Russian youth organisation protests Voina's art award

Nationalist youth organisation Rossiya Molodaya (Young Russia) picketed Russia's ministry of culture on 15 April in protest over the awarding of a contemporary art prize to the controversial art collective Voina, demanding that the ministry stop allocating funds for the prize and "return by any lawful means funds spent on a prize for extremists and provocateurs".

Voina was awarded the Rb400,000 ($14,000) prize for Dick Captured by FSB!, a 65 x 27m spray painting of the outline of a penis on a bridge opposite St Petersburg's Federal Security Service (FSB) office. The collective will distribute the winnings to orphans and inmates.

Voina did not attend the awards ceremony. Spokesperson Leonid Nikolayev told Russian News Service radio: The prize is secondary and insignificant. Our country has its own prize for artists who deal with social and political issues. We were nominated for a state prize in the form of a criminal case that could land us up to seven years in jail."

Nikolayev and collective artist Oleg Vorotnikov were jailed after overturning police cars in another performance in St Petersburg last September. They were bailed out by Banksy in February, but are not allowed to leave St Petersburg while they await trial.

Image: Voina Collective's graffiti penis on a drawbridge in Moscow.

Serrano's Piss Christ attacked by Christian fundamentalists

Controversy has followed Andres Serrano's Piss Christ ever since he plunged a plastic crucifix into a glass of his own urine and photographed it, but it reached an unprecedented peak on Palm Sunday when it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an "anti blasphemy" campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in the city of Avignon, The Guardian reports that the violent slashing of the picture, and another Serrano photograph of a meditating nun, has plunged France into soul-searching about Christian Fundamentalism and Nicolas Sarkozy's use of religious populism in his bid for re-election next year. Read more...

Image: Andres Serrano, Piss Christ (1989)

The Andy Monument, Union Square NY

A new public art work has appeared in New York's Union Square. Commissioned by the Public Art Fund, Rob Pruitt's The Andy Monument (2011) is a statue of Andy Warhol made from chromed, glass-fibre-reinforced polyester resin and stood atop a concrete plinth. His Warhol shares the square with monuments to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Mohandas Gandhi, and is the Warhol of the 1970s and 80s: big glasses, shirt, tie and casual blazer, a Bloomingdale 'medium brown bag' in his right hand and a Polaroid camera slung around his neck. Read more...

Image: Rob Pruitt's The Andy Monument (2011) commissioned by the Public Art Fund, NY

Starkwhite opening tonight

Matt Henry's exhibition Vernacular Painting opens tonight at 5.30pm.

Image: Matt Henry, Signal Yellow (Pillarbox) from the series, 16:9 2011, acrylic on linen, frame, acrylic glazing, 618 x 1001 x 69 mm

Showing that philanthropy can work, even when times are tough

The UK's biggest art charity has announced plans to increase funding to museums and galleries to buy and show art by over 50% by 2014. The Art Fund is committing £7m a year to their funding programme, up from £4.5 million. They also launched the National Art Pass giving special access to art all over the UK.

Demonstrating that philanthropy can continue even when times are tough, the Art Fund is taking steps to support the delivery of art around the UK and to help people to experience great art at first hand. They include:

• Making more money directly available for the purchase of important works of art
  
• Running more public fundraising campaigns
  
• Supporting curatorial development
  
• Supporting the collecting of international contemporary art
  
• Celebrating, advocating and supporting the museums and galleries sector through the art fund prize for museums and art galleries
  
• Campaigning for ways to make it easier for institutions to acquire art
  
• Helping people make the most of art through the introduction of the National Art Pass

All funding for the art charity is raised from donations, public appeals, trusts and foundations and through its 80,000 supporters

Image: artist Grayson Perry at a National Art Pass launch

Turner Contemporary aims to revitalise the town of Margate

Locals in Margate are hoping the new Turner Contemporary gallery will help to revitalise a town where a declining tourist trade has left buildings empty and high levels of unemployment. They are hoping that the new art gallery and its links with 19th century artist JWT Turner will transform Margate in the way the Tate gallery turned a sleepy seaside St Ives in soutwest England into an artistic mecca, or the way the Guggenheim revived Spain's industrial city of Bilbao.

