15 April 2020, 6.30 - 7.45pm
Royal Academy of Arts
The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre,
Burlington Gardens,
London
Tickets: £15

Inspired by Léon Spilliaert’s night-time walks, our panel – including Director of the Smithsonian National Museum Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, contemporary photographer Nadav Kander, and author Iain Sinclair – explore the importance of solitude and walking in relation to creating art.

Solitude, melancholy and a sense of silence are frequently conveyed in Léon Spilliaert’s paintings, with his early works created in response to night-time walks he took through his home town of Ostend, Belgium.

Our panel, chaired by art critic and author Dr Gilda Williams, and including Director of the Smithsonian National Museum Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, contemporary artist Nadav Kander, and author Iain Sinclair, use Spilliaert’s work as a springboard to deliberate how solitude and walking can inspire or impede creativity and how artists represent these experiences in their work.

Dr Gus Casely-Hayford is the Founding Director of the Victoria and Albert East museum scheduled to open in 2023. From 2018 to 2020 he served as Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. His series, Tate Britain’s Great Art Walks, continues to be featured on Sky Arts television.

Nadav Kander’s photographs emphasise the importance of contemplation, inviting the viewer to pause and pay attention to the fundamental issues of today. From his award-winning series Yangtze: The Long River through to his intimate portraits and nudes, Nadav Kander’s photographic work alludes to the quiet and emotive aspects of human experience.

Iain Sinclair has lived, worked and walked in East London for more than fifty years. Walking became his preferred method of urban exploration with books like London Orbital and Lights Out for the Territory. His latest project set in Peru is called The Gold Machine.

Dr Gilda Williams is Senior Lecturer on the MFA Curating programme, Goldsmiths College, and longtime London art critic for Artforum. Her most recent books are ON&BY Andy Warhol and the best-selling artbook How to Write about Contemporary Art, now in six languages.

Wednesday 11 December 6pm - 8pm

Join us at Flowers Gallery, Cork Street, London for the launch of Nadav Kander's new monograph The Meeting (Steidl).

Nadav Kander's photographic work has been described as both beautiful and uneasy, alluding to the quiet and emotive aspects of human experience and hidden truths beneath the surface. Throughout his life, Kander has accumulated a body of portrait photographs, creating images of extraordinary beauty and poignant human concerns. Kander's characteristically minimal approach reflects his interest as an artist in shared universal experience, moving beyond the specificity of public persona or status. His enigmatic portraits of both cultural figures and unknown sitters combine rawness and sensuality, power and delicacy, revealing his subjects as though caught in a moment or reverie or vulnerability.

A portrait presentation will be on view at Flowers Gallery, 21 Cork Street, London, W1S 3LZ until 21 December.

14 February 2020, 19.00
Ondaatje Wing Theatre
National Portrait Gallery, London
Tickets: £10

Nadav Kander introduces his new book, The Meeting, the first collection dedicated to his portraiture, and talk about his aim to move beyond capturing a physical likeness and show what makes his sitters human.

Nadav Kander's aim to move beyond capturing an accurate likeness - to access the emotions within, the uncertainty, the shadow as much as the light, the complex sense of self that otherwise lays hide."Revealed and concealed, beauty and destruction, ease and disease, shame and shameless," explains Kander, "These paradoxes are essential to all my work and represent what is common to all my varied subject matter...." With his minimal and intuitive approach, Kander shows his interest in universal experience, which transcends the specificity of public persona or status. His enigmatic depictions of actors, artists, musicians, authors, sports icons and political leaders - from Barack Obama, John Le Carré, Alexander McQueen, to Tracey Emin, Robert Plant and Prince Charles - are layered and penetrating, revealing unexpected moments of reverie and vulnerability.

Nadav's lecture will be followed by a signing of The Meeting in the NPG's Gallery Bookshop.

