Oh So Pretty (The Mott Collection) reviewed by Denni Rusking

"Oh So Pretty: Punk in Print 1976-80" is a compelling 500 page document made up of images from Toby Mott's collection of flyers and zines. The work is messy, raw, bold and often funny. The book made me think about the best aspects of the punk movement. No doubt you'll have seen the classic posters and postcards by Jamie Reid of the queen (with swastikas for eyes and a safety pin through her nose) many times before however few people will seen the covers of Look At The Time, White Stuff or Bored Stiff magazine, flyers for The Damned at the Lancaster Uni or The Jam at The Queens Hall in Leeds. These artworks may have been made quickly by over enthusiastic punks but they seem as important as the music that they were promoting. Below is the cover of Bondage magazine whose editor Shane MacGowen went onto to form The Pogues.

These publications and promotional flyers remain dynamic and immediate. Of course they were never attended to be preserved and cherished but when collected together they remind the reader Punk was more than just spiky haircuts it was about freedom and passion. I like this book as it manages to reflect the inspirational energy of Punk. Maybe what's special about it is the way the editors place sexy photos of Debbie Harry, Adam Ant and Billy Idol in the pop mags next to striking feminist collages by Linder and alongside  the scary propaganda of the National Front. The book really succeeds in giving a warts and all portrait of the late 1970s.

(Phaidon Books ISBN: 9780714872759)
(Review by Denni Rusking 2016)

The Undiscovered Peter Cook by Simone Hoffs

Last night on BBC 4 I watched Victor Lewis-Smith's doc on the late great writer, comedian and only twin: Peter Cook. Having gained the trust of Cook's widow Lin, Lewis-Smith was allowed access to boxes of rare recordings, scripts , notes, drawings that had been rotting away in Cook's old home in Perrin's Walk, Hampstead. Lewis-Smith is like Angus Deyton in that he comes across as a man head over heels in love with Monty Python, The Goodies, Not The Nine O'Clock News and the rest and sadly tries too hard to be like his heroes. But although Lewis-Smith's narration and the unnecessary poor man's Terry Gilliam animations that featured heavily both got on my nerves after a while, this doc was full of treats.

Derek and Clive fans will shoot their load over new unearthed clips of Cook revealing he went to the Job Centre only to discover the only vacancy that suited his abilities was that of a shit eater. ("At a pinch, I'll take it... at least it's regular.")

Admirers of Not Only... But Also will be cock a hoop over the discovery of a fantastic sketch of Cook interviewing guest star Peter Sellers as a boxing champion who becomes an artist. Sellers explains that after being knocked down and seeing blood drip from his nose onto the floor he has an epiphany. ("I've been on the canvas ever since. I see this second exhibition of mine as something of a comeback.")

And lovers of blasphemous jokes will feel their cup runneth over when they hear the 1963 recordings of The Dead Sea Tapes which is 5 hours of Pete and Dudley improvising interviews with characters who once met Jesus.

There are also interviews with Lin Cook who reveals Cook drank too much because he felt despair but that he sometimes managed stints of up to 7 months where he abstained from the sauce. And we see some of the love letters and doodles that Peter left for her to find.("When you smile my heart leaps.") We see video footage of Dudley playing piano at Cook's funeral service. We see Cook listening to Stephen Fry read from Billy Bunter whilst on holiday in Egypt. We see Cook and his neighbour play golf using dustbin lids. And we see many other clips which all do the same thing which is remind us how wonderful Peter Cook was.

Despite Peter's many talents there was one thing he couldn't do and that was sing. The unearthed recordings of Cook paying tribute to Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley are both awful but everything else Lewis-Smith uncovers in the doc is pure gold.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0830jyr/the-undiscovered-peter-cook

(Text by Simone Hoffs, 2016)

Unceded Territories by Stephanie Moran

In the context of indigenous rights struggles in British Columbia, decolonization is not just a metaphor, an abstract theory, or a project of contemporary art: it is a real demand.

The title of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s major solo exhibition refers to the fact that the city of Vancouver (regularly in the top five index of the world’s best places to live) is built on land that has never officially been ceded to the Canadian nation by the First Nations bands that lived there for centuries before ‘settler’ immigrants arrived from Europe and claimed it as theirs, forcing the original habitants onto tiny reservation areas.

