Art from Elsewhere: International Contemporary Art from UK Galleries

Art from Elsewhere

International Contemporary Art from UK Galleries

David Elliott

A R T F R O M E L S E W H E R E

A R T

F R O M

E L S E W H E R E

Curated by David Elliott Supported by the Art Fund Hayward Publishing

Foreword: Roger Malbert

Essay: David Elliott – A View from a Window

Artists in the Exhibition

Works Acquired through the Art Fund International Partnerships

Footnote: Stephen Deuchar

Essay: David Elliott

A View from a Window

‘I live on the ninth floor of a big high-rise at 19 Mickiewicz Street.

Our building has 20 floors – it is magnificent! And it is situated in the very centre of Łód . We proudly call this whole high-rise complex “the Manhattan of Łód ”.

‘Since 1978 I’ve been filming the big concrete courtyard under my window. It will be the hero of this film along with its events and my neighbours, whom I like to watch from time to time…’ 1

The words quoted above are those of Józef Robakowski, one of the most influential experimental film/video artists in Europe. They appear in his introduction to View from my Window, 1978–99 (2000), a work recently acquired by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and The New Art Gallery Walsall, and included in Art from Elsewhere because the purchase was supported by the Art Fund’s international contemporary collecting programme.

This work is emblematic of many others that have been purchased under this scheme. It weaves together a number of different stories and, as we begin to take them in, we gradually realise that the inevitably limited outlook of an artist through his window is not so much a view but a prism through which, in this case, 20 years of life, history, politics, economics, Communism, Solidarno

, martial law, the fall of

the Berlin Wall, the rise of neo-liberalism and many other world-shattering events have been reflected. Robakowski shot his first frames in 1978; the film reached its natural and necessary conclusion just before the end of the millennium, when the view was obliterated.

The seemingly banal activity of looking out a window can easily gobble up vast tranches of a life. But in Communist Poland, where this story begins, the ostensibly passive actions of watching or viewing could, as the artist makes clear, suggest the malevolent force of surveillance; though not necessarily so. We also learn how periods of relative quietness or reflection provide welcome and productive spaces in which to digest events: those everyday, disastrous, joyful, tragic, comic – or just normal – marks that serve to measure and punctuate life.

and ambiguous nature. This depends not only on aesthetics – how beautiful it is or not – but also on the ethics of what kind of observation is being carried out and by whom. This in turn relates to what is being depicted and whether it is in any sense ‘true’, as well as, of course, the matter of perspective: that of the viewers (both the artist and the observers of the work).

This particular many-stranded tale also records the history of a single, perhaps imaginary, place in Łód that Robakowski describes consecutively as a courtyard (a social space), a parking lot (a ‘business opportunity’ under the period of martial law in the early 1980s) and finally, in the late 1990s, a construction site which was to lead to the eventual replacement of the view by a high wall. Although his narrative is inflected with ironical hindsight, his images are innocent of premeditation. Robakowski’s tone of voice emerges out of his editing and his commentary, which combine to establish a tension between what seems to be true and an external world governed by a flux of absurd, impersonal and constantly changing rules.

Józef Robakowski, View from my Window, 1978–99 (2000)

The difficulty in interpreting any view, however, lies in its multiple

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the city in which Robakowski lives and works had been little more than a village, yet over the next hundred years, aided by Prussian influence and a newly settled Jewish population, it rapidly became ‘the Manchester of Poland’ and the country’s third largest city. Like its namesake, it was a successful and prosperous centre for the production and trade of textiles.

Ravaged during World War II and, like Manchester, a victim of the general industrial decline that followed, Łód had to reinvent itself.

Incidents reported in the early part of Robakowski’s film make it clear that he was situated on the far side of the Iron Curtain. In spite of this, these two cities, like many others East and West, shared a common fate. By the 1970s, impersonal high-rise social housing had created similar ‘Manhattans’ all over the world, while the vast halls of industry lay empty. By the end of the 1990s, urban regeneration was no longer a matter of building for public good, however second-rate its product, but of finding returns for foreign investors.

