The Art Collective Superflex Wants to Change the World and Thinks You Can Too →

Superflex | The New York Times

Superflex’s Superbrick Factory is a work space in which “Superbricks” are produced and used to construct sculptures in the space. Superbricks are pink, curved bricks made from unfired clay that are constructed to avoid the right angles and straight lines of human architecture. Credit": Mathias Lassen/Courtesy of Museum Jorn

by Laura Rysman

If humans have any chance of saving themselves and life as we know it, we need to see the world in a whole new way — from the point of view of other species.

It’s a theory championed by the Copenhagen art collective Superflex, which builds on the philosophy that art and artists can and should play a role in the future of the world. […] That kind of thinking has placed Superflex among the innovative artists addressing the world’s ills today. Key to their philosophy and others like them is the belief that people should consider the impact on other species and work not only with fellow artists, architects and other experts, but also with communities to address those ills.

“We believe that today art is, and should be, at the forefront of making infrastructure at every possible level,” said Bjornstjerne Christiansen, one of the founders of Superflex, speaking on a panel titled “Worlds Imagined: Biodiversity and Tech” at the Art for Tomorrow conference in Milan last week. “It’s in the actual landscape-making where art has a crucial role to play.”

Read more here.

Ann Veronica Janssens in 'Colour: Seeing Beyond Pigment' at Z33, Hassel, Belgium →

Ann Veronica Janssens
May 16 - August 24, 2025 | Z33, Hassel, Belgium

Ann Veronica Janssens, 09.04.23, 2023 & 04.10.23 #2, 2023. Photo © Kobe Vanderzande

Pigments are everywhere. From paints to cosmetics and clothes, from everyday objects to your food and drinks, they literally add colour to life. Unfortunately, the pigment and dye industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world. In the search for natural alternatives, Laboratorium – the biolab for art, design and biotechnology at KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent – went a long way. Here, melanin proved to be a fascinating track. In Z33, researchers, designers and artists present their results for the first time.

In the exhibition, Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens contributed Future Forms of Beauty, where she manipulates transparent ribbed glass with a thin layer of synthetic melanin.

Curated by Annelies Thoelen, Colour: Seeing Beyond Pigment is presented in collaboration with: KASK & Conservatory (HOGENT – Howest), VUB (Sustainable Engeneering Materials Research Group) and UGent (Evolution and Optics of Nanostructures).

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Ann Veronica Janssens in Experiences of the World at Museum of Contemporary Art and Architecture Centre, Lisboa →

Ann Veronica Janssens
May 15 - October 26, 2025 | Museum of Contemporary Art and Architecture Centre, Lisboa

Ann Veronica Janssens, Blue, Red & Yellow — scalemodel 1, 2001. Coleção de Arte Contemporânea do Estado/Coleção Ellipse, em depósito no MAC/CCB. Vista de exposição © António Jorge Silva

Experience involves perception, imagination, and memory; it implies desire and relates to action, practice, and thought. It is always both individual and collective, internal and external. Each person experiences the world differently, in a state of continuous transformation. The world moves—and with it, everything that inhabits it.

A museum is also a place of experience, shaped by its architectural form, the objects it presents, and the relationships it establishes with those who inhabit and visit it. Experiences of the World brings together a selection of singular poetic “microcosms” in constant motion and transformation, challenging our senses to open in multiple directions. From restlessness to wonder, with moments of irony in between, the invited artists critically engage our imaginative capacity, putting our certainties to the test.

Here, objects are displaced from their everyday meanings, out of scale, in precarious balance, with unexpected connections, or altered in their materiality. Environments shift our perception, testing the limits between physical properties and opposing elements—light and darkness, sound and silence, emptiness and presence. Moving and still images awaken imagination and memory. Literary languages and nonlinear writing take on plastic form in space.

