Studio International Art Magazine

In a riveting, large-scale work called Moss Ball: A Meditation on the Overview Effect (2018), E.V. Day makes some unlikely, and therefore all the more intriguing, connections. She imaginatively links together disparate structures in an associative, appropriative weave, likening a moss ball, a decorative item in a formal baroque garden, to the view of the Earth from the point of view of an astonished astronaut seeing it from space for the first time as well as to the explosive sensuality that is Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa and to his gilded architectural fantasias with their cascades of slender golden rods that represent rays of heavenly light. A gorgeous three-dimensional starburst (she calls it a “sputnik”) is affixed to the flat surface of her moss ball cum globe like a constellated brooch, tethered to a slender wire that traverses the gallery to the opposite wall, suggesting a divine shaft of light. Intersection: International Art and Culture, Arthur M Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University, Beijing 27 May – 27 August 2018 Interview by LILLY WEI Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

James Edgar and Sam Walker: ‘We think of Assembly Point as part of our collaborative practice’ James Edgar and Sam Walker talk about Assembly Point, their co-founded gallery, studio space and publishing company, which they set up in 2015 in south London. James Edgar (b1978) and Sam Walker (b1986) met when they were students on the MA fine art course at Camberwell College of Arts. Walker has worked in gallery spaces in London, managing curating and setting up shows, and Edgar has many years’ experience in printing and publishing, and runs the letterpress studio at Camberwell College of Art. While they were students, Edgar and Walker researched art spaces in New York and London, looking at the different ways they were operated, in terms of finance, collaboration and creative community. The pair collaborated on their MA show, producing a gallery space within the exhibition, and while they also make work individually, they graduated together as Edgar-Walker in 2013. Studio International visited Edgar-Walker at Assembly Point, the contemporary arts space they co-founded in Peckham, south London in 2013, and heard about the ideas behind their enterprise, the people involved and the many and varied events and ventures associated with it, from studios to book launches and publishing, gallery exhibitions, performances and the sale of limited-edition artworks. Edgar-Walker have built a wonderful creative hub, a supportive community for the artists who have studios on site, and – very rare in our current social and financially troubled times – a place that celebrates and encourages creative practice, particularly supporting artists whose work has not yet been widely exhibited. There is much to be celebrated in the magnificent environment of Assembly Point, and south London is richer for this substantial and important arts space. Interview by MK PALOMAR Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Art on the Underground has an audience beyond the reach of any gallery - five million passengers every day – and 270 stations across London’s tube network in which to display work. Yet, despite its vast reach and the fact that it has commissioned artists including Cindy Sherman, David Shrigley, Mark Titchner, David Batchelor and Assemble, few people outside the art world have heard of it. Its programme for 2018-19 kicks off this summer with an immersive new multimedia work by Heather Phillipson (b1978) at Gloucester Road underground station, where a disused platform has become a permanent display space for three-dimensional art. Phillipson is one of an impressive lineup of established and emerging female artists of many ages and nationalities selected to mark the centenary year of the Representation of the People Act (whereby all men and some women over the age of 30 were granted the vote). Words by VERONICA SIMPSON Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Vera Molnár: ‘I have no regrets. My life is squares, triangles, lines’ The pioneer of computer-assisted art recounts her love affair with lines, the balancing of order and chaos, and preparing to be surprised. Born in Budapest in 1924, Vera Molnár moved to Paris in the late 1940s, pursuing a lifelong fascination with geometric forms, both in her solo practice and as a co-founder of GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel). Attuned from childhood to the possibilities of a system-based art, Molnár conjured up a “machine imaginaire” whose hypothetical programmes altered the concrete bones of her images, rotating, disordering, and fracturing specific elements in multiple iterations. Later, facilitated by the freeing spirit of 68, Molnar gained access to actual computers, the imagined machine now real. Throughout, her ingenious research has probed the question of what a machine can accomplish, whether intervening on geometric forms, printed or handwritten letters. Avoiding premeditation, Molnár fine-tunes her programmes as the works unfold, favouring an instinctive method that enables greater receptiveness to the unpredictable, an approach she has called “the conversational method”. In addition to the computer’s evident speed and scope for calculation, Molnár values its greater finesse and intuitive potential in realising an imagined image: “This may sound paradoxical, but the machine, which is thought to be cold and inhuman, can help to realise what is most subjective, unattainable, and profound in a human being”. Writing New Codes: Cordeiro / Mallary / Molnár The Mayor Gallery, London 6 June - 27 July 2018 Interview and translation by ANGERIA RIGAMONTI di CUTÒ Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