Rounding off the sceptical, laconic humour that characterises his film, Robakowski finally observed the creation of a new Poland out of the ashes of the Soviet Empire, but with little triumphalism and even a sense of foreboding: ‘The courtyard has lost its meaning… Time passes slowly…

‘1st May. Something has changed. They used to march from right to left and now they are going from left to right. But this does not really mean anything. Six years have passed. It is the 1990s now and we live in the free Poland we always longed for but our parking lot is not doing too well. The traffic on the street certainly got heavier and the street is no longer named after our national bard – it’s Marshal Józef Piłsudski’s street instead. Times have changed.’ 2

Three Art Museums – And One Small Epiphany In spite of their common vicissitudes, Manchester and Łód have developed, and both maintain, a strong civic sense, constructing impressive but very different public art museums as part of this.

The first building of the Manchester Art Gallery opened in 1824 and has been extended many times to house a historic international collection of fine and applied arts in which works by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood are particularly strong. Łód ’s Muzeum Sztuki did not open until 1931 but is one of the world’s oldest museums of modern art, focusing on the European avant-garde (including some young British artists) from the 1920s to the present.3 Today it occupies a number of buildings, including a former textile mill, and is one of the main attractions in the city.

In many industrial and post-industrial cities, the art museum, often as part of a larger complex, has become not only an expression of history, identity and purpose but also a place of discovery, excitement and self-revelation. As a repository itself of many stories, histories, ideals, dreams and nightmares rooted in the past, the museum has no choice but to stand in the present and, perhaps, should the wind blow fair, look tentatively towards the future.

At this point, the story of how and why I am writing this essay becomes relevant: I was born in Manchester but left there when I was six, although, perhaps perversely, I still regard myself as Mancunian.

My first move was to the Midlands where one of my earliest positive memories is that after pain-filled visits to the dentist, the Leicester City Museum and Art Gallery a few metres away was a kind of consolation prize. Old-fashioned, in that it combined many different disciplines within a single complex, it was for me a wonderland of different impressions. I was later to learn that, under the stewardship of Trevor Walden (1916–79), it housed one of the country’s most active museum services.

I had first started to notice art when I was a teenager. There was none at home but friends of my father, émigrés from Germany and Czechoslovakia, had pictures on their walls. And then there was

Artists in the Exhibition

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (b. 1957, Beijing) is the most famous artist to emerge from China in the past two decades. A keen activist, he regularly voices his criticism of the Chinese government using social media and art to express political and cultural concerns. In 1981, after a government crackdown on freedom of expression, Ai moved to New York for 12 years where he was exposed to artists such as Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, whom he credits as major influences.

Since returning to China, his run-ins with the police have been welldocumented and he is banned from leaving the country.

Ai’s early sculptures, such as Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) and Crossing Tables (1997), subvert Chinese material culture by smashing, defacing or dismantling ‘dynastic’ furniture. More recent large-scale minimalist installations frequently tackle natural and man-made catastrophes, tacitly criticising the government’s responses. Subjects include the 2008 Sichuan earthquake (Names of the Student Earthquake Victims, 2008–11 and Straight, 2008–12), and the 2008 baby-milk scandal (Baby Formula, 2013).

A Ton of Tea (2007) brings together an array of the artist’s concerns, by referencing the globalised nature of Chinese trade in a block of dried tea (this being the traditional means of preserving and transporting tea in China). This popular export product invokes colonialism and trade with Britain and the rest of the world and the myriad conflicts and geopolitical changes that this everyday product has precipitated. Ai compressed the commonplace Pu-erh blend of tea from Yunnan Province into an exact ton, a colonial unit of measurement only adopted by China in the 1970s, an early stage in its bid to establish itself as a major free-market economy. Beyond these inherent references, the final post-minimalist piece is also more simply experienced on a physical level, with the viewer struck by both the material bulk of the sculpture and its aromatic smell.

This goal of overwhelming viewers with the sheer physicality of a work is a recurring theme in Ai’s practice, and in turn alludes to the mass labour production for which China has become known. CP

Shirin Aliabadi

Shirin Aliabadi (b. 1973, Tehran, Iran) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice investigates the role of women in Islamic societies.

Her photographs and paintings challenge our assumptions about contemporary women’s lives in Iran, questioning both traditional Islamic views of women as well as those in the West.

Aliabadi garnered much attention for her 2007 ‘Miss Hybrid’ and ‘City Girls’ series, a sequence of portraits of young Iranian women wearing hijab, but with bleached hair, coloured contact lenses and strips of surgical tape on their noses. On one level, these IranianWestern hybrids make a political statement about the limits of female expression in Iran: although the women are veiled, the looks are likely to be judged as immodest by the conservative elite. On the other hand, the tropes of Western femininity raise questions about women’s identity in the West – is the drive to change one’s physical features to fit American or European social ideals any less repressive than the prescription to wear the Iranian chador or roopoosh?

