This week: Just Stop Oil’s Stonehenge protest. On Wednesday, two activists sprayed orange powder paint made from cornflour on to three of the boulders at Stonehenge, prompting outrage and some support. Before this latest action, in an article for the July/August print edition of The Art Newspaper, John Paul Stonard had argued that Just Stop Oil’s museum-based protests add up to “one of the most successful campaigns of civil disobedience in history”.
Installation view of Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere. Intergalactic Palace (2024) at Hayward Gallery
Photo: Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery
He reflects on whether the latest protests reinforce this conviction. At the Hayward Gallery in London, the Bahamian-born, US-based artist Tavares Strachan has just opened his first major survey exhibition. We go to the gallery to talk to him.
Tavares Strachan speaking to the Week in Art‘s host Ben Luke at the exhibition
Photo: David Clack
And this episode’s Work of the Week is Janus Fleuri by Louise Bourgeois, made in 1968. It is one of the highlights of Unconscious Memories, a show in which Bourgeois’s sculptures and installations are installed alongside the historic works in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. We speak to Cloé Perrone, the co-curator of the exhibition.
Louise Bourgeois‘ Janus Fleuri (1968) at the Galleria Borghese
© The Easton Foundation/Licensed by SIAE 2024 and VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Ph.by A.Osio
- Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere, Hayward Gallery, London, until 1 September
- Louise Bourgeois: Unconscious memories, Galleria Borghese, Rome, 21 June-15 September