Simon Fujiwara’s new exhibition at Tate St Ives shows him to be a master story-teller, weaving fact and fiction to compelling and powerful effect. As a child, he lived in Carbis Bay, just a mile from St Ives, and his recent artworks explore his childhood experiences in Cornwall; growing up gay, with an English mother and a Japanese father, in a seaside village. For the exhibition he has taken over the entire gallery, presenting a series of large-scale installations, many of which integrate works by famous St Ives’ artists, including Alfred Wallis, Patrick Heron and Barbara Hepworth, and blending them with his own family narratives.
Neville Gabie is the artist-in-residence at the London 2012 Olympic Games. He is also the only person to have sat in every one of the stadium’s 80,000 seats. His time-lapse film capturing this ridiculously epic endeavour is one of a series of artworks that he has produced for London 2012 in response to the Olympic site. TateShots went to meet him to find out more.
Portuguese artist Pedro Cabrita Reis creates installations that revolve around themes of architecture and of memory of place. He is known for his use of industrial materials, and for highlighting the process of construction, joining elements in a way that can sometimes seem provisional or unfinished. Having started his career as a painter, Cabrita Reis continues to see his work as an extension of painting. ‘When I use glass or fluorescent tubes, plaster, wood, steel or poured paint it’s still about the vocabulary of painting’, he has said. TateShots caught up with him during the installation of three of his pieces at Tate Modern.
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