David Shrigley talks about his large-scale installation Life Model II at Fabrica Gallery in Brighton, part of the Brighton Festival for which he is this year’s guest director On the Brighton Festival’s website, Shrigley describes Life Model II as an artwork that begets other artwork … [with] a three-dimensional sculpture of the life model … trying to stand still. Shrigley tells us: “It’s a good thing to make a sculpture of something that is trying to stay still.” Perhaps he is suggesting that the idea of motion (or fidget) is important to have in mind when it comes to making art that isn’t moving. Shrigley is so well known for his interestingly scribbly surreal and subversive images and texts that getting past the cameras and journalists to interview him before the opening of his show was a complicated navigation – a lot of people want a bit of Shrigley, his wit, his sideways view, his easy presence. But there is a deception in his work – not one of any malice or duplicity, but one related to his self-deprecation and to the perception of people who have no understanding of the world of making writing and drawing. Shrigley’s work looks easy to do, intuitive and fluid, a stream of consciousness (or so it seems), appearing as though effortless, as it splodges and splashes across pages and prints and books and walls. But the kind of drawing that appears to repeatedly and perpetually fly so free from the constraints of form, fashion and aesthetic conventions takes years of dedicated hard work, skill and a unique sort of brilliance to achieve. Shrigley is like a really fit ballet dancer pirouetting his ink across white space and leaving gloriously subversive traces of skew-eyed thinking in his wake. Perhaps Shrigley’s unusual physicality (he is 6ft 5 inches tall), has contributed to his unique view of the world. He is also unusually generous for an artist: generous with his time, his ideas and his work. And his work is much more diverse than might at first be expected – there are books, sculpture, installation, collaboration, and a musical event scheduled in the Brighton Festival for which he has designed all the instruments. David Shrigley: Life Model II, Fabrica, Brighton 14 April – 28 May 2018 Interview by MK PALOMAR Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Miguel Chevalier: ‘I feel that I live in what’s happening today’ Ahead of two simultaneous solo shows in London, pioneering computer artist Miguel Chevalier invited Studio International into his Paris studio to discuss his interest in making the real virtual and the virtual real. Miguel Chevalier (b1959, Mexico City) is a true pioneer of computer art. He has been using computer science as a means of expression in the field of visual arts since 1978, when, as a student, he managed to negotiate out-of-hours access to use the rather sizeable machines at the Optics Centre at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. In 1983, he spent some time in the new digital department at the Pratt Institute in New York, before returning to Paris to continue his experimentation and, ultimately, win the support of some key curators and critics, who enabled him to show and develop his work. Chevalier sees his digital and virtual compositions as very much a continuation of art history, throughout which new young generations of artists have sought to experiment and push the boundaries of the possible. More recently, he has begun to create real, physical objects, using techniques such as laser cutting and 3D printing to work backwards from his virtual imaginings. Simultaneously, using touchpads and VR, he creates interactive works that invite viewers to traverse the boundaries of reality, entering a virtual world. A longstanding interest of Chevalier’s is the development of cities and urban planning. For a double exhibition across London’s Mayor Gallery and Wilmotte Gallery, he is expanding his Méta-cities project to create an immense interactive installation in the latter architectural space and a more domestic representation of the same ideas in the Mayfair space, exploring the many potential scales and instantiations of a digital work. Studio International visited Chevalier in his Paris studio to discuss his career, his commitment to the digital as a “very open tool”, and his interest in making the real virtual and the virtual real. Miguel Chevalier: Ubiquity 1, The Mayor Gallery, London, 13 April – 1 June 2018 Miguel Chevalier: Ubiquity 2, Wilmotte Gallery at Lichfield Studios, London, 13 April – 15 June 2018 Interview by ANNA McNAY Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Role/Play: Collaborative Creativity and Creative Collaborations at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, brought together 54 graduate students from North America representing a wide range of disciplines to present their work to each other. Organized by Liese Zahabi and Molly Morin. The student symposium was spearheaded by Liese Zahabi, a graphic/interaction designer and assistant professor of graphic/interaction design at the University of Maryland, and Molly Morin, an artist working at the intersection of digital and analogue practices who is assistant professor of art at Weber State University. Morin gave a lecture titled Informational Material: poetic data visualisation, CNC fabrication, and embodied systems, in which she elaborated on her approach to art-making, which involves creating material representations of data through generative drawing, digital fabrication and fabric sculptures. Morin received degrees in sculpture before taking on her role at Weber, where she fosters methods for making art with digital tools. Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

