Bad At Sports

This week Duncan and Richard interview Monica Bonvicini about her work and her show Light Me Black which is the current Focus show at the Art Institute of Chicago. Well, it was largely Richard as he would not shut up and Duncan had to be wheeled into the interview on a gurney due to his case of swine/bird/monkey flu/pox, and therefore did not have the strength to lift the stun gun of containment which is typically used in these situations.The following text was shamelessly lifted from the Art Institute's web site.November 20, 2009–January 24, 2010 Gallery 182 Overview: Equal parts beautiful and menacing, Monica Bonvicini’s sculptures, installations, videos, and drawings provoke an acute awareness of the physical and psychological effects of institutional, particularly museum, architecture. Favoring industrial materials that reference the modernist canon, such as metal and glass, often combined with the trappings of sexual fetishism—leather, chains, and rubber—Bonvicini confro

This week: Guest interviewer Anna Kunz (accompanied by Pamela Fraser) talks to Carroll Dunham about his show at He Said/She Said and more!American painter. He completed a BA at Trinity College, Hartford, CT, in 1971 and later settled in New York. Initially influenced by Post-Minimalism, process art and conceptual art, he was soon attracted to the tactility and allusions to the body in the work of Brice Marden, Robert Mangold and Robert Ryman. Spurred on by the revival of interest in Surrealism in the 1970s, Dunham began to make abstract, biomorphic paintings reminiscent of the work of Arshile Gorky and André Masson, executed with a comic twist enhanced by lurid colours and the suggestion of contemporary psychedelia. In the 1980s he began to paint on wood veneer and rose to prominence in the context of a broader return to painting in the period. Age of Rectangles (1983–5; New York, MOMA) is a highly abstract composition of differing forms, symptomatic of his work at this time: geometric sketches co-exist with

This week, another in the series of interviews Duncan and Christian did at the Banff Centre while they were on art vacation, Jonathan Watkins! Jonathan Watkins (born 1957) is an English curator, and is currently Director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. Watkins emigrated to Australia with his family in 1969 and studied Philosophy and History of Art at the University of Sydney, where he later taught. He was curator of the Chisenhale Gallery in London during which period this relatively small local gallery became an internationally known centre of excellence - many of the Artists shown at that time later going on to major acclaim including a number of Turner Prize winners, Watkins later moved to the Serpentine Gallery from 1995 to 1997 and worked in a freelance capacity as curator of the Biennale of Sydney in 1998. Watkins now lives in Birmingham, England. He currently directs the Ikon Gallery, and recently unveiled plans for a new museum of modern art in Birmingham.

This week Duncan and Christian talk to Ron Terada about art, hockey fights and Blade Runner (for the love of God, Edward James Olmos's character was named Gaff!!!).Ron Terada lives and works in Vancouver. Recent solo exhibitions include Voight-Kampff (2008), Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver; Stay Away From Lonely Places (2006), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; and You Have Left the American Sector (2005), ArtGallery of Windsor. His work has been included in a number of group exhibitions including Tractatus Logico-Catalogicus (2008), VOX Centre de l’imageContemporaine, Montreal; Words Fail Me (2007), Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; The Show Will Be Open When the Show Will Be Closed (2006)Store, London and the Kadist Foundation, Paris; Intertidal (2005), Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Belgium; and General Ideas: Rethinking Conceptual Art 1990-2005 (2005), CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco. Terada was a recipient of the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award, Canada Counc

This week Duncan talks to Charles Esche, Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Kerstin Niemann, Research Curator at the Van Abbemuseum, and Stephanie Smith, Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smart Museum of Art about the current Smart Museum exhibition, Heartland.Project backgroundIn 2007 and 2008, the Heartland curators, eschewing traditional research methods, set out on a series of old-fashioned road trips through the vast center of the United States. These research trips informed two distinct exhibitions. The first presentation, which opened in October 2008 at the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands, sought to uncover new ways of thinking about the American interior during the U.S. presidential election and gave European audiences access to a broad survey of the Heartland’s culture, art, and music. The second, reconceived presentation at the Smart Museum, offers U.S. audiences a more focused look at the ideals of resourcefulness and invention that permeate the Heartland

Liam Gillick. That is right, the man whose imagination can take him anywhere. A transparent master of the question of Modernity? Cat lover? Designer/author/theorist/artist/architect? The son Donald Judd never wanted? Enigma cloaked in riddle? Relational Aesthetic celebrity? All these things and more... We at Bad at Sports try and get to the bottom of Liam's magic in this hour-long interview. The last element in Liam Gillick's 4 part global retrospective, "Three perspectives and a short scenario" will run through January 10th at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.  Accompanying that exhibition, Gillick has produced "The one hundred and sixty-third floor: Liam Gillick Curates the Collection," which is also be on view.Liam Gillick emerged in the early 1990s as part of a re-energized British art scene, producing a sophisticated body of work ranging from his signature "platform" sculptures -- architectural structures made of aluminum and colored Plexiglas that facilitate or complicate social interaction -

Jeremy Deller. That's right, this week we have one of the world's most interesting contemporary artists talking about "What It Is," a show and tour he has worked on, that appeared at The Hammer, the New Museum and now, Chicago's MCA, featuring a car that was bombed-out during the Iraq war. He is joined by artist Esam Pasha to talk about "What It Is"Deller's work often challenges our assumptions about what "is" and "is not" art and uses the banner term "art" to gain access to, extend, push, and develop local cultures.  Deller is also the first Turner Prize-winner to appear in the 230 hours of the Bad at Sports show. Schedule of Participants at the MCA http://www.mcachicago.org/deller/Jeremy Deller http://www.jeremydeller.org/Esam Pasha http://www.artvitae.com/artist_portfolio.asp?aist_id=217MCA Release about the show http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/exh_detail.php?id=219

