RA Magazine's pick of this week’s art events (14 - 20 June)

Posted: 14 June 2013 by Sam Phillips

_{Lee Godie, 'Lee and Cameo on a chair...', (early to mid 1970s). the artist. Courtesy Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection.} Alternative Guide to the Universe
Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, until 26 August 2013
The Hayward has avoided including the words ‘Outsider Art’ in the title of its summer show.

That phrase to classify artists who work outside the art world always seems reductive, and the works on view are anything but one of a kind, ranging as they do from Frenchman Marcel Storr’s hallucinatory urban visions to the photo-booth self-portraits of homeless Chicago artist Lee Godie.

Other unconventional conceptions of the world are on view in the Hayward Gallery Project Space, where the magnificent Museum of Everything takes residence – claiming to be ‘the world's first and only wandering museum for the undiscovered, unintentional, untrained and unclassifiable artists of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries’.

Sculpture in the City
City of London, from 20 June
London’s square mile becomes something of a sculpture park from 20 June when – in conjunction with galleries Pace, Lisson, Sadie Coles, Waddington and White Cube – some top-end contemporary art is installed in the vicinity of The Gherkin.

_{Ryan Gander, 'More Really Shiny Things That Don't Mean Anything' 2, 2011. Stainless steel. 275cm diameter. © the artist. Photograph: A et cetera.}

Antony Gormley RA presents a classic work of cast-iron figures, Parallel Field (1990), while office workers can literally ‘go through the keyhole’ if they encounter Silver Affair (2008) by Jim Lambie – the door aperture is represented in metal at the size of a passer-by. Other participating artists include Jake and Dinos Chapman, Ryan Gander and Shirazeh Houshiary.

Seizure
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, from 15 June
One of Artangel’s most memorable site-specific commissions of the last decade was Roger Hiorns’ Seizure (2008), for which the British artist sprayed the inside of a soon-to-be-demolished Southwark council flat with copper sulphate – the entire interior became encrusted in bright blue crystals.

_{Roger Hiorns, 'Seizure', 2008/2013. Courtesy the artist and the Arts Council Collection. Photo Nigel Roddis.}

Following its acquisition by the Arts Council, the installation will be presented from this weekend at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Quite how the piece will be presented at the park is under wraps, but no doubt it will gain new and very different associations located in such a bucolic environment.

Modern British Collage
Pallant House, 15 June - 15 September 2013
Following ‘Schwitters in Britain’ at the Tate, another exhibition dedicated to the inventive medium of collage opens in Chichester’s Pallant House Gallery. Starting this Saturday, the show moves through the decades in an effort to demonstrate how British artists have experimented with the form.

_{Nigel Henderson, Screen, 1949-52 and 1960. Collage and mixed media, Pallant House Gallery (Wilson Gift through the Art Fund, 2004) © The Estate of Nigel Henderson}

Highlights include John Piper’s combination of paint and paper ephemera, Pop Art tableaux by Peter Blake RA and Nigel Henderson, and more recent pieces by John Stezaker, in which found photographs are cut up and reassembled to highly surreal effect.

_{Rachel Adams, 'Ottoman', 2011. Wood, fabric, paper, furniture legs, goache (green). 145 x 90 x 90 cm. © Rachel Adams. Image courtesy of the artist and Domobaal.} Paper Presentations
'Paper', Saatchi Gallery, 18 June – 29 September 2013
'Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper)', ICA, 19 June - 8 September 2013

Work on paper is not the first medium that comes to mind when one considers contemporary art. But even in the digital age, parchment continues to exert a push and pull on artistic practice, employed in artworks in ever more inventive ways.

The Saatchi Gallery from Tuesday presents ‘Paper’, including over 40 artists who use the material for everything from drawing and collage to even sculpture, in the form of Rachel Adams' figures formed from scrunched up sheets.

The day after, the ICA opens ‘Keep Your Timber Limber’, which looks at how eight artists have addressed social and political issues through drawing. Highlights include German artist George Grosz’s interwar satires and Tom Of Finland’s gay-culture images of leather-clad muscle-boys.

Sam Phillips is a London-based arts journalist and contributor to RA Magazine