Newsletter #22 / March 23rd
GRACE CUELL x F O R A / squared
Welcome back to the FORA newsletter. We have been taking a small break from our weekly broadcasting, but are now back, and are kicking things off with a list of j’adores curated by our next feature artist — Grace Cuell. Below you will find songs, ceramics, and the ever-present Hilma af Klint.
Cuell’s exhibition Soft Landing will be launching in the FORA window this Thursday (March 25th). From 6pm, join us for a viewing at 75 Vulture St, and a drink at The End thereafter. By then, so the weather tells us, the sky will be clear.
A select number of photographic prints will also be available for purchase on the night, examples of which can be found at the bottom of this newsletter.
event information can be found here
Hilma af Klint: Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 2, Childhood, 1907
Af Klint was one of many artists (including Kandinsky and Malevich) drawn to the esoteric philosophies that flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—Spiritualism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and the like. But af Klint’s engagement went deeper than most, and she was tenacious in her pursuit of personal spiritual contact. Her greatest work, the series of 193 Paintings for the Temple, was made by channeling spirit-masters who she claimed moved her hand and planted images in her mind. She spent the rest of her life mulling over what they gave her.
— Susan Tallman (NYRB, 2019)
Anna St Louis / Wind (2018)
But on a record that unfurls with the pastoral ease of Neil Young’s Harvest Moon and the idiomatic flexibility of Buffy Saint-Marie’s best, she seems to have made definitive choices about the type of songs she sings and how she builds them with her band. Alongside a sympathetic crew that includes producer Kevin Morby and Pavo Pavo multi-instrumentalist Oliver Hill, St. Louis embraces a sense of elegant austerity here, so that these tunes never do too much at once.
— Grayson Haver Currin (Pitchfork, 2018)
Angel Olsen / Chance (2019)
You’d think the Missouri-born singer-songwriter, who had built up a passionate following but was still at a remove from the mainstream, would have been gratified by all this starry attention. But Olsen, who has a bone-dry sense of humour, which she expresses in perfect deadpan, recalls the surge of interest that followed My Woman with a raised eyebrow. “There were a lot of people coming out of the woodwork going: ‘I loved the My Woman record.’ I’m like: ‘Yeah…’” She affects to look supremely unmoved. “‘I’ve made records before.’”
Killian Fox (The Guardian, 2020)
Life Slice Studio / @lifeslice.studio
Judy Watson’s the holes in the land 5 (2015), colour etching
further reading from grahame galleries + editions —
Grace Cuell prints available for purchase @ Grace Cuell x FORA / squared
[6pm / Thursday / March 25th]
See you then xxx
What FORA wants
The FORA newsletter seeks to bring forward the intertextuality that we reside in, and the inextricable ways in which art and life are linked. That is an obvious point, but one that must be constantly remarked upon, as it is one we are constantly surprised by. To be reminded of these circles is to be drawn back into the fold, equipped with the tools of thinking critically and acting compassionately.
pps/FORA is developed on the land of the Jagera and Turrbal peoples