This week for your listening pleasure Bad at Sports has dispatched Shannon Stratton and Duncan MacKenzie to Illinois' glorious Kankakee to meet up with the artists of Temporary Services. They query Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin, and Marc Fischer about social practice and the group's decade long history. The new www.badatsports.com is here! Come check out our redesign! Sunday the 8th we all need to once again make a trek down to Hyde Park to pick up the Artists Run Chicago Digest. In it you will find contributions by Lori Waxman, Dan Gunn, and little ole Bad at Sports! What follows is from http://www.studiochicago.org/arc-release/Artists Run Chicago Digest Release Sunday, November 8, 2:00 - 5:00pm Hyde Park Art Center 5020 S. Cornell Chicago, IL 60615 Join the Hyde Park Art Center, threewalls and The Green Lantern Press, as they celebrate the release of the Artists Run Chicago Digest. The A.R.C. Digest: Published by threewalls and The Green Lantern Press, The Artists Run Chicago Digest docum

This week Duncan and Christian check in from the Banff Centre for the Arts. They sit down with the Director of Visual Arts, Kitty Scott to discuss what the Banff Centre is and does. Then they hijack a moment of performance art to "guerrilla" style interview Jan Verwoert, a contributing editor to Frieze magazine, a regular writer for Afterall and Metropolis M, and the leader of their summer residency.

This week Duncan and Richard talk to Anthony Elms about WhiteWalls! Also the book review has made its glorious return. Terri and Joanna review “The American Painter Emma Dial” by Samantha Peale. Rejoice and be glad!

This week Bad at Sports has it all: tattoos, surfing accidents, sexual deviants, motorcycle races, newborn babies, starring death in the eye, and a walk down the red carpet at the Emmy's. Brian and Patricia probe artist Paul Urich about the connections between his studio practice and the craft of tattooing. Paul Urich has had exhibtions at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Eleanor Harwood Gallery, Fecal Face Dot Gallery, and created a limited edition sneaker for Nike.

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This week we return to Chicago's magic love and check in with a few local heroes, Rob Davis and Michael Langlois. Fresh from shows in New York and Berlin, they have returned home to a run of great exhibitions starting with the Cultural Center in January and rolling up to the current 12 x 12 at the MCA. They join us to chat about painting, perspectives on art history, collaboration and show making in the contemporary context, while always draping one hand back to tradition. The outro has a guest commentator with a message for Joseph Mohan. After that there is a special surprise for those who hang about for end of the credits. Or maybe not. I thought it was funny.

This week: Duncan and guest interviewer (who really does most of the interviewing while Duncan slumbers) Anna Kunz talk to artist and educator Jay Wolke! This entertaining and at times wacky interview is not to be missed. As you listen to this you can think to yourself; "I wonder what general zaniness was in the 10 minutes Richard chopped out of this show for the purposes of brevity and flow", but you can rest comfortable that most of it consisted of Anna giving Duncan a hard time. Do not miss the longest, most unfocused and rant laden outro/credits in the history of the show, where Richard and Duncan are interrupted by Buses, the El, a panhandler, and Richard's spontaneous rant about a cop on a Segway smoking a cigarette. This spawns a discussion about the ascendancy of "douchebag" in the contemporary lexicon. Wow. That is a lot of quality show!Lifted shamelessly for somewhere else:Jay Wolke is professor and chair of the department of art and design at Columbia College Chicago, and the author of All Around t

This week Tom and Amanda talk to artist Helidon Gjergji!

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This week Duncan sneaks into The School of the Art Institute of Chicago to interview Mary Jane Jacob, Professor and Executive Director of Exhibitions.  Mary Jane Jacob's name is synonymous with the phrase "art as social practice" or the field of art that is now more widely known as "Relational Aesthetics."  Jacob was at the center of the nineties debate about what was and could be considered an art object/experience and was putting on festivals, exhibitions, and public art programming that expanded our art consciousness long before Bourriaud "sexy-ed" up the field with his now seminal book. Aside from being a former Chief Curator at the MCA Chicago and LA MoCA, Jacob was also the person behind "Culture in Action," Chicago's progressive, but widely debated 90's public arts program. She is the author/co-author of several books including, "Learning Mind: Experience into Art," "Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art," "Culture in Action: A Public Art Program of Sculpture Chicago," "Conversations at The Castle: Chang

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This week Patricia and Brian sit down again with Lawrence Rinder. In the last interview, they discussed his role as the director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and it new building campaign. In this conversation they focus on his curatorial career, and his most recent exhibition Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye. Previously he was the Dean at California College of the Arts, curated for the Whitney Museum of American Art, and founded the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art at CCA.

This week, Patricia and Brian present the work from the Telling Stories class at CAA. The class was run by Taraneh Hemami, who invited the west coast Bad at Sports team to guest lecture and guide the students on an project interviewing community artists. The works edited for this podcast were of surprising content and quality, so we decided to share them with the Bad at Sports community. The students involved wih the project are Kim Ciabattari, Janet Lai, Jamie Lee, Fumi Nakamura, Johann Pascual, Jaron Stokes, Michelle Yee , Shen Yequin, Alexandra Styc, Alex Langeberg, Jamie Lee, Kristina Grindle, Amy Kelly, Taylor Ward, and Madeline Ward.