Art Monthly 462: Dec-Jan 22-23

Contents

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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’.