FOUNDER / EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Róisín Tapponi PUBLISHERS / ONLINE PLATFORMS Issuu CONTRIBUTORS Dougal Verinder-Gedge Jamila Prowse Kai-Isaiah Jamal Lorén Elhili Maria Fusco Naomi Accardi Rehana Zaman Rene Matić Rhea Dillon Sabrina Mumtaz Hasan Sinéad O’Dwyer ART DIRECTION & DESIGN DATEAGLE STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHERS Yousef Hilmy Ottilie Landmark Pamila Payne CONTACT editorartworkmagazine@gmail.com @magazineartwork ARTWORK Magazine © 2020 ISSN 2732-4761 Reproduction without permission is prohibited ARTWORK Magazine is published twice a year. The viwes expressed in its pages are not necessarily those of ARTWORK Magazine. The magazine does not take respibility for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. While every effort has been made to identify copyright holders, some omissions may occur. EDITOR’S LETTER To names one’s archive is a perilous matter; it can suggest that these texts ‘belong’ together, and that the belonging is a mark of one’s own presence — Sarah Ahmad My encounters with magazines and journals have always been opportune sites for change. It started with fashion magazines—when I first moved to the UK, I remember standing in the big Tesco in Croydon begging my mum for an issue of British Vogue. What do ye want that for? The images rewarded me with an imagination, I became open to the possibility of obtaining a reality far removed from my own. More than that, I was mesmerised by how the pages yielded the power to bind together so many voices (within limits—the lack of diversity in fashion zines was un-conceptualised at the time). I was nine years old and my generation of bloggers soon sprouted tour-de-force fashion entrepreneurs—Elise By Olsen, Tavi Gevinson, Susie Bubble. I could not believe it—beyond purchasing a magazine, I could use my own words to access this world? The Condé Nast or Vice logo weren’t signs anymore, my own voice signified endless possibilities. Recognising that, I disciplined my skill by writing my own critical fashion blog which ran weekly for five years (an embarrassing past, although I believe my 13 year old self is still up somewhere on an i-D article running ‘Top 5 Bloggers to Watch’).
Issue One July 2020 I reached out to my local paper asking why there wasn’t a fashion section. By the age of 13 I was a ‘Fashion Editor’ and received writing commissions thereon in. Fast-forward a year or so and my tastes changed, I dropped fashion and started collecting obscure independent art magazines (many out of print today, but still archived/hoarded in the garage) and journals such as Third Text, n.paradoxa and The Happy Hypocrite (I am honoured to have founder Maria Fusco contribute to this first issue). I started writing for the magazines that I was reading. When I was 19 I materialised Habibi Collective and continue to straddle journalism, film curation and academia on an independent and institutional, local and international scale. I have never received a formal art education and none of my family are interested in the arts. Half are nestled in rural Ireland and the other half are Iraqi immigrants scattered everywhere, life and limited resources taught me how to hustle more than art school ever could—for that I am grateful. With my curatorial work, I run a strict politics of production. I will not bore you with my practice here, but the idea for this publication came from a place of anger at the way things are run. For years I have worked in the heart of media outlets in the UK and internationally, as staff writer and on freelance retainer, and there is little integrity. Similarly, I noticed that many well-meaning independent magazines took these large-scale media capitalist corporations as editorial models. I was talking with editors who were versed on primitive accumulation, yet expected free labour from commissioned writers and advertised unpaid internships. In response, I scribbled down a quick manifesto: Biannual critical art magazine by and for marginalised writers, artists + practices slow-writing + attention to quality, no copy-writing or fast-paced production pay for contributors, recognising the value of experimental art-writing every text must have an opinion, no artistic or political censorship experimentation outside formal boundaries of text + image collaboratively-driven, decentralisation or production + master narratives Thinking about my magazines in the garage, I constantly ask(ed) myself: How do I run a publication like this and make it sustainable? I still don’t have an answer. As well as anger, everything you will read in this issue came from a place of deep love. In November 2019, I curated a list of my favourite artists working right now and reached out to them. I am so ecstatic that most of them persevered with me, through thick, thin and a pandemic. It has been an honour to develop these texts in such close tandem with so many gifted people, many of whom I am honoured to call my friends. I want ART WORK to be a high-quality critical art magazine from the margins and I can say proudly that Issue One fulfils this vision. I would like to thank all of you for reading this, for buying the magazine—I truly appreciate it and hope you’re here with me for the long-run. Thank you to the huge crowd who danced at the fundraiser party at SET Dalston, DJs Chooc, Sara, James and Chloe and to everyone who donated on the online fundraiser. Thank you to Martin and Vanessa for being my designers, my aesthetes and eyes and Asel for your preliminary designs. Thank you to those who tuned into my passionate outbursts (for want of a better word), my family for asking how’s the magazine thing going? and everyone else who has supported me along the way. From a place of anger and love — as always,
Rx
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ART WORK Magazine