Yuxweluptun paints the British Columbian landscape peopled with stylized psychedelic representations of indigenous figures in contrast with the suited or lab-coated ‘white man’ with sinister mask-like faces. He seamlessly synthesises modernist forms and traditional First Nations styles into his own distinctive and individual painting language, depicting a personal mythological and shamanistic vision of the territories that reveals the underlying and usually invisible (to the non-indigenous ‘settlers’, tourists and visitors) political and societal conflict.

Yuxweluptun’s epic contemporary canvases deliver a condemning polemic in tones from the satirical to the raging, and visually articulate the injustices of the dispossession of the original peoples of Canada: the many different nations that were decimated and segregated, disenfranchised from their ancestral lands, still struggle to be recognized as nations in their own right, and to set the terms of negotiations over the territories they now share with the Canadian nation. The paintings of suited corporate figures reveals the ugly face of their greed to extract the land’s resources for profit, acts which doubly dispossess the First Nations peoples; whose business interest complicates any negotiation over land rights while wreaking massive environmental damage.

Other paintings show the religious aspects of First Nations’ peoples, as in Spirit Dancer Dances Around the Fire, a mystical painting of spirits dancing in the sacred ceremonial space of the longhouse. Viewers can walk around a longhouse space in the very early virtual reality piece Inherent Rights, Vision Rights, 1992, that Yuxweluptun created on a residency at the Banff Centre. The cyber-world of the VR piece suits the shamanic world-vision and psychedelic figures of the paintings, and translates them into the more familiar contemporary ground of video games. In a recorded interview from 1992, Yuxweluptun describes VR helmets as ‘the white man’s mask’, as he pityingly explains that this is the first time whites have made a cultural mask, and that they are generally unable to access other dimensions without the aid of technology.

Unceded Territories by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun is on display at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, Vancouver until 16^th October. 

(Text by Stephanie Moran 2016)

The Infinite Mix by Rebecca Hughes

An iconic brutalist office block on The Strand becomes the perfect venue for the Hayward Gallery’s new pop up space. This concrete maze offers up a weird, engaging, moving, and hilarious assortment of installations down each disorienting dark corridor. The Infinite Mix is devoted to experimental video, image and music, blending these elements to achieve total celebration of diversity. The feeling of entering a dystopian, futuristic universe is appeased by the nostalgia yearning of many of the installations, commonly rendering the bygone times hyper-modern, infinitely mixing past and present, concept and vision. This is an emotional and cerebral gallery experience that demands and rewards immersive intraction with all of its components.

A self-confessed Martin Creed fan, I was already delighted to be edging slowly down the first dark corridor towards the pop-punk sounds of the artist bellowing his song, “You Return”. Work No. 1701 lands us at a crossing on a New York intersection as we begin to watch people battle their way in various ways across the busy street. A guy with a prosthetic leg crosses nimbly, absorbed in the delicate dance of forward motion and instability. A woman crosses with the rising and dipping of a palsied gait. A man hops agonsingly over the striped crossing, foot waddled in a vast bandage. Themes of Creed’s sculptures reappear during this poetic video of the everyday - a celebration of motion, endurance and fortitude with an injunction to pause and see the world with fresh eyes.

Staying in New York for the next installation, we are catapulted into Stan Douglas’s Luanda-Kishasa - a painstakingly recreated 1970s recording studio. There are some brilliant musicians in this fictional jazz-funk session, that seems to loop endlessly. The sound mix highlights each player, clad in a costume so meticulous it feels as though entering a sepia-toned time-capsule. The endlessness is simply a construct, each variation carefully edited and remixed by Douglas, the seeming improvisation nothing but a clever trick, the infinite fusion of sound and culture provoking feelings of timelessness and endurance, in a strange parallel with Creed’s overarching theme.

The third room, for me, is worth the visit alone. Ugo Rondinone’s Thanx 4 Nothing, featuring beat poet John Giorno, is humorous, compassionate and engrossing. Four large screens surround us, with tv monitors placed on the floor like stage footlights, providing different views and profiles of Giorno, standing strikingly in the proscenium of Paris’s Palais de Glace theatre. Elegant in black suit, white shirt and black tie, his feet stranegly unclad, he begins an affecting performance of an autobiographical spoken word piece thanking past lovers and friends for good sex and wild times, their intimacies and betrayal, the depression and joys of an underground life. Accompanied by glorious immersive music, Giorno is mesmerising, in equal parts funny and heart-breakingly poignant. Everybody who entered was enraptued by this bare-footed poet until the final puff of his contemplative cigarette.

