June: Books and Exhibitions

Viviane Sassen’s Venus & Mercury

Exhibition at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam

Amsterdam’s Huis Marseille welcomes back visitors to its physical space with an exhibition Viviane Sassen’s Venus & Mercury. The body of work, which was created in Versailles and inspired by the French royal courts of the 17th and 18th centuries, will occupy all 14 galleries and the museum garden. Sassen presents a melancholic narrative drenched in eroticism, power, intrigue, illness, decay, and death. The photographer has also created a number of installations especially for the venue, including one based on the residential history of the space, which occupies a canal-side house.

huismarseille.nl

© Viviane Sassen.

CIRCULATION(S) festival

Outdoor exhibition from 03 June until 26 July

One of the first festivals to take place after lockdown, CIRCULATION(S) returns to the Centquatre-Paris, France, this week. Alongside the physical opening, the entire programme will be accessible online from 03 June. 

festival-circulations.com

Hi NOON

Launched in July 2019, Hi-Noon is an artist-run initiative that aims to make collecting art accessible to a wider audience. The initiative was set up by Sophy Ricketts and Rut Blees Luxemburg and initially comprised work by nine artists including Alix Marie and Yushi Li. Hi-Noon has just announced the addition of three new pieces by Bettina von Zwehl, Naghmeh Navabi, and Loreal Prystaj — their work, according to the founders, should evoke hope, creativity and joy at such an uneasy time.

hi-noon.net

world_capital_hi_noon_bjp
World Capital. 2019 © Felicity Hammond.

Lumen Museum of Mountain Photography

Exhibitions running from 06 June until 11 November

Located in the Italian province of South Tyrol, overlooking the stunning Dolomites mountain range, sits a museum devoted entirely to mountain photography. This week, Lumen opens their next season of shows — two exhibitions in collaboration with National Geographic, featuring work by Ricardo Azarcoya, Luis Armando Vega, Musuk Nolte, Nicolas Villaume, and Victor Zea. 

lumenmuseum.it

The Covid Photo Museum

Online gallery

The Covid Photo Museum was conceived of as an online time-capsule for the extraordinary circumstances caused by the pandemic. Curated by creative duo Billy Linker and Einav Jacubovich, the site features nine themed galleries with titles such as The space we used to fill, 1.5m apart and Enclosed spaces.

covidphotomuseum.org

Protesters outside the Statehouse Atrium during the State of Ohio’s Coronavirus response update on Monday, April 13, 2020. © Joshua Revolt.

A Different Age by Shirley Barker

Online exhibition running from 22 June to 24 July

James Hyman Gallery launches an online exhibition of largely unseen photographs by Shirley Barker focused on the photographer’s celebrated street scenes of elderly people in Manchester and Salford in the north of England. “We are now starting to see the easing of the lockdown,” observes Baker’s daughter, Nan Levy, who co-curated the show with James Hyman. “Sadly our elderly folk are still advised to stay safe at home… [These images] show older people enjoying their daily lives in the community in a way that is not possible at the moment.”

jameshymangallery.com

© Shirley Barker.

Absolutely Augmented Reality by Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song

Photobook

Collating original sketches and 100 colour photographs by New York-based artists Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song, Absolutely Augmented Reality presents a series of unpublished works that fuse photography, painting and performance. Describing themselves as “photo-existentialists practising anthropological symbolism”, their imagery combines humour and surrealism with contemplations on metaphysics.

© Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song,

Anne Turyn: Top Stories

Exhibition at Weiss Berlin, Germany, from 11 to 27 June

In 1978, Anne Turyn founded the punk periodical Top Stories. Each issue featured the work of one artist, and between 1978 and 1991, the publication showcased the work of Kathy Acker, Laurie Anderson, Constance DeJong, Jenny Holzer, Cookie Mueller, and Richard Prince, among others. Now, the issues are amalgamated in a photobook available to pre-order and presented in an exhibition that opens at Weiss Berlin next week.

Early Sunday Morning by Peter Mitchell

Published by RRB Photobooks

Comprising nearly 100 photographs of Leeds taken during the 1970s and 1980s, Peter Mitchell’s latest photobook reveals the intricate layers of the city’s urban and social history, exposed by rapid changes in the landscape. The images depict 100-year-old terraces, corner shops, factories and pubs — many are bordered up or adorned with painted signage, pointing to the brisk transformation of the city. Edited and sequenced by John Myers, Mitchell’s new book shows a different Leeds to the sombre ruins depicted in his past titles such as Memento Mori, or the detached view presented by The Man from Mars.

rrbphotobooks.com

© Peter Mitchell.