HOLLY BLACK ARTS JOURNALIST

Cover Story, Lina Iris Viktor, Elephant Magazine Issue 44

Artist profiles for Sotheby’s Artist, Radical, Women, Other sale

A number of era-defining works by artists from the Middle East, Asia and the United States will be offered in the upcoming Contemporary Curated sale, online from 14-21 April. All of these artists were active throughout the male-dominated art world of 20th Century, but it is perhaps only now that their true value in the market is coming to light. Ahead of the sale, we explore five revolutionary artists whose contribution and legacy is more relevant than ever.

Preston is my Paris Essay, for Aperture magazine

Britain’s ubiquitous graffiti-strewn carparks, rundown bus stations, and no-frills pubs might not seem like obvious subjects for artistic scrutiny. But these seemingly innocuous places hold a special kind of magic for Adam Murray and Robert Parkinson, who started documenting them a decade ago in Preston, the northern city where both artists lived and worked at the time. Now, the pair looks over the legacy of their collaborative project with a new book, Preston is my Paris: 2009–2019, presenting a slice of the huge amount of imagery they produced.

This Artwork Changed My Life, for Elephant Magazine

The Virgin Mary has long been an important part of Christian iconography. For Holly Black, the Madonna was channeled through a kitsch taste for the baroque, but a rare image of her swollen belly offered a new perspective on the meaning of motherhood.

Jenny Sabine’s Smart AI Sculpture, for Wallpaper 

What could a ‘hive mind’ actually look like? It is a question that defines the latest collaboration between Microsoft and experimental architectural designer Jenny Sabin, as part of an Artist in Residence programme that seeks to explore the intersection of the arts, humanity and technology. The result is a responsive AI sculpture installed in the atrium of the company’s campus in Redmond, WA, which would not look out of place on the set of a sci-fi thriller.

In Conversation with Mikhael Subotzky and Zoé Whitley for Elephant Magazine

South African artist Mikhael Subotzky investigates the politics of identity and representation through a multi-faceted practice that encompasses photography, film, experimental painting and more. He speaks to curator Zoé Whitley about interrogating whiteness, artistic responsibility and inspirational writers.

Rebel Erotica, Playboy Summer 2019

Print Heaven: Inside the Biggest Magazine Collection in the World

“We call it heaven, the final resting place for magazines!” Holly Black revisits Hymag, the Guinness World Record-holding collection in London, eight years after cataloguing began. Photography by Louise Benson

What does the world’s largest magazine collection look like? I’m lucky enough to know, thanks to one sweaty summer spent in a storage unit in North London eight years ago, when I assisted in the early stages of cataloguing Hymag, the now Guinness World Record-holding collection, with owner James Hyman and curator Tory Turk.

Exhibition design at the Venice Biennale, for Wallpaper

The concept of duality is a founding principle for Delvendahl Martin Architects’ (DMA) design for the Venice Biennale’s main exhibition. It is informed by Ralph Rugoff’s curatorial vision, which embodies what he terms a ‘split personality’ by representing all 79 artists both in the relatively traditional confines of the Giardini’s Central Pavilion, and the expansive industrial setting of the Corderie in the Arsenale. Visitors have the chance to view the artists’ work in two entirely different contexts.

This isn’t the first time DMA has collaborated with Rugoff to create an exhibition experience based on dualism. Back in 2015 the practice – which featured in the Wallpaper* Architects Directory in 2015 – conceived Carsten Höller’s ‘Decision’ at the Hayward Gallery (Rugoff is director), where visitors were invited to explore a range of environments (including two huge slides) that presented a choice with two possible outcomes.

The Artist Activists, Ackroyd & Harvey, for The Arts Society magazine, summer 2019

Interpreting Islamic Collections, Museums Journal April 2019

Interview for AnOther

Andy Warhol is, beyond his own legendary status, known for capturing the most famous faces on the planet, using silkscreen prints and Polaroids alike to immortalise everyone from Jean-Michel Basquiat to John Lennon. Throughout his career he built an impossibly glamorous mystique around The Factory, as an extension of his own persona as artist and celebrity. However, Aeneas Bastian, director of his eponymous gallery with venues in Berlin and London, was relatively unfazed when he was invited to sit for Warhol as a child.

STILL I RISE: FEMINISMS, GENDER, RESISTANCE review for The White Review

When an exhibition promises to do away with a singular narrative in favour of presenting ‘multiple histories’ the result can often be confounding and lacking in cohesion. STILL I RISE: FEMINISMS, GENDER, RESISTANCE at Nottingham Contemporary vows to ‘discard linear models of process’ and is indeed a sprawling show presenting the history of feminist resistance from the nineteenth century to the present day, with over 100 exhibits from 50 practitioners. However this exhibition, which is ‘Act One’ of a two-part survey (the second opens at De La Warr Pavilion, East Sussex, in February), manages to deliver an insightful viewing experience. With no fixed route or timeline visitors are encouraged to wander the four thematically arranged galleries with the aid of a mind map which unifies the artists through seemingly disparate terms such as ‘rituals’, ‘process’ and ‘sci-fi’. The tool is more akin to a flow diagram than the rigid leaflet guides that usually accompany extensive shows.