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International Report: Manifesta 12, Palermo – ‘cultivating coexistence’ but who’s doing the gardening?

Titled ‘The Planetary Garden: Cultivating Coexistence’, for its twelfth edition the roving European art biennial explores ideas around how life forms meet and adapt to coexist, while also aiming to put down roots in its host city of Palermo, Sicily. Eva Rowson, one of 10 a-n Artist members who attended the Manifesta 12 preview, reports from the Italian island.

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Dissatisfied with the art world? Then build your own

Build Your Own Art World was a one-day seminar at OSR Projects in Somerset that considered what it means to be artist-led and if there is an alternative to a global gallery system. For Julie McCalden, it highlighted the need for artists to resist the behaviours the art world encourages them to adopt.

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The art of incarceration: representation and rehabilitation in UK prisons

With reference to Edmund Clark’s current Ikon Gallery exhibition ‘In Place of Hate’ – the result of three years as artist in residence at the therapeutic prison HMP Grendon – a recent symposium in Birmingham explored the role of art and its use as a rehabilitative tool. After a day of talks and presentations, Carrie Foulkes finds her belief in socially-engaged practice reaffirmed.

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a-n Research: a focus on education

a-n Research editor Dany Louise highlights content that focuses on education in schools and universities in our growing, free-to-view index of visual arts cultural policy and strategy documents.

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Artists and mental health: depression is neither romantic nor inevitable

Do the pressures of being an artist, with the precariousness of funding, the demands of unrealistic deadlines and the need to be seen to succeed and deliver consistently, make talking about depression and mental health tantamount to career suicide? Artist and writer Alistair Gentry, who has suffered with depression since a teenager, thinks the answer is ‘Yes’ – but that the issue is too important to keep quiet about.

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Hull and the 2017 City of Culture legacy: where do local artists go from here?

Writing for a-n News in August 2016, Hull-based artist Paul Collinson called on the City of Culture legacy team to “set foot outside their fortress and talk to those who will be left behind to carry on the good work”. Now, after the city’s high-profile year of cultural activity, he looks back over the year and asks, “Where next?”

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We are not surprised: open letter on sexual harassment in the art world

In response to recent allegations of sexual harassment within the art world and the resignation of Artforum co-publisher Knight Landesman, an open letter has been published by ‘art world workers’ calling for an end to silence around the issue and a renewed effort by individuals and institutions to deal with what it describes as ‘an environment of acceptance and complicity’. Here, we republish the letter in full.

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Claudia Rankine’s The White Card: life-affirming response to ‘Black Death Spectacle’

To coincide with Soul of a Nation at Tate Modern, US writer Claudia Rankine presented a reading from her new play, which explores racism in the art world and beyond. Sonya Dyer found it a powerful vehicle for exploring the intersections of capitalism, race, empathy and resistance – particularly in light of the Dana Schutz Whitney Biennial controversy and a renewed focus on depictions of the Black body.

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Working for free: what’s to like?

Artists are often asked to work for free in return for exposure via social media likes and audience praise, so for a recent commission (paid) Alistair Gentry decided to walk around Folkestone dressed in a cliched ‘artist’s costume’ asking other types of worker if they’d do the same. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they weren’t particularly keen.

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Ethics, art and technology: the need for a human-centred approach

At a recent symposium in London, academics, technologists, artists and film makers gathered to discuss the politics and ethics of art technology. Artist and writer Alistair Gentry attended and was struck by the need for a much closer relationship between the tech and ethical tendencies in this ongoing and vitally important debate.

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