Ann Veronica Janssens, Belén Uriel, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Ernesto Neto, Fernando Brito, Fischli & Weiss, Gabriel Orozco, Horácio Frutuoso, Mattia Denisse, Mauro Cerqueira, Mona Hatoum, and William Kentridge shape this exhibition, which ultimately speaks of art as experience—critical, revelatory, and poetic in its way of thinking about the world.

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Petra Cortright in Electricity for All at Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee →

Petra Cortright
May 15 - August 16, 2025 | Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee

‘Electricity for All’ at the Knoxville Museum of Art features work by contemporary artists exploring the complex relationships between technology, information, and power. Curated by KMA’s assistant curator, Kelsie Conley, the exhibition showcases work by Petra Cortright alongside pieces by Jim Campbell, Petra Cortright, Daniel Canogar, Nathan Hylden, Beryl Korot, Frederick Hammersley, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Amor Muñoz, Iván Navarro, Marilène Oliver, Mimi Ọnụọha, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, Elias Sime, Jered Sprecher & Sam van Strien.

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In Dialogue: Angela Bulloch, Richard Deacon, Janice Kerbel, Pae White and Jim Amberson →

Angela Bulloch and Pae White | STPI Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore

Artists in the exhibition New Releases Old Friends, Angela Bulloch, Richard Deacon, Janice Kerbel, and Pae White, come together for a panel discussion at STPI Creative Workshop & Gallery moderated by Jim Amberson.

New Releases Old Friends spotlights new facets of their respective practices, with fresh works by Bulloch, Kerbel and Rehberger premiering in Singapore alongside earlier works by Deacon and White – all developed in close collaboration with STPI’s Creative Workshop during their residencies with the esteemed Visting Artists Programme (VAP).

Find more information on the exhibition here.

Sylvie Fleury & Angela Bulloch: THE ART OF SURVIVAL / BABY DOLL SALOON →

Angela Bulloch
May 3 - July 26, 2025 | Mehdi Chouakri, Charlottenburg

At the heart of the intuitive and almost experimental collaboration between Sylvie Fleury and Angela Bulloch—now brought together in the exhibition THE ART OF SURVIVAL / BABY DOLL SALOON in Charlottenburg—are a series of firework performances the artists staged in London (1993), Dijon (1994), and Berlin (1999). Rather than bursting into color across the sky, the fireworks in these works seemed to explode within the space itself. Soot marks left behind on white walls bore witness to the pyrotechnic interventions. These attacks on the interior—long symbolically charged as the realm of the domestic and confined— can be read as a casual yet sharp critique of a visual tradition that, for centuries, has placed women within enclosed, private settings: from Vermeer’s The Lacemaker (c. 1670), to the impressionist paintings of Berthe Morisot, to Edgar Degas’ Woman Ironing (1887). along with focused group presentations of painting, sculpture, photography, and ceramics.

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The Decisive Moment with Jonny Niesche, the Australian contemporary artist behind Gucci's 90x90 project on his career-defining epiphany. →

Jonny Niesche | Assouline Culture Lounge

Photo by Dirk Tacke.

by Sofia Quintero

In the occasion where fine art meets high fashion, few brand collaborations strike the perfect balance between heritage and innovation. But not every brand is Gucci. To celebrate its iconic silk scarves, the Italian heritage brand launched "90x90," a special campaign featuring nine international artists tasked with reimagining five archival themes: flora, fauna, nautical, equestrian, and the GG Monogram.

Among these visionaries is Jonny Niesche, an Australian contemporary artist whose vibrant works have captivated the art world at large with his hypnotic blend of romanticism, abstraction, and minimalism. Known for his explorations of light and space perceptions, Niesche brings a distinct angle to the collaboration. "I have loved Gucci since my teens," Niesche says. "The brand has always had an elegance and classic style that really resonates with me." 90x90 marks Niesche’s first partnership with a fashion label. He deliberately waited for the ideal opportunity, and Gucci was the perfect fit.

Read more here.