Nadav Kander will be signing copies of his latest monograph - The Meeting - at Paris Photo, Steidl Espace, on Saturday 9 November at 4pm. Pop down and say hi!
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Regardless of his sitter—whether family member or influential celebrity—Nadav Kander’s portraiture shows what makes that particular individual human. His aim is to move beyond capturing an accurate likeness—to access the emotions within, the uncertainty, the shadow as much as the light, the complex sense of self that otherwise lays hidden. “Revealed and concealed, beauty and destruction, ease and disease, shame and shameless,” explains Kander, “These paradoxes are essential to all my work and represent what is common to all my varied subject matter…” This collection, the first book dedicated his portraiture, shows the range and nuance of Kander’s work.

With his minimal and intuitive approach, Kander shows his interest in universal experience, which transcends the specificity of public persona or status. His enigmatic depictions of actors, artists, musicians, authors, sports icons and political leaders—from Barack Obama, John le Carré, Alexander McQueen, to Tracey Emin, Robert Plant and Prince Charles—are layered and penetrating, revealing unexpected moments of reverie and vulnerability.

324 pages Hardback / Clothbound 27 x 33 cm English Texts by Ian McEwan, David Lynch, David Campany & Nadav Kander ISBN 978-3-95829-615-2 Publication date 11/2019 STEIDL

23 September - 16 November 2019
Mariner
The Levinsky Gallery,
Roland Levinsky Building,
University of Plymouth,
PL4 8AA
Plymouth.ac.uk

An epic maritime poem is the inspiration for a major exhibition of international art in Plymouth.

Mariner: a painted ship upon a painted ocean is running in The Levinsky Gallery, University of Plymouth from Monday 23 September to Saturday 16 November.

It takes as its starting point one of the most influential poems in the English language, The Rime of the Ancient Marinerby Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834).

The exhibition showcases a series of new commissions and artworks that consider the contemporary resonance of the poem, including: Zubenelgenubi a new film by Serena Korda; a bespoke installation by Mary Evans, which draws on historical artefacts held at The Box, Plymouth; new sculptural works by Grace Schwindt; a new multi-sensory installation of the Raft of Medusa by Lucy and Jorge Orta and special contributions from Ellen Gallagher and Edgar Cleijne and Linder Sterling.

Featured alongside are selected artworks by Nicola Bealing, Justin Brice Guariglia, Vija Celmins, Angela Cockayne, Tacita Dean, Naomi Frears, Nadav Kander, Joe Lyward and Richard Wentworth.

Mariner is The Arts Institute’s first national touring exhibition. Following the Plymouth show, it will be on display in The Andrew Brownsword Gallery, University of Bath (24 January – 21 March 2020), and John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton (2 May – 4 July 2020).

During its time in Plymouth, the work on display is contextualised with a series of talks by experts from the University and its Marine Institute: pioneering microplastics researcher and Professor of Marine Biology Richard Thompson OBE; Professor Dafydd Moore, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities; Professor of Marine Zoology John Spicer; Founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network, Associate Professor of Spatial Practice Sana Murrani; and Artistic Director of The Arts Institute Dr Sarah Chapman.

Renowned poet Philip Gross will talk about how the sea has featured in and influenced his work, and there will be a screening of the documentary Leviathan introduced by Professor Phillip Hoare from the University of Southampton, as well as a roundtable discussion led by Dr Chapman on how the poem might be understood in these times of ecological crises.

Mariner: a painted ship upon a painted ocean is curated by Dr Chapman and delivered by The Arts Institute and The Box, Plymouth. The exhibition is a key milestone in the relationship between the organisations ahead of The Box opening in Spring 2020.

Dr Chapman said: “Inspired by language and rich visual metaphor, Mariner connects the past with the present to retell an epic tale for the 21st century. Our exploration is informed by the latest research into marine science and marine pollution, the movement and migration of peoples across the seas, hidden postcolonial histories and human vulnerability and isolation.

“The work chosen for the exhibition and our programme of associated events will reframe a classic narrative, and give a new perspective to an urgent ecological message.”

Nicola Moyle, Head of Heritage, Art and Film at The Box, Plymouth said: “The Mariner exhibition is a long-held ambition of Dr Chapman and The Arts Institute, and we are really pleased to be working with them on a show which brings the historic and the contemporary together through a fantastic range of artists and artworks and a really thought-provoking event programme.”