An installation by Amy Wetsch, an MFA student at Mount Royal School of Multidisciplinary Art, filled the foyer outside the conference hall. The work detailed her continuing explorations of the human immune system through the medium of sculpture. Wetsch’s practice considers the impact of disease and illness on the body, specifically in relation to auto-immune conditions, something with which the artist has personal experience. Her fascination with the body’s misdirected inclination to attack itself provides the impetus for her visual explorations. Role/Play: Collaborative Creativity and Creative Collaborations at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, brought together 54 graduate students from North America representing a wide range of disciplines to present their work to each other. Organized by Liese Zahabi and Molly Morin. Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Adam Haar Horowitz, a charismatic researcher at the cutting-edge MIT Media Lab, spoke about his work relating to hypnagogia, the liminal space between wakefulness and sleep. The topic was immediately captivating – and easy to relate to – given that this is a mental state that applies to all of us. Haar Horowitz believes that technology has the ability to reveal parts of ourselves that otherwise remain invisible, and studies how to control and capture dreams during the moment of hypnagogia, asserting that such access leads not only to revelation but, ultimately, wellbeing. Haar Horowitz studied mindfulness meditation and mind-wandering during his earlier work at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and also spent time as an artist-scientist at the Marina Abramović Institute. Role/Play: Collaborative Creativity and Creative Collaborations brings together 54 graduate students from North America representing a wide range of disciplines to present their work to each other. Organized by Liese Zahabi and Molly Morin. Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Jifei Ou, another member of the Media Lab at MIT, is a compelling designer whose subject matter is transformable materials. Starting with the premise that physical materials are generally thought to be static and permanent, Jifei seeks to reformat such materials with digital characteristics, making them programmable, for instance, or able to change their shape. Bio-mimicry and bio-derived materials inform his research, and the natural world is just as informative to his thinking as digital technology. The new materials that result from these experiments could be used to serve a number of purposes, from the construction of responsive living environments to the enhancement of existing interactions with products. Role/Play: Collaborative Creativity and Creative Collaborations at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, brought together 54 graduate students from North America representing a wide range of disciplines to present their work to each other. Organized by Liese Zahabi and Molly Morin. Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Role/Play: Collaborative Creativity and Creative Collaborations at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, brought together 54 graduate students from North America representing a wide range of disciplines to present their work to each other. Organized by Liese Zahabi and Molly Morin. Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Michele Oka Doner: ‘We can’t repair the Earth if we don’t fall in love with it’ American artist and author Michele Oka Doner shares some of her explorations of nature and ritual from across her five decade-long practice Walking into London’s David Gill Gallery, there is a sense of stillness and peace, the gentle scent of burning wax hovers on the air like in a chapel, and visitors are transported a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of Piccadilly’s rush hour. This is the work of Michele Oka Doner (b1945, Miami Beach), who, now in her fifth decade of artistic practice, has a longstanding interest in nature, the elements, ritual and wanting to make people slow down, stop and take a closer look at the world around them. Her second solo show at the gallery pivots on a large bronze work, Altar II, a complex cast, jigsawed back together, from an intriguing and manifestly beautiful tree root, which Oka Doner retrieved from the Hudson river, while visiting friends in New York, with the help of a tow truck and a 12-minute gap between trains on the Metro-North line. It is kept company by a number of smaller Burning Bushes and Shaman Sticks, all flickering bright with heavily dripping candles, creating a gentle, almost transcendental, glow. On the walls, there are huge, androgynous, black-and-white figures, printed in relief from ink-infused organic material. Inspired by the myth of Prometheus and the basic attributes that distinguish humanity from any other animal species, Oka Doner believes that all art begins with the sacred, and she relishes the excitement of discovery and transformation, creating something that is ultimately shared. Oka Doner’s work ranges in scale from jewellery and furniture to set and costume design for the Miami City Ballet, and she has undertaken a number of large-scale public art commissions as well, including Radiant Site at New York’s Herald Square underground station and A Walk on the Beach at Miami international airport. In London for the opening of her exhibition, before heading to Oxford for the launch of a book (she is also a published author), Oka Doner spoke to Studio International about her practice in general and, more specifically, her love of fire and the need to bring it back into her life. Michele Oka Doner: Bringing the Fire David Gill Gallery, London 21 March – 25 April 2018 Interview by ANNA McNAY Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Simon Patterson: ‘It’s about you filling in the gaps … the viewer completes the work and keeps changing it’ Simon Patterson talks about his show Safari: An Exhibition as Expedition, at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, and about the concepts that inform his work. The practice of the British artist Simon Patterson (b1967, Leatherhead, Surrey), who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1996, has woven together diverse entities. He has played with and subverted maps, systems, classification and documentation since his inclusion in Damien Hirst’s Freeze exhibition in 1988, when he displayed text works such as The Last Supper Arranged According to the Sweeper Formation (Jesus Christ in Goal). Later works include The Great Bear (1992), a reinterpretation of London’s underground map that replaces the names of stations with those of notable characters – King’s Cross becomes Piero della Francesca, Earl’s Court becomes Captain Cook. In 