Art Monthly 476: May 2024

Contents

Tai Shani, My Bodily Remains, Your Bodily Remains, and All the Bodily Remains that Ever Were and Ever Will Be, 2023

Interview

Other Worlds

Tai Shani interviewed by Bassem Saad

We are continuously put in a position where we feel we are starting from ground zero, when in fact we are part of what I think of as a collaborative anthem crossing time and space.

Peter Santino, I Am Sorry, 1995

Feature

The Art of Apology

Bob Dickinson argues that not only can art find new ways to address subjects of reparation and responsibility but can keep these issues politically alive

The theme of failure embodied in the ephemeral nature of Peter Santino’s I Am Sorry’s construction also emphasised the extent to which apologising, for real, is so fraught with difficulty. Even when it is sincere, an apology may still not seem like nearly enough.

badge depicting Edward Said printed by Sam Keogh to raise money for Palestine Action

Feature

Protest/Panic

In the light of the war on Gaza, Tom Hastings looks at how activists and artists have responded to the increasing restrictions on the right to public protest

Mona Benyamin’s video work Tomorrow, Again, 2023, featured a loop of news broadcasts on events in Palestine in which the broadcasters are overwhelmed by uncontrollable belts of crying. The mainstream media may learn something from those newsreaders’ inability to communicate as normal in the face of genocide.

Liberate Tate, Time Piece, 2015

Feature

Art/Protest

Giovanni Aloi asks what constitutes an effective intervention in our age of the hyperpolitical museum

Protesting is a serious and deeply engaged discourse: a true art form, especially when it takes place in a museum. An archaeology of museum protests reveals sedimentations, movements, strata and ruptures that activists must learn from and reinvent.

Kobby Adi, Lesson, 2023–24

Profile

Kobby Adi

Tom Denman

Rather than demystifying filmmaking – as structural film sought to do by subordinating content to form – Kobby Adi does the opposite, drawing an imperfect equivalence between the medium and his sculptures and positing the cinematic image as an immaterial presence magicked out of materials.

Editorial

No Pasaran

One of the greatest acts of protest was the formation of the International Brigade, whose volunteers came together to fight against General Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War. ‘No pasaran’, they cried in the Battle of Madrid – ‘They shall not pass!’

The need to protest, and to resist the rise of the far right everywhere and by any means possible, remains; if protests were not effective, govern- ments, especially dictatorships, would not use all their power to suppress them.

Artnotes

Pavilion Politics

The artist and curators close their Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale but still face protests; art buildings are bombed in Gaza and Kyiv; artists call for a boycott of the Outset contemporary art charity; Home art centre flip-flops on hosting events featuring Palestinian culture; the British Museum and the Science Museum suffer more protests over their ties to fossil fuel giants; work/live studios are studied; art education budgets are cut; Damien Hirst finds himself in a pickle of his own making; plus the latest on galleries, people, awards and more.

Obituaries

Richard Serra 1938–2024
Patricia Bickers
Lucas Samaras 1936–2024
Alison Green
Joan Hills 1931–2024
Chris Townsend

Nikita Mohammadi, Memory Stone, 2024, The Lowry, Salford

Exhibitions

Whitney Biennial: Even Better Than the Real Thing

Whitney Museum, New York

Mimi Howard

On the other side

FACT, Liverpool

Niki Russell

Jenna Bliss

Haus am Waldsee, Berlin

Martin Herbert

Candice Lin: The Animal Husband

Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh

Daniel Culpan

Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen: Daughter of Dog

Mostyn, Llandudno

Elisa Adami

Mathew Wayne Parkin: I can fit a fist in my mouth

Cubitt, London

Hannah Wallis

Nikta Mohammadi: Memory Stone

The Lowry, Salford

Farah Dailami

Lee Holden: Universal Bridge

Cross Lane Projects, Kendal

Bob Dickinson

Aleana Egan: Second Hand

Lismore Castle Arts, Waterford

Eilis O’Connell: In the Roundness of Being

VISUAL, Carlow

Joanne Laws

Unlicensed: Bootlegging as Creative Practice, Ben Schwartz ed

Books

Unlicensed: Bootlegging as Creative Practice

Adam Heardman

Printed on black paper, the book is a subversive object in itself, an exploratory survey presented as a 400-page zine, deliberately complicating its own medium. It feels both beautiful and disposable, making it the perfect vehicle for the (often conflicting) ideas it carries.

Ashley Holmes, Skylarking, 2024

Sound

Ashley Holmes: Skylarking

Sarah E James

Lit in an otherworldly amber light – as natural as firelight but as artificial as streetlight – Holmes’s sound installation resembles a kind of portal that might serve the purpose of nomadic time-travelling.

‘Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art’, Barbican, London

Report

Unravelling

Luisa Lorenza Corna

As widely reported in the media, in February, just two weeks after its opening, collector Lorenzo Legarda Leviste requested that the Barbican withdraw his loan from the show in protest against the cancellation of writer Pankaj Mishra’s lecture. Five artists followed suit.

The Neighbours, installation view

Reports

Letter from Sofia

Juliet Jacques

The team wanted to counter the idea that the history of the camps could not be told due to a lack of visual documentation or because the material is so fragmented; during a long conversation in their studio on the outskirts of Sofia, they told me that for them ‘the shards are the story’.

‘The Art of Hermès’, Omer Tiroche Gallery, London, 2020–21

Artlaw

Ties That Bind

Henry Lydiate

A recently filed lawsuit focuses on whether it is lawful for an exclusive trader of goods to sell only to would-be buyers deemed suitable. The eventual outcome of the case may have significance for the way dealers conduct primary sales of works by artists they exclusively represent – particularly for dealers who only sell to selected collectors.

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