Fiona Banner in Glasstress 2025 at the Boca Raton Museum of Art →

Fiona Banner
April 24 – October 12, 2025 | Boca Raton Museum of Art

Fiona Banner
Work 2, 2013
Glass
340 x 180 x 120 cm

Glasstress Boca Raton 2025 is the third iteration of the popular series of exhibitions at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. Glasstress is a project in Murano, Italy, at the Berengo Studio that brings major international artists, many of whom have never worked in glass, to Venice to collaborate with its glass masters. These experts are challenged to rise to the technical challenges that artists at the forefront of contemporary art present and expand beyond their centuries-old techniques. The project also aims to increase the prestige of glass as fine art and to bring Murano's ancient traditions into the contemporary world. The result is innovative artworks that are dramatic.

Glasstress Boca Raton 2025 includes over twenty works by globally celebrated artists. Irish artist Sean Scully, known for lush abstract paintings, turned to sculpture as an artist-in-residence at the Berengo Studio. His Venice Stack is a monumental tower with handmade glass squares of vibrant colors, measuring nearly eight feet tall. Another colorful installation of multiple glass urns by German artist Thomas Schütte, whose work is the subject of a current retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art, is also included. Other artists included in Glasstress Boca Raton 2025 are Chinese artist Ai Weiwei with a giant chandelier, British artist Fiona Banner with her life-size glass scaffold, and multiple works by the celebrated British artist Tony Cragg.

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Diana Thater and 8 Other Artists Pick Most Influential Environmental Art of the Past Century →

Diana Thater | Cultured Magazine

“This might not be environmental art, but it is an astounding image of the living environment, and it does what 'environmental' art should do and that is to give us an appreciation of the fascinating lives of others. It covers the 'art' part of the equation be being a REALLY GOOD photograph—something, ironically enough, we see very little of these days.

The story is this: A photographer was filming crested black macaques in Indonesia. He left his camera, and a female macaque snapped a series of self-portraits. You can see her thinking about it across the range of images. There are several shots where she tries serious looks—then she finally grins. Presumably, she was looking at her own reflection in the lens as she tried out different attitudes. In some of the photos you can see the camera lens reflected in her eyes. It’s not just a charming image of self-reflection; smiling from ear to ear, this macaque presents herself to the world. My purpose in making art is in representing those who do not represent themselves. But this macaque doesn’t need me. Crested black macaques are critically endangered.”

Read more here.

Angela Bulloch, Jack Goldstein, & Rirkrit Tiravanija in Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound / The Ringier Collection 1995 – 2025, curated by Beatrix Ruf & Wade Guyton →

Rirkrit Tiravanija
April 13 – October 5, 2025 | The Langen Foundation, Neuss

In Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound the Langen Foundation in Neuss presents an extensive selection of works from the Swiss Ringier Collection, marking its first major exhibition in Germany. Curated by Beatrix Ruf and artist Wade Guyton, the exhibition features approximately 500 works, offering an overview of one of the most relevant collections of contemporary art. Spanning works from the late 1960s to the present day, it documents Michael Ringier’s 30 years as a collector and key developments in the art world.

Together, these pieces form a rich and layered portrait of Michael Ringier, a Swiss publisher and media entrepreneur, whose collection of art is deeply intertwined with his personal and professional life, as well as the identity of Ringier, a media company active in 19 countries across Europe and Africa. Since 1997, the company has invited international artists to design its annual reports, granting them complete creative freedom. These collaborations have resulted in creative and intelligent explorations of the role of a media publisher today and its engagement with audiences. Renowned artists including Fischli/Weiss, Maurizio Cattelan, and Sylvie Fleury have contributed to these reports, as has Wade Guyton, whose report featured a one-to-one reproduction of one of his paintings printed in high-resolution detail across hundreds of pages. When compiled, these pages recreate the work in its original dimensions.

