BARBARA BOSWELL remembers South African poet, storyteller, publisher, editor and activist Diana Ferrus (1953-2026)
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Weathering a perfect storm of images
Hito Steyerl's book is a worthy but flawed attempt to mediate the negative visual overload of contemporary culture, says NICK WRIGHT
HELEN VASSALLO recommends a gripping Argentinian crime story about gender violence and the weaponisation of religion
New releases from Steve Swallow, Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts, and Ady Johnson
When the ravages of Alzheimer’s leave an elderly woman marooned in painful memories of October 1950, her grandchild comes up with a creative strategy.
New releases from Simone White, Brass Funkeys, and Souad Massi
SUE TURNER is compelled by a history that shows how far a country can turn in on itself to collude with abuses of power
RON JACOBS is persuaded by the parallel drawn between Charles Manson and Donald Trump
Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War
Hito Steyerl
(Verso £9.99)
IT’S not always the case that art professionals — artists themselves, critics and connoisseurs, historians and theorists — ground their thought and language in the distinctions, connections and contradictions revealed in a materialist scrutiny of the images that they create, consider or curate.
While the idea that the products of cultural work can be studied and understood independently of the circumstances in which they are produced persists, the very speed and complexity of the contemporary and highly mediated world allows little time for the quiet contemplation of classical beauty.
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MIRANDA RICHMOND relishes the gloriously liberated art of Roy Oxlade, and traces his method back to the thinking of David Bomberg, his acknowledged teacher
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher
The creative imagination is a weapon against barbarism, writes KENNY COYLE, who is a keynote speaker at the Manifesto Press conference, Art in the Age of Degenerative Capitalism, tomorrow at the Marx Memorial Library & Workers School in London