From the Back Catalogue:
‘Back in the USSR’ – Sarah E James on the unwritten story of Eastern Bloc conceptualism
First published in 2006
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[image: Boris Mikhailov, Untitled from ‘At Dusk’, 1996]
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A rough, blue-printed photograph of a run-down Soviet street scene.
“Soviet conceptualism was largely defined by the absorption of photography into art practices but, unlike western Conceptual Art, it sought to deconstruct mass distribution: unique art objects were central to Moscow conceptualism’s critique of the copy.”
‘On Modernism’ – Steven Mansbach argues that Modernism was, at its inception, a unifying language which sought to counter extremism and nationalism
April Art Monthly
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[image: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, ‘Multiple self-portrait in mirrors, Saint Petersburg’, c1915]
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A photograph of the artist, back to camera, standing in military uniform before symmetrically angled mirrors that surround his image with four reflections.
“Ironically, when Modernism was finally free to be uncovered, exhibited and advocated in post-Soviet Russia and throughout so much of its former imperium, it was frequently conjoined with a revived nationalism because each ‘liberated’ state sought to reassert its national distinctiveness.”
‘Only Connect’ – Anne Hardy interviewed by Joanne Laws
Only in the April Art Monthly
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[image: Anne Hardy, ‘Falling and Walking (phhhhhhhhhhh phossshhhhh crrhhhhzzz mn huaooogh)’, 2017]
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A photograph of a sculptural installation that fills a pink-painted gallery with assorted material elements, from lumps of clay and breeze blocks to electric fans and tape curtains.
“Found objects are everywhere, they’re affordable to work with and have intriguing material qualities, but I’m more interested in them as materials or objects that do not have an inherent or recognised value – as things full of potential, to become or to be, very much like ourselves.”
A photograph of visitors at an exhibition where the artworks are revealed through drawings on torn paper that covers the walls.
April art jobs, exhibitions and other artists’ opportunities, plus art listings, podcasts and more in the latest newsletter:
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[image: ‘Radical Collections’, Delaine Le Bas and Clémentine Deliss in conversation, 6.30pm 23 Apr, Whitworth, Manchester]
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TAKING ART APART SINCE 1976
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Art Monthly magazine April issue with a cover featuring typewritten text repeating the word ‘nothing’ in various columns with bullet points between.
Art Monthly, Issue 495, April 2026
• Anne Hardy – interviewed by Joanne Laws
• On Modernism – Steven Mensbach
• On Sculpture – Marjorie Welish
• Fiona Connor – Profile by Kathryn Lloyd
+ news, views, reviews and more…
[cover: Christine Kozlov, ‘Untitled (Nothing IV)’, c1967-69]
‘Still Lifescapes’ – Dave Beech argues that the still life, seemingly relegated to art history, should be re-examined in the light of the wider political, social and cultural contexts of individual artworks
Only in the March Art Monthly
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… it would also extend to the infrastructures, ecologies, histories, systems and structures that reproduce the divisions of labour, modes of exchange and spatial configurations that are presupposed in still lifes.”
[image: Wayne Thiebauld, ‘Delicatessen Counter’, 1963]
A Pop Art painting of a delicatessen counter featuring assorted meats and cheeses.
“A fully realised still lifescape would not only include the makers of the objects represented in still life and the communities which provide their raw materials, those who prepare the dinner or banquet and clean up after it, and the printers and paper makers of the books and manuscripts …
From the Back Catalogue:
‘Space Race’ – Rob La Frenais on the other side of the story
First published in 2015
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[image: Cosmonaut Alexander Polischuk with Arthur Woods’s ‘Cosmic Dancer’ sculpture aboard Mir space station in 1993]
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A photograph of a cosmonaut floating in a space station with an abstract geometric sculpture hovering in front of him.
“The words CCCP (Cyryllic for USSR) on Yuri Gagarin's helmet were painted there at the last minute in case the rural population mistook him for a western spy descending into the remote Russian countryside.”