Girls in Car 1–4 from the series ‘Freedom is Boring, Censorship is Fun’ (2005) provokes similarly complex reactions. The subject of the images is as banal as the title suggests: groups of girls in cars, perhaps dressed up for a party, snapped in traffic from another vehicle. The images highlight a complex understanding of Censorship is Fun’ series (2005) (and overleaf)

Girls in Car 1–4, from the ‘Freedom is Boring,

femininity and a desire for a multicultural identity in a traditional Islamic society. These girls embrace freedom and censorship in such a way that feminism, as we know it in the West, is turned on its head. In the artist’s words, ‘We in Tehran are all exposed to the same trends and tendencies, via magazines, TV, et cetera [as Western societies]. So the source of inspiration is the same as anywhere, but each culture will create its own aesthetic based on their surrounding and proximities... Feminism in the Western sense of the word is boring compared to what girls are doing in Iran or in the Middle East. Putting heavy makeup on and bleaching your hair can be a sign of rebellion.’ BF

Yto Barrada

Yto Barrada (b. 1971, Paris) documents the struggles and dreams of the people who live in her hometown, Tangier, on the northern Moroccan coast. From this vantage point, on the edge of the narrow channel dividing Europe and Africa, Barrada articulates, through photographs, videos, installations and interventions, the ways in which the Straits of Gibraltar shape the lives of people on the Moroccan side.

Barrada came to international attention with ‘The Strait Project’ (1999–2003), a photographic series that explores these themes, in particular the dreams of migration shared by many people living in the city. Since 1995, many European countries, including Spain, have required that Moroccans wishing to cross into Europe present special entry visas, which are almost impossible to obtain. The closing of Europe’s borders coincided with the arrival of satellite television, beaming European popular culture into Moroccan living rooms, swiftly turning the continent into an unreachable paradise, albeit a tantalisingly close one. In her words, works like ‘The Strait Project’ serve ‘to name the disease and point at the symptoms’.

Beyond her own practice, Barrada also works to promote film culture more generally in Morocco, and in 2006 co-founded the Cinémathèque de Tanger.

From the ‘Sleepers’ series (2006) (and overleaf)

The theme of transformation is a consistent thread through much of Barrada’s works – the condition of waiting to move on, to become something or someone else, to gain a different status. In ‘Sleepers’ (2006), Barrada’s near life-size photographs show sleeping figures in a public park in Tangier. Stretched out over the grass, faces hidden by coats or hoods, the sleepers await their perilous passage across the strait to Europe. These politically charged images are reminiscent of the pictures that came out of Abu Ghraib Prison during the Second Gulf War in which prisoners were tortured and abused by US soldiers.

But the subjects here are merely sleeping. The images invite us to contemplate the story of the person asleep in the grass and the journey that lies ahead of them. HS

Mohamed Bourouissa

Mohamed Bourouissa (b. 1978, Blida, Algeria) is an artist whose practice explores social tensions within contemporary society through photography, installation and film. After moving to France from his native Algeria, he grew up in ‘les banlieues’, the suburbs of Paris that have become a byword for the ghettoisation of migrant communities. This experience shaped Bourouissa’s approach to image making, which is primarily concerned with representations of the contemporary urban environment and, in particular, geographic and social spaces prone to negative stereotyping.

‘Périphérique’ (2005–08), Bourouissa’s best known photographic series, directly addresses many of these preoccupations. Utilising a documentary photography aesthetic, Bourouissa defies the notion of a ‘decisive moment’ by carefully constructing scenes that use the residents and high-rises of the banlieues respectively as his protagonists and set pieces. While the works of French romantic painters, such as Delacroix and Géricault, influence these staged compositions, they retain what the artist describes as ‘emotional geometry’ through the natural interaction of his subjects to reveal moments of heightened tension. This interplay of truth and fiction acts as a provocation, creating a sense of apprehension and threat.

The title of the series refers both to the ring road encircling Paris and to those who are marginalised, physically and socially.

