Art Monthly 419: September 2018

Contents

Lynn Hershman Leeson First Person Plural, the Electronic Diaries of Lynn Hershman 1984-96

Interview

Becoming Roberta

Lynn Hershman Leeson interviewed by Isobel Harbison

The San Francisco-based artist discusses constructing fictional identities and bots, DNA archiving, surveillance and dodgy software.

Dante Hotel lasted about ten months. It was a performance named after the host hotel, which was easier to produce at the time than exhibitions at museums and galleries, which in those days did not show women artists at all. This is why, during this same period – the 1960s and 1970s – I invented three art critics to review my work, which is how I got a gallery in the first place.

‘Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions’ installation view Kunsthalle Bern

Feature

Curatorship

Andrew Hunt asks what was curatorial theory

At a time when museums and galleries, under threat from budgetary cuts, staff shortages and scandal, are becoming curatorially conservative, is it time curators explored different modes and models of curating?

Yet this isn’t a time for mourning: we might view current anxieties around employment, finances and the sustainability of institutions, alongside an outdated ‘meta-theory’ of curating, as ashes on which to build other ideologies.

Comment

Editorial

Hot Desking

Donald Trump’s choice of presidential desk – the Resolute desk, fashioned from a Victorian British Navy ship – perhaps plays to his ego, having been made famous by JFK. But, despite its name, wasn’t the original ship marooned in Arctic ice and eventually abandoned?

In many ways the furnishings of the iconic oval office are a good indicator of the state of relations between the UK and the US.

Artnotes

Hope to Nope

Artists pull their work from the Design Museum’s show of political art after the institution hosts an event for the arms trade; Banu Cennetoglu’s The List is vandalised twice at the Liverpool Biennale; the Cuban government decrees that all non-official cultural activities will be banned from December; the al-Meshal Foundation cultural centre in Gaza is destroyed by Israeli air strikes; Galerie Kleindienst in Germany drops artist Axel Krause after he expresses anti-immigration views on social media; the National Gallery is accused of unfair dismissal by its long-term gallery educators; plus the latest news on galleries, appointments, prizes and more.

EJ Hill Excellentia, Mollitia, Victoria 2018
part of ‘Made in LA’ at the Hammer Museum

Exhibitions

Somewhere in Between

Bozar, Brussels

Ellen Mara De Wachter

2nd Yinchuan Biennale: Starting from the Desert

MOCA

Andrew J Stooke

Edinburgh Art Festival

various venues

Martin Vincent

10th Liverpool Biennial: Beautiful world, where are you?

various venues

David Trigg

Made in LA

Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Dominic Johnson

The Everyday Political

CGP London

Lauren Velvick

Playbour: Work, Pleasure, Survival

Furtherfield, London

Henry Broome

A Woman’s Place

Knole House, Sevenoaks

Gilda Williams

Morag Keil: Here We Go Again

Project Native Informant, London

Martin Herbert

Phil Collins: Can’t Do Right for Doing Wrong

Home, Manchester

Tom Emery

Akram Zaatari: The Script

New Art Exchange, Nottingham

Maria Walsh

Lucy Skaer: The Green Man

Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh

Rosie Lesso

David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night • Soon All This Will Be Picturesque Ruins

Whitney Museum of American Art New York • PPOW Gallery

Fiona Anderson

Athens Round-up

Rodeo • Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center • MIET

Vassilios Doupas

Reviews

Performance

Maria Fusco: Eczema!

Jamie Sutcliffe

This peculiar work sought to read eczema as an inscriptive malady that could be scrutinised and made legible, interpreted as a distracting epidermal script through anecdote and analogy to the act of writing itself.

Reviews

Books

Artists in the City: SPACE in ’68 and beyond

Jennifer Thatcher

Against the odds, SPACE’s set-up has proven to be a viable model for studio provision, one that has inspired others nationally (SPACEX, Acme Housing) and internationally (Künstlerhaus Bethanien, PS1), and the organisation continues to advocate the wider benefits to society of artists working in the city.

Reports

Conferences

Private Museums

Aoife Rosenmeyer

Chris Dercon told a story of private museums and collections in terms of ruins and what is left behind.

Reports

Conferences

Experimenter Curators’ Hub 2018, Kolkata

Skye Arundhati Thomas

The failure of the public institution is merely a symptom of the failure of the democratic state.

Reports

Luiz Roque Descriptive Geometry 2012

Letter from São Paulo

Disobey

Holly Willats

‘It is complicated to live here,’ says a young black man interviewed on camera about living in the south zone of the city, ‘black people are the first suspects.’

Reports

Katrina Neiburga Pickled Long Cucumbers 2018

Letter from Riga

At a Crossroads

Chris McCormack

Hairpin bends in political history were ruminated on throughout ‘Everthing Was Forever, Until It Was No More’.

Artlaw

Twitter thread by STEVE JXSEPH noting the apparent plagiarism by Juergen Teller of work by Mickalene Thomas

Copyright

Style, Content and Plagiarism

Henry Lydiate

Courts look at whether specific and overall visual content of the original copyright-protected work has been borrowed, and not whether the style of the original copyright-protected work has been used.

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.