Ethical Portraits (2021) @Zer0books @tribunemagazine @friezeofficial @thewhitereview @grantamag @theTLS (she/her) | rep @Kat_Aitken
Articles by Hatty Nestor
Tom Hardwick-Allan Lays the Past to Rest
The works in Tom Hardwick-Allan’s current exhibition at South Parade are exact reflections of its title, ‘Low Relief and Foil’: a foil is both the trail that a hunted animal leaves as it passes through its environment and a plot device by which a character is defined by its inverse. The show comprises several new cast-iron reliefs, made by pressing carved wood into petrol-rich sand – a method called imprinting – before pouring melted-down car brake discs into this mould.
Marlene Dumas: Mourning Marsyas
Dumas’s tortured, grief-stricken images will haunt you long after you have left this exhibition Marlene Dumas. The Enemy, 2018-2024. Oil on canvas, diptych, 40 x 30 cm (15 3/4 x 11 3/4 in) each. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London. Photo: Peter Cox. Frith Street Gallery, London 20 September – 16 November 2024 by HATTY NESTOR Historically, portraits have been visual depictions of status and prestige, representations created to mark power and authority.
Naudline Pierre: This Is Not All There Is
Pierre draws us into her own uncanny mythical world underpinned by spirituality in a show that focuses on her works on paper Naudline Pierre: This Is Not All There Is, Installation view, The Drawing Center, New York, 2023. Photo: Daniel Terna. The Drawing Center, New York 2 June – 10 September 2023 by HATTY NESTOR Naudline Pierre’s This Is Not All There Is invites us into a fictional, mythical world of creatures and iconography.
Agata Słowak: Time Is Love
Identity and sexuality are explored in the young Polish artist’s powerful and controversial paintings, in which the female nude is often the central focus Agata Słowak: Time Is Love, installation view, Fortnight Institute, New York, 2023. Photo: Jason Mandella. Courtesy of the artist and Fortnight Institute, New York.
The Kingdom of the Sick
In Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor she distinguishes between the ‘kingdom of the well’ and that of the ‘sick’, this latter space which is ‘the night-side of life’ that all of us are ‘obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of’. These kingdoms of sick and well are places we all at times find ourselves subject to – they are both geographical and metaphorical spaces.
YSI artist spotlight: Claye Bowler and Nwando Ebizie — Corridor8
10.11.2021 — Interview by Hatty Nestor Sculpture is often defined as three-dimensional objects and structures, but it can also reference sound and non-material artwork, and the multitudinous ways that art can transform and reimagine. It is in this spirit that Yorkshire Sculpture International (YSI) brings together diverse narratives around gender, lived experience and meaning making.
Silvana Trevale’s ethereal images frame the hopes of Venezuela’s youth
1854 Commissions, Studio 1854, Uncategorised 3 hours ago by Hatty Nestor View Gallery 11 Photos 1 of 11 Silvana Trevale’s ethereal images frame the hopes of Venezuela’s youth © Silvana Trevale . Source: 2 of 11 Silvana Trevale’s ethereal images frame the hopes of Venezuela’s youth © Silvana Trevale . Source: 3 of 11 Silvana Trevale’s ethereal images frame the hopes of Venezuela’s youth © Silvana Trevale .
Revisiting Martin Parr’s Seminal Benidorm Photographs
Benidorm, 1997© Martin Parr/Magnum Photos Hatty Nestor looks back at the British photographer’s 1997 series and its relationship to the representation of working-class people July 06, 2021 The depiction of class in visual culture has always been a point of contention and complexity. One example of this is Benidorm, a once small fishing village on the east coast of Spain which, over the last half a century, has become the home of the tacky ‘Brits abroad’ trope.
Art and the Law: What Images from the Criminal Justice System Can Teach Us
Alicia Neal, Final Painting of Chelsea Manning, 2014. Courtesy of the artist On the eve of Chelsea Manning’s release in March 2020, I returned to an essay I had written about a portrait that her support network had commissioned in 2014 while she was in solitary confinement. The artist, Alicia Neal, wanted to offer news outlets an alternate image to Manning’s military portrait while in solitary confinement at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.
Art and the 'Real'
Realism Materialism Art is an anthology of essays published by the Centre of Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York, in conjunction with Sternberg Press. To uncover the relationship between realism and materialism within the sphere of art, the editors have selected a rich combination of exhibitions, talks and theorists through which to discuss current questions in critical theory.