Nadav Kander taking over Steidl Instagram for the next week. Sharing inspiration and images from his upcoming book 'The Meeting' due out in the Fall.

Regardless of his sitter—whether family member or influential celebrity—Nadav Kander’s portraiture shows what makes that particular individual human. His aim is to move beyond capturing an accurate likeness—to access the emotions within, the uncertainty, the shadow as much as the light, the complex sense of self that otherwise lays hidden. “Revealed and concealed, beauty and destruction, ease and disease, shame and shameless,” explains Kander, “These paradoxes are essential to all my work and represent what is common to all my varied subject matter…” This collection, the first book dedicated his portraiture, shows the range and nuance of Kander’s work.

With his minimal and intuitive approach, Kander shows his interest in universal experience, which transcends the specificity of public persona or status. His enigmatic depictions of actors, artists, musicians, authors, sports icons and political leaders—from Barack Obama, John le Carré, Alexander McQueen, to Tracey Emin, Robert Plant and Prince Charles—are layered and penetrating, revealing unexpected moments of reverie and vulnerability.

324 pages
Hardback / Clothbound
27 x 33 cm
English
Texts by Ian McEwan, David Lynch, David Campany & Nadav Kander
ISBN 978-3-95829-615-2
Publication date 09/2019
STEIDL

Flowers Gallery NY, has extended Dark Line - The Thames Estuary Exhibition, for an additional three weeks. The exhibitions now runs until Saturday 15 June.

4 April - 15 June 2019
Flowers Gallery,
529 West 20th Street,
New York,
10011
flowersgallery.com

Celebrating the contribution of the photobook to the evolving story of photography, Aperture will present a daily, in-person spotlight on individual books and publishers as part of AIPAD’s Publisher’s Area Programming, hosted by Lesley Martin, Creative Director.

Please come along to hear Nadav introduce his Dark Line - The Thames Estuary series.

Date: Saturday 6 April 16.00
Location: Pier 94, 12th Avenue, New York
More information can be found here

To celebrate Nadav Kander's most recent recognition as the 2019 recipient of the Sony World Photography Awards' Outstanding Contribution to Photography, Kander will discuss his career to date with the esteemed curator, author and museum director William A. Ewing.

Date: 18 April - 19.00pm
Location: The Edmond J Safra Lecture Theatre, King's College, London, The Strand
Ticket sales here

Nadav Kander was announced this morning as the 2019 recipient of the Sony World Photography Awards’ Outstanding Contribution to Photography. The Awards will also celebrate the artist with a substantial presentation of his work at the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition, 18 April - 6 May at Somerset House, London. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to view Kander’s acclaimed and lesser-known works in one space, including portraiture, figure studies, landscapes and moving image.

4 April - 25 May 2019
Flowers Gallery,
529 West 20th Street,
New York,
10011
flowersgallery.com

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? ...That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, without the shadow of the future?” - Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

British photographer Nadav Kander is best known for Yangtze - The Long River, for which he earned the prestigious Prix Pictet award in 2009. In 2015, Nadav Kander began journeying to the Thames Estuary, to photograph the point of transition between the River Thames and the sea, creating atmospheric images of its slow-moving dark waters and seemingly infinite horizons.

On view for the first time in the United States, the works in this exhibition mark a shift towards the use of new image formats and an expanded use of media. Alongside the photographs are column-like steel water tanks, containing submerged objects extracted from the river, and a video installation The Edge of the Stream, with music specially commissioned by German-British composer Max Richter.

The elongated vertical photographic format recalls Chinese Shan Shui scroll painting, reflecting the abiding influence of Far Eastern aesthetics. Presented low to the ground, and with bodily proportions, they evoke a sense of weightlessness, inviting the viewer to ‘step off’ into the image.

