SXSW London’s exhibitions line-up puts emphasis on art and technology and artists from London’s Caribbean diaspora – The Art Newspaper

The South by Southwest (SXSW) music and expertise pageant, held in Austin, Texas, since 1987, has constructed a world fame for taking part in host to mind-expanding, boundary-breaking conversations on the confluence of enterprise, expertise, movie and music. SXSW London, the model’s first South By pageant in Europe, has introduced a line-up of artists and curators who will add an artwork emphasis to the Austin playbook in per week of exhibitions mounted within the inventive hotbed of Shoreditch, east London. SXSW London may also function a multi-venue convention and occasions and reveals constructed round music, cinema and entrepreneurship.

The visible arts programme, with an emphasis on the approaching collectively of artwork, music and expertise and on the work of London artists from the Caribbean diaspora, shall be curated within the first week of June by two main figures of their area: Beth Greenacre, a long-time collaborator with the extensively influential musician and collector David Bowie, and curator of Bowie’s assortment till his loss of life in 2016, and Alex Poots, creative director of The Shed, in New York Metropolis, and beforehand chief government and creative director of the Manchester Worldwide Competition and creative director of Park Avenue Armory.

The featured artists are Andy Warhol, a founding father of technology-facing interdisciplinary artwork, and up to date practitioners together with Alberta Whittle, Alvaro Barrington, Beeple, Damien Roach, Denzil Forrester, Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst, Runkus, Tavares Strachan and Zinzi Minott.

Patrick Moore, a board member of SXSW London and former government director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, who has been the pageant’s cultural adviser for the previous 12 months, tells The Artwork Newspaper that the pageant didn’t need merely to “ transport Austin to London”. The organisers, he says, “felt that it was crucial that London [should] have an genuine programme that was reflective of British tradition. And it appeared to me that it will be very odd to have, for instance, a music programme with out together with the visible arts and vogue and movie altogether, as a result of they appear to me to be uniquely gathered collectively in English tradition.” This emphasis on interdisciplinarity and on the convergence of artwork and expertise was the place to begin, Moore says, for one thing new when the South By model travelled to London.

The concept of the convergence of artwork kinds, Moore says, is “each an outdated concept and a brand new concept. It is new in that it appears very a lot a part of up to date tradition, that younger artists do not wish to be only a painter, only a film-maker, only a sculptor. They wish to pursue each attainable inventive endeavour.” It’s also an outdated concept, Moore says, “that jogs my memory of Warhol and [his] insistence on not being boxed into only one space of creativity. South by Southwest is related to the brand new and the subsequent and discovery and that is proper. But it surely’s additionally primarily based in one thing that is older and a conventional concept of breaking down boundaries.”

A highlight on artwork and expertise

At Protein Studios, an industrial-flavoured area in Shoreditch, Poots shall be presenting a four-stage “SX LDN LAB” to discover the intersection of artwork, expertise and bodily area. Poots was drawn to Protein Studios from the primary as a location that supplied the pliability he wanted when working with Warhol’s movie archive and with the growing concepts of the main digital artist and NFT (non-fungible token) pioneer Beeple, the musicians and ground-breaking AI (synthetic intelligence) artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, creative director of Serpentine Galleries, who will conduct an interview with an artist whose id has but to be revealed.

Poots has been concerned for years, he tells The Artwork Newspaper, with artists working at new frontiers in expertise, and likewise how area is used, together with an “curiosity in how somebody like Marina Abramović would possibly work in area”. He has mounted a present on AI artwork with the artist Ian Cheng at The Shed, an area that “opened with Björk, who’s actually on the intersection of artwork and expertise”.

Poots and his manufacturing home North Star Studio have been working with Moore on an set up—the very first thing guests will encounter at Protein Studios—that includes a collection of Warhol movies, lots of which first appeared within the artist’s immersive membership present The Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966-67), with musical performances by the Velvet Underground and Nico. Moore says that Poots and he didn’t need simply to recreate The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. “We needed to have a form of echo of it. One of the vital astonishing issues that Warhol did was in 1964 to choose up a digicam and begin making portraits otherwise. Digital camera and movie had been the expertise of the day. Afterward, Warhol would go on to make use of consumer-grade video as effectively. However these movies, for me, have a life far exterior of The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. I believe they’re among the most vital works that Warhol made. So we needed to seek advice from this lengthy custom within the visible arts of breaking down boundaries utilizing expertise.”

Additionally at Protein Studios, Poots will function the breakout US digital artist Beeple—the sale of whose NFT work Everydays: The First 5,000 Days (2021) for $69.3m brought on such excited artwork world ripples within the early days of the worldwide pandemic—and his generative sculpture The Tree of Data, which makes its UK debut, addressing themes of nature and sustainability within the context of expertise, after being first proven at Italian Tech Week in Turin in September 2024.