The exhibition's subversive title highlights how traditional artistic media continues to inspire new interpretations—both by challenging their conventional boundaries and through intentional artistic ambiguity. Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound re-examines the expectations surrounding what defines a medium and how it shapes our perception. The connection to a global media company like Ringier is evident: from its beginnings in publishing and printing to its evolution into a digitized and diversified corporation, the company has been shaping the relationship between content and medium for over 190 years. Wade Guyton, too, challenges the concept of the medium of painting—whether through his large-format printed works or the strategic use of digital technologies, he questions what a medium can be and how it shapes the art it conveys.

Through these explorations, the exhibition invites viewers to see the collection not merely as a compilation of works but as a dynamic narrative that constantly opens up new perspectives. This approach reflects Michael Ringier’s view of art as a living, integral part of both his entrepreneurial and cultural engagement.

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Review: Jorge Pardo at 1301PE →

Jorge Pardo | ArtForum

by Jan Tumlir

“Art is what it has become,” Theodor Adorno unequivocally declares in Aesthetic Theory (1970). His statement implies that the original meaning of a work can be completely overturned by its contemporary circumstances. A similar point can be made about gallery practice: Operational protocols, once seemingly set in stone, can undergo ground-up rethinking with every slight shift in our systems of informational and economic distribution. Jorge Pardo’s latest outing at 1301PE addressed this process from an ironic distance. But some measure of warmth could also be felt here, directed from the artist to the gallery’s founder, Brian Butler, with whom he has worked closely since the earliest days of his career. 

This show consisted of just one painting, Untitled, 2024, the scale and proportions of which closely matched those of the wall on which it hung, one that faced the entrance to a reconfigured downstairs gallery. Normally, this space opens onto a corridor that connects to the reception desk and office, and, farther on, to a stairway leading up to a second showroom. On this occasion, however, the passage had been sealed. In a period when commercial galleries are increasingly prone to hedging their bets with “mixed nuts,” something-for-everyone assortments of art, this was a rather striking proposition. Even more so was the fact that this work could be read as a kind of tribute to its site. At a distance, the painting appeared resolutely abstract, nonreferential, this impression reinforced by its title (or lack thereof). Observed more closely, it was revealed to be suffused with information. Its surface teems with material gleaned from every poster Butler had produced to accompany the gallery’s exhibitions up to then. Snippets of typography and fragments of imagery are scattered throughout, as if drawn through a shredder and then spread, mulch-like, across the picture plane. As with much of the artist’s work, Pardo layered, condensed, and recomposited the source data with the aid of computer programs run with minimal interference. Nevertheless, the result bore a strikingly organic aspect. From its earthy, autumnal tones to the quasi-gestural application of each daub of color, the painting greeted the eye as a kind of Arcadian landscape akin to those by Édouard Vuillard.

Read more here.

Charline von Heyl in Remix: From Gerhard Richter to Katharina Grosse at The Albertina Museum →

Charline von Heyl
June 29, 2025 - January 4, 2026 | The Albertina Museum, Vienna

Charline von Heyl, Bait Ball, 2017

The Viehof Collection is one of the most important private collections in Germany, whose focus is undoubtedly on the art of its own country, with a special focus on those artists who shaped the Rhineland and its art centers of Cologne and Düsseldorf as a nucleus of the avant-garde of international importance. 24 artist positions were selected for the major spring exhibition in order to present the development of German painting and sculpture after 1960.

The show presents an overview of the depth of this collection: from Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, who stand for the “cheeky”, socially critical art of the 1960s, to that of the 1980s, which was shaped by Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen and Katharina Sieverding, to the field of figurative and abstract art of the 21st century, which is represented by works by Neo Rauch, Daniel Richter, Isa Genzken and Katharina Grosse.