“Today’s popular imagery is in some ways replacing language. People speak of their ‘snapchat story’ and emojis replace longer writing forms describing emotion. I wish to make work that does not literally describe what is in front of me. I do not wish to focus my lens and capture a millisecond of realistic information. I am moving away from common perceptions that photographs are the result of a lens that ‘focuses sharply’ on what is in front of it.” - Nadav Kander

9 January - 9 February 2019

Flowers Gallery is delighted to present its first exhibitions in 2019, Flowers Contemporary I, II & III, taking place across both London locations, and the New York gallery. The exhibitions bring together works by gallery artists, representing the wide-ranging themes and concerns defining their practice today. 

Highlights from this display include Nadav Kander's Landscape from his series Dust on show at Flowers Gallery, Kingsland Road, London.

30 November 2018 - 3 February 2019
Room 35-41a, Floor 0

In 1969, the National Portrait Gallery began to collect portraits of living sitters. Since then the contemporary collection has grown considerably through acquisitions and commissioned portraits and now encompasses works produced from 2000 to the present day.

Highlights from this new display include Nadav Kander's portraits of Tinie Tempah, David Beckham and Take That. Unseen portraits of musician Amy Winehouse, the John Kobal New Award commissions, newly acquired portraits of Explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Astronaut Tim Peake and Museum Director Neil MacGregor, photographs from The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding, and new works by artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby.

William A. Ewing and Holly Roussell
Thames & Hudson
Publication: 16 October 2018
£39.95 hardback
ISBN: 978 0 500 021705

Our fast-changing world seen through the lenses of 140 leading contemporary photographers around the globe. We hurtle together into the future at ever-increasing speed – or so it seems to the collective psyche. Perpetually evolving, morphing, building and demolishing, rethinking, reframing and reshaping the world around and ahead – and the people within it – an emerging, planetary-wide Civilization is our grand, global, collective endeavour. Never before in human history have so many people been so interconnected, and so interdependent.

With close to 500 images, many previously unpublished, this landmark publication takes stock of the material and spiritual cultures that make up ‘civilization’. Ranging from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from our great collective achievements to our ruinous collective failings, Civilization: The Way We Live Now explores the complexity of contemporary civilization through the rich, nuanced language of photography.

This ambitious publication is accompanied by an internationally touring exhibition produced by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography – a global cultural event for a global subject.
To coincide with the launch of the book will be a selection of photographs at Flowers Gallery, London E2. The exhibition ‘Civilization' is on view from 7 November – 22 December. www.flowersgallery.com

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art
Seoul, South Korea
October 18 2018 - February 17 2019

Civilization: The Collective Life is a major exhibition, featuring the work of 100 of the world’s finest photographers. It addresses and illuminates major aspects of our increasingly global 21st century civilization. It stresses the fact that contemporary civilization is an extremely complex collective enterprise. Never before in human history have so many people been so interconnected, and so dependent on one another. In science and art, at work and play, we increasingly live the collective life. The Olympic Games, the giant Airbus, CERN, MRI, the Trident Submarine, Wikipedia, the Academy Awards, the International Space Station, Viagra, the laptop computer and the smartphone... However we feel about any of them, none of these complex phenomena would have been possible without superlatively coordinated efforts involving highly educated, highly trained, highly motivated, highly connected people.

Further information and future touring venues here: https://www.fep-photo.org/exhibition/civilizationthe-way-we-live-now/

Launched by the Pictet Group in 2008 the Prix Pictet has steadily grown in prominence to the point where it is now regarded as one of the world’s leading photography prizes. The first seven cycles of the award have uncovered outstanding photography applied to some of the most pressing environmental and social challenges of our times. Within the broad theme of sustainability each cycle of the Prix Pictet has a specific theme – the seven themes to date have been Water, Earth, Growth, Power, Consumption, Disorder and Space.

To celebrate achievements of its first ten years The Prix Pictet and Les Rencontres d’Arles will present a special exhibition and screening devoted to the seven cycles of the award to date.

