Publisher: The Studio Trust
Content: 320 pages, full colour
Language: English
ISBN: 0983259909 (Hardcover).
Dimensions: 11.0 x 8.7 x 1.0 inches
Price: Hardcover: US $29.99, UK £24.99
Editor: Michael Spens
Deputy Editor: Dr Janet McKenzie
Creative Director: Martin Kennedy
Vice-President: Miguel Benavides
To order your copy please contact studio@mwrk.co.uk
Introduction
Another Yearbook feels like a cause for celebration. In response to the financial crash in 2008, cautionary spending policies were adopted by galleries and museums, and major auction houses laid off junior staff and battened down the hatches. At the top end of the art market, however, prices and profits continued to rise, exacerbating the paradox of cut-backs and closures at community and regional levels. Art publishing too must proceed carefully, making the role of online journals such as Studio International in education and in the dissemination of critique more important than before.
Against the values we have inherited from the Enlightenment and 20th-century romanticism, whither are we bound? That art is central to global culture, there is no doubt, and so too, the role of the artist to question powerful hegemonies on the world stage. The relatively modest exhibition, Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion, which had sprung out of the University of Houston’s Blaffer Gallery in late 2008, reached New York University’s Grey Art Gallery in the spring of 2009 (also shared with the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton Long Island). Is the non-centrality of these venues, the non-celebrity status of most of the 15 international exhibiting artists, or the non-alignment of the exhibition’s theme to current high-priestly curatorial preoccupations in the main centres, a reason why this challenging exhibition has not yet moved on to a wider, major circuit? It would be a most fitting exhibition in any of a number of venues in Europe at the present time.
A sympathetic strain of motivation and inspiration was already evident in the contributions of many of our writers here, and the works they choose to focus on: Cildo Meireles, Rosalind Nashashibi, Anthony Gormley, Aida Tomescu, Sophie Calle and Tracey Emin. We have also sought to cover major museum and gallery events, with the relaunch of London’s redesigned Whitechapel and outstanding shows such as Tate Modern’s Rodchenko and Popova, which at last set right the key role of Liubov Popova in reappraising Constructivism. This enabled the principles of Constructivism to find fuller application in photography and film-making. Perhaps it is symptomatic of the redefinition of that key movement in Russia, and its ramifications and legacy, that two new publications on film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky have appeared, in which his lasting – but not fully recognised – influence on film and television today is asserted. Tarkovsky can be seen to have been a “damaged Romanticist” who mirrored modern emotion.
We keep a watch on today’s pivotal figures, including Richard Serra, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Luis Barragàn and now Ed Ruscha, always wary of the curatorial urge to revise and the art market’s urge to hedge. Even Frieze Art Fair, a superb London innovation, showed symptoms of both processes. We welcome our growing cyber-readership, including an increasing number of students.
Michael Spens
Editor
Contents
Harold Offeh – interview: ‘I am always asking: who is not part of the ...
Harold Offeh discusses boredom, curiosity and 1980s pop culture, the influence of punk and hip-hop, ...
Peter Kennard – interview: ‘Montage is about allowing people to think ...
Peter Kennard, the celebrated political artist, talks of photomontage, protest, art schools and imag...
Lana Locke – interview: ‘I look more at the racial connotations of col...
Lana Locke talks about about domesticity in life and art, colonialism and climate change –and how ...
Shneel Malik – interview: ‘I’m a crazy optimist. I know that the rig...
Architect and bio-designer Shneel Malik discusses bio-algae, eco-aesthetics, artisans pioneering eco...
Jens Fänge – interview: ‘I try to come to a painting from a different...
As Jens Fänge exhibits new work in Paris, the Swedish painter talks about assemblage, the structure...
Vision & Reality: 100 Years of Contemporary Art in Wakefield
As the Hepworth Wakefield celebrates its 10th birthday, it is apposite that it is marking its place ...
Eleanor May Watson – interview: ‘Home is a sanctuary, but also a reall...
