Art Monthly 412: Dec-Jan 17-18

Contents

Jenny Holzer ON WAR 2017

Feature

Blowback

Can radical art survive any context asks Francis Frascina

When the context is Blenheim Palace, can even an artist like Jenny Holzer, known for her critiques of power, resist being co-opted?

Lucy Lippard long ago cited Jenny Holzer as an example of an artist employing double coding, with one version of her work acting as a 'Trojan horse'.

Sherrie Levine After Russell Lee 2016

Feature

Proxies

What you see is not what you see argues Mark Prince

Artists as different as Jasper Johns and Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman and Pilvi Takala have all adopted various guises to challenge assumptions about reality and image, original and copy, truth and fiction.

Pilvi Takala pitches herself as presuming the world is a safer, more tolerant, less bigoted place than it proves to be. But the cameras which capture her intervention are placed there by her, in the knowledge that she is a minnow among piranhas; that the assumptions on which her character is based are naive.

Comment

Editorial

Vozhd

It is notable that, at a time when more and more nationalists are being elected to power, the centenary of the overthrow of the last tsar was barely marked in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Are we handing hard-won democratic power back to repressive authoritarians?

As world politics continue to shift to the extreme right, there has been much talk of the need for 'strong leadership'.

Letters

What is Happening?

Laure Genillard asks why won't more galleries voice the fact that art fairs are rapidly eroding their viability.

Artnotes

Occupied

Artforum publisher Knight Landesman resigns over sexual harassment allegations; Armory director Benjamin Genocchio is sacked over sexual harassment allegations; Berlin's prize for young artists is criticised by its shortlisted artists; journalists are detained for trying to report on the labour issues behind the Louvre Abu Dhabi; a sculpture by Ron Mueck is attacked by a mob of religious nationalists in Istanbul; LA anti-gentrification campaigners take their protests to East Coast museums; Marina Abramovic cancels her plans for her performance institute; plus the latest news on galleries, appointments, prizes and more.

Terre Thaemlitz Lovebomb/Ai No Bakudan 2003-05

Profile

Terre Thaemlitz

Larne Abse Gogarty on the Minnesota-born, Kawasaki-based artist, writer, DJ and composer who explores gender and systolic systems, and argues against reconciliation.

Closing with a 30-hour canto entitled 'Meditation of Wage Labor and the Death of the Album', Soulnessless also stands as a response to the increasing demands for endless content, often freely provided, within online commerce and culture.

Hannah Black Anxietina (The Situation) 2017

Profile

Hannah Black

Lizzie Homersham on the Manchester-born, New York-based artist, writer and activist who addresses the legacies of slavery, censorship and collectivity.

On a Sunday afternoon I observed a few different interpretations of the unstated rules of the show. Nowhere did it say that you could take a copy of the book; some visitors asked at the front desk whether this was allowed, others gave themselves permission to pick up a copy, reading parts of it in situ or tearing pages out for shredding before tossing a remainder back on the pile.

Micol Hebron Gallery Tally 2013-
at Baltic

Exhibitions

Alfredo Jaar: The Garden of Good and Evil

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton

Virginia Whiles

Alina Szapocznikow: Human Landscapes

The Hepworth, Wakefield

Maria Walsh

David Dye: Devices

Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

George Vasey

14th Lyon Biennale: Floating Worlds

various venues

Andrew J Stooke

Rachel Whiteread

Tate Britain, London

David Trigg

John Akomfrah: Purple

Barbican, London

Jack Smurthwaite

David Panos: Time Crystals

Pump House Gallery, London

Paul Clinton

Orla Barry: Breaking Rainbows

Wexford Arts Centre

Cherry Smyth

Seth Price Circa 1981

Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

Neil Zakiewicz

Raqs Media Collective: Twilight Language

The Whitworth, Manchester

Tom Emery

Newcastle Round-up: Freedom City 2017

Side Gallery • Great North Museum: Hancock • Baltic

Elisabetta Fabrizi

London Round-up

Tintype • Maureen Paley • Parasol Unit

John Douglas Millar

London Round-up

The Room • One Paved Court • Simon Lee

Peter Suchin

Reviews

Film

Karrabing Film Collective: Saltwater Dreams

Maria Walsh

Here the community become Spect-actors in the Boalian sense of seeing and forming themselves through acting out their everyday conflicts.

Experimenta

Dan Ward

The Experimenta strand of the London Film Festival showed over 30 artist films intended to 'transform our experience of seeing moving images' with a programme that functioned like an audit of what the experimental constitutes.

Reviews

Artists' Books

Tania Kovats: Dirty Water

Michael Hampton

Adhering to the classic newspaper format, Dirty Water's contents become more prosaic as you get into the back pages.

Books

Erika Balsom: After Uniqueness

Seth Pimlott

After Uniqueness foregrounds the infrastructures of distribution and the trajectories of circulation that moving-image work has historically taken: processes that are fundamental to the production of meaning and value in the field.

Reports

Charles Lim Sea State 9: Proclamation 2015

Letter from Barcelona

Dark Ecology

Rob La Frenais

As I left Catalonia by road hours before the declaration of independence on Friday, the Spanish border had a heavily armed roadblock manned by masked Guardia Civil, something I have only ever seen in rural Mexico.

Slavs and Tatars Society of Rascals 2017

Letter from Budapest

The Castle and the City

Maja & Reuben Fowkes

'You hold the castle, but we have the city' was the combative slogan with which the second Off Biennale Budapest was launched this autumn, a grassroots biennale organised on the principle of preserving artistic independence by eschewing government funding and avoiding state-run venues.

Martha Araújo For a body in its impossibilities 1985

Letter from Los Angeles

LAX ART

Catherine Spencer

The works in 'Radical Women' are not quiet and their feminisms are not necessarily aligned: this literal and conceptual noise is one of the show's most powerful effects.

Artlaw

Ways of Working

Digital Drivers

Henry Lydiate

A dealer-signed certificate has little or no value in the wider art market to prove to subsequent purchasers (on resales) that the work is authentic. Similar credibility problems surround authenticity certificates signed and issued by executors or trustees of a deceased artist's estate.

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.