All Bar None
Collaborative duo Rosie Hastings and Hannah Quinlan have spent the past nine months constructing a filmed archive of gay bars across the UK. Currently showing as part of the exhibition ‘Utopian Voices Here & Now’ at Somerset House, UK Gaybar Directory (2016) is an archive of these spaces, raising important questions concerning the LGBTQ community, both past and present. Hatty Nestor The UK Gaybar Directory is a project where you collaboratively filmed 170 gay bars across the UK.
Radical Love
In an excerpt from her newly published book – Ethical Portraits – Hatty Nestor talks to Heather Dewey-Hagborg about her artwork that stands in resistance to surveillance and gender binaries Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Radical Love, 2016; Genetic materials, custom software, 3D prints, documentation; each portrait 8 x 6 x 6 inches.
Ethical Portraits - In Search of Representational Justice by Hatty Nestor
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Catching up with... Lucy Williams
Series: Graduates of the RA Schools By Hatty Nestor Published 15 May 2015 As she launches her new book, Lucy Williams discusses her time at the RA Schools and tells us how her block colour, architectural collages bring a fresh perspective to urban landscapes. Lucy Williams graduated from RA Schools in 2003 and has continued to redefine the concept of collage through her intricate mixed-media paper cuts.
Kiki Smith’s Dirt
The dirty woman is a hardwired gendered subject. Someone once told me they felt like a dirty woman after they slept with fifteen people in a week. Everyone is a woman's dirt. But I’m having trouble with categories. This is an essay about many people's lives and dirt. In Andrea Chu Long’s Females, she writes: Everybody knows that men have much more respect for women who’re good at lapping up shit.
Milton Avery: The Late Portraits
Focusing on works done in the final four years of Avery’s career, these portraits depict the people and motifs closest to him Victoria Miro Venice 20 July – 8 September 2019 by HATTY NESTOR Milton Avery evokes “complex states of self-consciousness through matt surfaces that yield intense colour saturation”, the art critic Siobhan McDevitt wrote, in a review of the artist’s work in 2002.
Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings: ‘Our work poses questions that bridge the gap between the past, present and future of queer culture in the UK’
The collaborative duo talk about their film UK Gay Bar Directory, which is showing at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool as part of its exhibition Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity by HATTY NESTOR Artistic duo Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings assembled footage of more than 100 gay bars across the UK for their 2016 video UK Gay Bar Directory. The five-and-a-half-hour film methodically documents these spaces – including gay bars that have now closed, such as the Hoist in London.
Ceal Floyer
Ceal Floyer’s subversion of everyday objects continues her meditation on materiality in private and public space Lisson Gallery, London 16 November 2018 – 12 January 2019 by HATTY NESTOR For centuries, artists and philosophers have theorised about the relationship between private and public space, materially and conceptually.
Queerdirect Is Redefining How Art Institutions Designate Space to LGBTQI+ Individuals
In Peter Ackroyd’s 2017 book Queercity, he writes that urban landscapes have always been a place of home and haven for queer communities. Yet within cities, art institutions – much like all other institutions – have often failed to support the endeavours of LGBTQI+ identifiers, and the effects of such prolonged underrepresentation only furthers their marginalization.
Banu Cennetoğlu: The List
Istanbul-based artist Banu Cennetoğlu talks about the List, a documentation of refugees known to have died trying to reach Europe, now on show at the Liverpool Biennial, her recent film at the Chisenhale that spanned more than 128 hours, and the images we create of ourselves and other people by HATTY NESTOR The refugee crisis increasingly raises questions of protection, vulnerability and citizenship.
Alison Wilding and Florence Peake in conversation
With Wilding’s show Right Here and Out There and Peake’s RITE on concurrently at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, the artists talk about their practice Florence Peake. RITE: On this pliant body we slip our WOW! 2018. Photograph: Rob Harris. Image courtesy De La Warr Pavilion. by HATTY NESTOR Situated in Bexhill, East Sussex, the De La Warr Pavilion embodies an aura of calm, tranquillity and mystery.
Inti Guerrero: ‘I am trying not to fall into the cultural production and consumption of difference’
Inti Guerrero is the man behind this year’s curatorial vision of EVA International, Ireland’s biennial. On 14 April, 12 weeks of events began in Limerick for this year’s event, which seeks to explore questions of identity and politics and includes 56 international artists working in a wide range of mediums and forms. Guerrero, who was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1983, is currently Estrellita B Brodsky adjunct curator of Latin American Art at Tate London.
