in the garage

The reason I noticed the police out and about yesterday is that we did a quick 'culture' trip to catch up on the latest show at Garage. Called Futurologia/Russian Utopias and running until 23rd May 2010, the main part of the exhibition is made up of commissioned work by contemporary Russian artists, responding to the 'pioneering' directions of Kazmir Malevich in both his abstract and figurative versions.

The work is pretty varied, with some really interesting pieces as well as some real clunkers - well, at least that is what I feel about an iPod spiralled into a plastic Tatlin Tower.....

Frustratingly there is no catalogue, photographs are not allowed and the best artist's work -such as Aidan Salakhova's amazing paintings and Olga Chernysheva's series of photographic and journal entry light-boxes which delicately and straightforwardly explore experiences of Russia, travel and life - do not seem to have made it to any website yet, so I can't share them with you.

And, as usual at Garage, I am both deeply impressed with the quality and amount of work going on to promote contemporary Russian art and culture (through Daria Zhukova's non-for-profit Iris Foundation) and completely stunned by the amount of private money that must be involved; not only commissioning - as far as I can tell - 26 new works, but also in yet another interior re-build of the centre during the winter.