Art Monthly Talk Show

Christopher Townsend discusses how mid-century British modernism has become inaccessible to contemporary viewers since it can now only be viewed through contemporary culture's mythologising of late capitalism.

John Douglas Millar on why experimental writing thrives in the art world, and Peter Suchin on Focal Point Gallery's 'Tarot' exhibition.

Bob Dickinson reports on the nuclear-bunker-based Time Machine Biennial in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Paul O’Kane discusses Gillian Whiteley’s book on assemblage, Junk: Art and the Politics of Trash.

Stephanie Schwartz discusses her feature article ‘Photography as Work’, which questions the utopian potential of digital photography, with reference to the Jorge Ribalta-curated exhibition ‘A Hard, Merciless Light: The Worker-Photography Movement 1926-1939’ at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.

Maria Walsh discusses her interview with Mary Kelly, and JJ Charlesworth argues that theory’s current obsession with objective critique misses the mark in comparison with subjective criticism.

Critic, musician and curator Morgan Quaintance joins critic and artist Peter Suchin. They discuss General Idea’s ‘Haute Culture’ exhibition in Paris and Suchin’s ‘Rebel Without a Course’ article on practice-led PhDs, which questions the institutionalisation and professionalisation of artists.

Dave Beech and Larne Abse Gogarty discuss ugliness, in relation to Beech's feature article 'On Ugliness', and Gregory Sholette’s book about guerilla activist art, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture.

Art Monthly Editor Patricia Bickers discusses with Dean Kenning his report on art students’ recent direct-action campaigns, including occupation, teach-ins and protests. The pair also discuss Mike Watson’s polemic (AM342), which advocates that art schools become independent of the university system.

Zoë Shearman discusses the British Art Show 7: ‘In the Days of the Comet’, while Maria Walsh focuses on Berthold Brecht’s influence on artist filmmakers, who, she argues, should explore fiction and narrative rather than pure reflexivity.

Richard Hylton discusses two films by Ruth McClennan and is joined by Sophia Phoca who asks how might artist filmmakers might go about producing their films today when funding bodies are being forced to close and many support structures have disappeared.

Colin Perry and Klara Kemp-Welch discuss Manifesta 8 in Murcia and ‘Touched’, the Liverpool Biennial.

In this 15-minute Talk Show extra, Matt Hale and Andrew Hunt discuss the likely impact of forthcoming government spending cuts on the arts. Andrew Hunt, who runs Focal Point Gallery in Southend, reports back from a meeting at Tate Modern attended by the heads of over 70 public galleries from across the country to discuss the cuts and the fightback.

John Douglas Millar discusses the ethics and aesthetics of docu-art as practised by artists such as Renzo Martens, Harun Farocki and Aernout Mik, and asks: does art’s subjectivity give it a unique angle on the exploitation of tragedy? Andrew Hunt, meanwhile, suggests that optimism and humour are intelligent alternatives to the cynicism of postmodern irony.

Andrew Hunt and Jennifer Thatcher discuss new trends and approaches to gallery design, and a new book, Curating and the Educational Turn, which suggests that a shift towards education pervades current curatorial practice.

Coline Milliard and Mark Prince discuss the the literary tendency in contemporary art, and the recent Falmouth Convention where the keynote speech was by Lucy Lippard.

Theorist Dan Smith talks to host Matt Hale about current use of the spiritual in art, and artist and activist John Jordan discusses Liberate Tate’s recent protest against BP sponsorship at Tate’s summer party while critic JJ Charlesworth argues that the activists oversimplified the issue.

Artist Dean Kenning and poet Cherry Smyth join Matt Hale to discuss Kenning’s feature on relational, collaborative artwork in the public realm – in particular projects by David Collins and Emma Hart in Morpeth School, Bethnal Green, London – and Smyth’s review of Rachel Harrison’s exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery.

Gilda Williams and Maria Walsh join Matt Hale to discuss ways in which artists utilise the difference between ruined buildings and the merely derelict, and how Hannah Sawtell’s films analyse entropy in the age of the digital.

Sally O’Reilly and Mark Prince join Matt Hale to discuss the work of John Smith and the idea of artists as curators of the self.

Patricia Bickers and Alex Coles discuss the work of artist Sturtevant, appropritation in both visual art and advertising, and the failure of ‘designart’.