For Moore, Beeple’s legacy relates on to that of Warhol. “Not solely using expertise, but in addition his ambition, his insistence on working exterior the strictures of the normal artwork world. And likewise his fascination with commerce. That jogs my memory of Warhol rather a lot,” Moore says. “As Warhol moved away from bodily artworks into one thing like movie, Beeple has moved from the digital world into the bodily world with sculptures,” Moore says. “In order that’s a really fascinating trajectory for him.”

Beeple constructed the artwork world neighborhood connection that led to his breakout 2021 sale via his “on a regular basis” every day posts of labor on Instagram. Poots is in flip fascinated by the facet of Beeple’s observe that has a social facet that reminds him of “Warhol’s works within the Nineteen Eighties and at Studio 54 and the Manufacturing unit. This concept that the work goes past being one thing on the wall or a sculpture standing in a museum; that it involves life within the presence of others.”

“Right here is an artist,” Poots says, “who’s actually coming from a unique world … he’s not from throughout the sanctum of the visible artwork world. And but I’ve actually discovered an infinite quantity from his observe and from the best way the individuals within the exhibition are a part of the work.” Poots refers back to the interplay of Beeple’s work “with politics, with music”. The artist’s “grammar”, Poots says, “is extra multi-layered than you see should you simply take a look at his work on-line on a laptop computer. And I believe that is what I am getting very fascinated by. And that is why I believe he is a major new voice.”

Each Moore and Poots had been deeply impressed by The Name (2024), Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst’s standout AI exhibition at Serpentine London, constructed round vocal units created with UK choirs. Moore and Poots have invited the musician and artist duo to create an interactive music set up, an extension of The Name, to current at SXSW London.

“Holly and Matt are fascinating,” Moore says, “as a result of their work lives on this planet of music as effectively. And it was actually necessary … to remind those that South By is understood for music and that music is a crucial a part of what we do.” He provides: “We felt that an interactive music set up from them could be nice as a result of there will be all types of musicians attending and acting at South By. And we hope that they will go in and make music with Holly and Matt’s set up utilizing AI.”

“I actually needed to ask Holly and Matt to take one thing” from The Name, Poots says, “and simply advance it a bit. What would they wish to do subsequent with one in every of their items?” For Poots, Herndon and Dryhurst are “significantly superior on this observe of … historical music mixed with a really refined use of AI”.

“After all, there are actual issues as there may be at each revolution, whether or not it is an industrial revolution or a technological one,” Poots says of artwork and AI, ”however there’s additionally nice magnificence and potential in these moments … I am fascinated in exhibiting optimistic methods of people being inventive with all totally different sorts of instruments.”

An emphasis on native artists

Simply as Protein Studios represents one facet of Shoreditch’s historical past, as a house to small companies and light-weight trade, to craft and creativity, the places for Greenacre’s two curated reveals—the immersive exhibition Lovely Collisions, that includes the work of main up to date artists and inspecting the position of Caribbean diaspora artists in London’s cultural scene, and the artist Damien Roach’s Grounding—are buildings steeped within the space’s historical past. The crypt of Christ Church Spitalfields, Nicholas Hawksmoor’s early 18th-century Baroque masterpiece and image of the architectural regeneration of Spitalfields, shall be house to Lovely Collisions. The Truman Brewery is the historic former enterprise headquarters of one in every of east London’s most necessary employers, Sir Benjamin Truman, an necessary patron of Thomas Gainsborough, who commissioned the artist to color photos of 4 generations of his household, amongst them the excellent portrait of Truman’s grand-daughter Mrs William Villebois.

Greenacre tells The Artwork Newspaper that she finds it crucial to provide cautious consideration to the historical past of those websites. “Truman [Brewery] may be very city, has this industrial previous,” Greenacre says. For Grounding, Roach’s immersive audiovisual set up within the former brewery, the artist, she says, “has thought in regards to the science and the work…. you will come into the area from the road so from the hustle and bustle of Shoreditch with all that industrial previous round you. And you will come into this area which can really feel very meditative”. The flooring shall be Astroturfed to play with Roach’s “very futuristic notions of nature and these shall be offered on quite a few screens”. These futuristic notions achieve resonance from the Truman household’s patronage of Gainsborough, who was an early grasp of panorama, of the pastoral idyll, as a lot as he was of the swagger portrait of silk-clad Georgian swells. Roach, Greenacre says, is “actually excited about our relationship to the world. And to panorama … asking us to consider … the present environmental crises.”

Moore may be very taken by Roach’s concept that “nature is main and ever altering. It is each a gorgeous concept and an concept that carries with it the form of the spirit of tension we stay in in regards to the world in the intervening time.” Moore highlights the outstanding place that Roach’s Grounding will get pleasure from, “as a result of actually each particular person going via into the Truman Brewery for the convention will stroll via Damien’s set up. So it is an actual signal from us to those individuals who could also be coming from the media world, or the expertise world, that the visible arts and interdisciplinary work are going to be a part of their expertise.”