2002, Patterson completed his Cosmic Wallpaper at the University of Warwick, in which he renamed the constellations to reveal a history of the rock band Deep Purple. Then, in 2011, he designed his poignant commemoration to Wilfred Owen’s work, La Maison Forestière,turning the Forest House in Ors (where Owen had written his last letter to his mother just before he died in 1918), into a building “… that looks like an imaginary thing, a model of a building, a space to think in, not a space to live in.” Exhilarating, bewildering and thought-provoking, Patterson’s eclectic and energetic investigations into the various systems and conditions of our times entertain, baffle and inform in equal measure. Safari: an Exhibition as Expedition De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex 20 May – 3 Sept 2017 Interview by MK PALOMAR Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Harold Cohen: I was probably the only person who considered the computer to be potentially an autonomous art making entity Pioneer of computer art Harold Cohen died last year at the age of 87. In 2015, in one of the last interviews of his life, he talked to Studio International about his long career. Harold Cohen was born in London in 1928, but moved to the US in 1968 and died there in April last year. In this conversation, one of his last filmed interviews, made in May 2015 in his home studio in Encinitas, California, he recounted his career since its beginning in London. In the late 1960s, he already had an established career as a painter. In 1965, the Whitechapel Gallery held a retrospective of his oeuvre, and in 1966 he was invited to represent the UK at the Venice Biennale, which further consolidated his position in the art world. Two years later, however, when participating in an academic project in the United States, he was introduced to the language of computer programming and the theory of artificial intelligence, which led to a radical change in his life and art. Thereafter, Cohen turned his attention to the use of computer programming to create art. His biggest ambition was to try to reproduce human cognition in a machine and discover what the outcome would be. He was the first artist to experiment with artificial intelligence to relate its theories to art practice. The understanding of computational language as something also belonging to the artistic universe occurred through the efforts of pioneers such as him. Interview by CAROLINE MENEZES and FABRIZIO POLTRONIERI Filmed by JONATTAS POLTRONIERI

UK artist Stephen Chambers talks about looking for the extraordinary within the ordinary, about the appeal of fictional kingdoms, the relationship between art and literature, and being led by his instincts to do what he ‘can’t help doing’ For his Venice Biennale presentation, UK painter and printmaker Stephen Chambers has conjured a cast of 101 imaginary courtiers, whose quietly introspective, quizzical visages adorn the white walls of the Piano Nobile of Ca’ Dandolo, a 17th-century palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal, much as the typical court or ancestral portraits of the “great white male” adorn the walls of Europe’s institutions and mansions. But this is not a typical court. In fact, with his selection of fictional appointments, Chambers admits he is “bringing to the high table those that are more likely to be fed in the garden shed”. This work, The Court of Redonda – nearly two years in the making - draws on a remarkable, seemingly true story of a tiny, uninhabited island in the West Indies, called Redonda, which a passing merchant trader had the ambition to claim as his own in 1865, electing himself monarch. The title passed down to his son, who then declared that it should follow a literary lineage. From that point on, the kingship was offered to poets and writers. It was the writings of Spanish novelist Javier Marías, one of Redonda’s more recent sovereigns, and Marías’s own eclectic choice of courtiers (including film director Pedro Almodóvar and English novelist AS Byatt) that inspired Chambers with his imaginary court of 101 different ethnicities, cultural affiliations (carefully indicated by clothing and hairstyles) and professions - not just poets, philosophers, artists and writers, but also patients, pharmacists, harlots and “bums”. There is something very eastern about the colouring and presentation of these portraits, but largely western in their clothing and expressions – a combination that is highly appropriate to this Venetian setting, where the ancient worlds of the east and west have long collided. The beauty of these portraits is in their humanity and their lack of pomp or perfection. Says Chambers: “I wanted to avoid making any of the people particularly beautiful. (They are) not head-turningly dashing or spellbindingly beautiful. I wanted the paintings to do that but the people in them to be diverse and regular … and interesting.” Consequently, what the work provokes is a recognition of ourselves and our fellow humans in these humble courtiers – hopefully, igniting conversations about what kind of a regime might result under the guidance of such an eclectic but unprepossessing bunch. As a collateral event of the 57th Venice Biennale, The Court of Redonda is accompanied by a new triptych: State of the Nation, painted before, during and after the UK referendum: the motif of a rider balancing precariously on a galloping horse ends with him tumbling to the ground. The exquisite tones and draughtsmanship of these paintings set up an emotional tension with the unfolding tragedy, the horseman going from unbalanced to unseated to freefall in horrifying slow motion – this freeze-frame catastrophe evocative of more than just one of last year’s major political events. Chambers (b1960) studied at Winchester School of Art, and subsequently at St Martin’s School of Art and Chelsea. His work is avidly collected and he has received many scholarships and fellowships, including being elected as a Royal Academician in 2005, and being awarded an Honorary Fellowship from Downing College Cambridge in 2016. A major