To Hauser & Wirth Somerset in the West Country of England for the opening of Jenny Holzer’s terrific solo show, which features many works hot from the studio all beautifully placed in the historic farm buildings and its courtyard (until 1 November). It was great to catch up with one of my all-time favourite artists whom I first interviewed back in 1988, when she showed her work at London’s ICA and beyond. (The sight of PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT and MONEY CREATES TASTE flashing across the Piccadilly Circus Spectacolor Screen to the utter bemusement of Christmas shoppers is a memory I especially cherish.)
Nearly 30 years on, and despite her now-global art fame, she is still as modest and self-deprecating as ever. As a keeper of horses and owner of a farmhouse herself, in Hoosick Falls upstate New York, she seemed utterly at home in H&W’s rural setting where she had spent two weeks planning the layout of the show. Even though high summer in the idyllic English countryside might appear an incongruous context for her lacerating accounts of atrocities and grim renderings of redacted official US documents, such is the power of her art that it can transform any setting and here it acts as a grim reminder that terrible acts are—and have been—as likely to take place in picturesque farm buildings as anywhere else.