Art Monthly Magazine
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CONTENTS
Issue 451, November 2021
Hiwa K, View from Above, 2017
FEATURE
Pinned Down
Hiwa K interviewed by Chris Clarke
For me, it is important in every work to be a betrayer, to not be loyal to my ideas. Otherwise you become a designer. And sometimes you have to surprise yourself. I cannot make a setting and stick to it, because I get stuck in it.
Jason Hirata, ‘From Now in Then’, installation view at Fanta-MLN with Painted Square, 2021, on the floor and Car, 2021, which took viewers wherever they need to go after visiting the exhibition
FEATURE
Remote Working
Saim Demircan finds that working remotely has given rise to new ways to think about accessibility, labour and authorship
Perhaps the absence of the artist commits a final act of anti-objectification, eschewing the prerequisite in the art world to be ‘everywhere’ at all times.
Barbican Stories: an indispensable record of discrimination in the workplace
FEATURE
Crisis Communications
Chris Hayes argues that, despite its faults, social media can still be used a tool against powerful vested interests
Part of what fascinates me about the art world’s use of Instagram is this tension: how fluidly a vernacular of call-outs and accountability, calls to defund and abolish, are adopted and performed on platforms that are easily dismissed and rarely carry any stakes.
 | | From the Back Catalogue
Activism as Art
Activism is not an add-on says Tom Snow
First published 2019 – now free online |
Adam Farah, Spiritual Teething, [date?]
PROFILE
Adam Farrah
Larne Abse Gogarty tugs at the cultural references of the London-born artist also known as free.yard
Farah offers a way of negotiating nostalgia, sentiment and universality while asking viewers to negotiate their own particularities of class, race and history.
sponsored
EDITORIAL
Eh?
Why do cultural agencies persist with stifling bureaucratic language that acts as a barrier to non-corporate voices?
When applying for a grant, for example, the first test of eligibility appears to be whether the applicant can understand and negotiate – digest – the sheer quantity of verbiage required in the process.
sponsored
ARTNOTES
University Action
University lecturers go on strike at the Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths; Cuban artist Tania Bruguera agrees to political exile in return for the release of activists; Manchester’s Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art restructures in response to accusations of institutional racism; Unesco finally recommends that the Parthenon Sculptures be returned to Greece; plus the latest on galleries, people, prizes and more.
Peggy Ahwesh, Lessons of War, 2014, Spike Island
EXHIBITIONS
Thea Djordjadze: all building as making
Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin
Mark Prince
Gregg Bordowitz: I Wanna Be Well
MoMA PS1, New York
Benoit Loiseau
Peggy Ahwesh: Vision Machines
Spike Island, Bristol
Adam Hines-Green
sponsored
Margate Now: Sunken Ecologies
Royal Esplanade, Westbrook
Ellen Mara De Wachter
Tip of the Iceberg
Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea
Matthew Bowman
Illiberal Arts
HKW, Berlin
Luisa Lorenza Corna
sponsored
Angelica Mesiti: In the Round
Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh
Tom Denman
Untitled: Art on the conditions of our time
Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
Greg Thomas
Gustav Metzger at the Merz Barn
Merz Barn, Elterwater
David Briers
The Toe, The Horse, The Sister
ARTISTS’ BOOKS
Maria Zahle: The Toe, The Horse, The Sister
Adam Heardman
Maria Zahle’s new publication is a book and an art-object that’s at least as concerned with breath as it is with geometry. The paper has been cut and styled and patterned with shapes, gaps, marks, typographic flourishes, intrusions upon the text. These intrusions become part of the language.
BOOKS
Boris Groys: Logic of the Collection
Daniel Neofetou
Boris Groys goes on to suggest that our inability to situate contemporary art anywhere else than ‘in an invisible space between the norm and the deviation from the norm’ means that we should all adopt the temporal position of the migrant.
BOOKS
Bluecoat, Liverpool: The UK’s First Arts Centre
Bob Dickinson
Bluecoat’s success in reinventing itself complemented the arrival of Tate Liverpool in 1988, and gave rise to Merseyside Moviola and the creation of Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT), helping to secure the city’s European Capital of Culture status in 2008.
Urias, Racha, 2020
FILM
Notes on Travecacceleration
Conal McStravick
In the titular video made in collaboration with Occulted and Joaquim Ramalho, Ode appears as a digital oracle, or orixá, who speaks from the hypermediated spectacle of the travesti and colonial archives.
Diego Marcon, The Parents’ Room, 2021
REPORTS
Letter from Naples
Mark Sladen
The ambition that Giuseppe Morra brought to Naples is still detectable at his foundation, which has a hare-brained grandeur: its exhibitions have been mapped out for 100 years.
Malgorzata Markiewicz, Medusa, 2021, Styrian Armoury
REPORTS
Letter from Graz
Agnieszka Gratza
In contrast to the stilted, familiar and rather cold vision of the continent that came across in ‘Europe: Ancient Futures’, here was a Mitteleuropa in the true sense of the word.
Flora Yukhnovich, I’ll Have What She’s Having, 2020, estimated at £60,000–80,000, sold for £2.3m
SALEROOMS
Frieze Week
Colin Gleadell
In the past couple of years, the London market has looked fragile in the wake of Brexit, the expansion of Paris, the exodus of Italian dealers and the explosion of Asia into western markets. This year, Sotheby’s gave up about £60m of art, mostly by contemporary western artists, to its Hong Kong branch for a sale the week before Frieze.
Beeple, Abundance, 2021, NFT physical token
ARTLAW
Automatic for the Beeple
Henry Lydiate
One of the highest-losing underbidders for Beeple’s Abundance NFT was Amir Soleymani, who was then required by Nifty Gateway to pay $650,000 for a numbered ‘second edition’. Soleymani was unaware that his initial registration for the auction had included a commitment to such a ‘second edition’ purchase, which he did not want, and refused to pay.
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