solo show of print work, The Big Country, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 2012 and also at the Pera Museum in Istanbul, in 2014, where its visitor numbers exceeded those of the simultaneous exhibition of Andy Warhol prints. Stephen Chambers: The Court of Redonda Ca’ Dandolo, Grand Canal, San Polo, Venice, 13 May – 26 November 2017 and The Heong Gallery, Downing College Cambridge from February 2018 Interview by VERONICA SIMPSON Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Maryam Najd: ‘I became interested in reaching a certain perfectionism in how you use paint’ Iranian-born artist Maryam Najd talks about identity and culture in her practice, her love of materials and her Non Existence Flag Project, which was due to be exhibited in Beijing this autumn, until the Chinese Ministry of Education banned the show claiming the exhibition posed ‘an unpredictable political risk’ The work of Maryam Najd, who moved to Belgium from Iran more than two decades ago, displays her interests in figurative and abstract painting, and her extensive knowledge and appreciation of materials. At one end of her studio, on a long table, many beautifully cared for and variously shaped brushes lay ready for her work; at the other end, by a large easel – an opaque white glass table palate – pots of pigment, bottles of solvents and mediums are arranged in careful order. Resolutely determined not to be fixed or interpreted by the other’s perception of her place of origin, Najd’s images may be said to work towards the possibility of unfixing, perhaps even dissolving, boundaries between entities, whether geographical, conceptual, philosophical or cultural. Najd talked to us about her recent works, and the concepts behind her practice. Interview by MK PALOMAR Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Gender inequality was one of many human rights issues that artists wrestled with at the 57th Venice Biennale, with one of the most powerful statements coming from the Irish pavilion, in the Arsenale. Here, artist and film-maker Jesse Jones has constructed a huge theatrical evocation of her own creation myth, that of the giantess. Much of Irish artist and film-maker Jesse Jones’s work is inspired by women’s rights to bodily self-determination, and she is a keen supporter of those who wish to repeal the eighth amendment to the Republic of Ireland’s constitution, which criminalises abortion. But the visual and aural cocktail she has conjured for the 57th Venice Biennale goes much deeper than modern gender politics. Her Irish Pavilion work Tremble Tremble is trying to rinse our conscious and subconscious minds free from millennia of patriarchal dogma, and implant a new creation myth: that of the female giantess. To work this magic, she has set a potent stage, the dominant feature of which is two huge screens on which Irish actress Olwen Fouéré appears like a figure from a Shakespearian shipwreck, at times tiny, and at others huge, intoning skin-pricklingly powerful texts that she and Jones have devised, which includes the words from a medieval manuscript for identifying and prosecuting witches, The Malleus Maleficarum, here spoken backwards. Jones developed this piece with curator Tessa Giblin – formerly at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre and now director at Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery – so that it maximises emotional and visual impact in its dark, high-ceilinged Arsenale setting. The audience is loosely corralled in front of the screens by two giant female bones, inspired by the earliest discovered bipedal “human” ancestor, “Lucy”, unearthed in the 1970s in Ethiopia. The viewing space is semi-enclosed by full-height black voile curtains, with the image of a woman’s bare arm depicted on the upper part of each one – although one is unaware of these arms until, aided by black-clad assistants, the curtains sweep along their ceiling tracks to circle the audience in a spooky embrace. Ripe with associations of wombs and graveyards, the work feels both ancient and modern. Its title, Tremble Tremble, is taken from a women’s movement protest in Italy, from the 1970s, which called for wages for housework. It was orchestrated by the feminist academic Silvia Federici, whose book on the patriarchal appropriation of women’s bodies in order to fuel the capitalist system with workers and soldiers has had a major influence on Jones’s work. Jones hopes the title evokes “this trembling sense of being on the precipice of massive political change”. Giblin feels that Jones has really pushed herself to new levels in how her work is experienced. Says Jones: “I had wanted for a long time to stop thinking about making art as a way of displaying things, but to think about it as a way of arranging objects almost like ruins and to see how they lie and how the relationships that they set up in the world can create a kind of alchemy.” Jones hopes the work speaks to those who are struggling to engage with a world where fake news is allowed to dictate the political agenda. People are, says Jones “very confused with this break in truth and language, and it’s a break between our bodies and our conscious minds. We have to find a way to access things that are held in our body and articulate them.” Jones completed an MA in visual arts practice at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology in 2005 and is based in Dublin. Her Trilogy of Dust films speculate on post-apocalyptic futures, while a recent installation at Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, No More Fun and Games collages works by women from the gallery collection with a performance piece. In 2016, she worked with Sarah Browne on a piece In the Shadow of the State addressing the role of institutions in controlling and regulating the female body. It was commissioned by Artangel, Create and Heart of Glass. Jesse Jones: Tremble Tremble Irish Pavilion for Venice Biennale 13 May – 26 November 2017 Interview by VERONICA SIMPSON Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

