Art Monthly 392: Dec-Jan 15-16

Contents

Mark Leckey Dream English Kid, 1964 - 1999 AD 2015

Interview

Moon Child

Mark Leckey interviewed by Jennifer Thatcher

Mark Leckey's videos and performance lectures led to his winning the Turner Prize in 2008. As he prepares for exhibitions at the Fruitmarket Gallery and the Liverpool Biennial, he discusses here issues of authenticity, shopping skills and the merits of performing shamanistic rituals for white goods.

There is a shift away from that drive towards authenticity. In order to get to something, you can't approach it as if it is an authentic thing. You have to approach it through a cloak of inauthenticity. You have to enhance the artifice in order to generate a sensation that feels in some way genuine.

Mez Breeze _s[p]erver[se]_: 404 poetry_ 2007

Feature

Glitch Poetics

Nathan Jones makes new sense from non-sense

In our hypermediated world, how have artists such as Caroline Bergvall, Mez Breeze, Erica Scourti and Ryan Trecartin utilised glitches to reveal language itself to be an embodied medium?

Our experience of media is precisely – and perhaps uniquely – the experience of their failure.

Cosmonaut Alexander Polischuk with Arthur Woods's Cosmic Dancer sculpture aboard Mir space station in 1993

Feature

Space Race

Rob La Frenais on the other side of the story

The Science Museum's exhibition 'Cosmonauts – Birth of a Space Age' set out to survey the Soviet approach to space exploration and its cultural influences. But aside from some obvious exhibition design cues, where are the promised artworks?

The words CCCP (Cyryllic for USSR) on Gagarin's helmet were painted there at the last minute in case the rural population mistook him for a western spy descending into the remote Russian countryside.

From the Back Catalogue
Art and Power Julian Stallabrass finds that the Cold War still dictates the agenda in the Hayward Gallery's Council of Europe exhibition

Comment

Editorial

No Room At The Inn

With living and working spaces suitable for artists on the decline in London and the Tory government planning to sell off housing association properties, is appealing to the dubious largesse of property developers really all that the mayor can come up with?

In the next five years as many as 3,500 artists are likely to lose their studios in the capital – 30% of the current already meagre provision. Assuming that at least some of the 35,000 graduates emerging every year from the ever-expanding art departments of London universities want to stay in London, where on earth are they going to find space to work, let alone live?

Letters

Coincidences

Lizzie Homersham highlights further issues with Tate Modern's 'The World Goes Pop' exhibition that she reviewed last month.

Response to Dave Beech's review of Liam Gillick

Paul Carey-Kent takes issue with last month's review of the 'Liam Gillick: The Thought Style Meets the Thought Collective' exhibition, and Dave Beech responds.

Artnotes

Parisian cultural institutions mourn the recent terror attacks; the gender pay gap in the arts is documented; new studio provision is passed over in favour of retail; Brooklyn Museum comes under fire for hosting a property development conference; George Osborne spares the arts from the worst of his latest budget cuts; the Tories resume attempts to push through education proposals for a non-arts Ebacc qualification; staff petition against layoffs at Firstsite Gallery; Northern Ireland ministers backtrack on arts cuts; Anish Kapoor's London Olympics sculpture keeps costing taxpayers; arts organisations improve their own self-generated income; the Museums Association updates its code of ethics around corporate sponsorship; the latest news on galleries, appointments, prizes and more.

Oliver Boberg Factory Site 2002

Exhibitions

to expose, to show, to demonstrate, to inform, to offer: Artistic Practices around 1990

mumok, Vienna

Saim Demircan

Collaborators 4

Roaming Room, London

Kathryn Lloyd

Félix González-Torres: This Place

The MAC, Belfast

Joanne Laws

Chantal Akerman: NOW

Ambika 3, London

Christopher Townsend

Fiona Banner: Scroll Down and Keep Scrolling

Ikon, Birmingham

David Trigg

Niamh O'Malley: Glasshouse

Bluecoat, Liverpool

Lizzie Lloyd

John Wilkins

Turps Gallery, London

Neil Zakiewicz

Imran Qureshi: Idea of a Landscape

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris

Rina Banerjee: Human Traffic

Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris

Virginia Whiles

The Feast Wagon

The Tetley, Leeds

Tom Emery

duh? Art & Stupidity

Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea

Beth Bramich

Alien Encounters

Nottingham Contemporary

Larne Abse Gogarty

Model Behaviour

Holden Gallery, Manchester

Bob Dickinson

Right Here, Right Now

Lowry, Salford

Bob Dickinson

Dundee and Glasgow Round-up

Cooper Gallery • Lifespace • David Dale Gallery

Catherine Spencer

Reviews

Books

Winter Round-up: Watch this Space

Peter Suchin gathers some recent releases

A few years ago books on curating were all the rage, a trend now being replaced by works examining the cultural prominence of the collector.

Kenneth Goldsmith: Capital – New York, Capital of the 20th Century

Gilda Williams tackles an epic of conceptual writing

I can't review Goldsmith's half-million-word tome and claim to have actually read the whole book. Having spent a good two months cradling Capital, I can now admit that I will never finish it – in the same way that I will never finish reading the internet.

Reviews

Film

Bristol Radical Film Festival

Colin Perry finds common ground between activists and artists

The most startling and devastating film shown in the festival was Blacks Britannica, 1978, directed by documentarian David R Koff and originally commissioned for broadcast on the public service station WGBH but then subject to censorship in both the US and UK.

Reports

Conference

Artists' Moving Image Practice in Britain: From 1990 to Today

Maria Walsh on the critical encounter in moving-image art

From the diverse forms of scholarship and practices that jostled together, it would appear that the catch-all term 'moving image' has finally liberated past entrenchments of film practice in this country. But this dissolution of camps has also left some critics at sea.

Artlaw

Ways of Working

When Collaborators Turn

Henry Lydiate has advice for artist collaborators

Marina Abramović is being sued for breach of contract by her former artistic collaborator Ulay over works they jointly created – this lawsuit raises issues about artists' ways of working together, and legal and business issues involved and arising.

Listings

Events

London Art Calendar

This month's highlights include:

The updated events and exhibitions calendar can also be viewed online.

Exhibitions

Exhibition Listings

Art Monthly's exhibition listings can be viewed online.