March 19 2021     #208

COPENHAGEN OUTSIDER ART GALLERY:
Pradeep Kumar, Shane Drinkwater & Shun Yonaha

March 12 – April 10

Copenhagen Outsider Art Gallery's latest exhibition, +10, is a group exhibition with an Indian, Japanese and Australian artist.

Untitled, Pradeep Kumar, n.d. Carved matchsticks

Indian artist Pradeep Kumar is deaf and uses a hearing aid; his father worked hard to teach him letter sounds, and he started in a school. Kumar sat at the back of the class and started to cut small figures out of blackboard chalk. Later, he started working with matches and made people and exotic birds. Kumar has learned that through his art he can express the words he is unable to say.

Australian Shane Drinkwater's artworks are filled with a color, a shape or a simple motif such as number systems, letters or characters reminiscent of extinct written language.

"Shun Yonaha: no art, no life", NHK World - Japan (2019)

Shun Yonaha draws his demons on paper, with a myriad of the visions and hallucinations that take place inside his head. The spirit of an elderly Man, who follows Shun every day, is often reproduced, or people he has been hospitalized together with in the past.

For more information, go to www.coag.dk.

CREATIVE GROWTH:
First Poetry Publication

The result of Creative Growth’s first poetry program, The Poem is Telling Me I Remember is a chapbook that features poems collectively composed by Creative Growth artists during 2019–20. 

The poetry program consists of unique collaborative writing workshops facilitated by poet-in-residence Lorraine Lupo and guest poet Kostas Anagnopoulos. Poems featured in the book are beautifully illustrated with art from the Creative Growth Studio. Proceeds from sales of the book benefit the program.

Preview the book along with audio of select poems read by Creative Growth artists at creativegrowth.org.

"Giving Artists With Disabilities a Space to Thrive", a video on the Creative Growth art centre by Great Big Story (2018)

ITINÉRAIRES SINGULIERS:
12th Regional Festival

March 15 – May 9, 2021

Itinéraires Singuliers produces and shares artistic projects related to culture, society, the hospital world, the worlds of disability and education with a collaborative approach, creating new links between art and society. 

The 2021 Itinéraires Singuliers festival has the theme "Liens & Secrets".

Each year, the Itinéraires Singuliers association offers a theme that invites people to meet and create. Everyone can join in, wherever they are and with whatever means they have. This is a a collective, unifying project which will carry on over a few months.

Also included in the festival is a retrospective of artist Mario Chichorro, 

Left: Ca va la tête? Mario Chichorro, 2019          
Right: Rigolade, Mario Chichorro, 2018

A contemporary artist born in 1932, Chichorro's paintings are between Naive Art and Art Brut, but it is difficult to put a label on him. Mario likes to vary styles even if his work is easily identifiable thanks to his palette of colors, the material and the shapes he uses in his works.

For more information on the festival programme, go to: www.itinerairessinguliers.com. 

OBITUARY:
Jerry Hubbell  (1935–2021)

The Raw Vision team were saddened to hear of the passing of Jerry Hubbell.

Jerry Hubbell named the couple of acre lawn full of his sculptures in rural Howard, Kansas “Hubbell Rubble” and said: “Its there for entertainment, especially for children to get a knee-slapping kick out of.”

Hubble wore jeans, plaid shirts, and a stetson hat.  His slow-speaking, under-emotive Midwestern demeanor seemed to belie his playful nature.

A heart attack in 2001 forced Hubbell to give up welding, but the sculptures were periodically refreshed and re-painted. The figures face east towards the highway bordering the site – presenting themselves to the audience of passing cars – waiting each morning for the sun to lift the curtain on a sprawling prairie production number orchestrated by Jerry Hubbell’s welding iron. 

Text and photos: Fred Scruton

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