The "art effect" is already having an impact. Anticipating a cultural resurgence, entrepreneurs have begun moving into Margate's quaint but rundown Old Town, opening galleries, cafes and vintage boutiques. Some 40 new businesses have opened since last year. Others hope to re-open the old Dreamland amusement park and preserve its antique rides which include Britain's oldest roller coaster as part of a raft of visitor attractions that could once again draw vacationing families to the beach resort.

Image: the new Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate, England

A new addition to Billy Apple's transaction series

In 2005 Minter Ellison Rudd Watts advanced Billy Apple $100,000 credit for legal services for an artwork staged as a site-specific wall painting in the firm's reception area. Five years and one Top Up later the project has evolved into the exhibition Billy Apple®: $23,610 Top Up, a new addition to the artist's list of transactions dating back to Art For Sale, 1981. You can read the release for this Starkwhite exhibition presented in the foyer and reception areas of Minter Ellison's Auckland offices here.

Image: Billy Apple®: $23,610 Top Up, installation views of the Starkwhite exhibition at the Auckland offices of Minter Ellison Rudd Watts

Coming up at Starkwhite

Matt Henry's exhibition Vernacular Painting, opens in our upstairs galleries on Wednesday 18 May. You can read the exhibition release here.

Image: Matt Henry, Untitled (Titanium Dioxide) 2011, acrylic and lacquer on linen, pine stretcher and masonite panel, 210 x 210 x 45 mm

Challenging the notion of the national pavilion at the Venice Biennale

In the first of a series of interviews with art-world figures operating outside the Venice Biennale's official channels, ARTINFO spoke recently with Georges Rabbath, who is planning a Lebanese project in Venice titled Lebanon as a State of Mind, about the pitfalls - and benefits - of working on the margins of the official national pavilion system, and how it is appropriate for the Arab world today. Read more...

Image: curator Georges Rabbath

Slim pickings at the Museo Soumaya

"There is something tragic about the Museo Souyama, the spectacular-looking private museum in Mexico City that opened to the public on March 28. It is owned and operated by the Carlos Slim Foundation and contains the collection of the world's richest man, Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim. With so much money at his disposal I was expecting to see something extraordinary. But unfortunately it falls short." Read more...

Image: the exterior of the Fernando Romero-designed Museo Soumaya

In Praise of Doubt opens at Pinault's Punta della Dogana gallery

In Praise of Doubt has opened at Francois Pinault's Punta della Dogana gallery, a former Venetian Republic Custom House located at the centre of the lagoon on the Grand Canal. Assembled to explore "the questioning of certainty of identity" and "the relationship between intimate and personal dimension", the exhibition features works by Maurizio Cattelan, Dan Flavin, Roni Horn, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Subodh Gupta, Donald Judd, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Sigmar Polke and others.

This link takes you to a conversation between Jackie Wullschlager and  Francois Pinault published in the Financial Times. You can also see our recent post, Francois Pinault hones his Ventian project, here.

Images: Venice's Punta della Dogana and Felix Gonzales-Torres' Sturtevant in the exhibition In Praise of Doubt

Alicia Frankovich @ VVORK

Alicia Frankovich's Revolution (Martini Fountain) features on VVORK, a daily website that offers a curated collection of contemporary art. You can visit VVORK here.

Image: Alicia Frankovich, Revolution (Martini Fountain), 2010 

Ai Weiwei: the latest developments

You can catch up with the latest Ai Weiwei developments here.

Image: a billboard near Ai Weiwei's Beijing studio

Radical art collective wins Russian Ministry of Culture prize

The New York Times reports that the radical art collective Voina has won a contemporary art award sponsored by Russia's Ministry of Culture and the National Centre for Contemporary Art for a project that consisted of a 210-foot penis painted on a drawbridge in St Petersburg. Pointed at the the headquarters of the state security service, the FSB, the penis stood for several hours before authorities scrubbed it off. Yana Sarna, who acts as a spokesperson for the group, said in a statement that the group would not keep the prize money, but would forward it to political prisoners in Russia. Read more...

