Emma Mahony

In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in and support for artists who are mothers with a number of exhibitions dedicated to this much maligned sector of the art world, including most recently, Fruits of Labor which opened at Apexart in New York in November 2023 and features the work of eight artist-mothers; and the now annual Procreate Project Mother Art Prize 2023, which has a new home in the Zabludowicz Collection in London. Support networks for, and collectives of, artists-mothers have emerged including: The Mothership Project (2013-now) in Dublin; and Mother House Studios (MHS) (2016-now) in London. Books exploring this topic have also recently been published including art critic, Hettie Judah’s How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents) (2022); and Why Call It Labor? On Motherhood and Art Work (2020), edited by Mai Abu ElDahab and featuring the writings of seven artist-mothers from the Arab world.

In order to understand the structural issues artists-who-are-mothers face and to determine how to level the playing field, this article surveys the existing research that has been carried out on artist-mothers and contextualises it both within the broader history of the relegation of women artists by the art world and by patriarchal society. It then draws on strategies that emerge from the discourses of feminist economics, eco-feminism, anti-capitalism, commoning, and radical care, and concludes with a 12-point proposal for change that would arguably transform the art world and the greater creative sector into a more egalitarian system that recognises and values the contributions of all of its participants. Corresponding with the feminist focus of this research the vast amount of the literature I draw upon is by authors who identify as women, non-binary or LGBTQ+.

... The exhibition toured to the Milton Keynes Gallery, Cornerhouse in Manchester, Angel Row in Nottingham and Tullie House Carlisle. The exhibition included Stephen Willats, Sam Durant, Christian Marclay and Dave Muller. ... Exhibitor, Durant, Sam. Curator, Mahony, Emma. ...

A neo-liberal narrative dominates the cultural value discourse wherein the value of publicly funded art and higher education is increasingly assessed on the basis of extrinsic values. Higher education is expected to contribute to the knowledge economy and the arts to social amelioration, cultural tourism and regeneration. Such an overt focus on the extrinsic values of art and education sidelines their intrinsic values – how they contribute to the common good by promoting collective well-being and sustaining a critical public sphere. Rather than arguing for how their intrinsic values might be marshalled into this neo-liberal value discourse as many cultural analysts continue to do, this article calls for a redefinition of value based on principles of commoning. In place of ‘value’, it looks to the concept of ‘social wealth’, which is created by radical experiments in producing the commons. It considers how ‘art institutions of the common’ and ‘universities of the common’ that have em...

This paper takes the public seminar, What Do You Stand For: Who’s Afraid of Solidarity? , held at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin in 2012, as a case study for an analysis of the relationship between visual art institutions and left-wing political ideologies. It seeks to contextualise the oppositional practices of its four panellists: Valerie Connor (representing Blue Funk), Mark Garry, Garrett Phelan, and Sarah Pierce, in relation to how they align their practices with the liberal democratic state and the art institutions it funds. The relationship of the state to the politics of resistance that operates against it is the starting point for this analysis. This framework is then mapped onto the art institutional landscape and onto the activities of the panellists. The question then becomes: where do these deviant institutions stand in relation to the state-funded established art institution?

The recent growth of the ‘fallism’ movement, in conjunction with Black Lives Matter (BLM), has seen a surge in the number of plinths that stand vacant across South Africa, the United States and Europe since 2015. This article explores the theme of the empty plinth and interrogates what the significance of absence is. It asks what role empty plinths play in fomenting discussion about historical injustices? And, how these empty plinths can be reactivated or reclaimed in a way that attempts to recognize contested memories and ameliorate contemporary divisions along the lines of race, religion and ethnicity? It considers how the British, Ukrainian and Irish states and their civil societies have variously responded to the problem of what to do with monuments (and their empty pedestals) to individuals and regimes that are guilty of human rights abuses. To draw these conclusions, it looks in detail at three examples of monuments that have fallen over an extended time period and the respons...