Perhaps the most incredible use of space was Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s Opera in which we are confronted with Maria Callas flickering in a narrow alcove of the building, behind an almost invisible barrier. A holographic apparition, Callas is played by the artist who lip-synchs to arias from Cherubini’s Medea, Verdi’s La Traviata and Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. The echoes of the cold, concrete space around is threaten to absorb and overwhelm her plaintive howls, heightening the sensations of loneliness and wistful desire. This is a meditation on urban loneliness, a mesmirising yearning for something more, a soul roped off from the rest of the world, destined to play out this melancholy scene in darkess, untouched and unnoticed. If no-one is there to witness your creation, can you call it art?

Down in the basement, 3D glasses are donned to watch Cyprien Gaillard’s Nightlife. This complex video is the perfect example of interconnection. As a sequence of images alone it’s stirring stuff but it requires a few viewings and concentration to unfurl all the layers. Taking us from LA to Nazi-era Berlin, we end up floating above the Olympiastadion amongst an immense firework display, all accompanied by a looped, distorted line from Alton Ellis’s Black Man’s Word: “Aww-wah, I was born a loser,” Ellis wails, over and over.

The imagery all connects: the shattered Rodin sculpture we light on was bombed by the Weathermen, a Left-wing group connected to the Black Power movement; the Berlin stadium was Nazi-built and the spotlit oak tree is the one that Jesse Owens won in 1936 in that stadium. The quaking trees and illuminative fireworks are the images that remain, and that hanting refrain, “I was born a loser” - this is an ambiguous  and meticulously thought-out installation, combining scultpure, music and 3D visuals to incredible, provoking effect.

Kahlil Joseph’s m.A.A.d fills two-screens in a panoramic and intimate film; a chaotically disturbing but hauntingly beautiful portrait of Compton in LA. The pacing and suspense of the film keeps you hooked, swimming in the unnerving sensation of violence about to erupt, the jarring juxtapositions of street life and police brutality with gentle, warm scenes of domestic life, and the unbreakable bonds of friendship. The scenes veer from intensely realistic and shocking to a kind of macabre magic realism, that is stunningly matched with Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics, heightening narrative tension and propelling us towards an abrupt, but not uenxpected, finale.

Bom Bom’s Dream by Jeremy Deller and Cecilia Bengolea shows the fantastical adventures of a kamikaze dancer competing in a Jamaican dance scene. Her hilarious contortions are interspersed with deliberately crude fantasy scene of a chameleon, who eventually swallows her whole.

Cameron Jamie’s Massage the History, a title taken from the Sonic Youth track, documents bizarrely erotic dance routines revolving around furniture. The unexpectedness of this film, the incongruous elements of costume, set and music all align to make a a surreal and hallucinatory experience, where it is as much fun to watch the reactions of other visitors as it is to watch the film itself.

Elizabeth Price’s retro-feeling K is an ominous sci-fi confluence of CGI images of yellow stockings on a production line, flashes of footage of the singer Crystal Gayle, and an unnerving, synthesised voice promoting a fictional troupe of “professional mourners”. these disparate elements combine to create an unsual reflection on collective emotion and mechanisation of the modern world.

Rachel Rose’s Everything and More has all the right elements of a soaring, trippy installation, but somehow fails to move entirely. 1960‘s style psychedelic fractals swarm over a translucent screen that allows a view over London’s South Bank, a wonderfully imaginative use of the building, that should induce feelings of weightlesness to match the narrative, but somehow doesn’t. These galaxies of bubbles, and indeterminate liquids are used in conjuction  with a voiceover of US astronaut David Wolf’s descriptions of the jarring effects of returning back home from space, and being crushed by the weight of gravity (“I thought I had ruined my life, gravity felt so heavy, the watch like lead on my wrist”) and Aretha Franklin’s soaring vocals.

I entered the gallery as a trepidatious technophobe but emerged totally overwhelmed by the vast scope of vision that had been encountered and left with the certainty that audiovisual work is one of the most consistently creative fields of modern art.

The Infinite Mix is at the The Store at 180 The Strand, WC2 from Friday until December 4. 