‘Mars Attacks’ – With Earth increasingly despoiled, Bob Dickinson asks what comes next as NASA and astro-capitalists set their sights on colonising Mars
Only in the March Art Monthly
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[image: Jonas Staal, ‘Empire’s Island’, 2023]
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A macro photo of a miniature tabletop landscape featuring many tiny satellite dishes and radar stations.
“Ailton Krenak has been quoted as actually welcoming the idea of humans colonising planets like Mars because it might enable the Earth to be ‘left to us’, meaning, of course, indigenous peoples.”
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‘Field Work’ – Rehana Zaman interviewed by Adam Benmakhlouf
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[image: Rehana Zaman, ‘Jo Kherray So Khaey’, 2026]
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A film still showing a close up of feet standing embedded in the dry earth of crop rows where small seedlings are springing forth into the bright sunlight.
“I was conscious of the ease with which renderings of the landscape can so easily become bucolic or romanticised – the trope of the simple rural ways of living that obscures the continual displacement and expropriation of land in the interests of capital.”
A photograph of wall-mounted white neon tubes of each letter of the alphabet written in narrow wobbly block caps, only the letters M to Q are visible in the image.
March art jobs, residencies, grants, exhibitions and other artists’ opportunities, plus art listings, podcasts and more in the latest newsletter:
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[image: Fiona Banner, ‘Every Word Unmade’, 2006–07, artist talk, 3pm 21 Mar, The Common Guild, Glasgow]
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Delivered to your door:
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TAKING ART APART SINCE 1976
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Art Monthly magazine March issue with a cover featuring a close-up photograph of film stock featuring piles of strawberries variously ripe or overripe
Art Monthly, Issue 494, March 2026
• Rehana Zaman – interviewed by Adam Benmakhlouf
• Mars Attacks – Bob Dickinson
• Still Lifescapes – Dave Beech
• Arash Nassiri – Profile by Matt Williams
+ news, views, reviews and more…
[cover: Rehana Zaman, ‘Soft Fruit’, 2026]
Leah Clements – Profile by Tom Denman
Only in the February Art Monthly
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[image: Leah Clements, ‘My Mouth Was Vibrating’, 2022]
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A nighttime photograph of the large screens at Piccadilly Circus displaying in huge white block capitals on a black background the text 'my mouth was vibrating'.
“Leah Clements’s commitment to access is pronounced in her use of alt (or alternative) text – the verbal description of images that assists the visually or aurally impaired – in which she is one of contemporary art’s most innovative practitioners.”
From the Back Catalogue: ‘Empire, Extinction and Ecstasy’ – Izabella Scott claims the US is obsessed yet in denial about the concept of empire.
First published in 2020
Read for free now:
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[image: Danh Vo, ‘Untitled’, 2020, White Cube, Bermondsey, London]
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A photograph of a gallery installation featuring a wall piled high with fire logs that are arranged into the design of a US flag but which have been part removed.
“The politics of imagining the US’s downfall has always been inconclusive; even as it is obliterated, these visions continue to place America centre stage. Dreams of the centre falling, after all, confirm where the centre of the world is, investing it with power even as it symbolically collapses.”
‘Art and Contested Memory’ – Bob Dickinson warns of the need to preserve collective memory against attempts by far-right regimes to erase it
Only in the February Art Monthly
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[image: Carlos Leppe, ‘The Singers’, 1980]
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A film still of an opera singer performing in close up against a sky-blue background.
“Performance art had an important role in defying Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship because of its ability to sidestep censorship, and as such it features significantly in the country’s collective memory of the period.”
‘Sick at Art’ – Sophie J Williamson calls for collective, creative resistance to the capitalist-made conditions of exhaustion and slow death
Only in the February Art Monthly
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[image: Finnegan Shannon, ‘Do you want us here or not’, 2018–]
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