Eleanor May Watson talks about the weight of history, the evolving nature of her work and the comple...
Sadie Morgan – interview: ‘When you’re part of a community, architec...
Sadie Morgan, of Stirling Prize-winning architects De Rijke Marsh Morgan, discusses social and envir...
Crystal Fischetti – interview: ‘I use my whole body when I paint’
Crystal Fischetti talks about ‘coming out’ of the spiritual closet, and how she uses her whole b...
Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America – book review
Preceding an exhibition at New York’s New Museum, this book, based on a vision of the late Okwui E...
Prabhakar Pachpute – interview: ‘I juxtapose memories and what is happ...
Artist Prabhakar Pachpute talks about growing up in a coal-mining region in India, and how its assoc...
Unearthed: Photography’s Roots
The first major exhibition of photography at the Dulwich Picture Gallery uses nature as a lens to ex...
Tako Taal and Adam Benmakhlouf – interview: ‘This slow-motion style of...
Tako Taal and Adam Benmakhlouf discuss their ideas behind the 2021 Artists’ Moving Image Festival ...
Nick Hornby – interview: ‘Liquefied photography is magical and mysteri...
British artist Nick Hornby talks about his shift from art history to personal histories, and combini...
Quilts from three generations of African American makers in a remote Alabama community demonstrate g...
Sara Barker – interview: ‘I tackle sculpture from the position of pain...
Glasgow-based Sara Barker talks about how the pandemic has affected her practice and her exhibition,...
Scottish artist Michael Visocchi talks about his commission to create a sculpture for South Georgia,...
Luiz Zerbini – interview: ‘I treat a painting as an oracle’
Brazilian painter Luiz Zerbini discusses urbanity and nature, the power of geometry and the secret l...
Jordan Baseman on turning mastectomy tattoos into the subject of a cartoon...
Jordan Baseman’s films deal with everything from embalming to post cancer surgery tattoos, and see...
Moynihan Train Hall: splendour for the masses
Wrought of sheer will, the Moynihan Train Hall, a radiant new gateway to Manhattan, addresses past, ...
Christine and Jennifer Binnie – interview
Artist sisters Christine and Jennifer Binnie talk about their joint curation of an exhibition from t...
Sarah Wood – interview: ‘At the moment we all want to gather around st...
Sarah Wood, artist, filmmaker, talks about what lockdown has taught her and how making her latest fi...
Young Poland: The Polish Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1918 – book revi...
The range of work to emerge from the Young Poland movement is staggering and this well-researched, b...
With 62 of Kandinsky’s paintings and works on paper, this exhibition charts the development of his...
Shaping the World: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now – book review
This is a fascinating account of conversations between Antony Gormley and the art critic Martin Gayf...
Genesis, a floating church, by Denizen Works
Elements of care and craftsmanship link Genesis, a floating faith space on a traditional narrowboat,...
Abigail DeVille: Light of Freedom
In the year that has seen the Black Lives Matter movement and the questioning of what public statues...
The Film London Jarman Award 2020
After a challenging year in view of the global pandemic, the prize named after the legendary film-ma...
Brian Dawn Chalkley: The Untold Depth of Savagery
Brian Dawn Chalkley’s alter ego, Dawn, has sketched a world of androgynous figures with guns in se...
Katharina Grosse – interview: ‘My eyes are my most important tools’
Katharina Grosse talks about the importance of layering, colour and bodily intelligence in her paint...
Special issue 2004, Volume 203 Number 1026
Special issue 2004, Volume 203 Number 1026
Special issue 2005, Volume 204 Number 1027
Special issue 2005, Volume 204 Number 1027
Special issue 2006, Volume 205 Number 1028
Special issue 2006, Volume 205 Number 1028
Special issue 2007, Volume 206 Number 1029
Special issue 2007, Volume 206 Number 1029
Special issue 2008, Volume 207 Number 1030
Special issue 2008, Volume 207 Number 1030