ART-PRESENTATION:The British Art Show 9

The British Art Show is widely acknowledged as the most important and ambitious recurrent exhibition of contemporary art produced in the UK, bringing the work of artists defining new directions in contemporary art to four UK cities. Following its launch in Aberdeen the exhibition will continue its national tour to multiple venues across the cities of Wolverhampton, Manchester and Plymouth throughout 2022.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: The British Art Show Archive

Focusing on work made since 2015, British Art Show 9 showcase the work of 47 artists and reflects a precarious moment in Britain’s history. During this time politics of identity and nation, and concerns of social, racial and environmental justice have pervaded public consciousness. The artists presented in the exhibition respond in critical ways to this complex context. Through their works, they imagine new futures, propose alternative economies, explore new modes of resistance and find ways of living together. They do so through film, photography, painting, sculpture, and performance, as well as through multimedia projects that don’t sit easily in any one category. The exhibition is structured around three main themes: “Healing, Care and Reparative History”, “Tactics for Togetherness” and “Imagining New Futures” and has been conceived as a cumulative experience. The exhibition will change and adapt for each city, presenting different combinations of artists and artworks that respond to their distinctive local contexts. In Aberdeen, the exhibition will focus on the effort to develop alternative systems for ethical cohabitation in the world. Over half of the works will receive their UK premiere, including many significant new commissions and site specific installations, such as: Maeve Brennan’s new iteration of “The Goods” (2018- ); a series of moving-image works and photographs which take an in-depth look at the international traffic of looted cultural objects. Patrick Goddard’s new film commission “Animal Antics” (2021); an absurdist commentary on the Anthropocene. The work is co-commissioned with Film and Video Umbrella, FLAMIN London, and EWERK Freiburg. A new participatory project by Grace Ndiritu, “Plant Theatre For Plant People” (2021), that creates a community of people learning from plants and culminates in a processional performance through the streets of Aberdeen. This work is made possible by Arts Council England support. Three new works by Florence Peake each named “CRUDE CARE” a ceramic sculpture, a performance and film informed by Aberdeen’s landscape and precarious workers in the care sector. This work is made possible through Art Fund support. Tai Shani’s phantasmagoric, multi-layered art spans film, performance, text, sculpture and installation. Drawing on references ranging from feminist science fiction, post-modern architecture, psychoanalysis and popular culture, she reimagines histories and mythologies to reclaim forgotten female narratives and explore speculative realities that challenge current patriarchal structures. Her installations often emerge from, and contain, her own writing. Shani presents a new instalment of “The Neon Hieroglyph” (2021), which she describes as a ‘mausoleum for psychedelic witches, a house for ghosts where the gothic and the hallucinatory collide’. This experiential work stems from Shani’s research into ergot, a fungus that grows on various grains, from which LSD is derived. Mandy El-Sayegh animation “Windows live (states)” (2021), egins with an urgent call for action, handwritten by the artist in blue ink. Its words are from a policy document issued by the American Movement for Black Lives, demanding cuts in US military expenditure and re-investment in community wellbeing. Its demands, in support of free speech, protest and ending the occupation of Palestine, include a fight against the proliferation of bills opposing boycotts of Israel. As the text grows, it becomes enmeshed in a rapidly spreading system of lines that eventually fills all available space. For El-Sayegh, this passage is a point of departure to explore the interwoven fabric of solidarity movements. Multimedia artist and musician Andy Holden is a master of eclecticism and irony. His work constantly moves between subjects, media and approaches and is frequently collaborative. He is currently working with his ornithologist father on a project exploring bird and human migration, while his main collaborator in his installation “Cat-tharsis” (2016/21) was his late grandmother, who left him the 300 china cats that became its inspiration. Holden’s own love of collecting and his obsession with charity shops led him to discover the work of outsider artist Hermione Burton (1925 – c.1990), whose paintings he found by chance and has since collected, researched, restored, exhibited and filmed. For Hrair Sarkissian, photography is a way of seeing, and telling. Born and raised in Syria and of Armenian descent, he uses the camera to relay stories related to his personal memories and background. Though his photographs rarely contain people they are full of unseen presences. His subjects include issues such as the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23, the ongoing war in Syria, and the plight of disappeared people and their families all over the world. Sarkissian’s most recent work involves seeing without looking. Nothing is visible in “Deathscape” (2021), his first sound work, which documents the noise of forensic archaeologists excavating mass graves in Spain, the legacy of the civil war and its aftermath. Helen Cammock is attentive to voice, in all its literal, physical and metaphorical dimensions. Through moving image, poetry, print, installation and performance she investigates its individual and collective use, and considers what it means to have one’s voice amplified, marginalised or silenced. Her work often emerges from writing: she interweaves her own words with those of other writers, philosophers and musicians. In her elegiac film “Changing Room” (2014) and multimedia installation, “Changing Room II” (2021) a reflection on her late father, an art teacher and amateur ceramicist, Cammock asks questions about identity, value and artistry – not least about who gets to be considered a ‘professional’ artist, and why. Cooking Sections is a collaboration between Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, who define themselves as ‘spatial practitioners’. Using a combination of art, architecture and ecology to address urgent issues concerning food and climate, they have probed the ethical and economic impact of British colonial trade, the environmental impact of salmon farms in Scotland, and have investigated ways of watering without water in Sicily among others. Their ongoing research project, “CLIMAVORE”, encourages a diet and food infrastructure that adapts to the climate emergency. The exhibition includes a programme of artists’ films and a dedicated website enables artists, including those not showing works in Aberdeen, to share works online. It is accompanied by a publication that includes curatorial essays and individual artist texts.

Participating Artists: Hurvin Anderson, Michael Armitage, Simeon Barclay, Oliver Beer, Zach Blas, Kathrin Böhm, Maeve Brennan, James Bridle, Helen Cammock, Than Hussein Clark, Jamie Crewe, Oona Doherty, Sean Edwards, Mandy El-Sayegh, Mark Essen, GAIKA, Beatrice Gibson, Patrick Goddard, Anne Hardy, Celia Hempton, Andy Holden, Joey Holder, Marguerite Humeau, Lawrence Lek, Ghislaine Leung, Paul Maheke, Elaine Mitchener, Oscar Murillo, Grace Ndiritu, Uriel Orlow, Hardeep Pandhal, Hetain Patel, Florence Peake, Heather Phillipson, Joanna Piotrowska, Abigail Reynolds, Margaret Salmon, Hrair Sarkissian, Katie Schwab, Cooking Sections, Tai Shani, Marianna Simnett, Sin Wai Kin fka Victoria Sin, Hanna Tuulikki and Caroline Walker.

Photo: Kathrin Böhm, When Decisions Become Art, 2019-ongoing. Installation view: Kunstbunker Forum für Zeitgenössische Kunst Nürnberg. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Johannes Kersting

Info: Curators: Irene Aristizábal and Hammad Nasar, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Schoolhill, Aberdeen, Scotland, Duration: 10/7-10/10/2021, Days & Hours: Mon and Wed-Sat 10:00-17:00, Sun 10:00-16:00, www.aberdeencity.gov.uk