Admission free

. www.theinfinitemix.com

(Text by Rebecca Hughes 2016)

Yerma by Rebecca Hughes

I first became aware of Simon Stone when living in Perth, and happily situated next to a beautiful old cinema specializing in Independent and Australian film. Whilst standing in line for a $5 ticket one evening I overheard a conversation about a young Australian director who had adapted Ibsen’s The Wild Duck into a movie. The story, it seemed, had been transposed to a small logging town in Tasmania. Although by no means a traditionalist, there was something about this notion that horrified me. This happens sometimes when a play is too close to your heart. The audacity of it! I fumed to myself. Intrigued by what I was sure was going to be a total massacre of a beloved play, I ensured I saw Stone’s The Daughter immediately. One of my greatest pleasures in life is being surprised and having prejudices and preconceived notions proved wrong. Stone had seduced me. His adaptation was radical and risk-taking, brilliantly reminding modern audiences of the relevance these classic plays still hold for us. In this fast-paced world where everything seems transitory and readily disposable these plays endure, and for good reason. The central messages are, and will continue to be universal, and provide wonderful companionship in times of happiness or of grief.

Stone has performed similar magic on Federico Garcia Lorca’s classic play, Yerma, originally set in rural Spain in 1934, now relocated to modern-day London. Yerma, meaning barren, is a play about the inability to conceive. The longer our heroine tries and the more times she is thwarted in her desire, the more her obsession consumes her and pitches her relentlessly towards a shocking end. Not a vestige of rural Spain remains in this production; this is a contemporary and strikingly relatable story, featuring a simply astonishing performance from Billie Piper. Stone demonstrates again his uncanny ability to highlight the female experience and draw out incredibly raw, visceral and emotionally-charged performances from his heroines. From the moment Piper bounds on to the stage, you are electrified by her flighty, effervescent presence, with a voice as captivating and startling as the intense physicality of her performance. She bounds into view, speaking relentlessly in a fast-paced chatter, almost irritating in her total self-awareness and sardonic humour which establishes our complicated feelings towards the heroine of this tragedy. The knowingness of her pouting and preening is recognisable in this selfie saturated era - highlighting a peculiarly female awareness of watching eyes, and how you appear to others.

The remarkable stage is encased by glass, trapping the actors inside, highlighting the modern themes of voyeurism, reality as entertainment, the spectator as complicit through passivity and awed interest. The glass cage serves many purposes; the constriction primarily heightens the activity and intensity of the characters’ unravelling, and mirrors their ordeal of being trapped by circumstance in an unavoidable fate. It acts in a meta way by mirroring her job as a lifestyle journalist and blogger in which she is also trapped in a screen, grappling with outsiders viewing and commenting on her life. Their enclosure renders us spectators equally vulnerable and exposed, with little mitigation from the relentless march towards tragedy.

Yerma’s husband, movingly performed by Brendan Cowell, enters languid and relaxed, gazing bemusedly as she trips around him like an errant fairy that he is intoxicated by, but cannot quite capture. His later incomprehension and anguished helplessness in the face of his wife’s disintegration is entirely sympathetic. Unavoidably a play about gender, it comments on the abyss that can exist between male and female visions of the world and the way we relate to ourselves and each other. A sense of futility and knowingess is afforded to the spectator from their obvious disjunction; the visible truth to everybody but themselves, that they, as her acid-tongued mother remarks, are simply ‘not compatible’. Nature’s hand cannot be forced, biology has is own way of dictating circumstance. This truth is made starkly clear when we learn that she had been able to conceive previously with her former lover, Victor, but had chosen to abort.

However swiftly she skips between emotional states, Yerma is never satirised or made melodramatic. Once again, this is due largely to the incredible vocal performance of Piper, the sensitive pitching and modulation of her voice depending on current emotional and mental state. In the beginning her speech is frothy, rapid, captivating in happiness but switches dramatically to a pained trickle as disillusionment and depression sets in, words crawl slowly out of her shaking lips as though hauled up from the deepest well of despair. A depiction of depression so frighteningly accurate and relatable that it can’t help but make you wonder how Piper manages to relive such an experience night after night.

In one particularly memorable scene, she sits apathetically slumped in her barren garden that she has been unable to cultivate; a cruel reminder of the emptiness of her womb. In obvious torment she claws frantically at her t-shirt, plucking it disgustedly from her, lamenting the wanton betrayal of her body. She lashes out cruelly at those around her like a tiger in a cage protecting her territory, but her territory is the grief that she cannot share with anyone. In disgust at herself she tries to make herself disgusting to others, alienating herself as her body has alienated her. The deft pacing, and rapid set changes hurtle you towards a violent ending that is simply inevitable.

