Studio International: Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, Studio International

Australian sculptor Ron Mueck’s touring show has now been seen by more than a million visitors. What is it that draws people in such great numbers to view his reproductions of other human beings?
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil, until 22 February 2015.

Basim Magdy: interview

Curated by Regine Basha at Cecilia Brunson Projects, the show features one of Magdy’s most recent films, The Many Colors of the Sky Radiate Forgetfulness (2014), to be screened this month at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Basim Magdy talks to Studio International about the subject and process of his filmmaking.

Lynn Hershman Leeson: ‘I’ve always been interested in the exchange between reality and virtual reality’

The US artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, known for her performance art and film-making, talks about her latest show, Civic Radar, making films with Tilda Swinton, and her fears about bio-engineering.

Trish Wylie interview: ‘Wylie provides a hotline to the gods of the silver screen’

Studio International has come to north west London to visit the painter Trish Wylie in her studio. Although Wylie is drawn to a broad range of creative disciplines – literature, dance, performance and music – she chooses to work, as a painter because of its immediacy and its solitary practice.
Trish Wylie – Cowboys, Belgravia Gallery, London, until 12 February 2015.

Thomas Allen: ‘I want my cave to offer an escape’

Thomas Allen talks about his background in sociology, how his latest work relies on the scribbles of perfect strangers – and why termites are so fascinating.
Thomas Allen: Contemporary Cave Painting, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, until 8 February 2015.

Gail Pickering: ‘I was interested in the histories of community video production’

The London-based artist Gail Pickering talks about her recent major exhibition at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, which combined visual art, installations, videos, screenings and performances, and the ever-changing, ever-static, ever-replicating nature of images.

Jessica Stockholder: ‘Art changes, taking account of the present moment’

Jessica Stockholder talks about her work, which combines painting, sculpture, installation and language in a unique creation that calls for a close personal encounter with the viewer.

Samara Scott: Harvest

Using edible and chemical substances from hair gel to toothpaste to avocado skins and potatoes, Samara Scott explores the processes of human consumption and waste through the creation of a series of dense landscapes lit by a warm, coloured light.
The Sunday Painter, London, until 18 January 2015.

Wojciech Fangor: Colour-Light-Space

In the 1950s and 60s, Polish-born Wojciech Fangor was an artistic force to be reckoned with. Having turned to poster art as an escape from the social realism that dominated his homeland at that time, he became fascinated with the interaction between colour and space.
3 Grafton Street, London, until 9 January 2015.

Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915 – 2015

To measure the imprint that a century of abstract art has left on society, culture and politics, Adventures of the Black Square at the Whitechapel Gallery collates artwork from every corner of the globe.
Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 6 April 2015.

Saba Qizilbash: ‘I always attempt to speak from personal eye level’

Saba Qizilbash: interview

The Pakistani-born artist says much of her works have been in response to stages in her personal life, from documenting the death of her mother, to painting children in beautified battlefields, to looking at how her clothes could tell a story.

Lynn Hershman Leeson: Civic Radar

Civic Radar, a comprehensive, long-overdue retrospective of Leeson’s work, presents the remarkable breadth of her thinking about art, technology, politics and the increasingly elastic and complex definitions of what constitutes identity and being.
ZKM/Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany, until 6 April 2015.

Serge Poliakoff: Silent Paintings

Through his devoted exploration of abstraction, Russian modernist Serge Poliakoff not only established himself as one of the most accomplished painters of his generation, but also as a master of his own style.
Timothy Taylor Gallery, London, until 21 February 2015.

Valerie Hird: interview

US artist Valerie Hird studied archaeological illustration and then painting before becoming a compulsive traveller. Her work, she says, is deeply rooted in multiple cultures, the nomadic icons she uses filtered through her own cultural roots to create a transcultural and hybrid that rejects a simple east/west interpretation.

William S Burroughs: Can you all hear me?

The October Gallery’s exhibition explores the legacy of novelist and artist William S Burroughs, and shows work by those he influenced, including Brion Gysin, Liliane Lijn, Genesis P-Orridge.
October Gallery, London, 7 February 2015

Nina Lola Bachhuber: interview

The Munich-born artist’s delicate drawings depict invented characters that are then given form in sculptures. She explains her methods and her choice of materials and says a humorous air of surrealism leavens a wild energy in her works.

