Art Monthly 432: Dec-Jan 19-20

Contents

Anne Imhof, Sex, 2019, rehearsal photograph of performer Eliza Douglas

Feature

Intimacy Rising

Lizzie Homersham asks what forces have changed the space of the intimate

Anne Imhof’s Sex indicates what work can be available for people who look the right way in the right place and time in order for their performance to be recompensed as contemporary art. They also perform the exhaustion of this role, as if there is nowhere to go except this extremely social sphere, the seeming inverse or tethered twin of the prison, detention centre or psychiatric unit.

Ashanti Harris with Jen Martin, Sonic Seance: The Gathering, 2019

Feature

Expanding the Curriculum

Ranjana Thapalyal argues for the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach to teaching

Art school discourse, too, seems to have hoodwinked itself into thinking it has dealt with multiplicities and complexities in the student cohort by batting away the bogey-man of fixed truth, and declaring it to be unstable and contingent. Why then, in 2019, do we face renewed and quite rightly even more strident calls for ‘decolonising the curriculum’?

The 5th World Festival of Youth and Students, Warsaw, 1955

Feature

Fighting Fascism

Sarah Jury argues that art is one of the few remaining spaces in which cultural activism can make a difference

The most effective way for artists, educators, curators, writers, activists, museums and publications to fight fascism isn’t yet clear, but it is widely discussed. I bounce from being annoyed that there is so much discourse that it has become an industry in its own right, to being relieved that so many people are trying to do something.

Hal Fischer, Handkerchiefs, 1977

Profile

Hal Fischer

Chris McCormack on the intersection of subcultures and the everyday in the work of the San Francisco-based artist

For one work, taken over 24 hours during a weekend, Fischer photographed a popular bus stop bench on 18th Street in San Francisco, just 75ft from the corner with Castro street, on the hour, every hour.

Comment

Editorial

Judge Dredd

The alignment of art and activism is long standing, and over the years both have come under fire from the authorities. Perhaps less obvious, however, is the backing of the courts which, recently, have become more prominent in their defence of artists and activists.

How has it come to this? It is as if representative public bodies, from the government down, have been put on a permanent war footing against the citizens of this country who they are meant to protect.

Nan Goldin and her activist group PAIN perform a ‘die-in’ at the Sackler courtyard, V&A, London

Artnotes

Divest BP

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery drops the BP Portrait Award; Nan Goldin’s PAIN activists protest against Sackler funding at the V&A; the Roundhouse turns down £1m from the Sackler Trust; artists withdraw their works from high-profile exhibitions; plus the latest news on galleries, appointments, prizes and more.

Megan Broadmeadow, Why Can’t We Do This IRL?, 2019
on show in ‘You Feel Me_’ at Fact, Liverpool

Exhibitions

Super Black

Firstsite, Colchester

Open Your Eyes

Art Exchange, Colchester

Matthew Bowman

13BC: Fatal Act

Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin

Maeve Connolly

You Feel Me_

Fact, Liverpool

Laura Robertson

Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory

Met Breuer, New York

Michael Wilson

Sara MacKillop: Returns and Renewals

Peer, London

Peter Suchin

Edward Allington: Things Unsaid

Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

David Briers

Michael E Smith

Modern Art, London

Mark Prince

Haroon Mirza: Waves and Forms

John Hansard Gallery, Southampton

Adam Heardman

Ilona Sagar: Deep Structure

S1 Artspace, Sheffield

Lauren Velvick

Christodoulos Panayiotou: Act II – The Island

Camden Arts Centre, London

Paul Carey-Kent

Mikhail Karikis: For Many Voices

MIMA, Middlesbrough

Elisabetta Fabrizi

Reviews

Ron Athey, Acephalous Monster, 2019

Performance

Ron Athey: Acephalous Monster

Dominic Johnson

Ron Athey is no longer concerned precisely or exclusively with what he once termed his project to create ‘a perfectly depicted apocalypse’.

Reviews

Books

Futures of the Contemporary

Daniel Neofetou

For Peter Osborne, this results in ‘anti-capitalism without a post-capitalist imaginary – a series of abstract ideas (freedom, equality, communism) severed from historical meanings rooted in particular social relations’.

Reviews

Books

Anne Boyer: The Undying – A Meditation on Modern Illness

Elisa Adami

As Anne Boyer was pumped with highly-toxic medicine manufactured by extractive industries, her desire to survive clashed with her effort to ‘unravel survival’s ethics’.

Reviews

Lav Diaz, The Halt, 2019

Film

15th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival

Vera Mey

The Halt is a more digestible 283 minutes compared with Lav Diaz’s other films, which defy both cinema and the notion of film as something to be attentively and studiously sat through.

Reviews

Hani Jawherieh, Training Camp, Jordan, 1969

Film

The Found Archive of Hani Jawherieh

Amna Malik

The sense of the exhibition conveying a meaning equivalent to a double negative comes about inevitably because of the diminished resources and platforms through which a Palestinian history can be seen.

Reports

Taus Makhacheva, Tightrope, Dagestan, 2015

Letter from Timisoara

Maria Walsh

My presupposition that there would be a connection between the biennale and the city’s regeneration, perhaps gentrification, was immediately confirmed on sighting the enormous apartment complex under development on the same boulevard as my hotel.

Reports

Ila Beka & Louise Lemoine, Homo Urbanus Rabatius, 2017

Letter from Rabat

Adam Hines-Green

Much was made in the opening speeches of the Biennale about freedom: the freedom of expression offered to the curator and the artists. Freedom of expression is an essential but not sufficient condition.

Reports

Blackpool Art B&B

Blackpool Art B&B

Denise Courcoux

Art B&B has been driven by frustration at the lack of local opportunities to network and expand artistic practice; to paraphrase one of the Art B&B staff, they want to attract artists who wouldn’t ever come to Blackpool.

Artlaw

Ways of Working

Legal Drivers

Henry Lydiate

A key feature of Banksy’s practice is the marked absence of a signature/tag on all but his earliest publicly sited work. This has led to a recent legal challenge, which in turn has driven him to introduce a new way of working.

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.