Billie becomes more furious and terrifying in her frustrated, thwarted womanhood. In one of the final scenes, the muddy fields of glastonbury are transformed to a Boschish scene of sheer hell and surreal violence. The hysteria lurks and then springs with unexpected vehemence and abandon. Stefan Gregory’s brilliant Greek chorus soundscape magnifies the pitch and intensity. Music builds eerily and jarringly between scenes, which are introduced, Brecht-style, with dates and headlines on a screen: “A year later”, “An ex reappeared”.

This play also draws on Artaud’s idea of the Theatre of Cruelty - employing the language of symbols to unleash powerful unconscious responses. Instead of simply following dialogue, we learn the language of cages, trees, barren land, soil, and lightening. As Albert Bemel explains, this theatre of cruelty ensures that:

“Lighting, sound equipment and other technical means would no longer subserve the text; they would partially replace it. The noises, music and colours that generally accompany the lines would in places substitute for them. They would be fortified by a range of human noises- screams, grunts, moans, sighs, yelps...These would extend the range of the actor's art and the receptivity of the spectator. To put it another way, they would enlarge the theatre's vocabulary…They would surrender themselves to a performance, live through it and feel it, rather than merely think about it.”

Stone’s radical interpretation recognises that language occasionally fails in its function to relate painful experience and offer catharsis to those that suffer. This is a play of such power and devastating acuity it can be almost unbearable. The performances are unnerving and uncomfortable yet always electrifying. Relatable to those who have ever watched someone close to them in pain, been in a dysfunctional relationship, felt the heartache of thwarted desires, lost a child or their sanity.

Yerma is on at The Young Vic until the 24th of September

(Text by Rebecca Hughes 2016)

Terence Donovan: Speed of Light by Denni Rusking

Terence Donovan (1936-1996) was born and raised in the East End of  London. In his teens he joined the Bethnal Green Photographer's Club and his first efforts won him some prizes. After completing his National Service Donovan became involved with John French who had revolutionised the British press by giving newspapers the same high quality photos that previously were only seen in the pages of glossy fashion magazines. French was known for his indoor studio work but Donovan was more interested in taking photos outdoors, usually of tough looking James Bond type men wearing immaculate Austin Reed suits. Donovan's hero was Bill Brandt. Brandt's photos have a gritty feel about them, which you can definitely see in Donovan's work.

In 1960 Micheal Heseltine became publisher of Man About Town magazine. Heseltine changed the publication making it more about men's fashion. Around the time David Bailey would become famous for taking photos of glamorous women fir Vogue magazine, Donovan would make a name for himself taking photos of stylish men for Town.

Speed of Light is the first major retrospective of Terence Donovan's work and there is much to enjoy. It's nice to see the membership card from the Bethnal Green Photographer's Club and Donovan's collection of cameras, and his notes and letters. Donovan did well in the Thatcher years. His portraits of the great and the good from this period are quite stunning. It was in the 80s that Donovan made his best known work which is the video of Addicted To Love by Robert Palmer. Donovan filmed 5 models pretending to be Palmer's backing band. The gorgeous models appear to be in a zombie state. Their outfits are almost transparent and their make-up is overdone. They are disturbing, stunning and sexy and Donovan's video is one of the most memorable pop videos of all time.

In the 90s GQ magazine employed Donovan to take photos of dozens of British icons such as Lemmy from Motorhead. The portraits are all here, many of them are great images but I found myself thinking Donovan can't have been too excited about photographing Jarvis Cocker or Damon from Blur. By the mid 90s it's hard to think what was left for Donovan to achieve. He seen it all and bought the t-shirt. His friends and family were shocked when it was discovered Donovan committed suicide.

Donovan's ex studio and home in Bourdon Street is now up for grabs. The asking price is 18 million pounds. Outside his old head quarters there is a bronze statue by Neal French of Donovan photographing Twiggy. There's no doubt that Terence Donovan helped to make the 60s swing. This exhibition is a fitting tribute to a great talent.

The show runs until the 25th September.