Refiguring the 50s

The exhibition at Ben Uri brings together five postwar artists, Joan Eardley, Sheila Fell, Eva Frankfurther, Josef Herman and LS Lowry, all of whom shared a common interest in working people and the underlying human condition.
Ben Uri, London, until 22 February 2015

Anna McNay: .@BenQuilty opens at @PearlLamFineArt. @studiolatest interview: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/ben-quilty-interview

Anna McNay: Jasper John's #Regrets is now showing at Vienna's Upper Belvedere. @studiolatest reviewed it @CourtauldGall http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/jasper-johns-regrets-courtauld-gallery-francis-bacon-lucian-freud

Cindi Di Marzo: #ExhibitionsonScreen brings art to theatres everywhere. First up: #vanGogh in Amsterdam, #Matisse in NYC http://bit.ly/1BQYO59

Julie Beckers: Queenly Ventures! http://artdaily.com/news/75519/Czech-archaeologists-find-tomb-of-previously-unknown-pharaonic-queen-Khentakawess#.VKqAeFoxJUQ

Anna McNay: Matthew Barney's River of Fundament is now on show at MONA, Australia. @studiolatest reviewed it @haus_der_kunst http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/matthew-barney-river-of-fundament-haus-der-kunst-munich

Caroline Menezes: Rui Macedo opens In Situ: Letter of Intent @macniteroi, review of his previous show: http://goo.gl/iy6okF

Caroline Menezes: Fabrizio Poltronieri: Iconic Theogonies @Oi Futuro extended through 1 February 2015. Review @http://goo.gl/2Q0CV4

Caroline Menezes: Lucia Pizzani won #Hotshoe Photofusion Award 2014. Reread Nicola Homer's interview with her @http://goo.gl/t0kcDn

Cindi Di Marzo: #CooperHewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, NYC, reopens with #MairaKalman Selects, celebrating the collection: http://bit.ly/15PdMNj

Julie Beckers: Marbles! http://artdaily.com/news/74827/Elgin-marbles-sculpture-leaves-Britain-for-first-time-on-loan-to-a-Russian-museum#.VIGvY74xJUQ

Video interviews

Marie Jacotey, Alberto Biasi, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Matt Copson, Marie Jacotey, Milou van der Maaden, Kirsty Ogg, Charles Richardson, Steven Appleby, Adeline de Monseignat, Aleah Chapin, Glenn Ligon, Nanda Vigo, Nadav Kander, Vânia Mignone, Alex Hartley, Jyll Bradley, Pablo Bronstein, Emma Hart, rootoftwo (John Marshall and Cezanne Charles), Lewis Biggs, Alastair Upton, Ed Atkins, Anita Taylor, Rose Wylie, Ben Quilty, Marina Abramović, Tim Marlow, Edith Devaney, Cornelia Parker, Hughie O’Donoghue, Ben Johnson, Shezad Dawood, Jerzy Kierkuć-Bieliński, Zhang Enli, Alex Warren and Tobias Ross-Southall, Liliane Lijn, Tomás Saraceno, Kurt Jackson, Bill Woodrow, Kara Walker, Jonathan Gabb, Philomene Pirecki, Bedwyr Williams, Patrick Hughes, Liane Lang.

The Drawn Word: ‘Even if I write my name I am drawing’

The Drawn Word. Published by Studio International and the Studio Trust, 2014. Cover image: Will McLean. “All writing is drawing/ Method of Investigations”.

This publication focuses on explaining the relationship between writing and drawing; the ideas raised at the symposium are expanded and clarified, with the inclusion of artists’ and academics’ contributions from sources as diverse as Oxford professor emeritus Martin Kemp – who has written on the Leicester Codex by Leonardo da Vinci and Professor Asa Briggs (a leading British historian and a key code-breaker at Bletchley Park during the second world war) – who discusses, “Drawing as Code”.

The Drawn Word is the product of a research project funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council networking grant that explored the relationship between writing, drawing and literacy. As such it is a collaborative publication between Studio International, the University of the Arts London (UAL) and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (RMIT).

Editors: Professor Stephen Farthing RA and Dr Janet McKenzie
Publisher: Studio International and the Studio Trust, New York and London, 2014.
Content: 128 pages, full colour.
Language: English.
ISBN: 9780983259954 (Softcover).
Dimensions: 280 x 115 x 11 mm (11.0 x 8.7 x 7/16 in).
Price: UK £20, US $30, A $40.