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You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry curated by Su Wu at Dallas Contemporary →

Jorge Méndez Blake
April 11 – October 12, 2025 | Dallas Contemporary

You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry is at once a celebration of the genre and a categorical collapse, offering extended engagement with tapestry while magnifying how its contemporary practitioners are challenging the material, ideological, and narrative conventions of the age-old medium. Across works by thirty artists, the exhibition suggests tapestry as an active inflection point for unresolved inquiries into the human condition, including notions of authenticity, durational effort in the face of technological efficiency, and depictions of vastness and omniscience in physical form. The tapestries here move beyond the rigid ethnographic categorizations that have often guided the presentation of textile in institutional settings, instead reflecting circulations of people, materials, plants, and trade colors, both native and not, and identities that are temporary and contentious, or even unverifiable.

Taking its title from a letter written by Kafka, in which he imagines his father’s presence woven across a map of the world, “You Stretched Diagonally Across It” depends, like the pieces that compel it, on exceeding fixed latitudes and boundaries – between art and craft, perception and tactility, and tradition and improvisation – even to the point of unraveling. A tapestry, as posited by guest curator Su Wu, is an object in which the image and its substrate are co-arising, in a medium that often makes of gesture a devotion. In our screen-mediated contemporary moment, the exhibition offers tapestry as uniquely situated to reconsider material and temporal significance – whether it matters what our myths are made of – and the relationship between surfaces and the structures that comprise them.

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Uta Barth in Blur / Obscure / Distort: Photography and Perception at the Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach →

Uta Barth
April 5 - August 24, 2025 | Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach

Installation view of Blur / Obscure / Distort: Photography and Perception (April 5 – August 24, 2025) at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida. Courtesy of the Norton Museum of Art. Photo: Ashley Kerr.

Blur / Obscure / Distort: Photography and Perception brings together photographs that are linked by the common objective of disrupting the viewer’s sense of time, space, place, or scale. Sometimes considered errors, photographic blur, distortion, and obfuscation have also been important creative and aesthetic strategies adopted by artists since the medium’s 19th-century inception. Highlighting photographs from the Norton’s Collection and a selection of special loans, this exhibition points to the constructed nature of perception and, in turn, photography’s vulnerability to manipulation even when it appears to show what is “real.”

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Uta Barth in Anonymous Was A Woman: The First 25 Years at the Grey Art Museum →

Uta Barth
April 4 - July 19, 2025 | Grey Art Museum, New York University

Installation view of Anonymous Was A Woman: The First 25 Years. Courtesy Grey Art Museum, New York University. Photo: Simon Cherry

This exhibition celebrates Anonymous Was A Woman (AWAW), a grant program for mid-career women artists living and working in the United States. Featuring works by 41 of the 251 artists who received the award in its first quarter century, it provides a timely opportunity to look back at a crucial period of art production by women, and to reflect on the program’s enormous impact.

Since its inception, AWAW has helped reshape the landscape of arts funding, filling a vacuum left after the National Endowment for the Arts terminated its grants to individual artists in 1994. Every year between 1996 and 2020, AWAW awarded unrestricted gifts of $25,000 to ten women artists over the age of 40; in recent years, both the amount of the award and the number of awardees have increased. Initiated and still led by photographer and philanthropist Susan Unterberg, who herself remained anonymous until 2018, the groundbreaking program refers to a phrase in Virginia Woolf’s essay “A Room of One’s Own,” which drew attention to challenges faced by women writers and artists in a patriarchal society. True to its name, AWAW solicits recommendations from over 200 unnamed nominators and selects awardees via anonymous panels. Over the years, the grant, which provides both financial support and professional recognition, has been truly transformational for a number of the recipients.

The artworks on view span an array of media, subject matter, and formal approaches. Equally wide-ranging are the generational, regional, ethnic, and racial backgrounds of the artists represented. Guest curators Nancy Princenthal and Vesela Sretenović sought works created as closely as possible to the year the artists received the award. Rather than choosing a thematic focus, the curators aimed to trace the development of contemporary art practice over the last twenty-five years, addressing issues of identity and community; the position of women artists in society; the shifting value of craft; the expanding possibilities for installation and time-based media; as well as the many uses of anonymity. The opportunities for future interpretations of AWAW’s importance remain, like art itself, infinite.

