Contents
Interview
Lawwoman
Carey Young interviewed by Maria Walsh
The London-based artist talks about law as an artistic medium, asks who has the power to define others, and gives tips on how to avoid security guards.
Could art expose the edges of law or a point where law seems to break down? I’m not a lawbreaker necessarily, but I’m interested in its margins and gaps.
Feature
In Between
Mark Prince explores ideas of space and place in art
Citing works by Lawrence Weiner, Bas Jan Ader and Marcel Broodthaers, and by painters Rene Daniëls and Raoul de Keyser, Prince maps the distances between history and geography, language and image, the real and the virtual.
Given the old antagonism between painting and Conceptual Art, it still needs pointing out that – unlike photography, film and the digital arts – they are the two ‘media’ best equipped to hold signs, visual and linguistic, at a critical remove, while keeping them in play.
Feature
DIY • DIWO • DIA
Louise Ashcroft celebrates artists taking back control in precarious times
Recent political and economic turmoil has left the art sector straitened, but some artists see this as an opportunity to develop original approaches based on collaboration and support, forming new organisations from alternative art schools to community interest companies – it’s time to do it yourself, do it with others, do it anyway.
Many of today’s artist projects go a step further than the Occupy movement’s deconstruction of traditional politics with achievable, localised goals that respect artists’ responsibility to ‘keep it complex’.
Comment
Editorial
Enough!
Issues around access, representation and authority are to the fore today across old, new and social media, as illustrated by Carey Young’s focus on female judges in her recent film Palais de Justice. But while progress on such issues may be more visible in today’s networked world, this same hyperconnectivity also makes it painfully clear just how much further there is to go.
‘And the best thing about Alexa is that unlike my wife she doesn’t answer back.’ A slave bot that echoes her master’s voice, what’s not to like?
Artnotes
Jerwood Impasse
Jerwood Gallery in Hastings has been ordered to return 300 artworks to the Jerwood Foundation after a row over funding; Arnolfini in Bristol is to be a subsidiary of the University of the West of England; Lincoln’s Usher Gallery could lose its artworks and become a wedding venue; Hertfordshire County Council is auctioning 160 paintings from its collection; new research shows that only 3% of artists earn enough from their art to live comfortably and a third earn less than £1,000 per year; plus the latest news on galleries, appointments, prizes and more.
Obituaries
Susan Hiller 1940-2019
Richard Grayson
Jonas Mekas 1922-2019
Gilda Williams
Robert Ryman 1930-2019
John Slyce
Exhibitions
We are the people. Who are you?
Edel Assanti, London
David Barrett
Patricia L Boyd: Inter-
Reading International
Jack Smurthwaite
Ghislaine Leung: CONSTITUTION
Chisenhale Gallery, London
Joseph Constable
Christopher Kulendran Thomas: New Eelam – Bristol
Spike Island, Bristol
Lizzie Lloyd
Mark Fell: The Concept of Time is Intrinsically Incoherent
Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea
Matthew Bowman
Jack West: Last Man Standing
Castor, London
Martin Holman
Daria Martin: Tonight the World
Barbican, London
Amy Budd
The Range
Eastside Projects, Birmingham
Tom Emery
Snow Crash
IMT Gallery, London
Henry Broome
Ravioli Me Away: View from Behind the Futuristic Rose Trellis
Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge
Niki Russell
Morag Keil: Moarg Kiel
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
Larne Abse Gogarty
Condo
various venues, London
Paul Carey-Kent
Kochi-Muziris Biennale: Possibilities for a Non-AlienatedLife
various venues
Virginia Whiles
Reviews
Books
Josephine Berry: Art and (Bare) Life – A Biopolitical Inquiry
Daniel Neofetou
Josephine berry ends her book on a resolute, if not quite optimistic, note. She insists that, in the face of its seeming total subsumption, autonomous art’s ‘wish for what is not willed, for errancy’ must still push forward.
Books
Jared Pappas-Kelley: Solvent Form – Art and Destruction
Michael Hampton
Jared pappas-kelley enlists destruction – through fire, theft, disappearance or design – as a critical reagent showing up previously hard-to- discern, internal or ‘solvent’ characteristics of all artworks.
Reviews
Film
Circa Projects & Giles Bailey: Festival of the Not
Adam Pugh
Truly an exemplar for equable, non-hierarchical models of organising and programming, the star and shadow is proof of the viability of those models in the face of the ‘no alternative’ imposed by dominant structures; the ‘not’ here rather an ‘or’.
Reports
Letter from Houston
Extra-Terrestial Investments
Astrid Korporaal
Houston doesn’t exactly have the contemporary arts pilgrimage kudos of New York or LA, but the pioneer space cowboy metaphor of discovery is a powerful one, if it can be directed towards open and ethical curiosity.
Conference
Transmediale
Lauren Velvick
These two instances of bringing the past to bear on current issues emphasised the idea that while technology advances, it is the ways that people relate to and behave towards each other that dominate its application.
Artlaw
Copyright
Digital Regulation
Henry Lydiate
The new rules will correct longstanding weaknesses and flaws in EU copyright laws and their enforcement – across borders – by ‘content creators’ (including visual artists, film directors, musicians, composers and writers) whose works have been economically exploited by global online platforms without appropriate permission from, or fair payment to, originators.