Art Monthly Magazine
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Contents
Issue 461, November 2022
Steve Bishop, ‘Deliquescing’, 2018–19
Feature
Mould in the Museum
Chris Fite-Wassilak explores the work of artists who make use of fungus as a pointed form of institutional critique
Esmeralda Valencia Lindström is just one of several artists who have been making use of fungi and their mycelial tendrils to explore the limits of the preserve of the art institution as a supposed haven for the art object by exploring what actually is being preserved and propagated within its structures.
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From the Back Catalogue
Art and the Chthulucene
Jamie Sutcliffe takes a worm’s eye view. First published in 2016, now free online.
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Ryan Trecartin, Mark Trade, 2016
Feature
Beyond Techlash
Chris Hayes argues that we need to re-engage with anticapitalist thinking about technology
Classic formulations of debates about the relationship between art and technology might construct a line between fetishists on the one hand and luddites on the other. This frustration appears closer to an exhaustion with the discourse itself.
Hew Locke, Foreign Exchange, 2022
Feature
Righteous Riotousness
Tom Denman surveys recent responses by artists to the history of monuments and contends that every statue is a riot waiting to happen
Monuments are placeholders of the general antagonism and their destruction is a release. Official removal is a pre-emptive policy.
Jala Wahid, Baba Gurgur, 2022
Profile
Jala Wahid
Alex Hull
In her work, Jala Wahid addresses the fraught history between the UK and Kurdistan, centring on how the sale and export of oil has shaped Kurdish national identity and global politics.
sponsored
Editorial
You gotta laugh
When ‘bread and circus’ events such as the FIFA World Cup, which are meant to distract us from authoritarian overreach, merely remind us of the slow-motion car crash much of the world’s population is experiencing, what options are there?
Ahead of ACE’s 2023–26 Investment Programme announcement in October, a record number of organisations – over 1,700 – applied for funding, 700 of which were turned down. This was before the chancellor’s Autumn Statement and after years of under investment in the arts and across the whole of the public sector.
Letter
To Bruno Latour
Michaële Cutaya laments the philosopher’s death just at the point when his ecologically minded thinking is most urgently required.
sponsored
Artnotes
Let’s Level
Arts Council England’s flagship funding announcement leaves half of all National Portfolio organisations on standstill funding for three years just as inflation hits 11%; museum directors express dismay at anti-oil protesters without daring to mention the climate emergency; the cancellation of the Moscow Biennale signals an end to state support for contemporary art from Vladimir Putin’s regime; Iranian diaspora artists support art students protesting as part of the ’Women, Life, Liberty’ movement in Iran; National Trust members fend off a hostile takeover of the charity’s board by ‘anti-woke’ campaign led by a V&A board member; plus the latest on galleries, people, prizes and more.
Obituaries
Rodney Graham 1949–2022
Elisabetta Fabrizi
Emily Hesse 1980–2022
George Vasey
Silke Otto-Knapp 1970–2022
Jenni Lomax
Stephen Willats, Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs, 1972/2022
Exhibitions
Liza Sylvestre: asweetsea
John Hansard Gallery, Southampton
Hannah Wallis
Rosemary Mayer: Ways of Attaching
Spike Island, Bristol
Dylan Huw
New Contemporaries 2022
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull
Humber Street Gallery, Hull
Lauren Velvick
Stephen Willats: Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs
Bonington Gallery, Nottingham
Hugh Nicholson
sponsored
Pavel Otdelnov: Acting Out
Pushkin House, London
Marcus Verhagen
Pam Skelton: Ukraine Suite
Tension Fine Art, London
Maria Walsh
David Kefford: In Search of a Higher Shelf
Quip & Curiosity, Cambridge
Matthew Bowman
Yuri Ancarini: Works
Kunstverein Hannover
Mark Prince
Hollow Earth: Art, Caves and The Subterranean Imaginary
Nottingham Contemporary
Sophie J Williamson
sponsored
Tai Shani, My bodily remains, your bodily remains, and all the bodily remains that ever were, and ever will be, 2022
Performance
Tai Shani: My bodily remains, your bodily remains, and all the bodily remains that ever were, and ever will be
Kathryn Lloyd
Incorporating 3D animation, an original live score and dialogue, My bodily remains is an expansive meditation on love and pleasure as subversive tools of revolution and emancipation.
No Machos or Pop Stars
Books
Gavin Butt: No Machos or Pop Stars – When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk
Peter Suchin
Gavin Butt maps out the unorthodox nature of the Leeds art school milieu at this time, the ‘anything goes’ mentality so forcefully in play at ‘the Poly’, and the clashes between the traditionalist studio staff at Leeds University and the studio lecturers and art historians brought in by TJ Clark when he became professor there in 1976.
Alberta Whittle, Lagareh – The Last Born, 2022
Film
Alberta Whittle: Lagareh – The Last Born
Akshi Singh
That the film is as much about colonial history as it is about the possibilities for love, resistance and healing is a testament to Alberta Whittle’s radical imagination.
Roy Claire Potter, Land Lay Moldbrest, 2022
Online
Roy Claire Potter: Land Lay Moldbrest
David Steans: Mummy Hood Nesting Forest
Jamie Sutcliffe
Recounting the ambulatory and annotative wanderings of the story’s protagonist, Roy Claire Potter enunciates the simultaneous erosion and repurposing of both place and language.
‘to to go: Jorge Queiroz | Arshile Gorky’, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon
Reports
Art in Dialogue
Penelope Curtis
Nick Penny recently described the trend of ‘dialogues’ between contemporary artists and the permanent collections of museums as ‘a quarter of a century of intrusive interventions’. This is too harsh, and too undifferentiated.
Moyra Davey, Horse Opera, 2022
Reports
Letter from New York
John Douglas Millar
The overwhelming affect was nostalgia, which Lucy Sante has described as an inarticulate contempt for the present combined with a fear of the future. Such a feeling seems wholly understandable under current conditions.
Alighiero Boetti, Mappa, 1978, estimated at €2–3m, sold for €5.6m
Salerooms
Frieze in London
Colin Gleadell
An Alighiero Boetti ‘Mappa’ tapestry with pink seas sold above estimates for €5.6m. It is extraordinary to remember how difficult Edward Totah found it to sell Boettis in the 1980s for just a few thousand.
Pablo Helguera ‘Artoon’ commissioned by Ethics of Collecting
Artlaw
Ethical Collecting
Henry Lydiate
Why a code of conduct for contemporary art collectors? The authors answer their question by stressing the valuable role collectors have played ‘throughout the centuries supporting and encouraging artists and their ecosystems ... and continue to contribute in many positive ways to what art is today’.
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