When a change of government in the Netherlands reversed years of generous state support for the arts, Rune Peitersen got together with other artists to challenge anti-artist rhetoric and argue for fair pay and support for artists and arts organisations. He talks to artist and AIR Council member Joseph Young about Platform BK, the small but dynamic organisation he co-founded five years ago.
It’s been a busy and fruitful year for a-n/AIR’s Paying Artists campaign, with plenty of activity across the UK and internatioanally. Paying Artists Project Manager Julie McCalden looks back over 2015.
Situated on a rubble-strewn plot opposite Glasgow’s Tramway, Pollokshields Playhouse is opening its gates for film screenings in a shipping container, storytelling and soup made over an open fire. Richard Taylor visits the Albert Drive site to hear more about this community project.
Six a-n writers – based in Glasgow, Manchester and London – pick, in no particular order, their top five exhibitions of the year.
For her online artwork We Need Us – currently showing at group exhibitions in Manchester and London – Julie Freeman has powered an audio-visual animation with live data from the citizen science project The Zooniverse. She explains why data and how it’s used is so important in our increasingly digital lives.
Media Space associate curator and 1000 Words editor Tim Clark looks back over the year’s photo book releases and picks ten exceptional titles published in 2015.
In the latest in our series of picture-focused articles we take a look at the Radcliffe Infirmary Commemorative Commission, featuring artists Simon Periton, Antoni Malinowski and Daniel Silver.
There have been some fantastic artists’ books published this year and Sarah Bodman at UWE Bristol’s Centre for Fine Print Research has read most of them. Here she picks ten of her favourites.
Looking for Christmas present ideas but want to avoid the high street? Why not support artists and/or organisations that promote contemporary art by purchasing unusual or limited edition works online instead. Here’s 10 ideas to start you off, from a 50p badge to a £400 print.
This year’s engage International Conference in Glasgow focused on young people working with art and artists, with a remit to explore the gallery as a school, the importance of cross-disciplinary engagement, and the ethics of peer-led practice. But, as Moira Jeffrey reports, much of the lively and challenging discussion was wide-ranging and off script.
As her new exhibition War Damaged Musical Instruments opens at Tate Britain, Turner Prize-winner Susan Philipsz speaks to Jack Hutchinson about marking the centenary of the first world war, conflict-damaged brass instruments and the lure of Berlin.
A group exhibition of newly-commissioned photography has opened at Jerwood Space London, enabled by the inaugural Jerwood/Photoworks Awards. Tim Clark speaks to Photoworks director, Celia Davies, about the impetus for setting up this joint programme and what the various bodies of work might reveal about the new generation of practitioners.
For her book REGENERATION!, artist Jessie Brennan spent time on the soon to be demolished Robin Hood Gardens estate in Poplar, London talking to residents and making rubbings of their doormats. She speaks to Chris Sharratt about the nature of her practice, the importance of conversations and the clash of ideologies that the regeneration of the estate represents.
An installation by Ann Veronica Janssens is currently filling the gallery at the Wellcome Collection in London with an enveloping and brightly-coloured mist, as the first part of a year-long exploration into the experience of human consciousness.
As the Creative Time Summit NYC takes place this weekend at the Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, Nato Thompson speaks to Pippa Koszerek about the summit, his new book Seeing Power and how art can impact social change.
Artist and poet Nancy Campbell explores the disappearing languages and environments of the Arctic in her latest limited edition work, which launches later this week at a book fair in London. Sarah Bodman tells the story behind Proviso.
Crowdsourced from the ideas of Middlesbrough and Teeside residents through a series of workshops and open calls, mima’s current exhibition Localism is about reasserting the importance of the local in both the development of society and the international art world.
Alice Cunningham’s solo exhibition at the Royal British Society of Sculptors, London, includes new works in marble developed while she was recipient of the 2014 Brian Mercer Stone Carving Residency in Pietrasanta, Italy. She speaks to Pippa Koszerek about how she worked with a specialist stone carving studio to create the four works included in the show.
For his first major commission in the UK, Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates has created an installation in the grounds of a disused church in Bristol that will be alive with performances and discussion day-and-night for 552 hours. Rowan Lear reports from the opening weekend.
A recently opened skatepark in Everton Park, Liverpool is the result of a Liverpool Biennial commission of the South Korean artist Koo Jeong A, working with Wheelscape Skateparks and a host other agencies and community groups in the city. Laura Robertson takes a look at this luminous living sculpture and finds out more from the artist.
Best known for his ‘scratch video’ work in the 1980s, in his recent films the video artist George Barber uses dark humour to tackle topical issues such as military drones and the global refugee crisis. With shows currently taking place in London and Cardiff, Chris Sharratt talks to him about absurdity, politics and life on board a nuclear submarine.
Recorded deep inside a granite mountain in Scotland, Maria Fusco’s Artangel/BBC Radio 4 commission, Master Rock, tells the story of the men who 50 years ago risked their lives to create the Cruachan hydro-electric power station, and the artist whose mural was commissioned at the site to mark its opening. Moira Jeffrey reports.
For the second piece in our monthly series on artists’ books, Sarah Bodman looks at the work of artist and poet Jeremy Dixon and his affordable, small-run booklets.
Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas has produced the inaugural Hyundai Commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, unveiled this week. Here, Richard Taylor finds out more about his ‘Autoconstrucción’ approach to art, following up on themes discussed by Cruzvillegas at a recent ‘in conversation’ event in Glasgow.
As the art world descends on London for the 13th Frieze Art Fair, we take a snapshot of art fair activity happening across the capital this week.
