On the Other Side of the Globe (first major contemporary Korean art and design exhibition in Manchester)

Date: The exhibition runs from 3 to 31 August, 2010
Venue: Manchester Digital Laboratory, 36-40 Edge Street, Manchester M4 1HN
Contact: Hwa Young Jung - hwayoung@madlab.org.uk or
Beccy Kennedy - beccy@madlab.org.uk

Manchester Digital Laboratory (Madlab) is a new community space for people who want to do and make interesting stuff - a place for geeks, artists, designers, illustrators, hackers, tinkerers, innovators and idle dreamers; an autonomous R&D laboratory and a release valve for Manchester's creative communities. Based in Manchester’s bohemian Northern quarter in a building which used to be a shop and evoking the era of Manchester mill manufacturing, Madlab is a cottage industry all of its own. It’s a welcoming place for workshops, rendezvous, creativity making and, now, also, transnational art exhibitions - as it introduces its first: On the Other Side of the Globe.
Curated by Lee Joo Won of Seoul’s Art Connection Korea (ARCK), Madlab showcases 23 artists’ fine art, design, digital and video pieces. Co-director of Madlab, Hwa Young Jung, wanted to show Manchester some of South Korea’s design and art innovations, in a multi-location collaborative project with ARCK online gallery and London’s Britannia Centre. The artists contributing to ‘On the Other Side of the Globe’ explore some of Korea’s cultural, historical uses of iconography in design, including aspects of folk narrative, landscape, fashion, language and material culture. These elements are interwoven with themes and issues arising from contemporary lifestyles including ecology, tourism and digital innovation. The art works and installation pieces demonstrate how national characteristics can work to create a meaningful identity globally, relating to Korea’s cultural, natural and material production where it interfaces with the needs of 20th /21st century intercultural design, commerce and global forms of communication.
In Manchester’s first extensive, mixed media group exhibition of contemporary Korean art, this is a rare opportunity to see the cutting edge polymathy of art and design from the other side of the globe.

KOREAN COLLECTIVE LONDON 2010

Date: 30 July - 31 August 2010
Venue: 49 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4JR
Tel: 0207 499 1616
Email: INFO@ALBEMARLEGALLERY.COM
Web: http://www.albemarlegallery.com/


At a time when the attention of the art world is focussed on the art and artefacts of Asia in particular, and the contemporary art community on new art from emerging markets, The Korean Collective exhibition has brought together the work of six Korean artists with an interest in perception, displacement and the inner self.

Each has tackled these difficult themes with imagination and panache, and with the use of a range of materials and skills. Although the individual artists have pursued their unique paths, these three overarching concerns permeate each and every piece in the exhibition.Korea has experienced a cultural Renaissance over the last ten years, evident in its new public and private museums, modern, urban architecture and in the preservation of its traditional heritage.

The investment in the nation’s arts infrastructure is combined with the maintenance of rigorous technical standards in Western and Eastern styles of art by the leading arts universities of Hongik, Seoul and Ewha.

The market for Korean contemporary art is vibrant. Highly influential Seoul based galleries and important private Korean collectors are setting the contemporary art agenda for East Asia. Their influence, expressed in exhibitions, publications and by the appearance of their artists’ works in international auctions has moved beyond the confines of Asia and, like some Chinese art, has entered the mainstream. The Korean art world efficiently filters its most promising artists onto its national market, and with new and significant outlets overseas the future for these ‘talents’ is very bright. The best Korean art has, in short, a strong indigenous collecting base and an international pedigree...........

Reviewed by Iain Robertson

Head of Art Business Studies, Sothebys Institute of Art