INTERVIEW

Bad Timing
Adam Chodzko interviewed by David Barrett:
David Barrett:The first space in the Tate that visitors encounter is the loggia, which is a kind of open-air amphitheatre with a domed roof. This is the focus of your piece, Memory Theatre, 2008, which consists of a diagrammatic collage of images depicting an imaginary event in the loggia itself.
Adam Chodzko: The architecture is somewhat fantastical anyway, and I had the sense that there was some kind of hidden alignment to the structure - as if the design had a particular, but unknown, purpose. So the piece proposes that an event occurs at the moment when two natural events coincide: the sun reaching one specific position, and an extreme high tide.
If you want to read more...

FEATURES

Slow Time
Marcus Verhagen discusses globalisation and time:
Time was a major stake in the cultural and ideological conflicts of the late 60s. The British historian EP Thompson wrote a seminal article in which he argued that industrial capitalism had ushered in a sharpened rational conception of time, one that was no longer shaped by the rhythms of the activities that filled it but by the synchronisation of increasingly regimented tasks in the modern workplace. In Thompson's words: 'Not the task but the value of time when it is reduced to money is dominant. Time is now currency: it is not passed but spent.'
The same preoccupation with time is also widely discernible in contemporary art. Tate Modern put on 'Time Zones', a show that examined the cadences of social rituals across a variety of different locations. Frieze magazine brought out a 'Slow Issue', the exhibition 'Artempo' in Venice, focused on signs of impermanence in recent and not so recent art; and the list could go on. Plainly, both artists and curators are attending to contemporary notions of time and to the global pressures that colour them. So is there such a thing as slow art?
If you want to read more...

Things v Objects
Rikke Hansen on the public life of things:
Terms such as 'participation' and 'dialogue' have come to dominate the discussion that surrounds the so-called socially engaged art practices of the late 1990s and the 2000s. According to such rhetorics, the artist is an engineer of situations, setting up contexts in which passive spectators become active participants and co-creators of the work in question. It is a debate that has, so far, had little to say about the props that make up the stage set for these acts. Instead, objects are seen, at best, as necessary middlemen that work as catalysts for conversation or, at worst, as the last obstacles obstructing otherwise unmediated interactions. I want to focus on the life of 'things' in the social world and, more specifically, what happens to things when they get transported into the context of socially engaged art practices.
If you want to read more...

EDITORIAL

Back to future
A recent article in the Guardian that focused on the relative prominence of women in the museums and galleries sector seemed to suggest that everything was hunky-dory in terms of gender equality. In fact, there are still few women in the top jobs, particularly in the museum sector. The author of the article had confused office with power - pointing to the 'influence' women curators exert, for instance over the display of work at Tate. This is simply insulting, and not just to women. With office comes power - real power to change things. To deny that is to live in cloud cuckoo land.
If you want to read more...

ARTNOTES

More stories from the coal face of education: Sheffield Hallam University moves from Psalter Lane to a new city centre site and a change of faces at Goldsmiths.
Plus: Liam Gillick is to represent Germany in the next Venice Biennale; news on new galleries opening in London, and in Amsterdam some controversy surrounds the Vincent award.
Send your news items to: artnotes@artmonthly.co.uk

OBITUARY

Robert Rauschenberg 1925-2008

LETTERS

The debate on the future of art education continues apace in this month's letters pages.

EXHIBITION REVIEWS

Traces du Sacré
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Michael Corris
The Object Quality of the Problem / Les Inquiets: 5 artistes sous la pression de la guerre
Henry Moore Institute Leeds / Pompidou
Anna Dezeuze
Home Lands - Land Marks: Contemporary Art from South Africa
Haunch of Venison, London
Amna Malik
Mitra Tabrizian
Tate Britain, London
Maria Walsh
Marine Huggonier: The Secretary of the Invisible
Max Wigram Gallery, London
Stewart Home
Apartment Exhibition
Bereznitsky Gallery, Berlin
Sarah James
Sonsbeek 2008: Grandeur
Various venues, Arnhem
Sally O'Reilly
Psycho Buildings: Artists Take on Architecture
Hayward Gallery, London
Martin Herbert
Stuart Croft: Drive In
Fred, London
Jennifer Thatcher
Mark Neville
Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute
Martin Vincent
Lucy Skaer
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
James Clegg
Aisha Khalid
Pump House Gallery, London
Eliza Williams
Andres Lutz & Anders Guggisberg
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
Bob Dickinson
If you want to read more...

