Control Issue Twenty Launch

Launch: 6 - 9pm 17 February 

Laure Genillard Gallery

2 Hanway Place

London W1T 1HB

Control Magazine is seen as a vehicle for creating networks between artists who are working with people, community and society; artists that are looking for a relevance, a meaning for their art practice within the contemporary social setting. Central to such an engagement with society are the polemics, issues and visions both of the moment and of the future, and it is exactly this that forms the catalyst around which this Issue Twenty has been built.

The diverse contexts in which the individual contributing artists are working shows the near universal desire of artists to deal with both wider and local current polemics, interpreted in terms of the actual social and physical environment in which artists are located. Here Control creates a bridge between these practices that would be otherwise isolated from each other. These concerns of the artists here represent a counter consciousness to the general domination of object based thinking in contemporary culture, a counter consciousness that is rarely visible outside the context in which it originated. This issue of Control aims to further the networks between individual practitioners as well as raising their profile through documenting the creation of actual works that have been realised by artists with the participation of other people and communities.

Issue 20 has contributions from: Merlin Carpenter, Bedfellows, Francisco Camacho Herrera, Radio Anti, Stephen Willats, Eliana Otta,  Gladstone Thompson, Johanna Gustafsson Fürst.

Since the first issue in 1965, Control Magazine has acted as a vehicle for proposals and explanations of art practice between artists seeking to create a meaningful engagement with contemporary society.

Published and edited by Stephen Willats, this pioneering magazine has documented the work of many artists, both from the UK and abroad and encouraged a wide discussion of artists’ practices. It has included contributions and original pieces from an extensive range of artists over its eighteen issues. Since 1965, the magazine has published work and writing by over 150 artists, including John Latham, Roy Ascot, Anthony Benjamin, Dan Graham, Mary Kelly, Helen Chadwick, Tony Cragg, Dennis Adams, Lawrence Weiner, Anish Kapoor, Martha Rosler, Jeremy Deller, alongside collectives and collaboratives such as Gallerie in Friedrichstrasse, Artists Placement Group and early producer’s galleries such as that of Dieter Hacker. Many of the artists have made artwork specially for the magazine.

Control Magazine’s function has always been to provide a resource for artists to discuss their work and, in particular, to make connections with other disciplines such as social or computer sciences, technology etc. Its twenty issues provide a unique record of a specific area of art practice over four decades and this non-profit making publication has had an acknowledged influence on the practice of artists.

Alongside the magazine itself, there have been events held to launch certain issues, such as Cognition Control, Midland Group Gallery, Nottingham, 1972; the Symposium Art Creating Society at MOMA, Oxford, 1989; Art and Intervention at Wilma Gold, London, 2003.

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