Month: January 2023

Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London
Wildly graphic and often eye-poppingly nasty, the nightmarish creations of the Chicago Imagists echo the tumult of their era

The art of the Chicago Imagists of the 1960s and 70s provokes spluttering questions, and answers in a similar spirit. Incarnated as the Hairy Who, the Nonplussed Some, and various other names reminiscent of niche 60s rock groups before they made it big, the artists who came to be known as the Chicago Imagists (not a bad band name itself, come to think of it, if a bit too arty) were cartoonish and clever and possessed of a wayward graphic elan. Now at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in a Hayward travelling exhibition, this is the first UK show of their work in almost 40 years.

All alumni of, or teachers at, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fervent era of student protest, political assassinations and the Vietnam war, the Chicago Imagists were very much of their time and place. But little of t..

Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London
Wildly graphic and often eye-poppingly nasty, the nightmarish creations of the Chicago Imagists echo the tumult of their era

The art of the Chicago Imagists of the 1960s and 70s provokes spluttering questions, and answers in a similar spirit. Incarnated as the Hairy Who, the Nonplussed Some, and various other names reminiscent of niche 60s rock groups before they made it big, the artists who came to be known as the Chicago Imagists (not a bad band name itself, come to think of it, if a bit too arty) were cartoonish and clever and possessed of a wayward graphic elan. Now at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in a Hayward travelling exhibition, this is the first UK show of their work in almost 40 years.

All alumni of, or teachers at, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fervent era of student protest, political assassinations and the Vietnam war, the Chicago Imagists were very much of their time and place. But little of t..

There’s a seedy romance to a rundown motel, and photographer Kate Berry has made it her mission to capture regional Australia’s finest

Picture the road trip: a Kingswood wagon or maybe a Fairmont. Olivia Newton John in the tape deck. Mum and Dad smoking in the front. The marginally cranked-open window only serving to corral the smoke into the back seat. When you pull up at a small-town motel, the race to run in and jump from one single bed to another is sweet relief from the past five hours of travel sickness.

Thirty-plus years later, you’re in the grip of a very different kind of sickness – nostalgia. In the 19th century, it was considered to be a malady so serious it might get you committed. But it’s the lifeblood of Kate Berry, the Melbourne-based founder of OK Motels: an Instagram account – and, more recently, a gig series – celebrating and documenting the unique world of regional Australian motels.

Continue reading…Original Article

The Guardian

There’s a seedy romance to a rundown motel, and photographer Kate Berry has made it her mission to capture regional Australia’s finest

Picture the road trip: a Kingswood wagon or maybe a Fairmont. Olivia Newton John in the tape deck. Mum and Dad smoking in the front. The marginally cranked-open window only serving to corral the smoke into the back seat. When you pull up at a small-town motel, the race to run in and jump from one single bed to another is sweet relief from the past five hours of travel sickness.

Thirty-plus years later, you’re in the grip of a very different kind of sickness – nostalgia. In the 19th century, it was considered to be a malady so serious it might get you committed. But it’s the lifeblood of Kate Berry, the Melbourne-based founder of OK Motels: an Instagram account – and, more recently, a gig series – celebrating and documenting the unique world of regional Australian motels.

Continue reading…Original Article

The Guardian

Artist Nan Goldin welcomes move, which comes after firm’s alleged role in US opioid crisis

The National Portrait Gallery has become the first major art institution to give up a grant from the controversial Sackler family, in a move that campaigners said was a landmark victory in the battle over the ethics of arts funding.

In a decision hailed as “a powerful acknowledgment” that some sources of income could not be justified, a spokesperson for the gallery said it had “jointly agreed” that it would “not proceed at this time” with a £1m donation from the family, whose US pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma LP makes the highly-addictive opioid prescription painkiller OxyContin.

Continue reading…Original Article

The Guardian

Artist Nan Goldin welcomes move, which comes after firm’s alleged role in US opioid crisis

The National Portrait Gallery has become the first major art institution to give up a grant from the controversial Sackler family, in a move that campaigners said was a landmark victory in the battle over the ethics of arts funding.

In a decision hailed as “a powerful acknowledgment” that some sources of income could not be justified, a spokesperson for the gallery said it had “jointly agreed” that it would “not proceed at this time” with a £1m donation from the family, whose US pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma LP makes the highly-addictive opioid prescription painkiller OxyContin.

Continue reading…Original Article

The Guardian

Photographer Soraya Zaman traveled to 21 states to capture the trans experience in America with interviews and images

Photographer Soraya Zaman has spent the past three years traveling across 21 states in America, to photograph and interview transgender individuals in the cities where they currently live. The result is a book, American Boys, published by Daylight, which will be out on 2 April in the US and on 19 April in the UK. The book captures the trans experience, in the words of trans people.

Continue reading…Original Article

The Guardian

As he powers into his 80s, the photographer recalls shooting everyone from Kate Moss to Andy Warhol, shares his regrets over voting leave – and reveals how Gordon Brown pulled a fast one on him

‘You look knackered,” says David Bailey, greeting me at his studio. It’s up a small mews and sprawls so casually across two floors that it still feels like the 60s inside. “Look at you,” he says. “Your buttons aren’t even done up right.” I look down at my jacket: that bit is true. But I tell him: “I’m not tired!”

“I was watching you walking along the street,” he says. “I thought, ‘That must be the journalist, she looks knackered.’” The combination of acuity (he must be right: he is, after all, the one who makes a living with his eyes) and demonic overfamiliarity (by this point, we are holding hands; I have no idea who started it) is disarming. If this is his shtick, it’s working on me, totally and overwhelmingly. Or maybe he has a tailored shtick for everyone he meets.

Continue reading…Origi..