At Christ Church Spitalfields, Greenacre was excited on the considered working with a Baroque masterpiece because the venue for Lovely Collisions, “but in addition excited about its historic significance” as one of many 50 new church buildings earmarked by act of parliament in 1710 to accommodate London’s rising inhabitants. Greenacre finds that historical past “speaks actually strongly to what we’ve got … curated inside that area which seems on the fast inhabitants of Spitalfields and the historical past of its multicultural and actually various communities that traditionally have grown up round Spitalfields and Shoreditch”.

Lovely Collisions, Greenacre says, is constructed round Christ Church as a website of neighborhood, gathering and unity. “That is actually what underpins the exhibition,” she says, “excited about the Caribbean neighborhood and artists from the Caribbean diaspora, their affect on London creativity throughout all artwork kinds and their significance in what the neighborhood has offered us with, but in addition excited about this actually stunning kind of convergence of the dance corridor and the church and the priest and the DJ.” For her, music is what introduced the artists concerned collectively.

The primary artist she considered, Greenacre says, was Denzil Forrester. He had come to the UK, she says, and, discovered himself within the 90s frequenting the golf equipment of Stoke Newington, north London, a topic that also influences the work he creates to today. “Denzil talks so fantastically about these websites [as] an area of unity and a spot of neighborhood and a spot of security as effectively,” Greenacre says. “Once you take a look at Denzil’s work you are feeling that vitality and you’re feeling that sense of togetherness … Whatever the histories which have introduced artists and makers and the entire Caribbean neighborhood to London, there’s a sense of positivity and pleasure.”

“Alvaro Barrington is one other prime instance,” Greenacre provides. “His observe may be very a lot about collaboration and about neighborhood and he works with many alternative makers from musicians to craft individuals all through his observe. He is very intently aligned with Notting Hill Carnival, for instance, and that sense of the Caribbean neighborhood.” Emelda’s Junction, a part of Barrington’s studio, shall be co-curating a musical intervention. Tavares Strachan, Greenacre says, is working with meals and is bringing in one other artist, Runkus, a Jamaican musician and producer that Strachan has labored with on many events earlier than.The artist Zinzi Minnot shall be creating an set up for Lovely Collisions, a sound and video work, whereas Alberta Whittle, Greenacre says, “shall be animating the area with sculptures, three of that are her limbo dancers”. 

“We will actually have this sense of a bodily expertise,” Greenacre says. “The viewers will transfer and be moved via the area.” The ultimate multidisciplinary aspect shall be meals, she says. “Those that have been introduced up in a Christian custom will recognise the breaking of the bread in church and what bringing individuals collectively round meals means when it comes to neighborhood. We will have a restaurant all through the exhibition and a library and that is going to be co-curated with Tavares and that shall be meals or shall be serving meals that’s vital to the Caribbean and would possibly by no means have made it to the UK with out the histories related to the Caribbean neighborhood in London and the world over.”

The pageant expertise

Greenacre says that she and her collaborators have thought in regards to the arts programme “as an integral a part of the broader South by Southwest activations and exercise”. She hopes that “it encourages us to rethink methods of being, our approaches, our collaborative exchanges. I actually hope it highlights the cultural range of London and past.”

Moore hopes that individuals will come away from SXSW London, and its visible arts programming, feeling that “this number of artists, the vibe of it, the best way it is offered in a number of venues is actually reflective of London and will probably be one thing that you could’t get anyplace else”. Max Alexander, the chief government of the pageant, Moore says, is how enterprise persons are going to take part. “I do really feel very strongly,” Moore says, “that … that is the one form of [business-to-business] convention that has these cultural parts to it.” This issues, he says, as a result of “enterprise people who find themselves fascinated by and effectively versed within the arts are going to be most profitable sooner or later. I really consider that that is true, that individuals who stand on the intersection of expertise, enterprise and artwork are finest suited to success.”

Reflecting on the Warhol set up at Protein Works, Poots says he sees it as an “exploration of the place, in a really inventive manner, artwork and expertise can synthesise”. He finds it ironic that whereas Warhol was working “on the precipice of opening a brand new horizon for creativity”, the extra mainstream creative scene “was simply not seeing what he was seeing and the place it was heading”. Carrying that thought via to the current day, Poots says he hopes that the humanities and expertise programme at SXSW London will assist foster an atmosphere the place, 60 years on from The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the creative mainstream of the 2020s takes a much less binary view of artwork and expertise, of AI and NFTs, the place a lot inventive magic is occurring.

Poots hopes the visible arts programme, with its give attention to artwork and expertise interacting, will introduce “some curiosity for very fascinating issues”. Reflecting on the continuing debate about AI’s position in artwork, he mentions “that massive divide we had been all introduced up with between wonderful arts and fashionable arts. Warhol helps us take into consideration {that a} bit in a different way.”

Poots talks of the “necessity of those conversations proper now throughout the wider panorama”. “South by West Southwest has enabled that,” he says. “I am grateful that we’re capable of discover fairly cutting-edge, essential, considerate conversations or matters at a second when it feels actually essential that we accomplish that.”

SXSW London, 2-7 June 2025, Shoreditch, east London