“Art is the stuff you can’t say,” believes Haroon Mirza, Northern Art prize winner, Lisson Gallery artist and the man whose art work gives the exhibition its title. His work, a video installation including the ritualistic sound of Kenyan men drumming during a Muslim wedding, and a student giving a speech, offers a sense of urgency that is unmistakably politically charged. His work in this instance addresses cultural difference, even amongst those who share the same faith. Here his work reveals two different Muslim populations and there different, contradictory beliefs (music is banned by some Muslim leaders).

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In addition to Mirza, there are works from Broomberg and Chanarin, Allora and Calzadilla, Liu Xiaodong and Rashid Rana. Divine Violence from Broomberg and Chanarin features plates from the King James Bible, annotated à la Bertold Brecht and superimposed with imagery from the Archive of Modern Warfare. Artist duo Allora and Calzadilla tackle a contamination incident at a Puerto Rican GlaxoSmithKline factory in their 20-minute demolition video, complete with wrecking ball bell. Meanwhile,  Xiaodong’s paintings depict mine workers in one of China’s most politically tense regions.

Needless to say, the exhibition contains some provocative stuff which the language of art addresses with a suitable, vital tone. Not to be missed. (Words: Laura Thornley)

From 30th January to 7th March.  For more info visit: www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/cross-section-of-a-revolution

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The show will focus on her work in the 1970s, much of which has not been shown before. The exhibition’s title piece White Space, originally installed in the Student Cultural Centre in her hometown of Belgrade in 1972, has not been remade since its first showing. The show will also include two important sound pieces, previously unseen video documentation of seminal performances and a number of newly discovered photographs, all dating from 1971-1975.

Much of her work deals with time and the immaterial, what defines art and how we can experience higher plains, love and openness through art. While its clear Abramovich came up in the ranks alongside the feminist movement and fellow earth mothers such as Ana Mendietta, her work still bears a quiet power to still even the most cynical London minds. A great encore to shed some light on this fascinating artist. (Words: Laura Thornley)

On until 1 November.  For more info visit: www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/marina-abramovic-white-space

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Working in Brooklyn, New York, her inspiration comes from her surroundings: a hand painted sign or a piece of graffiti. She works mostly in shop bought enamels and charcoal, embedding a throw away aesthetic within her work. Her preoccupation with the caricature makes her work unmistakeably American and a not so distant relation to the pop art scene, although the artists prefers to think of her inspirations as Giacometti and the Abstract Expressionists.

Her first solo show, I Killed Kenny started its tour in 2013 in Santa Monica Museum of art and continued to further venues throughout the States. Pensato’s exhibition at Lisson Gallery this March will be her first major exhibition in the UK. In 2012 the artist was awarded the Merit Medal for Painting, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as other awards from the Guggenheim and Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

As part of her first show in London, the artists will be transporting her studio, otherwise known as, Joyceland, complete with plastic action men, paint pots, scraps of paper and all other paraphernalia that results from her painting methods. The artist will also be creating a site-specific mural along one of the gallery walls, during the month before the exhibition. (Words: Laura Thornley)

The exhibition is on at the Lisson Gallery from 26 March – 10 May. For more info visit: www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/joyce-pensato

Watch a video of Joyce Pensato in New York  discussing her work via the Nowness website. 

Joyceland
on Nowness.com

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Mirza, winner of the Silver Lion Award for a promising young artist two years ago at the Venice Biennale, is known for his ambitious and ground-breaking work with sound, sculpture, space and light. His sensory immersive sonic environments reverberate through the rooms at Lisson Gallery: ‘it’s weird – you can feel it right through your body’ one visitor commented whilst standing in the ‘LED surround sound sequencer’ upstairs at the gallery. Another: ‘this is how my brain works’.

The ‘LED surround sound sequencer’ (another of the bullet points) can be found in an airless and grey soundproofed room, where a ring of speakers are linked up to a small ring of LEDs. The interlinking wires are pulled taut and precisely arranged in a kind of elegant 3-D line drawing, and the lights flash on and off in an unknown automated sequence, communicating with their opposite speakers which pulsate in tandem.

Downstairs, the spotless floor of the gallery is dotted with turntables, wires, pieces of vinyl and great wads of violently angular soundproofing foam mounted at different points on the walls. Crackling, scratching, whomp-whomping sounds pick their way across the room.

Mirzas’s work is not confined to the series of spaces at Lisson Gallery. This week will see the opening of a second audio composition and light installation at the Hepworth Wakefield, where Mirza works with the architecture to distort and change the displays of objects from the Hepworth’s collection of modern British painting and sculpture. His work also expands into the internet sphere, on Vinyl Factory‘s interactive website, where all of Mirza’s samples are available to play with. If you’re nifty with an MP4 and fancy yourself as a potential collaborator, there is also the chance to put together a track  – which might even stand the chance of being released by the record label. (Words: Florence Ritter)

On until June 29th. For more info, visit: www.lissongallery.com/#/artists/haroon-mirza

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