Image: Voina Collective's graffiti penis on a drawbridge in Moscow.

Free-market logic at work at the Musée Picasso

The director of the Musée Picasso has defended her decision to organise an international touring exhibition to raise money for the renovation of the Paris museum. Anne Baldessari, the museum's director, told Le Monde that producing exhibitions abroad was their only resource, adding that the money received helps to finance conservation and exhibitions.

Baldessari revealed that the museum raised between €1m and €3.5m a year from the touring exhibition Masterpieces from the Picasso Museum. So far the exhibition venture has returned €16m.

The criticisms of the museum follow comments made by the General Association of Curators of French Public Collections expressing concern about cuts in state funding for French museums and the "extreme free-market logic" increasingly adopted by national museums, a barb directed at the Musée Picasso.

New Minister of Culture says mega-ads in Venice must go

Italy's new Minister of Culture, Giancarlo Galan, has told the La Nuova Venzia newspaper that the mega-ads in St Mark's Square and down the Grand Canal must go. "Tourists should not be faced with such a horrible sight, and the advertisers themselves must be finding the ads are bad publicity", he said. "The money to pay for the restoration that the advertisements are financing will have to be raised in other ways."

The decision follows stinging attacks on the Italian Government over the use of giant advertisements on some of Venice's most historic sights. Facing a funding crunch as masonry began to crack and tumble from some of its ancient palazzi, Venice began to offer adversing space in 2008 on the awnings used to cover scaffolding erected for restoration around St Mark's Square and up and down the Grand Canal.

But local conservationists said the advertisements to pay for essential maintenance got out of hand when a Coca-Cola advertisement all but obliterated views of the Bridge of Sighs behind the Palazzo Ducale. Dubbed the "Bridge of Signs", the structure is being rented out for €40,000 a month.

Image: A mega-ad covers the area surrounding Venice's Bridge of Sighs

Museums and artists call for the release of Ai Weiwei

The Tate, MOMA, the Guggenheim and other museums have joined art figures including the Gao Brothers and Cao Fei demanding that China release Ai Weiwei. Read more...

Peter Zumthor to create a secret garden for the 11th Serpentine Pavilion

Peter Zumthor, master of meditative, highly crafted buildings, has released images of his design for this year's Serpentine Gallery pavilion in London's Kensington Gardens. The pavilion, which opens in July and closes in September, will take the form of of a contemplative garden courtyard created by the Dutch designer Piet Oudolf.

"The concept", says Zumthor, "is the hortus conclusus, a contemplative room, a garden within a garden. The building acts as a stage, a backdrop for the interior garden of flowers and light. Through blackness and shadow one enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden, a place abstracted from the world of noise ands traffic and smells of London - an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers. This experience will be intense and memorable, as will the materials themselves - full of memory and time."

Zumthor's pavilion is the 11th in the series which began with Zaha Hadid in 2000 and has included giants such as Oscar Niemeyer, Alvaro Siza, Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry. Read more...
Image: A garden within a garden. Peter Zumthor's design for the Serpentine Gallery pavilion

Leigh Davis Flag Poems in Time, Text & Echoes

Image: Leigh Davis, Adoration of the Bleeding Edge, flag poem presented in the JAR exhibition Time, Text & Echoes (2010-2011), a sequence of ten-day hoists over 300 days, New North Road, Kingsland, Auckland, NZ

Review of Dane Mitchell's Radiant Matter Part 1 at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

"I suspect this is the best show of Mitchell's career so far. It is particularly cohesive conceptually, with its methodical ruminations on art viewing processes, 'radiant' but invisible matter and how we might detect it, and the authoritative power of language". Read more...

Image: Dane Mitchell, Radiant Matter Part 1, installation view, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, 2011. Photograph by Bryan James