 The Photographer's Gallery, (Floors 4 & 5), 16 - 18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW

(Text by Denni Rusking 2016)

Absolute Beginners by Denni Rusking

Julian Temple’s musical drama Absolute Beginners was very loosely based on Colin MacInnes’ novel from the 1950s. The tale concerns a struggling young photographer called Colin and a beautiful and ambitious fashion designer called Crepe Suzette.  Steven Berkoff appears as a fanatic not unlike Sir Oswald Moseley and David Bowie makes an appearance as a slick advertising executive. Colin’s parents are played by Ray Davies and Mandy Rice-Davies. There are also lovely cameos from the brilliant James Fox (as "Henley of Mayfair") plus Alan “Fluff” Freeman and Lionel Blair

  In the film we see Colin and Suzette drift apart, while watching the country drift towards social upheaval. Looking back on his movie several decades later Temple told us: “We were trying to hold up a mirror to 1958 and another to 1985, and bounce ideas between the two... We were very naive and made a lot of mistakes” Over the years some critics have been harsh and called said that Absolute Beginners was an “Absolute Turkey” that killed the British film industry. According to Wikipedia the film cost over 8 million to make and made back less than 2 million which led to the collapse of Goldcrest, (a major British film studio).

The best thing about Absolute Beginners is David Bowie’s title track which reached number 2 in the charts (it was denied getting to number one because of Chain Reaction by Diana Ross). And the second best thing about the film is the song Quiet Life sung by Ray Davies. When Patsy Kensit attempts to pay homage to Bardot in God Created Woman, or when ageing Teddy boys try a West Side Story style fight/dance routine or when Smiley Culture raps over a Miles Davies track it so nearly works but depressingly always just misses the bull’s eye. Mr Temple gets away with it just because the music is so good and the cameos are so good. In 2012 Temple made a brilliant documentary about London ("The Modern Babylon") which would feature very well edited short clips from Absolute Beginners. I guess all the right ingredients to make an absolute masterpiece were always there. This film is a mess but it's an interesting mess.

The new re-release on DVD and blue ray which tie in with the 

film's 30th anniversary feature brand new restoration and a documentary featuring interviews with Julian Temple and some of the cast. 

Text by Denni Rusking (2016)

The Bicycle Thieves by Simone Hoffs

The most famous Italian film directors I can think of are Fellini, Antonioni, and Bertolucci. I feel Vittorio Di Sica, who made my favourite Italian film never really got the attention he deserves so I’m delighted that this month BFI are screening his 1948 masterpiece.  I love the film because of the intelligent way it reflects both the harshness of life and also compassion and decency of everyday people. Cesare Zavattini who wrote the screen play was a Marxist who believed that with Mussolini gone, Italy could now make films that were shot on location and that featured realistic heroes who were trying to get back on their feet after the mess of World War 2. De Sica’s documentation of a downtrodden Rome couldn’t be more sad or beautiful.

A producer called David O Selznick told De Sica he would get the money to fund the making of the film on the condition that the lead character – a loving father who is unable to do his flyposter job when his bike is stolen – was played by Cary Grant. It’s a good thing De Sica rejected the offer. It is unlikely that moments such as Bruno being informed by his Dad that “You live and suffer” would hit home if they came from Grant’s lips rather than Lamberto Maggiorani’s.

Watching the desperate father and son struggle as they search for their lost bike is an experience that will stay with you. You won’t regret buying a ticket to see this classic film on the big screen.

Bicycle Thieve is on at the BFI Southbank, NFT3 until the 28^th of August.

Text by Simone Hoffs (2016)

Josephine Pryde by Astrid Horkheimer

Through photography and installation Josephine Pryde (born in Alnwick, 1967), explores the very nature of image making and display. She is fascinated by the relationship between art and photography, of art as commodity and of the seductive qualities of the wider art world. Her work often calls into question the conventions of the gallery and the complex networks of the art world. Josephine Pryde is an artist who never fails to surprise her audience. Her works embrace moments of beauty – the shimmering surfaces of fabric, portraits of staged personas, or frozen images of splashing liquids. On first glance, the conventions of commercial and artistic photography seem to apply to these images, but on closer viewing, there are cues that subtly question the very visual language that she uses and references. This time last year she had a solo show in San Francisco entitled "Lapses in Thinking By The Person I Am." The exhibition featured a fully functional model model freight train which visitors could ride through the gallery. Josephine Pryde is the artist I want to see win this year's Turner Prize. 

Text by Astrid Horkheimer ( 2016)