Hong-Kong based magazine Cobo has just published my report on this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale curated by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena. The overarching theme for the show is “Reporting from the Front” and the Asian pavilions are very much in the spotlight.
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The Italian web magazine Art a Part of Cult(ure) has just published the interview I had in Rome with artist Benjamin Skepper with the title “Benjamin Skepper, l’olandese tra Australia, Tokio, Russia, resto del mondo e bellezza. L’intervista”. The interview is part of my reportage about artists in Melbourne.
Here the link to the interview
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The Australian magazine Trouble has just published the interview I had in Melbourne with artist Two One (Hiroyasu Tsuri). The interview is part of my reportage about emerging artists in Melbourne.
Here the link to the interview
Here the link to the online version of the magazine
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I recently interviewed the artist Twoone (Hiroyasu Tsuri) in his studio in Collingwood.
The studio was quite empty because he had brought all the paintings at the Backwoods gallery, for his upcoming solo show “Define Nothing”.
Twoone’s Japanese background is evident in his paintings’ balanced composition. His mystical-looking characters with animal heads, realized in his unique style, are his trademark in the Melbournian thriving street art culture.
The exhibition has been a success. I took some pictures of the Twoone’s artworks in the gallery, and then I followed him in a street nearby where he was painting a wall.
When you visit a museum in Australia, you have to consider the snake danger.
According to the Australian mentality, which is close to Hinduism in this sense, you shouldn’t kill any snake – after all a snake is still part of the wildlife and you have to respect it.
Anyways, being aware of the snake danger, I decided to go to the Heide Museum equipped with my Crocodile Dundee hat.
I hoped that my Indonesian boyfriend Lucas would have bring with him a kris and my Japanese friend Minako a katana but, alas, they didn’t.
“What about you? Didn’t you bring a mandolino with you?” Lucas asked me referring to my Neapolitan origins.
“How you supposed to kill a snake with a mandolino, genius?”
“Unless…” I mumbled making my way through the lianas separating us from the museum “you charm the snake playing Torna a Surriento or something like that.”
Walking carefully, we finally arrived at the door of the Heide Museum without being bitten, which was good.
The current show was titled “Fiona Hall: Big game hunting”
Coming into the exhibition I took off my hat and I rapidly switched my attitude from adventurer to art critic.
Since Art Residences were established, artists took advantage and started travelling around the word.
It was such a great possibility. Who can refuse accommodation and a guarantee daily meal in faraway countries, ending with a personal exhibition?
In residence time artists gave birth to projects which are often result of an hybridising process.
Weird installations and psychedelic videos issued out to the artists previous work and the host country influences.
Sometimes is just the exhibition place that is unusual for a kind of art, and that is exactly “The Human Factor” exhibition case.
So, you have to imagine a typical late ‘800 starting ‘900 Italian noble mansion, just in the middle of Villa Borghese Gardens, Rome. There’s were the sculptor an composer Piero Canonica lived, but now it’s a museum filled with statues, paintings and beautiful relics.
Basically the interiors and the furniture remained the same, but sometimes curators tries to renew the environment, making contemporary art exhibitions.
Could sound like a weird experiment to Liang Shuo (China), Charles Lim (Singapore) , Koki Tanaka (Japan) and Wan Hong-Kai (Taiwan), the attendees to the Qwartz Rome Residency Program.
The idea was matching oriental contemporary art with an old typical roman ambience.
Once a friend of mine said to me: “I don’t really like funny art”
We were arguing on Pino Pascali, the Italian artist working in the seventeen, mostly known for his sculptures. Not exactly Canova’s style. Something like “Walt Disney going mad”, I mean, whale tales sprouting from the floor, brush caterpillars, pregnant canvas, that sort of things.
I not agree with my friend (who wasn’t Clement Greenberg anyway).
For me, art have to be game. A quest sometime. Something that could catch your imagination.
It’s better if art don’t take herself to seriously. I mean, not even stupid. Just intriguing.
Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