The retrospective exhibition will feature works from the prize winning series by the seven Prix Pictet winners – Benoit Aquin, The Chinese Dust Bowl; Valérie Belin, Still Life, 2014; Luc Delahaye; Mitch Epstein, American Power; Nadav Kander, Yangtze, The Long River; Richard Mosse, Heat Maps and Michael Schmidt, Lebensmittel.

In addition to this the work of the Prix Pictet laureates and other photographers nominated for the award will be the focus of a special presentation at the Théâtre Antique in Arles on Thursday 5 July 2018. At this event the new theme for the eighth cycle of the award will be announced.

CROISIÈRE
2 July - 23 September
10.00 - 19.00

Christie’s “The Last da Vinci,”  wins a Gold Lion for Film Craft.
A hidden-camera film which shows the real-life reactions of those who came to see the famed artist’s lost masterpiece on public display. Painted in divine light, each viewer is delicately framed like Leonardo’s depiction of Christ, mirroring the very artwork they are viewing. The response creates an emotional film--a story of awe, admiration, joy, reverence, sadness and beauty--as people gaze upon the last privately owned da Vinci before its public auction. Music by Max Richter perfectly matches the emotion and expressions of viewers, as the music stirs, so do the faces. The film never shows the painting itself. Instead, it only showcases the impact the work has on viewers, making the people in its presence the centerpiece of the film and their emotional response the voice. Nadav Kander of Chelsea Pictures directed for Droga5 NY. 

Nadav Kander in Conversation with Max Houghton, National Portrait Gallery, London

Portraits are everywhere. One finds them not just in museums and galleries, but also in newspapers and magazines, in the homes of people and in the boardrooms of companies, on stamps and coins, on millions of cell phones and computers. Despite its all-pervasiveness, portraiture has not received much philosophical attention, contemporary philosophy remaining largely silent on the subject. Philosophers with different areas of expertise and art historians with a philosophical knack discuss this enduring and continuously fascinating genre.

Speakers include: Diarmuid Costello, Reader in Philosophy, University of Warwick; Stacie Friend, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Birkbeck; Martin Hammer, Professor of Art History, University of Kent; Hans Maes, Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Art, University of Kent; Bence Nanay, Professor of Philosophy, University of Antwerp/University of Cambridge; Kathleen Stock, Reader in Philosophy, University of Sussex; portrait artist Nadav Kander, and Max Houghton, London College of Communication.

Talk details:
Seeing in the Dark
11 May 2018, 11.20 - 11.55
National Portrait Gallery, London

The Historic Dockyard, Chatham 23 March – 17 June 2018

Nadav Kander's landscapes from Dark Line - The Thames Estuary will be featured in an upcoming exhibition at The Historic Dockyard, Chatham, Powerful Tides: 400 years of Chatham and the Sea. From Tracy Emin to Chris Orr.

Powerful Tides: 400 Years of Chatham and the Sea is not only a celebration of the artists inspired by The Dockyard and the ships that were built there, but also links The Dockyard back to the waterways and the sea to which it was once intrinsically connected.

The exhibition reflects how Chatham impacted on key artists between the 18^th and 20^th centuries – names such as John Constable, J.M.W Turner, William Wyllie, Norman Wilkinson and Eric Ravilious – inspired by the engineering wonders created at the Royal Dockyard at Chatham.

The historical works show a transition of styles from the romanticism of shipbuilding, including the actions fought by Chatham built ships in the 18^th Century, to the colder industrial perspective of the mid-twentieth Century; where submarines and cranes replaced wooden warships with their towering masts.

The contemporary works included in the exhibition provide a link to the present – how the River Medway, Thames Estuary and the North Sea – all important route ways to the dockyard in its past, still inspire artists today. Nadav Kander’s reflections on the River Medway and the Thames Estuary, Christiane Baumgartner’s photogravures of the Medway’s banks and river; Catherine Yass’ lightbox of the Thames at low tide and Nikolaj Larsen’s extended film portrait of the Thames reflect visually on the river, its banks, bridges and its constantly changing surface. Some artists such as Langlands and Bell’s new work explore the play on words of names of Chatham built ships and the world’s waterways, others such Yinka Shonibare MBE (RA) with his Nelson’s Ship in Bottle refer both to British colonialism and its expansion in trade and Empire, made possible through the freedom of the seas and new trade routes, which contrasts with J.M.W Turners The ‘Victory’ Coming up the Channel with the Body of Nelson’.