L’impasse, La morsure, Le reflet and La rencontre are all taken from the ‘Périphérique’ series. These four images are indicative of the themes and influences present in the broader series: the cropped head of a man on a burnt-out car suggesting action beyond the frame in L’impasse (The Dead End) (2007); the title and subject, in this case a dog, portraying the threat of physical violence in La morsure (The Bite) (2007); the cinematic arrangement of discarded television sets, perhaps in acknowledgement of the influence of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, in Le reflet (The Reflection) (2008); the ambiguous threat of groups of young men, addressing society’s assumptions about working-class and migrant urban youth in La rencontre (The Meeting) (2005). Collected together, Bourouissa’s images serve to highlight the disparity between the city’s outskirts and the centre and explore issues of exclusion, isolation, immigration and class. GF

from the ‘Périphérique’ series (2005–08)

L'impasse (The Dead End) (2007)

Emily Jacir

Emily Jacir (b. 1970, Bethlehem) is arguably the best-known artist to emerge from the Palestinian territories. Although she was raised in Saudi Arabia and attended secondary school in Italy, she draws heavily on political and cultural concerns related to her homeland.

Often using language as a key element, her works force the audience to focus on the small, everyday tragedies of life in modern-day Palestine. One of her most famous pieces, entitled Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages that Were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied

by Israel in 1948 (2001), consists of a refugee tent with the names of destroyed villages sewn onto it. Jacir invited Palestinians and Israelis from all over New York to come to her studio and help sew the names into the tent, with many volunteers having been personally affected by the occupation. In Where We Come From (2002–03) Jacir asked Palestinians from around the world the question, ‘If I could do something for you, anywhere in Palestine, what would it be?’

The installation features documentation of her trying to fulfil the resulting wishes. Some requests were straightforward – ‘Go to Bayt Lahia and bring me a photo of my family, especially of my brother’s

Crossing Surda (a record of going to work and from work) (2002)

kids’ – while others shed light on the difficulty of free movement for Palestinians – ‘Go to my mother’s grave in Jerusalem on her birthday and place flowers and pray.’

Crossing Surda (2002) deals with the hardship of having to go to and from work each day across the borders of Palestine and Israel, specifically along the Ramallah-Birzeit road, which linked her then home with the university at which she was teaching. One day, while filming her feet at the border, her camera was destroyed by the border guards and she was held at gunpoint for three hours. ‘If I had not had this direct threatening experience,’ she commented, ‘this piece would not exist.’ In response, she cut a hole in her handbag and surreptitiously recorded eight days of her commute.

The resulting film chronicles her encounters with the border police, military tanks, tear gas, live ammunition and sound bombs aimed at those trying to cross. CP

Jitish Kallat

Jitish Kallat (b. 1974, Mumbai) creates vivid poster-like paintings and collages that explore individual and collective experiences in Mumbai, where he lives and works. Deriving much of his visual language from his immediate urban environment, and utilising the styles and compositions of billboards, advertising and propaganda posters, his works have a strikingly direct quality, accentuated by their economical use of hard-edged lines and their large scale. Kallat’s acrylics draw attention to the downtrodden inhabitants of Mumbai, the challenges of a globalised economy, transportation crises, city planning and the tensions and inequalities fuelled by industrial progress in the Indian subcontinent. Concerned with the perpetually overlapping realities of urban existence, his works brim with visual forms that, on closer inspection, reveal multiple meanings.

Rendered in landscape format, and over five metres wide, Sweatopia (The Cry of the Gland II), 2010, depicts nine male figures variously engaging with, looking away from or beyond the viewer. Their faces and clothing are rendered in washes of colour, while the starker, blackand-white treatment of their hair is reminiscent of the bold, glossy manes of comic-book characters. When examined in detail, however, it becomes clear that the hair of each figure is in fact composed of a dense massing of urban fragments – human figures, road maps, auto parts and piled-up motor vehicles. Scattered around these men are hovering, abstracted representations of human body parts – distorted rib-cages of muscle and bone – and spilling from these carcasses are dark, oil-like substances that emerge as silhouettes of the Mumbai skyline. These figures and streaming landscapes unite to depict the city as a tormented living entity, indifferent to the distinction between the human and the mechanical, and between individual, collective and capitalist endeavour. CG

Sweatopia (The Cry of the Gland II) (2010)

Amar Kanwar

Amar Kanwar (b. 1964, New Delhi) is a filmmaker whose works mix elements of documentary and travelogue with a complex and distinctly poetic visual language. His films make connections between private lives and major historical events, influenced by the effects of decolonisation in India and the turmoil of Partition.