Dawn Mellor: ‘It is not surprising that activism and resentments due to economics, class, racism and gender are emerging’
The artist best-known for her parodic portraits of celebrities talks about taking a year of from painting, exploring social media and satirising identity politics by HATTY NESTOR Dawn Mellor (b1970, Manchester, UK) is predominantly a painter. Her work – which mainly takes the form of portraiture – often deals with sexuality and violence: her parodic paintings of celebrities and iconic figures demonstrate the intricacies of fame, identity and politics.
Robert Irwin
Irwin’s immersive installations, with their experimental approach to light and space lead the viewer to question their own phenomenological experiences Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles 23 January – 21 April 2018 by HATTY NESTOR Through using natural landscapes, installation, paintings and the medium of light, Californian artist Robert Irwin (b1928) has experimented with perception since the 1950s.
Tabita Rezaire: ‘Reclamation allowed me to glow into my blackness, womanhood and queerness’
Tabita Rezaire talks about ‘decolonial healing’, her response to cyber-racism and the distorted representation of black people on the internet, communication technologies from the spiritual world, and empowering artists to have self-respect By HATTY NESTOR Tabita Rezaire is a French artist of Guyanese and Danish descent, who challenges the legacy of colonisation and patriarchy through healing, activism, art and film. She was born in Paris in 1989 and now lives in Cayenne in French Guiana.
Modigliani
This extraordinary retrospective unites Modigliani’s portraits and sculpture with the largest collection of his nude paintings ever shown together in the UK, as well as allowing visitors a virtual reality tour of the artist’s Paris studio Amedeo Modigliani. Nude, 1917 (detail). Private collection.
Jenny Holzer: Softer
In her current exhibition at Blenheim Palace, Holzer responds to the building’s military history with more than 50 works examining the brutality of war Blenheim Palace, Oxford 28 September – 31 December 2017 by HATTY NESTOR Jenny Holzer has artistically employed language for decades to question the origin of truth in society.
It’s How Well You Bounce
In the grounds of the UK’s first hospital to treat people with mental illness, lie a fascinating museum and gallery.
queer art since the decriminalisation of homosexuality
Where do those who identify as queer find cultural belonging in a political landscape that, from Donald Trump to the DUP to concentration camps in Chechnya, is increasingly and violently homophobic, sexist and transphobic. It's an especially timely question to be asking this year in the UK -- as 2017 also marks the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the country.
Block Universe 2017
In a climate of socio-political precarity, there has been a renewed focus on ideas of inclusivity and collective ownership in the arts. From 29 May to 4 June 2017, the London-based performance festival Block Universe returned for a third edition, unpacking the relationship between power, collective action and community.
Gregory Crewdson: ‘I wanted the photographs to feel like a suburban window, to give a sense that the viewer is looking into a world’
American photographer Gregory Crewdson talks about loneliness and connection in his work and, in particular, about Cathedral of the Pines, his current exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery in London that sprang from a difficult time in his life by HATTY NESTOR Photography has the capability to capture our most ephemeral experiences, especially those we encounter as strangers to the wilderness, resonating as material traces of hidden pasts and memories.
2016 was the year that... artists rose up against austerity and fascism
In response to the rising austerity and creeping fascism in the UK and beyond, there has been a growing concern amongst artists to confront the effects that this hostile political environment is having on its queer, marginalised and artistic communities. Of note, female artists have meditated on the tempestuous and emotional implications of this political turmoil, through the digital, performative and material.
Solid Light
Since making his first film, Line Describing a Cone, in 1973, British-born New York-based artist Anthony McCall has worked with sculpture, cinema and drawing. His recent works consider the relationship between artworks and their audience in three-dimensional space. Now 70 years old, McCall’s show ‘Solid Light, Performance and Public Works’ at Fundació Gaspar in Barcelona (until 30 October, 2016) features work from throughout his career, including his newest installation, Coming About (2016).
Hannah Black
Hannah Black: Blanket (Etihad), 2015, 47¼ by 34¼ by 10⅞ inches; at Arcadia Missa. Hannah Black’s practice deals primarily with issues of global capitalism, feminist theory, the body and sociopolitical spaces of control. A graduate of the art writing program at Goldsmiths and the Whitney Independent Study Program, Black underpins her work with rigorous theoretical research. In “Not You,” her first solo show, her concerns manifested in direct, material gestures.
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