Richard Wilson’s Ships Opera with its references to sail, steam and diesel and Layla Curtis’ maps of the journey of messages in bottles refers to time and tide, while Tracey Emin’s neon enigmatically glows in the space. Maps and historic models of lightships contrast with Chris Orr’s contemporary engraving and Steffi Klenz’ installation of images of the glowing refracted glass from lighthouse lamps. Anselm Kiefer’s photographs of the sea over laid with drawings of mathematical formulae extends our view of the flow of the river and the sea to the realms of measurement.

The Historic Dockyard Chatham is a commanding site of history. The exhibition, Powerful Tides: 400 Years of Chatham and the Sea both celebrates The Dockyard, the site’s history and also makes us think of the tidal waterways and seas that the ships and submarines moved over and under. 

Curated by Jean Wainwright

To coincide with Nadav Kander's current exhibition Dark Line - The Thames Estuary, Flowers Gallery will host a discussion between Nadav Kander, writer and curator David Campany, and author Iain Sinclair.

Join us on Thursday 7th December 6-8PM, Flowers Gallery, 82 Kingsland Road, London, E2 8DP.

RSVP is essential, as space will be limited - rsvp@flowersgallery.com

Nadav Kander answered the famous fifteen questions on Robert Elms' BBC Radio London show on Monday 20th November. The programme is now available to listen to on demand on BBC iPlayer. The Robert Elms show is a celebration of every aspect of the city of London. For three hours a day Elms' discusses art, architecture, history, movies, shopping, drinking and dining with his guests.

We're excited to announce the opening of Nadav Kander's newest body of work at Flowers Gallery, on Kingsland Road, London.

This will be the first solo UK outing of the series 'Dark Line - The Thames Estuary.' which has been made over the past three years here in London.

This ongoing series, is a personal reflection on the landscape of the River Thames at its point of connection with the sea, through atmospheric images of its slow-moving dark waters and seemingly infinite horizons. Kander's increasingly abstracted photographs describe the landscape through minimal compositions and a painterly layering of tones that appear to stain or bleed through the photographic surface, conveying an inner experience parallel to that of the visible world.

17 November 2017 - 13 January 2018
Flowers Gallery,
82 Kingsland Road
London
E2 8DP
flowersgallery.com

It was decided to honour the significance of Salvator Mundi  — the greatest artistic rediscovery of the last 100 years — by turning the tables and documenting its profound effect on those looking and pointing their camera phones.

Within the beautifully lit Christie’s exhibition space in Rockefeller Center, a camera was set up beneath the Salvator Mundi  to record a video portrait of those who came to spend time with it. Using the wide range of responses to the masterpiece, a single piece of film has been created that shows the divine moment of connection between this powerful, mysterious, enigmatic portrayal of Christ and those who have felt compelled to observe it.

The film is cut to four minutes and 14 seconds to reflect the fact that in his painting, Leonardo presents Christ as he is characterised in the Gospel of John 4:14: ‘And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the World.’

Director: Nadav Kander
Agency: Droga5 NY
Client: Christies
Production: Chelsea Pictures

Nadav Kander’s Exhibition Dark Line - The Thames Estuary will be opening at Flowers Gallery, Kingsland Road next week. The work is also being featured as a part of PRISMES at Paris Photo. Visit Flowers Gallery at Booth A 02 or the PRISMES Sector P 14.

Paris Photo
Grand Palais
9 November - 12 November 2017
www.parisphoto.com

Nadav Kander is at Unseen Amsterdam this year and will be giving an artist talk on his practice, discussing his new body of work Dark Line - The Thames Estuary - in the run up to his solo show at Flowers Gallery, London in November.

Friday 22nd September, 15.00pm
Location: Living Room, Unseen Amsterdam