Eschewing the direct representation of trauma, Kanwar’s works instead use literature, song and personal reflection to investigate its far-reaching consequences. Many of the artist’s recent films have explored these themes through multiple projections that present layered narratives. In Lightning Testimonies (2007) this is put to poignant effect in the accounts of women from various backgrounds and time periods, creating a polyphonic testimony of six decades of sexual violence. The Torn First Pages (2004–08) examines Burma before the recent partial détente, focusing on the story of a Mandalay bookseller imprisoned for tearing out the first page of all the books in his shop, each of which contained the staterequired slogan of the military regime. This small but potent act of resistance is explored in a 19-channel video installation, connecting stories from Burma, India, Europe and the USA to address issues around democracy, exile, memory and individual resistance.

A Season Outside (1997), an important early work and one of his most celebrated films, begins at dawn along the demarcation line between India and Pakistan. Cropped so the viewer is only partially aware of what is happening, groups of men, some dressed in orange others in blue, step towards each other and seem to clash violently.

As the camera pans out, we realise that the men are just passing goods back and forth at the border. These moments are followed by scenes from the demarcation line, including the theatrical military

A Season Outside (1997)

rituals enacted by Indian and Pakistani soldiers, and images from borders and conflicts around the world. The accompanying narrative, written and spoken by the artist, is a personal reflection on the effects of division and war, forming a moving meditation on the philosophies of violence and non-violence. BF

Works Acquired through the Art Fund International Scheme

Birmingham Museums Trust and The New Art Gallery Walsall

1 Christiane Baumgartner

4 Lee Bul

Mixed media and two

a Ladywood, 2011. Woodcut

After Bruno Taut (Devotion

photographs

and DVD, each diptych

to Drift), 2013

12 Jochem Hendricks

188 × 268

Crystal, glass and acrylic

Front Windows, 2008–09

b Asphalt I, 2006

beads on stainless-steel

HD video, Running time

Woodcut on Kozo paper,

armature, aluminium and

6 mins 5 secs

110 × 140

copper mesh, PVC, steel

13 Jitish Kallat

c Asphalt II, 2005

and aluminium chains,

Woodcut on Kozo paper,

274.3 × 296.4 × 213.4

Gland II), 2010. Acrylic on

110 × 140

5 Gardar Eide Einarsson

canvas, 213 × 518

Sweatopia (The Cry of the

Untitled Landscape (Tear

14 Naiza Khan

Untitled, 2012

Gas Canisters),

a Membrane, 2010

Wood and paint,

2012. Inkjet on aluminium,

Silkscreen and graphite

155 × 96.5 × 43.2

125 × 100

on paper, 100 × 70

2 Hanni Bjartalíð

3 Mohamed Bourouissa

6 Zhang Enli

b The City Soaks up Like a

Photographic prints from

Apartment 3, 2008

Sponge, 2011. Ink and

the ‘Peripherique’ series,

Oil on canvas, 300 × 240

watercolour on arches

2005–08

7 Semyon Faibisovich

paper, 36 × 51

a La rencontre

a Sick on the Way?, 2008

c The Structures Do Not

(The Meeting), 2005,

Hold, 2011. Ink and

62.5 × 82.5

b Take the Weight off

watercolour on arches

b Carré rouge

your Feet, 2008. Oil on

paper, 36 × 51

canvas, 195 × 145

d In this Landscape there is

(Red Square), 2005

Oil on canvas, 195 × 145

106 × 160

c Repose, 2009

no Certainty, 2011

c La République

Oil on canvas, 122 × 183

8 Matias Faldbakken

(The Republic), 2006

Oil on canvas, 195 × 150

15 Ola Kolehmainen

146 × 172.5

Untitled (Jerry Can Rod),

Shadow of Church, 2006

d Le poing (The Fist), 2006

2011. Steel Jerry cans,

C-print on diasec,

62.5 × 82.5

metal rod. 49 × 340 × 37

202 × 254

e L'impasse (The Dead

9 Cao Fei

End), 2007, 124.5 × 164.5

Live in RMB City, 2009

a Self portrait with Keys to

f

La morsure (The Bite),

Video, running time

the City, 2005

2007, 124.5 × 164.5

25 mins

Digital print, 21.5 × 28

16 Klara Lidén

g Périphérique (Peripheral),

10 Andreas Gefeller

b Lamppost, 2011

Prints from the SV

h Le couloir (The Corridor),

(Space View) and Blank

c Down, 2011

2007. 94 × 124

series, 2010–12

i

Le toit (The Roof), 2007

Inkjet print on fine art

d Monkey, 2010

paper. Dimensions

2007. 106 × 160

94 × 124

Inkjet print, 61 × 81 Inkjet print, 61 × 46 Inkjet print, 61 × 46

j

Le reflet (The Reflection),

variable

17 Barry McGee

2008, 160 × 95

11 Romuald Hazoumè

Untitled, 2011

All lambda prints on

ARTicle 14, Débrouille-toi,

Mixed media, 308 × 802

toi-même!, 2005

18 Miao Xiaochun

aluminium

Published on the occasion of the Hayward Touring exhibition Art from Elsewhere: International Contemporary Art from UK Galleries

Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Glasgow

24 October 2014 – 1 February 2015

Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

14 February – 31 May 2015

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima)

19 June – 2­ 7 September 2015

Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston

10 October 2015 – 30 November 2016

Towner, Eastbourne

23 January – 3 April 2016

Bristol Museum & Art Gallery and Arnolfini, Bristol

22 April –­ 17 July 2016

Exhibition curated by David Elliott Assistant Curator: Chelsea Pettitt The exhibition tour and catalogue is kindly supported by the Art Fund

Art Publisher: Ben Fergusson Staff Editor: Catherine Gaffney Sales Officer: Alex Glen Press and Marketing Coordinator: Diana Adell Catalogue designed by Daniel Streat at Barnbrook Printed in Antwerp by Albe de Coker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise, without first seeking the written permission of the copyright holders and of the publisher. The publisher has made every effort to contact all copyright holders. If proper acknowledgement has not been made, we ask copyright holders to contact the publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 85332 324 9 This catalogue is not intended to be used for authentication or related purposes. The Southbank Board Limited accepts no liability for any errors or omissions that the catalogue may inadvertently contain.

This exhibition has been made possible by the provision of insurance through the Government Indemnity Scheme. Hayward Gallery would like to thank HM Government for providing Government Indemnity and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.

Texts on the artists written by Ben Fergusson (BF), Gillian Fox (GF), Catherine Gaffney (CG), Chelsea Pettitt (CP) and Hattie Spires (HS) Carl Andre text based on words by James Beighton; Paulo Bruscky text based on words by Alix Collingwood

Published by Hayward Publishing Southbank Centre Belvedere Road London, SE1 8XX, UK www.southbankcentre.co.uk © Southbank Centre 2014 Texts © the authors 2014 (unless otherwise stated) Artworks © the artist 2014 (unless otherwise stated)

Distributed in North America, Central America and South America by D.A.P. / Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 155 Sixth Avenue, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10013 tel +212 627 1999 fax +212 627 9484 www.artbook.com Distributed in the UK and Europe, by Cornerhouse Publications 70 Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5NH tel +44 (0)161 200 1503 fax +44 (0)161 200 1504 www.cornerhouse.org/books

In Art From Elsewhere, curator David Elliott brings together a personal selection of recently acquired international works that have transformed public art collections across the UK. The 70 works featured are drawn from museums and galleries in five regions that were awarded significant grants under the Art Fund International (AFI) scheme to purchase contemporary works by major international artists over a period of five years. In his selection, Elliott discovers shared themes explored by artists all over the world. Their works reflect on the realities examining questions of trade and exchange, urban and international migration, frontiers and failed utopias Including an in-depth essay by David Elliott and commentaries on each of the selected artists, with a fully illustrated list of all the works purchased through the AFI scheme, Art From Elsewhere offers an insightful introduction to the richness of international contemporary art being acquired in Britain today.

Art from Elswehere features works by Ai Weiwei, Shirin Aliabadi, Carl Andre, Stephen Antonakos, Yto Barrada, Yael Bartana, Lothar Baumgarten, Mohamed Bourouissa, Robert Breer, Paulo Bruscky, Nathan Carter, Thomas Demand, Eugenio Dittborn, Omer Fast, Meschac Gaba, Shilpa Gupta, Romuald Hazoum猫, Michael Heizer, Jenny Holzer, Peter Hujar, Emily Jacir, Jitish Kallat, Amar Kanwar, Ola Kolehmainen, Barbara Kruger, Ana Mendieta, Aleksandra Mir, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Imran Qureshi, J贸zef Robakowski, Shahzia Sikander, Robert Smithson, Nancy Spero, Beat Streuli, Kara Walker, Yang Zhenzhong, Yeesookyung, Akram Zaatari and Horacio Zabala.

9781853323249 Hayward Publishing ISBN 978 1 85332 324 9

of global change and the post-colonial experience,

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