Art Monthly 501
November 2026

Contents

Beatrice Gibson, At Night, 2026

Interview

Inside a Crowd

Beatrice Gibson interviewed by María Palacios Cruz

It’s a crowd of voices, from the people in the work, the ones who are alive, to the ones who are no longer with us ... I can only do what I’m doing if I’m inside this assembly, inside a crowd. I can’t do it alone.

Caspar Heinemann, ‘Adduction’, 2026

Feature

Art & Ufology

Jamie Sutclffe argues that we have been rendered susceptible to the irrational by cynical, politically motivated misdirection

The logic goes: when media feeds are saturated with the diffuse threats of proxy war combat, the existential risks of deregulated AI development, resource scarcity and the potential presence of extraterrestrial life on earth, the attention of the electorate becomes distracted, confused, pliable. ‘Reality’ itself becomes a medium to be sculpted.

Sigmar Polke, ‘The Knowledge of Colours’, 2026

Feature

Who was Sigmar Polke?

Michael Archer reencounters the work of the elusive German artist 50 years after he first came across it

Sigmar Polke’s discontent with the Art Informel and Tachiste-oriented art taught in the academy manifested in his rejection of the idea that art could serve as an aesthetic salve to West Germany’s troubled conscience.

Olu Ogunnaike, What are you holding onto, 2026

Profile

Olu Ogunnaike

Phoebe Cripps

The more you see of your reflected self, the less you see of the image. My whiteness enters the night shots of Olu Ogunnaike’s friends and family, interrupting the intimate conversation between the images across a narrow space, ineluctably positioning my perception.

Editorial

The Last Word

Some argue that social media has ushered in a new ‘post-literate’ age but arguably, since the invention of the Gutenberg Press six centuries ago, technological changes have always altered the way people read.

Whatever the school riots that engulfed France last month developed into, the students who originally took to the streets to protest are clearly still passionate about education and, presumably, about reading. A society that does not value literacy, including visual literacy, is vulnerable to tyranny.

Letters

Strike at Goldsmiths

Goldsmiths University Strikers outline the effects of senior management’s proposed cuts.

Manifesta Omission

Penelope Curtis is surprised that AM’s review of Manifesta did not make clear the exhibition’s central premise: that each presentation took place in a church.

Artnotes

Kemi Axes Arts

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch pledges to halve the UK’s culture budget; the Labour government will retain free entry to museums; the Local Government Association proposes a new framework for arts investment; the Art Circle of Congolese Planation Workers forms a new collection of donated artworks to support the reforestation of postcolonial land; storm damage afflicts the Uffizi and the Venice Biennale; NY MoMA faces renewed protests over a disgraced trustee; Getty Images files for bankruptcy; plus the latest on galleries, people, prizes and more.

Charles Ray, Boy with Frog, 2009, Fridericianum, Kassel

Exhibitions

Technologies of Peace: Art and Transition in Contemporary Europe 1989–2026

IMMA, Dublin

Lina Džuverović

Beverly Buchanan: Weathering

Spike Island, Bristol

Luisa Lorenza Corna

Arthur Jafa: I Am Tony

New Museum, New York

Morgan Falconer

Charles Ray

Fridericianum, Kassel

Mark Prince

Monika Sosnowska: Weight of Matter

South London Gallery

Matthew Bowman

Sophie Calle: Something Missing?

Turner Contemporary, Margate

Gwen Burlington

Martin Maloney

Grazer Kunstverein, Graz

Chris Clarke

Rae-Yen Song 宋瑞渊: •~TUA~• 大眼 •~MAK~•

FACT, Liverpool

Adam Benmakhlouf

Liz Larner: A hard line to bend

Camden Art Centre, London

Daniel Culpan

Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970–Now

Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge

Lillian Wilkie

Dala Nasser: Cemetery of Martyrs

Peer, London

Paul Carey-Kent

Marina Vishmidt, Infrastructural Critique

Books

Marina Vishmidt: Infrastructural Critique – Contemporary Art Between Reproduction and Abolition

Dave Beech

We can expect three related but distinct tendencies to emerge: first, infrastructural critique will become a buzzword; second, it will be adopted as a template that is repeated; and third, it will set the agenda for an expansive and recursive research inquiry.

Imogen Stidworthy, Skydde, 2026

Film

Imogen Stidworthy: Skydde

Maria Walsh

Viewers are not participants in the Primary Work therapy session. Nonetheless, the encounter with the 28-minute film is intense and immersive, especially if watching with others in the gallery.

Ali Cherri, The Sentinel, 2026

Film

Ali Cherri: Soul Witness

Elizabeth Fullerton

The ‘Soldier’ trilogy reflects on forms of resistance, concentrated in the figure of the unproductive soldier who contravenes social stereotypes of heroic, hyper-masculine action men.

Rachel MacLean and Ela Orleans, They’ve Got Your Eyes, 2026

Sound

Sonica

Iain Campbell

Such synchronised visuals, whether rhythmically or amorphously tied to the sound, could feel like a kind of handholding, as if telling you how to understand what you’re hearing.

Daniel & Clara, Rewilding Imagination Lab, 2026

Reports

Letter from Essex

Greg Thomas

In the Gerry-rigged shacks and converted boat-homes of today’s Mersea island, you can see the inheritance of Essex’s historical anti-authoritarian individualism; so too at Dial House, the pacifist-anarchist commune established by Crass co-founder Penny Rimbaud and artist Gee Vaucher in Epping in 1967.

Jeff Koons, Baroque Egg with Bow (Blue Turquoise), 1994–2008, estimate £1.5m–2m, sold for £1.7m

Salesrooms

Monsoon Buoys Frieze Week

Colin Gleadell

The most conspicuous loss was on a Jeff Koons coloured stainless steel Baroque Egg with Bow (Blue Turquoise), which Monsoon fashion chain founder, Peter Simo, bought for £2.6m in 2012 but that now returned only £1.7m.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21, 1979

Artlaw

She Belongs to Me

Henry Lydiate

The Cindy Sherman Legacy Project will systematise and streamline the reprinting of Sherman’s photographs using the best available technologies and, in doing so, create a framework for sustaining the legacy of artists working in the medium of photography.