ARTISTS' BOOKS

Lucy Steeds reviews The so-called utopia of the centre beaubourg - An interpretation by Luca Frei and A Guide to Postmodern Architecture in London by Pablo Bronstein:
There is an uneasy fit between the publications of these two artists, who seem rather differently invested in the business of art, although both operate as amateur enthusiasts in fields beyond art. I think readers and viewers will find themselves in sympathy with one artist more than the other. Do you believe yourself to be one of the tastemakers for whom, and to whom, Bronstein speaks; or one of the creative libertarians that Frei seeks to muster?
If you want to read more...

BOOKS

Alison Green reviews Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures by Kobena Mercer:
The object of this book is to consider Pop Art from a postcolonial lens. It is part of a series that aims to realign the discourse around modern and postmodern art by redressing major issues in art history in terms of race, identity and nationality. This one expands on, indeed models a dismantling of, standard narratives of Pop as an American or Anglo-American movement of the late 50s and early 60s.
Ian Hunt selects the pick of the crop for summer reading.
If you want to read more...

FILM

Rod Mengham reviews polish filmmakers' Franciszka & Stefan Themersons' early films, now realeased on dvd:
Franciszka & Stefan Themersons, Adventure of a Good Citizen, 1937, turns the carrying of a wardrobe into a protracted odyssey. The citizen of the title tries to embody a spirit of independence through the simple action of walking backwards, an innocuous gesture that nonetheless arouses widespread condemnation and even organised protests - the screen is filled at one point by a band of marchers bearing placards with the slogan, Down with walking backwards!. Helping a removal man to carry a wardrobe supplies the citizen with an ideal pretext for his chosen form of rebellion, which is then carried to absurd lengths, like the wardrobe, which finds its way to the Baltic.
The comic brilliance of the film is not dependent on its naturalistic observation of eccentric behaviour, but on its visual poetics. The screen is occasionally split into two, with the imagery on one side simply reversed on the other, so that left is perfectly symmetrical with right, in a purely formal expression of conformity that provides a basis for the film's satirical resistance to standardisation. The duplication of one side of the face with its mirror-image is reproduced in the mocking behaviour of the citizen, who uses the mirror on the wardrobe door to appear to lift both legs in the air simultaneously, in a pre-war Polish anticipation of the antics of Harry Worth.
If you want to read more...

OPINION

Considering Craft
Peter Suchin
Craftsmanship, according to Richard Sennett's recently published critique of the decline of the craftsmanly element within culture, 'is based on slow learning and on habit'. 'Slow craft time enables the work of reflection and imagination which the push for quick results cannot.' Sennett only intermittently touches upon how exactly craft and contemporary art might operate as mutually supportive parts of a greater whole. He does observe that 'there is no art without craft; the idea for a painting is not a painting'. This seems a rather constrained viewpoint, ignoring the complexities thrown up by (60s) Conceptual Art's radical transformation of the relationship between craft and art.
If you want to read more...

REPORT

Frederika Whitehead reports from a debate on the government's new strategy document Creative Britain: New Talents for a New Economy:
Estelle Morris posed three questions for debate. 'Will the structure in the paper - with all its committees - actually damage creativity? Will the accountability mechanisms jeopardise risk-taking? And, will mainstreaming discourage some people from wanting to work in the creative sector in the first place?'
If you want to read more...

REPORT

Shumon Basar's letter from Iceland:
It is Sunday morning in Reykjavik. We have all just finished singing an a capella version of Elvis's 'Can't Help Falling in Love With You'. The collective effort, led by the Professor of Pop himself, Brian Eno, goes from terrible to less unbearable. 'Singing together transforms the individual from being "me" into being "us",' Eno explains. In Iceland, whose entire population numbers a mere 300,000, the distance between the individual and the nation is short - and thus allows for one of the best-running, socially-minded, designed democracies there is.
If you want to read more...

ARTLAW

Life after Art School
In his regular column this month Henry Lydiate reflects on the way that professional practice is taught in art departments and how it could be improved.
If you want to read more...

EXHIBITION LISTINGS

Listings for July and August are published on this website.

Free email bulletin

Would you like to know what is in Art Monthly each month? To receive a copy of this page by email each month please subscribe to the Art Monthly e-bulletin.