‘Still Lifescapes’ – Dave Beech argues that the still life, seemingly relegated to art history, should be re-examined in the light of the wider political, social and cultural contexts of individual artworks
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… it would also extend to the infrastructures, ecologies, histories, systems and structures that reproduce the divisions of labour, modes of exchange and spatial configurations that are presupposed in still lifes.”
[image: Wayne Thiebauld, ‘Delicatessen Counter’, 1963]
“A fully realised still lifescape would not only include the makers of the objects represented in still life and the communities which provide their raw materials, those who prepare the dinner or banquet and clean up after it, and the printers and paper makers of the books and manuscripts …
From the Back Catalogue:
‘Space Race’ – Rob La Frenais on the other side of the story
First published in 2015
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[image: Cosmonaut Alexander Polischuk with Arthur Woods’s ‘Cosmic Dancer’ sculpture aboard Mir space station in 1993]
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“The words CCCP (Cyryllic for USSR) on Yuri Gagarin's helmet were painted there at the last minute in case the rural population mistook him for a western spy descending into the remote Russian countryside.”
‘Mars Attacks’ – With Earth increasingly despoiled, Bob Dickinson asks what comes next as NASA and astro-capitalists set their sights on colonising Mars
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[image: Jonas Staal, ‘Empire’s Island’, 2023]
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“Ailton Krenak has been quoted as actually welcoming the idea of humans colonising planets like Mars because it might enable the Earth to be ‘left to us’, meaning, of course, indigenous peoples.”
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‘Field Work’ – Rehana Zaman interviewed by Adam Benmakhlouf
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[image: Rehana Zaman, ‘Jo Kherray So Khaey’, 2026]
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“I was conscious of the ease with which renderings of the landscape can so easily become bucolic or romanticised – the trope of the simple rural ways of living that obscures the continual displacement and expropriation of land in the interests of capital.”
March art jobs, residencies, grants, exhibitions and other artists’ opportunities, plus art listings, podcasts and more in the latest newsletter:
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[image: Fiona Banner, ‘Every Word Unmade’, 2006–07, artist talk, 3pm 21 Mar, The Common Guild, Glasgow]
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TAKING ART APART SINCE 1976
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Art Monthly, Issue 494, March 2026
• Rehana Zaman – interviewed by Adam Benmakhlouf
• Mars Attacks – Bob Dickinson
• Still Lifescapes – Dave Beech
• Arash Nassiri – Profile by Matt Williams
+ news, views, reviews and more…
[cover: Rehana Zaman, ‘Soft Fruit’, 2026]
Leah Clements – Profile by Tom Denman
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[image: Leah Clements, ‘My Mouth Was Vibrating’, 2022]
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“Leah Clements’s commitment to access is pronounced in her use of alt (or alternative) text – the verbal description of images that assists the visually or aurally impaired – in which she is one of contemporary art’s most innovative practitioners.”
From the Back Catalogue: ‘Empire, Extinction and Ecstasy’ – Izabella Scott claims the US is obsessed yet in denial about the concept of empire.
First published in 2020
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[image: Danh Vo, ‘Untitled’, 2020, White Cube, Bermondsey, London]
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“The politics of imagining the US’s downfall has always been inconclusive; even as it is obliterated, these visions continue to place America centre stage. Dreams of the centre falling, after all, confirm where the centre of the world is, investing it with power even as it symbolically collapses.”
‘Art and Contested Memory’ – Bob Dickinson warns of the need to preserve collective memory against attempts by far-right regimes to erase it
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[image: Carlos Leppe, ‘The Singers’, 1980]
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“Performance art had an important role in defying Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship because of its ability to sidestep censorship, and as such it features significantly in the country’s collective memory of the period.”
‘Sick at Art’ – Sophie J Williamson calls for collective, creative resistance to the capitalist-made conditions of exhaustion and slow death
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[image: Finnegan Shannon, ‘Do you want us here or not’, 2018–]
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“It is not the cultivated slowness of wellness culture, nor a radical rest of liberation. It is something more inert, and perhaps more dangerous to capitalism’s sensibility: rest without promise. I am not accruing value; I am not ‘becoming’.”
‘Thought Trails’ – Christina Mackie interviewed by Chris Fite-Wassilak
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[image: Christina Mackie, ‘Powder People’, 2018]
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“If you are out in the world and you’re not living on the internet, then you’re constantly being fed with the random and the infinite variety of the world, you are being given opportunities by what you observe. You’re given a vision. What are you gonna do with it?”
February art jobs, residencies, grants, exhibitions and other artists’ opportunities, plus art listings, podcasts and more in the latest newsletter:
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[image: Jazmin Jones, Seeking Mavis Beacon, 2024, screening, 2pm Sun 1 Feb, Chapter, Cardiff]
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TAKING ART APART SINCE 1976
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Art Monthly, Issue 493, February 2026
• Christina Mackie – interviewed by Chris Fite-Wassilak
• Sick at Art – Sophie J Williamson
• Art and Contested Memory – Bob Dickinson
• Leah Clements – Tom Denman
+ news, views, reviews and more…
[cover: El Morgan, ‘Have you had a productive day?’, 2023]
‘Global Fascisms’, Haus der Kulturen Welt, Berlin – Rachel Pronger
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[image: Robin Rhode, ‘Implis I-XIII’, 2000]
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“The curator talks about moving beyond apocalyptic thinking, yet by declaring every contemporary ill somehow ‘fascist’, this exhibition falls into that very trap. Given the dire straits to which current politics has brought the world, art-induced apathy is another indulgence we cannot afford.”
I have a review of Keith Sawyer’s fascinating book Learning To See in the Dec/Jan issue of @artmonthly.bsky.social magazine. And this prompted me to think of the key books on learning and teaching that I am always recommending to staff at Norwich University of the Arts. #CreativeEducation