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Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press: Nude Wing at Mudam Grand Hall, Luxembourg →

Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press
April 4 - August 4, 2025 | Mudam Grand Hall, Luxembourg

Fiona Banner, ‘Nude Wing’, 2011. Collection Mudam Luxembourg. Donation 2023 – Gaby and Wilhelm Schürmann avec le soutien des membres du Cercle des collectionneurs du Mudam Luxembourg. © Photo : Wilhelm Schürmann, Herzogenrath

Nude Wing (2011) is a monumental sculpture by Fiona Banner aka the Vanity Press (1966, Merseyside, UK) featuring a Tornado aircraft wing positioned vertically. As part of a series in which Banner repurposes combat aircraft, the work transforms military units into complex and striking sculptural forms that question a common understanding of aesthetics. Reaching six meters, Nude Wing’s sheer scale and polished surface heighten its totemic presence as it reflects both the viewer and their surroundings.

Engraved into Nude Wing’s polished surface, fragments of text describe a female nude posing in the artist’s studio. It draws parallels between the form of the wing and the human body whilst emulating ‘nose art’ – where cartoonish, often sexualised women are painted onto aircraft fuselages –, a form of folk art, an ongoing practice within the military that emerged during World War I.

Banner's conceptual and multidisciplinary work explores the porous boundary between image and text. For over thirty years, the fetishization of combat, from Hollywood to jingoistic military displays, has been central to her research. The artist draws on childhood memories of Royal Air Force airshows or walks in the Welsh mountains, where the pastoral silence would be shattered by the roar of aircraft. In her work, Banner questions visual cultures tendency to mythologise and aestheticize conflict. She challenges us to decondition our gaze and reconsider these ambivalent objects and the contradictory feelings they evoke, somewhere between fascination and repulsion.

‘That we find [these planes] beautiful brings into question the very notion of beauty, but also our own intellectual and moral position’, says the artist. ‘I am interested in that clash between what we feel and what we think.’

Nude Wing, which became part of the Mudam collection thanks to Gaby and Wilhelm Schürmann, with the support of the members of the Cercle des collectionneurs du Mudam Luxembourg, is presented in dialogue with New Collection Display.

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Angela Bulloch in Raging Planet curated by Connor Hirst at Newport Street Gallery, London →

Angela Bulloch
March 28 – August 31, 2025 | Newport Street Gallery, London

Angela Bulloch, Chain B 3:1:52:4, 2002. Three DMX modules, one black box, waxed birchwood, printed aluminium panel, white glass, diffusion foil, assorted black cables, RGB lighting system, DMX controller; Each: 20.1 x 20.1 x 20.1 in (510 x 510 x 510 mm). Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. © Angela Bulloch.

Curated by Connor Hirst, Raging Planet features works by Angela Bulloch, Roger Hiorns, Oliver Marsden, Hwang Samyong, Bosco Sodi, and Keith Tyson. Spanning three galleries, the show explores different ways artists engage with the natural world through paintings, sculptures, and installations.

Raging Planet highlights the use of texture and materiality across various works. Roger Hiorns showcases sculptures and paintings encrusted with copper sulphate crystals. His work often uses unconventional materials like industrial objects and organic substances. Bosco Sodi’s large-scale paintings incorporate sawdust, pigment, and other natural materials, creating surfaces that resemble weathered landscapes. Keith Tyson’s works, in which paint and chemicals react on acid-primed aluminium panels, highlight the unpredictable forces of nature. Angela Bulloch’s multimedia works, including her ‘pixel boxes’ and interactive sound installations, investigate the relationship between science, technology, and nature.