Abstract This paper examines how a new wave of student movements in Europe are rejecting the neoliberal values that increasingly shape and warp their institutions of higher education and are calling for a ‘new post-neoliberal university’, one that embraces critical enquiry as a means to serve the public good. It tracks this approach across three recent case studies—the 2015 student protests at the University of Amsterdam, Central Saint Martins (London) and the National College of Art and Design (Dublin)—arguing that the strategy that these groups adopt can be closely aligned with Simon Critchley’s radical political strategy of opening up spaces of dissent from within state territory, but at an interstitial (or internal) distance to it. When applied to the neoliberalized university, such an approach entails opening up spaces of resistance within the university that make use of its resources without being part of its top-down, bureaucratic structure. It concludes that the purpose of the creation of these ‘internal–external’ spaces is to experiment with alternative models of learning and critical pedagogies that test out what a post-neoliberal university may look like.

Reacting to the gradual neoliberalization of the European public art institutional landscape, actors within a number of critical art museums and galleries have attempted to reform their institutions from within through a process that is largely commensurate with Chantal Mouffe's radical political strategy of ‘critique as hegemonic engagement-with’. This article focuses on Manuel J. Borja-Villel's attempt to implement such a strategy at the Museu D'Art Contemporani, Barcelona (MACBA) in the early 2000s. Through an examination of two key projects – Las Agencias (The Agencies) (2001) and Com Volem ser Governats? (How do we want to be governed) (2003-2004) – it considers the efficacy of such an approach. In so doing, it calls into question the public art institution's ability to perform a self-critique when embedded within the hegemony of the neoliberal order and constrained by bureaucratic institutional limitations. It concludes by noting that Mouffe's strategy of engagement does not give sufficient consideration to the dependence critical public art institutions have on local and national political support and its funding channels, making them extremely susceptible to instrumentalization. In response to this constraint, it makes the recommendation that, rather than curbing their experimentation, these critical actors should embrace the potentially temporary status of their institutions, and intentionally push them to and even beyond their bureaucratic limitations.

In the current economic climate where state subsidies for the arts have been steadily eroded, there is a consensus in support of the good of corporate sponsorship for cultural institutions. This article seeks to problematize this consensus by critiquing the strategies that corporations employ in their sponsorship agreements with public cultural institutions and opening up a discussion around the ethical issues this poses for their recipients. It then examines how a coalition of subversive arts collectives, that come together under the banner ‘Art Not Oil’, have begun to successfully shatter this consensus through a sustained campaign of unauthorized live art interventions enacted inside cultural institutions. It argues that the unique strategy of resistance they employ operates at an interstitial distance to the public cultural institutions they target, from where they open up spaces of resistance ultimately capable of rewriting the cultural sectors’ corporatized value system.Key Wo...

The recent growth of the 'fallism' movement, in conjunction with Black Lives Matter (BLM), has seen a surge in the number of plinths that stand vacant across South Africa, the United States and Europe since 2015. This article explores the theme of the empty plinth and interrogates what the significance of absence is. It asks what role empty plinths play in fomenting discussion about historical injustices? And, how these empty plinths can be reactivated or reclaimed in a way that attempts to recognize contested memories and ameliorate contemporary divisions along the lines of race, religion and ethnicity? It considers how the British, Ukrainian and Irish states and their civil societies have variously responded to the problem of what to do with monuments (and their empty pedestals) to individuals and regimes that are guilty of human rights abuses. To draw these conclusions, it looks in detail at three examples of monuments that have fallen over a protected time period and the responses to their empty pedestals: The Edward Colston statue in Bristol, United Kingdom (2020); the Bessarabska Lenin which precipitated the leninfall across Ukraine (2013) and Nelson's Pillar in Dublin, Ireland (1966).

