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Contents
Interview
Telling Stories
Emilia Kabakov interviewed by Lisa Le Feuvre
The Russian-born New York-based artists Ilya & Emilia Kabakov have worked together for nearly 30 years. Here Emilia discusses the failure of utopianism, the importance of memory, and installation as an expanded form of painting.
Installation is a new genre. We have thousands of years of experience with painting, and know exactly how to look at it.
Feature
#Algopop
Bob Dickinson on art, life and the algorithm
As algorithms threaten to take over our lives, it is worth comparing the cautionary approach taken by contemporary artists like Heather Dewey-Hagborg with that of pioneers, like Manfred Mohr and self-styled mystic and algorist Roman Verostko, who moved with the 'rithm in the 1960s.
Heather Dewey-Hagborg created a series of life-size 3D-printed colour photographs representing what the people who deposited the detritus might have looked like. The work was intended to point out the dangers of future biological surveillance, a prediction that came true in 2014 when a commercial version of the technology, Parabon Snapshot, was released for police use.
Feature
Kill or Cure?
Giulia Smith speculates on the reasons for the upsurge in art about sickness
Judging by the work of artists such as Jenna Bliss, Lucy Beech and Patrick Staff, is the cure sometimes worse than the disease?
The implication is that the medical route out of gender dysphoria comes with its own share of toxicity. Cure and poison appear once again caught in a vicious circle.
Comment
Editorial
Apocalypse Now?
For millennia extraordinary natural phenomena have been interpreted by self-styled visionaries and artists as portents of impending catastrophe for the human race. Today, while advances in scientific knowledge confirm the potential for environmental catastrophe, they also provide evidence of mankind's ability to work together to protect the world and to understand our place in the universe.
The result was 'one of the most powerful explosions of energy we know of in the universe', whose gravitational waves reached earth some 130 million years later, temporarily distorting space and time.
Letters
Bronze Age Fair
Lawrence Leaman takes issue with Hauser & Wirth's appropriationist presentation of Bronze Age artefacts at Frieze art fair.
Artnotes
Occupied
Omer Fast's New York exhibition is occupied by Save Chinatown protesters; LA galleries suffer a boycott by Save Boyle Heights protesters; Guggenheim New York pulls artworks after protests by animal rights campaigners; artists lead a campaign against the recent rise in right-wing attacks on freedom of expression in Brazil; locals raise funds to save a work at Münster Sculpture Project; Art for Grenfell raises almost £2m; ACE launches a consultation on the future of Bristol's visual arts sector; plus the latest news on galleries, appointments, prizes and more.
Obituary
Ed Allington 1951-2017
Exhibitions
New North and South
various venues, Manchester
Virginia Whiles
15th Istanbul Biennial: A Good Neighbour
various venues
Jamie Sutcliffe
Zach Blas: Contra-Internet
Gasworks, London
Colin Perry
Miranda July: Interfaith Charity Shop
Artangel, London
Mark Wilsher
Sofia Hultén: Here's the Answer, What's the Question?
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
Mark Prince
We The People Are The Work
various venues, Plymouth
Martin Holman
Everything we see could also be otherwise (My sweet little lamb)
The Showroom, London
Sophie J Williamson
Poor Art | Arte Povera
Estorick Collection, London
Gianfranco Baruchello: Incidents of Lesser Account
Raven Row, London
Peter Suchin
Hilary Lloyd: Theatre
Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea
Richard Whitby: The Jump Room
The Old Waterworks, Southend-on-Sea
Lauren Houlton
London Round-up
Parafin • DomoBaal • CGP London
Paul Carey-Kent
Nottingham Round-up
Primary • TG • New Art Exchange
Tom Emery
Berlin Round-up
Martin-Gropius-Bau • KW Institute of Contemporary • Art Neue Berliner Kunstverein
Martin Herbert
Reviews
Books
Hito Steyerl: Duty Free Art
Lizzie Homersham
Throughout the book, uncommon, uncomfortable focus is placed on the imbrication of art and war.
Reviews
Film
Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival
Shama Khanna
The Festival was characterised by a stealthy overthrow of the coolly academic theme – 'Ultramarine: the sea' – by a 'bloody hot takeover' by queer, female and non-white identifying artists, hailing mainly from Glasgow.
Reports
Letter from the West Bank
KA
Emily Riddle
One hundred years later, Theresa May declares that the UK government is to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration 'with pride'. Please, prime minister, not in my name.
Letter from Timisoara
Why Salt?
Kristian Vistrup Madsen
As is the case in many countries of the former Eastern Bloc, the more inventive efforts of Romania's artistic community during the 1960s and 1970s were profound yet remain unsurveyed.
Reports
Abandon Normal Devices
Digital Dark Ages
Rob La Frenais
Described variously as 'artists' skunkworks' and 'cultural fracking', many of these artists deliberately subvert what have now become art-science conventions.
Artlaw
Ways of Working
Fair Deals
Henry Lydiate
Numbers of contemporary art fairs have expanded from three in 1970 to over 250 today, located in major cultural destinations far beyond their origins in Europe and the US. |