For the 57th Venice Biennale, the Greek artist offers his customary blend of architecture and film in a narrative video installation that explores the resonances between an ancient story by Aeschylus, involving a group of women seeking asylum, and a 20th-century scientific experiment. For Greece’s Venice pavilion, George Drivas presents Laboratory of Dilemmas, a riveting architectural, biological and mythological exploration of refugees and repercussions. He has constructed a glossy black labyrinth within the neoclassical pavilion, through which visitors wander while absorbing two narratives. One is Aeschylus’s ancient story The Suppliant Women, involving a group of refugees whose pleas for asylum are debated, and then acted out with a variety of consequences, by their reluctant hosts. The other, dominant, narrative is a fictional documentary of a genuine biological dilemma, delivered in bite-sized chunks on screens set within the labyrinth. The story concerns a 20th-century scientific community’s ethical and scientific difficulties when a major experiment, to create hepatitis-resistant cells, takes an unexpected turn: new cells appear that unite with their host cells to create their own cell culture. The dilemma is explored here in discrete episodes on screens set within the labyrinth structure, and then debated with all the gravitas of a full-on ethical enquiry, on a huge central screen at the heart of the building. The decision, debated in this stark, monochrome “court” setting (with a cast including actor Charlotte Rampling), is whether to kill the new cells and all that potential, or allow them to flourish. “The labyrinth is a challenge,” says Drivas. “The way it is used in Greek history, it’s not really a game. It’s a challenge where you enter and exit as a winner. This is the way the protagonist uses it …’ He hopes that the structure reflects the twists and turns of our mental processes. Ultimately, he hopes that it provokes some interesting questions. “Art can create dialogue,” says Drivas. “This is the purpose of the whole biennale here. There are no answers to be given from art, but there are very interesting questions.” Drivas (b1969, Athens) was selected from 30 potential artists for this year’s Venice Biennale. He is based in Athens and Berlin, and his work has won many awards at Greek and international festivals. His work was featured as a solo show at the Galleria Nazionale, Rome (2017), and, in 2009, he presented the solo show (Un)documented at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens. George Drivas: Laboratory of Dilemmas Greek Pavilion for Venice Biennale 13 May – 26 November 2017 Interview by VERONICA SIMPSON Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Jodie Carey: ‘I like my works to be imbued with a silence and a stillness’ The artist talks about her developing practice, the impact of motherhood, her concerns with mortality and the fragility of human life, and her redefinition of the monumental Jodie Carey is interested in ideas of ageing, memory, time passing and the shadowy boundary between forgetting and remembering, and her monumental sculptures and installations have been influenced by such genres as still life and vanitas. She originally studied textiles, before switching to fine art and attending Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art, and traces of her own path are evident in her painstaking and labour-intensive artworks. Since having her first baby in 2016, and returning to her studio three weeks later, she has moved away from her more decorative and ornamental earlier works and begun to strip back her work and make it more subtle. Carey, whose works develop through the process of making, describes her art not as a job but as an extension of who she is. She prefers more traditional and “simpler” processes, such as carving, weaving and drawing directly on to walls, eschewing anything heavily fabricated. She juxtaposes materials and scale, questioning the nature of the monument and exploring how something transient and fragile might also be quite monumental in its own right. Carey invited Studio International to her south London studio while she was making works for her new installation, Earthcasts, at Edel Assanti, London. Burying lengths of salvaged timber in the ground, she created rudimentary moulds, into which she then poured plaster. The resulting sculptures, which she worked into by hand, sometimes adding a lick of white paint or a shade of coloured pencil, are of a human-scale and could equally be age-worn human figures or gnarled tree trunks – again, the human and the natural is a juxtaposition Carey enjoys exploiting. There is a material roughness to her pieces, which she describes as “very physical objects”. Jodie Carey: Earthcasts Edel Assanti, London 23 June – 11 August 2017 Interview by ANNA McNAY Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Tadaaki Kuwayama: ‘Here is only the art itself’ The Japanese-born artist recounts his refusal to dictate how spectators should view his work, his visual dialogue with Frank Stella, and the desire to void his art of meaning. Born in Nagoya in 1932, Tadaaki Kuwayama rejected the doctrinaire strictures of the Japanese nihonga tradition, preferring to move to New York in 1958 where he encountered an art scene on the cusp of a new wave of currents such as conceptual art, minimalism and pop. With an aversion to abstract expressionism, Kuwayama produced distilled, richly coloured, discreetly reflective fields of paint without trace of manual intervention, the focus of the current exhibition at the Mayor Gallery in London. Intent on making the relationship with the surrounding space as important as the works themselves, Kuwayama increasingly favoured serial arrangements, sometimes adopting anodised metal, as a means of shunning the existential drama and connotations of creativity associated with the individual painting. Above all, the pristine uniformity and quiet, otherworldly theatre of these works are testament to Kuwayama’s resolve to avoid received notions of composition, colour, narrative, hierarchy and individuality. Tadaaki Kuwayama: Radical Neutrality The Mayor