The exhibition has been arranged in association with HENI, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Raging Planet is presented alongside The Power and the Glory, an exhibition that pairs historical archive photography from the atomic age with a collection of rare scholars’ rocks.

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Pae White in Énormément bizarre at Centre Pompidou, Paris →

Pae White
March 26 - June 30, 2025 | Centre Pompidou, Paris

Jean Chatelus, who passed away in 2021 at the age of 82, was a Lyon-born historian and lecturer at the Sorbonne. Throughout his life, he amassed a unique collection, driven more by an impulse to accumulate than by a traditional collector’s approach. Comprising nearly 400 pieces—sculptures, installations, paintings, photographs, drawings, votive and vernacular objects—the collection explores themes of the body, death, and the fleeting nature of life.

Énormément Bizarre: The Jean Chatelus Collection, donated by the Antoine de Galbert Foundation reflects Chatelus’s evolving tastes: from an early fascination with Surrealism and repurposed objects, to a later focus on body art. It also reveals his keen interest in non-Western ethnographic artifacts, folk traditions, and the works of contemporary art’s outsiders and enfant terribles, including Pae White, Cindy Sherman, Mike Kelley, Christian Boltanski, Yayoi Kusama, Michel Journiac, Daniel Spoerri, Robert Filliou, Nam June Paik, Joana Vasconcelos, Andres Serrano, and Wim Delvoye.

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Fiona Banner AKA The Vanity Press →

Fiona Banner AKA The Vanity Press | Burlington Contemporary

Fiona Banner AKA The Vanity Press in 2024. (© Fiona Banner Studio; courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London; photograph Leroy Boeteng).

interviewed by Millie Walton

Although the links drawn between different types of assault and exploitation – on the body, on the landscape, on language itself – are often unsettling and confronting, there is always a sense of play to what Banner makes, a sending-up or collapsing of ‘grand’ ideas but also of her work. For her Tate commission in 2010, for example, she bought and installed two full-size fighter jets – a Sea Harrier aircraft and a SEPECAT Jaguar aircraft – into the Duveen galleries, creating an environment that was alternately monumental and sad. She later melted the planes down into ingots, which she keeps in her east London studio. Ahead of Banner’s solo exhibition at Frith Street Gallery, London (21st March–3rd May 2025), Millie Walton spoke to the artist about language, time, motherhood and military aircraft.

Read more here.

Artist Rirkrit Tiravanija: "As an artist, I can only make signs."

Rirkrit Tiravanija | Louisiana Channel

“Paying attention now is actually a kind of political act."

Renowned Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija reflects on the role of art in a time of crisis, the importance of questioning authority, and the need for critical engagement with the world around us in repressive times.

For Tiravanija, art serves as a space of doubt and freedom: "Art is always a place where we can have doubt, we're free to think, and we're free to question authority—any kind of authority." He urges viewers to challenge established institutions, including their own assumptions.

“I think now when we're in a place and time where you know there's so much trying to ask for attention, but the attention they're asking for is a kind of is a diversion from reality in a way is a diversion from facts is a diversion from truth,” Tiravanija says.

Tiravanija talks shares his view of the world at the occasion of his most recent work ‘A Million Rabbit Holes (2024), reflecting the events leading up to the US selection in November 2024.

Throughout the discussion, Rirkrit Tiravanija draws on personal observations and global political concerns, highlighting the dangers of uncritical acceptance: "We're coming to a place where the dreams are going to be shattered, there is no more dream."

Tiravanija also reflects on the commodification of art, arguing for a return to its radical roots: "Art has to stop becoming commodified and art has to go out and back into the woods as it was. Or maybe Duchamp, like has said, you know, it's time to go underground."

Despite the challenges ahead, the artist remains hopeful that crisis can be a catalyst for change: "I think we're coming to a big crisis and I I think, and I hope, that crisis is extreme enough to wake people up, to come together, to do things together in opposition to those things that are being set on us."