 

Shaun Gladwell was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1972 and completed an honours degree at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney, before undertaking postgraduate research with the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales (now UNSW Art & Design). He was awarded the Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship in 2001 and conducted associate research at Goldsmiths College, University of London, in 2001–02. He undertook an Australia Council studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, in 2001 and many subsequent residencies and commissions in Europe, North and South America and the Asia–Pacific region have followed. Over the past decade, Gladwell has exhibited widely throughout Australia and in the United States, South America, Asia, Canada and Europe. He exhibited
at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and represented Australia in the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and has had numerous solo exhibitions.

Gladwell’s work is represented in many international public and private collections such as the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Orange County Museum of Art, California, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Connecticut, JUT Foundation for Arts and Architecture, Taiwan, Museum of Contemporary
Art, Tokyo, SCHUNCK*, Heerlen,
The Netherlands, VideoBrasil, Brazil, Tichy Ocean Foundation Collection, Czech Republic, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, Artbank, Australia, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney, University of Technology, Sydney, The University of Sydney, Sydney, and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand.

 

Dr Barbara Polla graduated in medicine from the University of Geneva in 1982 and was accredited as a research director by the Université Paris Descartes (Paris V–René Descartes) in 1994. She is a Harvard Fellow and a guest lecturer at the University of Modena, Italy, and is frequently invited around the world to address her fields of expertise. For six years she was a consultant on stress- related proteins to Japan’s Department of Education and Research, and from 1993 to 2000 a research director at INSERM, France’s national institute of health and medical research.

Dr Polla, mother of four daughters, was a councillor and member of parliament in Switzerland from 1991 to 2003, and opened her own art gallery, Analix Forever, in Geneva in 1991 followed by Paris in 2011. Dr Polla is also an independent curator and art critic, and teaches critical and creative writing at HEAD (Haute École d’Art et de Design), Geneva. She has also organised exhibitions and conferences and commissioned artworks on the theme of art and incarceration. With Professor Paul Ardenne, Dr Polla created VIDEOFOREVER in 2011, a series of video screenings and themed conferences on video, and, in 2014, co-curated the exhibitions Motopoétique (MAC Lyon) and Economie Humaine (HEC Paris). She has been following the work of artist Shaun Gladwell since 2010, drawn to Gladwell’s engagement with the body and choice of video as preferred medium. Dr Polla has contributed articles on art to a number of collective works. She has also written novels and short stories, including A Toi bien sûr (l’Age d’Homme, 2008); Victoire (l’Age d’Homme, 2009) and Troisième vie
(to be published by l’Age d’Homme in 2015). More general essays have focused notably on gender, with Tout à fait femme (2012), followed by Tout à fait homme (2014, Odile Jacob, Paris).

 

Paul Ardenne is an academic in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Amiens and a contributor to reviews
such as Art Press and Archistorm.
He is the author of several books on contemporary aesthetics, including Art l’âge contemporain (1997), L’Art dans son moment politique (2000), L’Image Corps (2001), Un Art contextuel (2002) and Portraiturés (2003). Other publications include Extrême–Esthétiques de la limite dépassée (2006), Images-Monde: De L’événement au documentaire (with Régis Durand, 2007), Art, le présent: La création plastique au tournament du 21ième siècle (2009), Moto, notre amour (2010), Corpopoétiques 1 (2011) and Cent artistes du Street Art (2011). He has also written several novels, including Posthume: La Halte, Nouvel âge (2012), Sans visage (2012) and Comment je suis oiseau (2014). In the fields of architecture and urban planning, Paul has written a number of monographs and studies on Rudy Ricciotti, Alain Sarfati, Philippe Gazeau, Brunet
and Saunier, Jacques Ferrier, FGPa, 5+1AA, and Franklin Azzi, among others. He was co-organiser, with Dr Barbara Polla, of the international conference Emotional Architecture, held in Geneva in 2012. He is also the author of an essay on contemporary urbanity, ‘Terre Habitée: Humain et l’urbain à l’ère de la mondialisation’ (2005, reissued with additional material 2010, Editions Archibooks).

A curator of contemporary art, Paul designed the exhibitions Micropolitiques (Grenoble, 2000), Expérimenter le réel (Albi-Montpellier, 2001 and 2002), and Working Men (Geneva, 2008). He was a commissioning curator on the exhibition La Force de l’art, held at the Grand Palais, Paris, in 2006. Other exhibition curatorships include Ailleurs (Paris, 2011), Art et bicyclette (in collaboration with Fabienne Fulchéri, Mouans-Santoux, 2011), WANI (with Marie Maertens, Paris, 2011), L’Histoire est à moi (Printemps de Septembre, a festival of contemporary creation, Toulouse, 2012), Aqua vitalis (with Claire Tangy, Caen, 2013), Motopoétique (MAC, Lyon, 2014), L’oiseau volé (with Barbara Polla, Paris, 2014) and Economie humaine (with Barbara Polla, HEC, Paris, 2014). He is curator of the Luxembourg Pavilion, which will show at the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, 2015, and which will feature the artist Filip Markiewicz.