Art Monthly 428: Jul-Aug 2019

Contents

‘Walead Beshty’ 2019 installation view, MAMCO Geneva

Interview

Cracked Mirror

Walead Beshty interviewed by John Parton

The Los Angeles-based artist discusses destruction that doesn’t destroy, not concealing rather than revealing, and the importance of collectivism, misusing systems and disobeying instructions.

There is an agency and a power that individuals have in relation to these organisations. They can cheat, lie and improvise! They can misuse the systems.

‘Philippe Parreno’ 2018, VR exhibition view, Gropius Bau, Berlin

Feature

Exhibition as Medium

It is not only works but exhibitions that can be site-specific argues Marcus Verhagen

The work of artists like Philippe Parreno, Elmgreen & Dragset, Pierre Huygue and Rirkrit Tiravanija does not critique the institution so much as embrace it.

While works in ordinary exhibitions are conceived separately and brought together in the curating, the exhibition as medium is more intimately embedded in its setting inasmuch as it must adapt and respond to it as a unified entity. It is site-specific by definition, at least in a relatively weak sense: it pushes up against the institution – its programming, architectural configuration and so on – directly, with little curatorial mediation.

Comment

Editorial

Peace for our Time

When President Donald Trump claimed that protests against his state visit to the UK were fake news, he was continuing a long tradition of politicians attempting to ignore massed ranks of protesters marching through Trafalgar Square. But whether the arguments are about war with Germany, Iraq, Iran or climate change, those speaking truth to power have usually been proved right.

Whereas Donald Trump’s attempt at concealment was unwittingly rendered transparent, Neville Chamberlain’s attempt at transparency effectively concealed the truth, not only from himself, perhaps, but also, and more importantly, from the population at large.

BP Portrait Award private view guests being helped over a wall after protesters blocked the National Portrait Gallery’s entrances
photo Mark Kerrison

Artnotes

BP or not BP NPG?

The National Portrait Gallery comes under sustained pressure from artists and activists over its links with BP; Yana Peel resigns as CEO of the Serpentine Galleries following protests after the Guardian reports that she is an indirect co-owner of Israeli spyware company NSO Group; funds raised for good causes by the National Lottery drop after Camelot spends £39m of good causes money on marketing; activists protest against Instagram’s censorship of nudity in artworks; plus the latest news on galleries, appointments, prizes and more.

Obituary

Peter Kardia

Ima-Abasi Capture Mechanism Bypass for Surplus — aChoreographic-Logic-Complex Dub (anticipatory talk back) 2018

Profile

Ima-Abasi Okon

Maria Walsh discusses exhibition-making as the creation of an atmosphere in the work of the London-based artist.

For Ima-Abasi Okon, exhibition-making method is a syntactical form akin to language, a process mirrored in the exuberant typographic wordplay of her titles.

Kota Ezawa National Anthem (Denver Broncos) 2018
on show at the Whitney Biennial

Exhibitions

Whitney Biennial

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Michael Wilson

Civic Duty

Cell Project Space, London

Giulia Smith

Lis Rhodes: Dissident Lines

Nottingham Contemporary

Erika Balsom

Amalia Pica: While inside

Herald St, London

Amy Luo

Palimpsest

Lismore Castle Arts, Waterford

Chris Clarke

Navine G Khan-Dossos: There Is No Alternative

The Showroom, London

Alexander Massouras

Kembra Pfahler: Rebel Without a Cock

Emalin, London

Dominic Johnson

Reviews

Simone Kenyan Into the Mountain 2019

Performance

Simone Kenyan: Into the Mountain

Agnieszka Gratza

Spread over four days, the event staged in Glenfeshie on the Spey side of the Cairngorms National Park consisted of three discrete yet complementary strands: guided walks; a choreographic work for five dancers performed on the slopes of Glenfeshie at an altitude of over 600 metres; and a vocal score composed by Hanna Tuulikki and sung by a 22-member choir.

Reviews

Film

Art at the Frontier of Film Theory: Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen

Vladimir Seput

It illustrates the elements of discourse and media hybridity (exhibition-making, filmmaking, photography, painting and moving image) that have become common among the artists and curators influenced by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen.

Reviews

Film

65th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

Adam Pugh

Many of the treasures of the festival assume modest forms, away from the smoke and mirrors.

Reviews

Books

Jackie Wang: Carceral Capitalism

Alexandra Hull

Although the book is rooted in the US prison and policing system, there are many parallels with the UK, where cuts have led to an uptake in similar technologies that can perpetuate inherent racial biases.

Reviews

Richard Grayson Possessions_inc. 2016-19

Online

Richard Grayson: Possessions_inc.

Jamie Sutcliffe

Richard Grayson makes for an endearingly jocular narrator, and it is appropriate that his on-screen proxy takes the archetypal form of Asmodeus, a demon prince of Judeo-Islamic lore.

Reviews

Ralph Dunn Public Toilets 2004

Gentrification

Archives, Queerness and Gentrification

Conal McStravick

In sum, we learn from these histories that in fact the archive and counter-archive of queer experience is a powerful site of learning and activism.

Reports

Tanya El Khoury The Search for Power 2018

Fast Forward Festival

What We Have in Common

Stephanie Bailey

The different registers that FF6 engaged in, from a private dinner and ticketed theatre play to free exhibition and public assembly, speaks to the commons in its current complexity.

Reports

UuDam Tran Nguyen ‘Serpents’ Tails’ 2019 at Galerie Quynh

Letter from Vietnam

Sojourners

Jonathan P Watts

It is the so-called sojourners who are the most well known on a global art stage and who produce – who have the privilege to produce – interrogative work about a country where the state cultural police still show up at exhibitions to cover works with brown paper bags.

Reports

James Richards Phrasing 2018

Letter from Copenhagen/Malmö

Contingencies

Dan Ward

If only we could be more like Denmark, she mused ...

Artlaw

Legacy

Art After Death

Henry Lydiate

There has been significant recent growth in representation by art-market professionals of the estates of artists who died in recent times, and such activity is fast becoming an established business specialism within the contemporary art ecosystem.

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.