Art Monthly 421: November 2018

Contents

Kerry James Marshall Untitled (Underpainting) 2018

Interview

Check It Out

Kerry James Marshall interviewed by Larne Abse Gogarty

Alabama-born, Chicago-based artist Kerry James Marshall believes that you have to work with the history you start out with before you can change it, but first you need to know everything you can about everything.

In a democratic sense, there is a notion of equality and fairness which sets the bar as if we should all be interested in the same things for the same kind of reasons, but that’s just not realistic. So because I don’t have another art history to begin from, I begin from what was introduced to me when I started out. That’s all I have.

‘Monochromatic Light’ installation view with artworks by Anna Appleby, Palazzo Ducale, Sassuolo, 2005

Feature

The Collector

The role of the collector is too often confused with that of the investor, argues Mark Prince

Taking a cue from the collector Count Panza and artists Sol LeWitt, Jorge Pardo and Lawrence Weiner, in the face of the ever-growing investment market for contemporary art, is it possible for artists to have a healthier relationship with the market?

I can’t think of a more generous rebuttal of the kind of contemporary art which sells itself on the basis of its disapproval of commerce than Jorge Pardo’s experimental promiscuousness with the world of the collector.

Comment

Editorial

Not in My Name

Last month’s so-called People’s Vote march drew an impressive 670,000 campaigners to the streets of London, but then the 2003 Stop the War march boasted a larger attendence yet it didn’t stop the bombs from falling only a month later. So if mass demonstrations don’t work, isn’t it time that Parliament took some responsibility for the mess, and the breaching by Brexiters of campaign financing laws (not to mention outside interference in the process itself), by voiding the referendum result?

One of the unforeseen legacies of referendums is that, unlike elections, they create wounds that don’t heal; whereas it is possible to change governments every five years or so through the ballot, a referendum sticks.

Artnotes

Undignified

The Natural History Museum faces protests over a reception for the Saudi Arabian embassy in the wake of the reported assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; the British Museum launches a series of talks attempting to counter alternative histories presented by Alice Procter’s Uncomfortable Art Tours; international museum curators continue to be sacked or resign in controversial circumstances; BBZ London protest the work of Luke Willis Thompson at the Turner Prize; plus the latest news on galleries, appointments, prizes and more.

Lucy Beech Reproductive Exile 2018

Profile

Lucy Beech

The Hull-born, Berlin-based artist blends documentary and fiction in films which explore all-women contexts from funeral care to fertility tourism.

The film Cannibals lays bare how feminist demands for equality and autonomy in economic and social life are currently marketed as personal lifestyle choices that enmesh individual dis-ease in a cycle of reward and punishment.

Tania Bruguera Article 11 2018
on show at Manifesta 12 in Palermo

Exhibitions

Manifesta 12: The Planetary Garden – Cultivating Coexistence

various venues, Palermo

Alex Fletcher

Taus Makhacheva: Baida

narrative projects, London

Marcus Verhagen

Raqs Media Collective: Not Yet At Ease

Firstsite, Colchester

Matthew Bowman

Liquid Crystal Display

Site Gallery, Sheffield

Lara Eggleton

Tania Kovats: Troubled Waters

Phoenix, Exeter

Martin Holman

Knock Knock: Humour in Contemporary Art

South London Gallery, London

Martin Herbert

Amy Sillman: Landline

Camden Arts Centre, London

Cherry Smyth

Senga Nengudi

Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

Amy Budd

Survey

Jerwood Space, London

Visions in the Nunnery

Nunnery Gallery, London

Paul Carey-Kent

Marcia Farquhar: Difficuλt

CGP London: The Gallery and Dilston Grove

Dominic Johnson

Dan Graham: Rock ’n’ Roll

Rodney Graham: Central Questions of Philosophy

Lisson Gallery, London

Brian Hatton

Reviews

Edgar Reitz and Ula Stockl Tales of the Dumpster Kid 1971

Film

Berwick Film and Media Art Festival

Elena Gorfinkel

Across diverse offerings, the pleasure of the programming at BFMAF lies in its embrace of the feral and the heretical, the intimate and the insurrectionary.

Experimenta

Adam Pugh

It is clear that the London Film Festival doesn’t fully know the considerable value Experimenta represents, and it seems to dangle by a thread.

Reviews

Books

Regeneration Songs: Sounds of Investment and Loss from East London

Chris Fite-Wassilak

Although the book has a ‘Fighting Back’ section, it’s limited in what it actually proposes.

Reports

Donald Rodney Psalms 1997

The Atlantic Project

After the Future

Rosalind Hayes

It is a shame that Donald Rodney’s earlier piece Visceral Canker, 1990, a radical critique of Britain’s first slave trader and celebrated plymouthian, John Hawkins, went unmentioned considering its local connection.

Reports

opening of KLA ART 18 – audience member views part of Timothy Wandulu’s 2018 video Modern Intellects

Letter from Kampala

Afriart

George Vasey

Bobi Wine hopes to replace the current autocratic president Yoweri Museveni and, as the self-proclaimed ‘ghetto president’, he has galvanised a disenfranchised younger generation. Around 77% of Uganda’s population is under 30 and there is a call for imminent and much-needed change.

Reports

V-A-C Foundation’s development of the GES-2 building

Letter from Moscow

Power Station

Jennifer Thatcher

Moscow’s cultural institutions are excavating and augmenting their collections to tell a more expansive account of Russia’s 20th-century history, one that, as with the Tretyakov and the Muzeon Park of Arts, includes socialist realist as well as avant-garde and ‘unofficial’ art like Ilya Kabakov’s.

Reports

Joram Schon Over the top – (AMG - SLS - SMG - SUV -$ -boSS) – Rest in peace + 2018

Letter from Berlin

Containerisation

Alexandra Symons Sutcliffe

In an adjacent hanger and outside the disused terminal is a more clearly controversial and troubling architecture of impermanence, the refugee camp where asylum seekers arriving in Berlin have been housed on a rotating basis since 2015.

Reports

Conference

Steirischer Herbst: Our Little Fascisms

Skye Arundhati Thomas

The bin, shaped like the recycling bins that urge us to throw in old clothes or used batteries, asks for old Nazi memorabilia instead.

Artlaw

Ways of Working

Love & Money

Henry Lydiate

There has been an unprecedented amount of media coverage of Banksy’s shredding of Girl with Balloon, 2006, since the incident took place at Sotheby’s London’s evening sale of contemporary art on 5 October 2018. But none of this has addressed a central issue: artists’ rights after there has been a transfer of ownership.

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.