Art Monthly 426: May 2019

Contents

Petra Bauer & SCOT-PEP Workers! 2018

Interview

Sisters/Workers

Petra Bauer and Molly Smith of Scot-Pep interviewed by Lauren Houlton

The Swedish artist and Scottish collective representative discuss collaboration, sex as work and the impacts of criminalisation.

For SCOT-PEP sex work is work. It is a material matter. It’s what sex workers do to survive. So we decided to make a film that made working conditions central without question. Sex work is work. Let’s begin there.

Carlos Motta ‘Shapes of Freedom’ installation view
Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia 2017-18

Feature

Performance Anxiety

Can performance art still be transgressive asks Bryony White

A range of new studies revisiting the history of performance art seek to define the limits of the art form, but perhaps its lack of definition is its strength.

On Instagram, Catherine Wood, Tate curator of international performance and contemporary art, had her post of Carolee Schneemann deleted from the Facebook-owned network. From heralded feminist icon to a contravention of decency, such a marked difference in reception reminds us of the troubled legibility of performance art’s visibility, and that radicality and extremity are always susceptible to circumstance.

Frank Bowling South America Squared 1967

Feature

Decolonising the Curriculum

Art history lags behind other disciplines in incorporating art by black and ethnic minorities argues Richard Hylton

Museums, curators, critics and theorists have done much to address the imbalance of representation in the art world but this is not yet reflected in the teaching of art history.

Post-colonial discourse in its many forms, though equally important, remains largely marginalised if non-existent across the course offerings of many art history departments in the UK.

Comment

Call & Response

Cryptic Obliquity

Morgan Quaintance takes issue with the political claims made in Stephanie Bailey’s article ‘Athens: Future Past’.

From the Other Side

Stephanie Bailey responds

Comment

Editorial

Fire and Brimstone

What is it about fundamentalism that gives rise to astonishing double standards, such as Brunei’s recent pleading for the UN’s tolerance over the Asian state’s decision to stone to death those it finds ‘guilty’ of gay or adulterous sex?

Jeremy Hunt met with Erywan Yusof, Brunei’s second minister of foreign affairs, and was assured that prosecutions for gay sex were ‘unlikely’ and would not be made against ‘non-muslims’. So that’s all right then.

Artnotes

Prosperity and Austerity

The arts and culture sector has overtaken agriculture in its contributions to the UK economy, returning more than twice as much to the Treasury than it receives in funding; more major cultural institutions turn their backs on the Sackler Trust over its links with the opiate industry; the British Museum continues to accept funds from the tobacco industry; MoMA PS1 settles with a curator after it withdrew an job offer once it discovered she had had a baby; plus the latest news on galleries, appointments, prizes and more.

Birgit Jurgenssen Shoe Roulade 1977
on show at GAMeC, Bergamo

Exhibitions

Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber

Sharjah

John Parton

The Lie of the Land

MK Gallery, Milton Keynes

David Trigg

Workforce

The NewBridge Project : Gateshead

Adam Heardman

Mike Nelson: The Asset Strippers

Tate Britain, London

Richard Grayson

Allan Sekula: Photography, A Wonderfully Inadequate Medium

Marian Goodman Gallery, London

Mark Prince

Barby Asante: Declaration of Independence

Baltic, Gateshead

Ella S Mills

Haegue Yang: Tracing Movement

South London Gallery

Marcus Verhagen

Frith Street Gallery, London

Deborah Schultz

Dominic Johnson

How Chicago! Imagists 1960s & 70s

Goldsmiths CCA, London

Alex Bennett

Birgit Jürgenssen: I am

GAMeC, Bergamo

Martin Holman

Reviews

Anne Imhof Sex 2019

Performance

Anne Imhof: Sex

Larne Abse Gogarty

The problem with Sex and I guess this is what the sugar attempts to acknowledge, is that once inside the Tate, techno, whips, drug paraphernalia and headbanging lose any minute vestige of subversion they may still have.

Reviews

Books

Danielle Child: Working Aesthetics – Labour, Art and Capitalism

Laura Harris

Danielle Child’s book resonates most compellingly when it moves to analyse the nature of art work (that is, the labour of art) in the contemporary moment.

Reviews

Richard Billingham Ray & Liz 2018

Film

Richard Billingham: Ray & Liz

Adam Hines-Green

Wisely, Richard Billingham and cinematographer Daniel Landin have regenerated Billingham’s memories in an entirely different aesthetic to Ray’s a Laugh.

Reports

Ho Rui An Student Bodies 2018

Letter from Singapore

PAP and Feng Shui

Chris McCormack

If Singapore is a country that is vying to be the polished westernised nexus to Southeast Asian arts and culture, it is one that often feels at cross-purposes with the controlling gahmen – Singaporean slang for government.

Reports

Amanda Heng Let’s Chat 2019

Letter from Manila

Transversality

Carlos Quijon Jr

To think about regions is to invoke a vaster world that unsettles inveterate nationalisms, opening up the national to often errant identifications with the Southeast Asian, the colonial, the modern or postmodern.

Artlaw

Copyright

Afterlife of Photographs

Henry Lydiate

Beyond the market, photographs can be important resources for artists, publishers, archivists and historians, film and programme makers, website designers and owners, museum and gallery curators and exhibition organisers. Legitimate use of such images can be fraught with difficulties for those who are not owners of copyright in them.

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.