Art Monthly 458: Jul-Aug 2022

Contents

Céline Condorelli, After Work, 2021

Feature

Work and Play

Céline Condorelli interviewed by George Vasey

I am fascinated by the hierarchies of labour and the presence of bodies in museum spaces. Institutions reify particular types of artistic labour while deleting other forms of technical labour.

Jana Romanova, Untitled, 2022

Feature

The Future Eaters

Sophie J Williamson discusses how the present disaster caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exends to other colonised communities in the region

European colonisers in Australia were dubbed by some aborigines ‘the future eaters’ because they consumed in abundance from the land without replenishing it, bereft of foresight.

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES PRESENTS: DOWN IN FUKUOKA WITH THE BELARUSIAN BLUES, 2010

Feature

Information v Experience

Mark Prince asks whether the tension between the apparent democratic reach of mass-media versus intimate forms of storytelling in our post-truth era might be resolved in art

If Down in Fukuoka’s dancing fragment of rogue narrative, put through a string of digitally animated variations, is not literally a form of storytelling, it is at least a commentary on the loss of its potential.

Nikhil Vettukattil, Amnesia, 2022

Profile

Nikhil Vettukattil

Alexandra Symons-Sutcliffe

Amnesia uses a techno soundtrack: the high bpm of hard electronic music brings you further into your own bodily rhythms.

Editorial

Moral Maze

The UK government’s Rwanda policy may be mostly performative, but it is unethical, unrealistic, costly – in every sense – and reeks of colonial attitudes that must be confronted.

Collective action is required to address the underlying causes of mass migration, and wealthier nations, many of which grew rich through colonial extraction and exploitation, have a duty of care.

Artnotes

Museum Meddling

An international report on museum governance slams today’s absurd levels of political interference; the V&A is picketed as it hosts the Tory Party’s fundraising ball; Documenta is targeted in racist attacks; artists suffer mass arrests over land rights protests in the Philippines; talks are announced between Greece and the UK over the future of the Parthenon Marbles; celebrated British artists plan to become German citizens in protest over Brexit; plus the latest on galleries, people, prizes and more.

Obituary

Hunter Reynolds 1959–2022
aka Patina du Prey 1989–2000

Alex Cecchetti, Sentiero (Path), 2022, Biennale Gherdëina

Exhibitions

Sylvie Fleury: Turn Me On

Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin

Juliet Jacques

Filippo Caramazza: Guston Reloaded

Handel Street Projects, London

Peter Suchin

Meriem Bennani: Life on the CAPS

Nottingham Contemporary

Luisa Lorenza Corna

Jitish Kallat: Covering Letter

Tangled Hierarchy

John Hansard Gallery, Southampton

Adam Heardman

Rajni Perera: Traveller

Eastside Projects, Birmingham

Thomas Ellmer

Berlin Biennale: Still Present!

various venues

Mimi Howard

Biennale Gherdëina: Persones Persons

various venues, Val Gardena

Lucia Farinati

Whitstable Biennale: Afterwardness

various venues

Sara Quattrocchi Febles

Gran Fury, Read My Lips, 1988

Books

Jack Lowery: It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful – How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic

Chris McCormack

The book centres on the visual material produced by the collective Gran Fury as part of the multiheaded fight against the political hostility of two successive Republican governments – and beyond – for those dying of HIV/AIDS.

Daisuke Kosugi, A False Weight, 2019

Film

Daisuke Kosugi: Somewhat Infrequently

Maria Walsh

Near the end, a black screen is punctuated by a circular dot that sways like a pendulum from one side of the screen to the other, its frame showing different fragments from the film. It is as if, in the back-and-forth motion, the film is recalling and erasing itself.

Anja Kirschner, UNICA, 2022

Film

Anja Kirschner: UNICA

Sam Dolbear

One point becomes clear: work is boring and repetitive, and involves a sort of reproduction of the self and a division of labour that also relies on the division of other people’s labour that is probably also boring and repetitive.

Maria Kulikovska, 254, 2014/22, Neue Nationalgalerie

Reports

Letter from Berlin

Brian Hatton

Maria Kulikovska first enacted 254 in July 2014, in protest against the Russian annexation of Crimea, her home, and the destruction of her works in Donetsk by the pro-Russian militia. Looting the Isolatsia gallery, they dragged out the statues she had cast of her own body in soap and, aiming their guns, shot them to pulp.

Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte, Lina Lapelyte, Sun & Sea, 2017/21

Reports

Letter from Luckenwalde

Greg Thomas

Located in the once-notorious state of Brandenburg, Luckenwalde was a site of neo-Nazi agitation during the 1990s and 2000s. That threat was seen off but the more insidious growth of mainstream nativist nationalism in the late 2010s has troubled the area.

Simone Leigh, Birmingham, 2012, estimated at $150,000, sold for $2.2m

Reports

Salerooms

Colin Gleadell

The May sales of Modern and Contemporary art in New York, which used to be packed into one week, were spread out over two this year and these bumper sales posted their highest ever total for a series of Modern and Contemporary art auctions at $2.785bn.

Maurizio Cattelan, La Nona Ora, 1999

Artlaw

The Unasked Question

Henry Lydiate

Rarely do artists issue author-recognition writs against fellow artists, but in May 2022 the chief intellectual property court in France heard such a lawsuit against Maurizio Cattelan.