Art Monthly 414: March 2018

Contents

Cécile B Evans Amoss World (Production Still) 2018

Interview

Shape Shifting

Cécile B Evans interviewed by Chris Fite-Wassilak

The Belgian-born, US-based artist uses digital avatars as tools to explore differences between constructed and felt realities. Here she chooses to respond as characters from the cast of her most recent project.

Weather: I'll answer this because I can afford to be idealistic and wrong at the same time. I'm the weather, it's my nature to change.

Women's March, New York, 21 January 2017

Feature

No Surprises

It is time that the art world put its own house in order argues Jennifer Thatcher

For too long galleries – both private and public – museums, universities and other cultural organisations in the UK have ignored the true scale of sexual and other abuses in the arts.

The art world is quick to denounce exploitation related to global capitalism and politics, yet is far slower to recognise and condemn the institutional, psychological, physical and emotional abuses perpetuated within its own ranks.

Isaac Julien Cinema Cinema 2005 from 'Fantôme Créole Series'

Feature

Red Africa

The Cold War didn't end in 1989 argues Amna Malik

New publishing and curatorial initiatives highlight the continuing role of the former Soviet Union in African independence struggles in countries like Ghana, Mozambique and Angola.

The scope of Red Africa offers a timely opportunity to draw such connections out, namely the possibilities created by art to occupy a space of resistance and thereby to transform mainstream politics.

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From the Back Catalogue The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994 Barbara Pollack reviews the PS1/MoMA exhibition

Comment

Editorial

#WeToo

The sea change in attitudes towards workplace harassment post-Weinstein is long overdue, but addressing the wider culture which has allowed abusers to act with impunity requires sustained collective action across society as a whole.

Abuse, whatever form is takes, is about power: the power of the abuser over the abused, of the powerful over the powerless; it is ultimately about inequality – political inequality – whether it is to do with gender, race, sexuality, wealth or health.

Letters

Manifesto not Manifested

Matthew Noel-Tod questions the Useful Museum approach to curating.

Artnotes

Creative Chaos

Creative Scotland causes chaos with its recent funding (and defunding) announcement; New York's Queens Museum and LA MOCA both lose board members over political differences; artists accused of sexual harassment have their museum exhibitions cancelled; the German culture minister green-lights a help desk for victims of sexual harassment in the arts sector; specialist art press Black Dog Publishing goes bankrupt; plus the latest news on galleries, appointments, prizes and more.

Keith Haring Acts of Live Art at Club 57 1980
photograph by Joseph Szkodzinski

Exhibitions

No, No, No, No

Cell Project Space, London

Amy Budd

Andreas Gursky

Hayward Gallery, London

Martin Herbert

Gilberto Zorio

Castello di Rivoli, Turin

Martin Holman

Break in Transmission

Holden Gallery, Manchester

Bob Dickinson

New Contemporaries

Block 336, London

Kathryn Lloyd

Rachal Bradley: Interlocutor

Gasworks, London

Joseph Constable

Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson: In the Family of the Carbons

Turnpike Gallery, Leigh

Natalie Bradbury

Everything we do is music

The Drawing Room, London

Virginia Whiles

Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978-1983

MoMA, New York

Saim Demircan

Sheffield Round-up

Graves Gallery • Persistence Works • Bloc Projects

Matthew Bowman

Ireland Round-up

Limerick City Gallery of Art • The Glucksman • Gallery of Photography

Joanne Laws

Reviews

Artists' Books

The Lost Diagrams of Walter Benjamin

Randall Couch: Peal

David Briers

The overall feel is very much that of the Assembling Magazines culture of the 1970s in which mail artists and others were invited to submit the same number of photocopies of a new work to a central collating and distributing editor.

Reviews

Books

The Art of Civil Action: Political Space and Cultural Dissent

Dave Beech

This collection of reports resituates the well-documented overlap between contemporary art and activism not as a type of artwork or a class of artists but as a form of collective self-organisation.

Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain

Lauren Velvick

It is important to note that Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Nathan Jones and Sam Skinner are not seeking to put across a coherent argument as to whether blockchain technology is utopian or dystopian, a tool for emancipation or one of oppression.

Reports

Small White Monkeys

Shameful

Naomi Pearce

A former gentleman's reading room seems an appropriate setting for an afternoon of readings and performances on the subject of shame.

Reports

Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster Full Circle 2016
commissioned by CEPA Gallery and CS1 Curatorial Projects

Letter from Buffalo

Boom and Bust

Dominik Czechowski

Alongside its multi-layered social and industrial history, cultural innovation has always played a significant role and Buffalo prides itself on its avant-garde heritage and pluralistic, socially engaged forms of artistic expression.

Reports

Muhanned Cader GPS – Anuradhapura to Colombo, 4.30pm to 8.00pm, Train, Feb 2015

Dhaka Art Summit

Magmatic Metropolis

Adam Przywara

This edition of DAS combined contemporary and historical artists, foregrounding art in the context of decolonisation, political economy and history.

Listings

Events

Calendar

The updated events and exhibitions calendar can be viewed online.

Exhibitions

Exhibition Listings

Art Monthly's exhibition listings can be viewed online.