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 know-how competition, held in Austin, Texas, since 1987, has constructed a world status for taking part in host to mind-expanding, boundary-breaking conversations on the confluence of enterprise, know-how, movie and music. SXSW London, the model’s first South By competition in Europe, has introduced a line-up of artists and curators who will add an artwork emphasis to the Austin playbook in every week of exhibitions mounted within the inventive hotbed of Shoreditch, east London. SXSW London may also characteristic a multi-venue convention and occasions and exhibits constructed round music, cinema and entrepreneurship.

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

The featured artists are Andy Warhol, a founding father of technology-facing interdisciplinary artwork, and modern 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 govt director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, who has been the competition’s cultural adviser for the previous 12 months, tells The Artwork Newspaper that the competition didn’t need merely to “ transport Austin to London”. The organisers, he says, “felt that it was essential 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 trend 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 know-how 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 types, Moore says, is “each an outdated thought and a brand new thought. It is new in that it appears very a lot a part of modern tradition, that younger artists do not need to be only a painter, only a film-maker, only a sculptor. They need to pursue each potential inventive endeavour.” It is usually an outdated thought, 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 following and discovery and that is proper. However it’s additionally primarily based in one thing that is older and a standard thought of breaking down boundaries.”

A highlight on artwork and know-how

At Protein Studios, an industrial-flavoured area in Shoreditch, Poots might be presenting a four-stage “SX LDN LAB” to discover the intersection of artwork, know-how and bodily area. Poots was drawn to Protein Studios from the primary as a location that provided the flexibleness he wanted when working with Warhol’s movie archive and with the creating 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, inventive 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 know-how, and likewise how area is used, together with an “curiosity in how somebody like Marina Abramović may 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 know-how”.

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 sequence of Warhol movies, a lot 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 type of echo of it. One of the astonishing issues that Warhol did was in 1964 to select up a digital camera and begin making portraits otherwise. Digital camera and movie had been the know-how of the day. In a while, Warhol would go on to make use of consumer-grade video as properly. However these movies, for me, have a life far outdoors of The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. I feel they’re a few of the most important works that Warhol made. So we needed to seek advice from this lengthy custom within the visible arts of breaking down boundaries utilizing know-how.”

Additionally at Protein Studios, Poots will characteristic the breakout US digital artist Beeple—the sale of whose NFT work Everydays: The First 5,000 Days (2021) for $69.3m prompted 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 know-how, 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 the usage of know-how, but in addition his ambition, his insistence on working outdoors the strictures of the normal artwork world. And in addition his fascination with commerce. That jogs my memory of Warhol lots,” 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 attention-grabbing trajectory for him.”

Beeple constructed the artwork world neighborhood connection that led to his breakout 2021 sale by his “on a regular basis” day by day posts of labor on Instagram. Poots is in flip fascinated by the aspect of Beeple’s apply that has a social facet that reminds him of “Warhol’s works within the 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 special world … he’s not from inside the sanctum of the visible artwork world. And but I’ve actually realized an infinite quantity from his apply and from the best way the folks 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 if you happen to simply have a look at his work on-line on a laptop computer. And I feel that is what I am getting very involved in. And that is why I feel he is a big 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 the planet of music as properly. And it was actually essential … to remind those who 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 can be nice as a result of there will be all types of musicians attending and acting at South By. And we hope that they’re going to 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 need to do subsequent with considered one of their items?” For Poots, Herndon and Dryhurst are “notably superior on this apply of … historical music mixed with a really refined use of AI”.

“After all, there are actual considerations 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 displaying 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 lightweight trade, to craft and creativity, the areas for Greenacre’s two curated exhibits—the immersive exhibition Lovely Collisions, that includes the work of main modern artists and analyzing 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, might be residence to Lovely Collisions. The Truman Brewery is the historic former enterprise headquarters of considered one of east London’s most essential employers, Sir Benjamin Truman, an essential patron of Thomas Gainsborough, who commissioned the artist to color footage 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 essential to offer cautious consideration to the historical past of those websites. “Truman [Brewery] could 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 concerning 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 might be Astroturfed to play with Roach’s “very futuristic notions of nature and these might 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 fascinated about our relationship to the world. And to panorama … asking us to consider … the present environmental crises.”

Moore could be very taken by Roach’s concept that “nature is main and ever altering. It is each a lovely thought and an concept that carries with it the type of the spirit of tension we reside in concerning the world in the meanwhile.” Moore highlights the distinguished place that Roach’s Grounding will take pleasure in, “as a result of actually each individual going by into the Truman Brewery for the convention will stroll by 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 know-how 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 fascinated 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 now we have … curated inside that area which seems on the fast inhabitants of Spitalfields and the historical past of its multicultural and actually numerous communities that traditionally have grown up round Spitalfields and Shoreditch”.

Lovely Collisions, Greenacre says, is constructed round Christ Church as a web site of neighborhood, gathering and unity. “That is actually what underpins the exhibition,” she says, “fascinated about the Caribbean neighborhood and artists from the Caribbean diaspora, their affect on London creativity throughout all artwork types and their significance in what the neighborhood has offered us with, but in addition fascinated 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 superbly about these websites [as] an area of unity and a spot of neighborhood and a spot of security as properly,” Greenacre says. “If you have a look at Denzil’s work you’re feeling that power and you are 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 apply could be very a lot about collaboration and about neighborhood and he works with many alternative makers from musicians to craft folks all through his apply. 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, might 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 might be creating an set up for Lovely Collisions, a sound and video work, whereas Alberta Whittle, Greenacre says, “might be animating the area with sculptures, three of that are her limbo dancers”. 

“We’ll actually have this sense of a bodily expertise,” Greenacre says. “The viewers will transfer and be moved by the area.” The ultimate multidisciplinary ingredient might 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 folks collectively round meals means when it comes to neighborhood. We’ll have a restaurant all through the exhibition and a library and that is going to be co-curated with Tavares and that might be meals or might be serving meals that’s important to the Caribbean and may by no means have made it to the UK with out the histories related to the Caribbean neighborhood in London and internationally.”

The competition expertise

Greenacre says that she and her collaborators have thought concerning 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 choice of artists, the vibe of it, the best way it is offered in a number of venues is de facto reflective of London and it is going to be one thing you could’t get wherever else”. Max Alexander, the chief govt of the competition, Moore says, is how enterprise individuals are going to take part. “I do really feel very strongly,” Moore says, “that … that is the one type of [business-to-business] convention that has these cultural components to it.” This issues, he says, as a result of “enterprise people who find themselves involved in and properly versed within the arts are going to be most profitable sooner or later. I really imagine that that is true, that individuals who stand on the intersection of know-how, enterprise and artwork are greatest 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 know-how 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 inventive scene “was simply not seeing what he was seeing and the place it was heading”. Carrying that thought by to the current day, Poots says he hopes that the humanities and know-how programme at SXSW London will assist foster an surroundings the place, 60 years on from The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, the inventive mainstream of the 2020s takes a much less binary view of artwork and know-how, of AI and NFTs, the place a lot inventive magic is occurring.

Poots hopes the visible arts programme, with its deal with artwork and know-how interacting, will introduce “some curiosity for very attention-grabbing 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 nice arts and widespread arts. Warhol helps us take into consideration {that a} bit in a different way.”

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

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