Gallery, London 7 June – 28 July 2017 Interview by ANGERIA RIGAMONTI di CUTÒ Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Tom Phillips: ‘I’m still reading books. Nothing changes and everything changes’ The artist talks about his love of words, the human drive to make marks and the more spiritual side of his work Tom Phillips has just turned 80 and, to mark this milestone, Flowers Gallery in London has put on, not so much a retrospective, as a survey of his lesser-known works. This collection of witty and playful pieces is testament to Phillips’s intellect and his talent as a storyteller. It includes a cage constructed from words, Wittgenstein’s Cage (2009), a visual representation of the eponymous philosopher’s theory that the limits of our world are set by the limits of our language. William Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett also feature. Phillips has constructed a library of book titles, all of which can be found in Hamlet and the pertinent words from Beckett’s play The Unnamable, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on” are stencilled on to artist palettes. Phillips is perhaps best known for A Humument, a work that has emerged over the past 50 years from a forgotten Victorian novel he picked up for a few pennies in Peckham Rye in south-east London. Every page of this book has been played with, coloured in and illustrated, with only a selection of words left legible. In doing this, Phillips has teased out a new story, an epic poem of sorts, from the original text. This chance acquisition was perhaps the most productive in a long career of collecting (hoarding is perhaps a more accurate term), old books, postcards, soil and even his own hair. Studio International went to Flowers Gallery in London to talk to Phillips about his love of words, the human drive to make marks and the more spiritual side of his work. Tom Phillips: Connected Works Flowers Gallery, Kingsland Road, London 26 May – 1 July 2017 Interview by EMILY SPICER Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Young’s Venice Biennale collateral event for Hong Kong explores the disquieting cocktail of components that comprise the charity single. He talks about the power of music, fake news and what our cultural products say about human nature. Samson Young is a composer and sound artist, whose work anatomises and manipulates the alchemical power of sound and film by revealing the way culture and context mediate our experience of it. For the Venice Biennale, Young occupied four rooms near the Arsenale with his work Songs for Disaster Relief, an installation that he describes as “an album unfolding in space”. The show is an immersive investigation into the psychological, cultural and aesthetic mechanisms of the disaster relief pop song. The main room features a dissection of the song Do They Know It’s Christmas?, which gave birth to the Live Aid phenomenon, fundraising for the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s. The lyrics – a saccharine mixture of phrases from the heartfelt to the bathetic – are embroidered in silver on to a theatrical curtain that stretches around the perimeter of the room. The room itself is styled like the lounge of a knowingly kitsch, contemporary hotel, all mid-century modern furniture and neon lights. It is supposed to represent the fantasy palazzo of Boomtown Gundane, a fictional character whom Young discovered while investigating a “fake news” story. The story claimed Gundane was a South African musician whose response to the UK’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? song was Yes, We Do!, a parody of a disaster single, the proceeds of which were donated to the UK to “fund instruction in discipline, literacy and contraception at British schools”. Young has decorated the lobby with various icons in reference to this fictional character, including framed fake gold and platinum discs. Snatches of melody saturate the space with a syrupy sweetness, switching from angelic choral voices and sweeping piano chords to lift muzak, highlighting both the formulaic - yet affecting - quality of these disaster relief anthems along with the banality of the lyrics. In an adjacent room, a large film projection features a performance by the Hong Kong Labour Union choir, clad in formal black, singing the words to We are the World, but in an animated whisper, devoid of melody – which strips the song of its emotional punch. Just outside this room, in a small alley leading down to a Venetian canal, is another work, Lullaby (World Music), triggered by one of Hong Kong’s most iconic charity songs, Many Hearts Prevail, a response to a massive flood in eastern China in 1991. Its lyrics are sung in Chinese to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, and, in the video, Young is depicted singing unaccompanied, wearing headphones and looking out from Hong Kong across the sea to China. Young was born in Hong Kong in 1979 and grew up in Australia. He has a major commission at Documenta 14 and is producing a five-part radio series for the Manchester International Festival, inspired by stories of 17th-century Chinese travellers who made their way to Europe on foot. He has been nominated for the Absolut Art Award and in 2015 won the first BMW Art Journey Award. Samson Young: Songs for Disaster Relief Hong Kong in Venice 13 May – 26 November 2017 Interview by VERONICA SIMPSON Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Mellors and Nissinen represent Finland at this year’s Venice Biennale. They discuss handmade puppets, homemade film sets, creation myths involving eggs, the flimsy narratives on which national identities are built, and whether you have to love something in order to make fun of it ‘All of these things (creation and national identity myths) are just about people generating little stories to entertain and manipulate people.’ Nathaniel Mellors. Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen’s film The Aalto Natives (2017) is a narrative multimedia installation offering an immersive theatrical experience around nationalism and identity. Finnish national characteristics and creation myths are explored and exploded in exuberant and irreverent style in an hour-long piece that plays on several screens around the Aalto pavilion, and incorporates dialogue between two sculptural animatronic figures, Geb and Atum, one of which is a large, talking egg. They play two terraforming aliens who revisit the Finland they created millions of years earlier to try to make sense of the culture. It is very much a homemade production: the pair built their own film sets in six weeks, in Mellors’ studio in Los Angeles, and made all their own puppets. They have used “more or less every kind of puppetry in this piece”, according to Nissinen, including claymation, stop-motion hand-drawn animation, CGI and hand-puppetry. The puppetry and animation provide a deceptively lighthearted, satirical context within which to interrogate serious issues of globalisation, shifting borders, racism, migration and national identity. ‘All of these things (creation and national identity myths) are just about people generating little stories to entertain and manipulate people,’ says Mellors. The curator is Xander Karskens. Nathaniel Mellors (b1974, Doncaster) and Erkka Nissinen (b1975, Jyväskylä) have established both solo and collaborative projects since meeting each other during a residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 2007. Mellors, who was awarded the Contemporary Art Society Prize in 2014, is now based in Los Angeles, where he recently had a solo exhibition: Prequel Dump, The Box, Los Angeles (2016). His work was also included in the main 2011 Venice Biennale exhibition, ILLUMInations. Nissinen was awarded the Illy Prize at Art Rotterdam in 2011, and the AVEK Prize for media art in 2013. Solo exhibitions include God or Terror or Retro Dog, at De Hallen Haarlem (2015), and Erkka Nissinen, at Jyväskylä Art Museum, Jyväskylä (2015). Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen: The Aalto Natives Pavilion of Finland, Giardini, Venice 13 May – 26 November 2017 Interview by VERONICA SIMPSON Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Maclean is representing Scotland at the Venice Biennale with her new film, a dark fairytale titled Spite Your Face. She talked to us before the biennale about the film, nationalism, fairytales, and how narratives can be so powerful that audiences prefer the fiction to fact Rachel Maclean: “I was interested in the power of narrative…and how, if lies are told to substantiate (a story), often disproving the lie is not enough to crack or affect the power of the narrative.” Scottish artist and film-maker Rachel Maclean continues in the compelling, sumptuously styled, satirical vein that is now her trademark with a new 30-minute film, Spite Your Face, a dark Venetian fairytale, commissioned for the Scotland + Venice presentation at the 57th Venice Biennale. Screened within the darkened interior of a newly deconsecrated church, Chiesa di Santa Catarina, in Cannaregio, Maclean’s work becomes the altarpiece, shown in portrait format as a large-scale projection. It weaves together visual and narrative references to Catholic religious mythology (in particular, that of the ascension and redemption) with the famous Italian 19th-century fairytale about Pinocchio, the puppet who wants to become a “real boy”, and the familiar rags to riches cliché peddled by today’s mainstream media. For Venice, Maclean has tweaked her usual baroque aesthetic to a more limited but emotionally heightened palette of gold, silver and blue, inspired by research she conducted in preparation for the piece. There are elaborate costumes that reference period Venetian finery, as well as settings that evoke the great religious paintings of the middle ages. This “high” visual tone jars with frequent moments of cartoonish violence and cheesy, promotional kitsch to conjure a uniquely disturbing tale of corruption and depravity. There is real bite to Maclean’s critique of the contemporary “post-truth” political rhetoric and the disappearance of more moral or ethical aspirations in the new digitally facilitated, clickbait media landscape. Set within two worlds – one a grimy, bleak world of poverty, bad skin and even worse teeth, the other a glittering “heavenly” place populated by silver-skinned arch manipulators – Spite Your Face tells the story of a young, orphaned beggar (played, as are all the characters, by Maclean herself), who is granted his wish to be rich and successful by a voluptuous composite of Roman goddess, Virgin Mary and the Blue Fairy. He is given a bottle of Truth, and advised to use it sparingly. However, although he finds that the Truth seems to heal his dreadful lesions and bad teeth – which brings him acceptance among the rich and powerful, and grants him admittance to their loftier realms – his own path to power is achieved only through lies and deception (as the poster boy for a fragrance called Untruth). In a fascinating twist, every time he lies, his nose grows longer, but his new adoring audience seem to love him all the more for it. Rachel Maclean is a Glasgow-based artist (b1987) who recently had major exhibitions at HOME, Manchester, and a screening of her previous film It’s What’s Inside That Counts (2016) at Tate Britain. After graduating from Edinburgh College of Art, she came to public attention in New Contemporaries 2009, won the Margaret Tait Award in 2013, has twice been shortlisted for the Jarman Award, and achieved critical acclaim for Feed Me (2015) in the British Art Show 8. Rachel Maclean: Spite Your Face Scotland + Venice, Chiesa di Santa Catarina, Cannaregio, Venice 13 May – 26 November 2017 Interview by VERONICA SIMPSON Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY

Words are at the centre of Stark's newest, most ambitious undertaking, a revised version of the popular 1791 opera The Magic Flute by the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the librettist Emanuel Schikaneder. The project, which takes the form of a film, is the outcome of the artist's Absolut Art Award in 2015. Read an interview with Frances Stark on the Studio International website.