Art Monthly 497
June 2026

Contents

Anna Barham, Out of the gravel, 2022/26, installation view

Interview

Disfluency

Anna Barham interviewed by Lizzie Lloyd

Each reader re-authors the text in the act of reading, and I was fascinated by the way agency was distributed within a group and between human and machine.

Isa Genzken, Untitled, 1998

Feature

On Sculpture: Against Standing

Mark Prince argues that sculpture’s once default position as a surrogate for presence has been challenged, taking it in new and more interesting directions

Anne Truitt’s anomalous sculptural idiom – a minimalistic formalism – points in two directions which seem mutually exclusive: ‘standing’ but ‘intactly’, it complies with sculpture’s definitional conditions to escape their confines.

Chavajay Benvenuto, Corn Man, 2020

Feature

Art and ID

Bob Dickinson observes how in western societies the debate around ID cards centres on issues about security while for many it remains a political struggle to achieve the right to an identity

In 2024, a sample of the bureaucratic paperwork and proof required by relatively specialised applicants, such as artists, to enter Europe was added to the British Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery in a display case organised by Daniel Lowe, curator of the Library’s Arabic Collections.

Jawed Karim, Me at the zoo, 2005

Feature

Me at the Zoo

For Giovanni Aloi, the very first YouTube video captures the contemporary mode of looking as a form of consumerist browsing

If Me at the zoo has become worthy of a museum collection, it is because it condenses with ruthless intensity the conditions of attention, representation and consumption that have come to shape art and communication in the first quarter of the millennium.

Lydia Ourahmane, (45.3820696, 12.3294242), 2026

Profile

Lydia Ourahmane

Chris McCormack

Lydia Ourahmane’s pier (titled after its future GPS co-ordinates) is expected to leave the gallery during the exhibition to be installed on the island; the carved-out tiled flooring that houses each of the eight posts will be the only remaining mark of its former presence.

Editorial

The Human Zoo

The overt and increasingly covert introduction of Smart technology, in both the public and private spheres, has opened us up to dangerous levels of surreptitious surveillance and non-consensual filming, not only by state agents but also by so-called content creators and influencers.

As Giovanni Aloi warns, such ‘frictionless viewing’, whether strolling at the zoo or scrolling on a digital device, cultivates the dangerous perception of the subject – animal or human – as being ‘perpetually available’ as ‘content’ with or without their consent.

ANGA’s protest march at the Venice Biennale

Artnotes

Venice Sanctioned

Protests come to a head at the Venice Biennale; photographer and social activist Misan Harriman is smeared by the right-wing press; a large-scale Banksy sculpture appears in Westminster; a large-scale Antony Gormley sculpture is removed from Reform-led Kent; London’s Artist Garden showcase for women artists is under threat from TfL; London Met University lecturers strike over cuts to academic staff in the Art Department and beyond; research shows that engaging with the arts reduces biological ageing at a similar level to physical exercise; plus the latest on galleries, people, prizes and more.

Racheal Crowther, ‘Liquid Trust’, Chisenhale, London

Exhibitions

Anne Truitt: Pioneer of Minimal Art

K20, Düsseldorf

Camiel van Winkel

David Hammons and Jannis Kounellis

White Cube, New York

Martin Holman

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective

Guggenheim Bilbao

Tom Denman

Racheal Crowther: Liquid Trust

Chisenhale, London

Michael Archer

Jumana Manna: Your Time Passes And Mine Has No Ends

Hollybush Gardens, London

Sarah E James

Paul Eastwood: Unreadings

Mostyn, Llandudno

Emily Butler

Zahra Malkani: Noorani Metal Sound

Auto Italia, London

Amrita Dhallu

Sara Cwynar: Baby Blue Benzo

The Approach, London

Lynton Talbot

The Coming of Age

Wellcome Collection, London

Marcus Verhagen

61st Venice Biennale: In Minor Keys

various venues

Chris Clarke

image from Chickenman Mkhize’s WORDSWORDSWORDS published by Wax366

Artist’s Books

Artists’ Books Round-up

Greg Thomas

The interest lies partly in the satirical power with which Chickenman Mkhize mimics and deconstructs public rules and signage in apartheid-era South Africa’s crumbling racist regime.

Ibrahim Shaddad, Jamal, 1981

Film

Courtisane festival 2026

Nathan Geyer

One of the most startling discoveries of the festival, Ibrahim Shaddad’s Jamal, 1981, featured in a programme of Sudanese cinema curated by Rund Alarabi & Vincent Stroe. Pitched to the Sudanese Ministry of Culture as a documentary about traditional sesame oil manufacturing, Shaddad’s film is in fact an intensely noisy piece of punk expressionism.

Peter Treherne, Matter of Britain, 2026

Film

Open City Documentary Festival

Oliver Dixon

Peter Treherne’s Matter of Britain, 2026, a collaborative documentary of a village’s performance of Arthurian myth, proposes cinema as a kind of residual ritual, a practice with which to trace our collective histories and subjectivities, operating firmly within remaining institutional infrastructures.

Tarek Atoui, ‘Souffle Continu, Sunflowers’

Sound

Tarek Atoui: Souffle Continu, Sunflowers

Joanne Laws

At Tarek Atoui’s feet is a sprawling web of transparent plastic piping that flows from a central chamber to a series of neat wooden boxes, which act as little islands within this fantastical cartography. Contained within are reeds, organ blowers and variations of flutes, with an intricate circuitry of electrical cables feeding a constellation of interfaces.

‘Document H.E.T. Alternative Publishing and Community Undercurrents’, The NewBridge Project, Newcastle

Reports

Alternative Art Publishing

Caitlin Merrett King

The exhibition at NewBridge Project presents a selection of Document H.E.T., a collection of radical and independently published printed matter from the 1970s to the 1990s – including information catalogues, community newsletters and magazines – gathered by Newcastle-based printmaker and graphic designer Niall Greaves.

Karlo Kacharava, Untitled, 1988

Reports

Letter from Tbilisi

Cherry Smyth

When it rains in Tbilisi, the buildings pour. Drainpipes empty straight onto the street, where pavements stream. Poor drainage could symbolise what refuses to be channelled out of sight in Georgia. Prolific graffiti signals the very alive tensions around self-determination – ‘Long live free Georgia’ – attesting to the defiant pride that greets you here.

Gao Zhen, The Execution of Christ, 2009

Artlaw

Repression in China

Henry Lydiate

In 2022, Gao Zhen emigrated to the US. In 2024, while in Beijing visiting his family, he was arrested, 100 of his artworks were seized, and his wife and seven-year-old son were banned from leaving China. Chinese media reports described Gao as a ‘so-called artist, who caters to Western political agendas through pseudo-art that vilifies and insults revered figures’.