In recent years a number of arguments have been made for the evolution of institutional critique into a new wave. The first of these arguments, which follows Chantal Mouffe's strategy of 'engagement', posits that the art museum has internalized the artistic critique previously levied against it, and enacts a form of self-critique (new institutionalism). The second argument adheres to the Autonomist Marxist strategy of 'exodus', and describes collectives that flee from the neoliberalized state institutional structure and draw on the tenets of movement-based aesthetics in order to self-institute their own alternative institutions (Gerald Raunig's 'instituent pratices'). Each of these strategies of resistance has its limitations. Instituent practices effectively wash their hands of state cultural institutions, leaving them to further devolve into the private sector unchecked, and, in the case of new institutionalism, the ability of the museum to reform itself from within is often severly compromised by the reality of how these institutions operate from within the hegemony of the neoliberal order. This chapter makes the argument that a further iteration of institutional critique-what I term 'interstitial critique' after Simon Critchley's radical political stragegy of opening interstitial distances in the state-has emerged in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010. In an era of climate crisis, interstitial critique holds the museum to account for its complicity-through the receipt of corporate sponsorship-in perpetuating climate change, precarious working conditions, and ultimately, the white supremacist, colonial narratives that underscore these related grievances. It does so by infiltrating the museum with an anarchic force from below, a force whose ultimate goal is to liberate the museum from the nefarious influence of its corporate sponsors and reclaim its cultural commons for the public good.

How does art, design and architecture enable empathetic and inclusive ways of living together? How do these spatial practices effect public exchange and opinion formation in urban spaces? This Special Issue of Art & the Public Sphere journal invites responses to the above questions, which frame the interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral knowledge-transfer and research action, Spatial Practices in Art and ArChitecture for Empathetic EXchange (SPACEX) supported by a H2020 RISE grant. SPACEX looks to spatial practices as a means of addressing these issues because of their ability to engage new public and foster meaningful partnerships, thereby forging a culture that embraces diversity, difference and discursive exchange within cities, towns and urban sites. Through articles and accounts of urbanist, art, design and architecture projects, and artist project spaces, the contributors to this issue have each addressed one of the four problems that face contemporary urban spaces in Europe. These problems variously span: (1) demise of public spaces and public spheres of opinion formation: Seemingly common spaces such as parks and squares, though publicly accessible, are increasingly privately owned. This restricts the way in which these spaces are used, such as the right to free assembly, and enforces oppressive forms of civic behaviour. (2) Contemporary cultural policy and gentrification practices: art and culture are often employed as key tools in urban regeneration schemes. While the inclusion and social engagement goals of these schemes are well intentioned, they are often

A neo-liberal narrative dominates the cultural value discourse wherein the value of publicly funded art and higher education is increasingly assessed on the basis of extrinsic values. Higher education is expected to contribute to the knowledge economy and the arts to social amelioration, cultural tourism and regeneration. Such an overt focus on the extrinsic values of art and education sidelines their intrinsic values-how they contribute to the common good by promoting collective well-being and sustaining a critical public sphere. Rather than arguing for how their intrinsic values might be marshalled into this neo-liberal value discourse as many cultural analysts continue to do, this article calls for a redefinition of value based on principles of commoning. In place of 'value', it looks to the concept of 'social wealth', which is created by radical experiments in producing the commons. It considers how 'art institutions of the common' and 'universities of the common' that have emerged in recent years are producing forms of social wealth that offer a viable alternative to the neo-liberal discourse of value.

This article explores the conflicted relationship between creative activism and the art world, through an analysis of the Barcelona-based activist collective Enmedio. It traces the emergence of Enmedio back to their involvement in Las Agencias, a radical collaboration between activist groups and the Museu D'art Contemporani, Barcelona (MACBA) in 2001, the outcome of which led the members of Enmedio to conclude that they needed to 'work at a necessary distance from institutions'. Taking this position as a jumping off point, this article questions the efficacy of such an approach and asks on what terms, if any, a relationship between anti-institutional actors and the art establishment can be mutually beneficial?

Today there is generally a consensus that the art world has finally achieved
a post-race, post-feminist, post-LGBTQ status quo. Such an assumption is normalized by critics like Nicolas Bourriaud who asserts that a new modernity configured to globalization has emerged, one in which artists are as equally influenced by art and culture from Africa and Asia as they are by the Western canon (Bourriaud 2009). Consequently, identity-based exhibitions, which focus on LBGTQ, Black, or women artists are no longer necessary, because the art world is always already equitable in its inclusion of Other artists. Isn’t it?

Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating aims to shatter this consensus with comprehensive statistical analysis of the inequities and exclusions that shape the art world. The book’s author, curator and arts writer Maura Reilly, approaches the subject from an insider’s perspective. Reilly was appointed founding curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in 2007 where, among other exhibitions, she was responsible for the permanent installation of Judy’s Chicago’s Dinner Party (1979), and co-curating Global Feminisms with Linda Nochlin...

‘All information will be common,’ is the message imparted by a seven-foot high banner pinned to the wall in NN Contemporary as part of the Freee-Carracci-Institute. ‘The common’ to which it refers, is a central tenet of the political philosophy of the Autonomous Marxist thinkers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. They predict that an as yet unforeseeable ‘event’ will result in a society where all will have access to and share the common. By the common they are referring to the natural common (the Earth’s natural resources which have a lengthy history of enclosure and privatisation), the artificial common (the intellectual products of human beings which are increasingly captured and valorised under post-Fordism), but also to private property in general, as well as state controlled, so-called public property, all of which they predict will become accessible for the use and enjoyment of all (2012: 103).  With its focus on ‘information’, the Freee Art Collective’s banner alludes to the artificial common. Following Hardt and Negri, their banner functions as a proposition for another world, one where the intellectual products of human beings – ideas, images, language and affects – will have escaped their current enclosure in the regime of private property and copyright law and be freely available to all.

This essay will put forward the argument that this future vision of the common – understood as an alternative to both private and public property in both their physical and immaterial manifestations – is prefigured in the Freee-Carracci-Institute. And, moreover, that it offers a temporary escape hatch from the narrative of neoliberal privatisation and commoditisation that has shaped the public cultural landscape since the 90s.

In its reduction of everything to economic or social ‘value’, the current neoliberal audit culture stifles and neutralises the agency of art. This paper puts forward a critique of the discourse of value and looks instead to that which has been rendered insignificant, worthless or valueless by our audit culture and asks how anti-values like ‘dissensus’, ‘philistinism’, ‘the common’, ‘possibility’, ‘failure’ and ‘love’ might productively shape a post-neoliberal art and educational landscape? Focusing on a number of artistic practices and pedagogic collectives that test-out these ‘anti-values’, it will ask the question why they are worthless to the neoliberal state, but priceless to a society that is attempting to imagine things otherwise?

In the current economic climate where state subsidies for the arts have been steadily eroded, there is a consensus in support of the good of corporate sponsorship for cultural institutions. This article seeks to problematize this consensus by critiquing the strategies that corporations employ in their sponsorship agreements with public cultural institutions and opening up a discussion around the ethical issues this poses for their recipients. It then examines how a coalition of subversive arts collectives, that come together under the banner 'Art Not Oil', have begun to successfully shatter this consensus through a sustained campaign of unauthorized live art interventions enacted inside cultural institutions. It argues that the unique strategy of resistance they employ operates at an interstitial distance to the public cultural institutions they target, from where they open up spaces of resistance ultimately capable of rewriting the cultural sectors' corporatized value system.

Abstract
This paper examines how a new wave of student movements in Europe are rejecting the neoliberal values that increasingly shape and warp their institutions of higher education and are calling for a ‘new post-neoliberal university’, one that embraces critical enquiry as a means to serve the public good. It tracks this approach across three recent case studies—the 2015 student protests at the University of Amsterdam, Central Saint Martins (London) and the National College of Art and Design (Dublin)—arguing that the strategy that these groups adopt can be closely aligned with Simon Critchley’s radical political strategy of opening up spaces of dissent from within state territory, but at an interstitial (or internal) distance to it. When applied to the neoliberalized university, such an approach entails opening up spaces of resistance within the university that make use of its resources without being part of its top-down, bureaucratic structure. It concludes that the purpose of the creation of these ‘internal–external’ spaces is to experiment with alternative models of learning and critical pedagogies that test out what a post-neoliberal university may look like.

Abstract Reacting to the gradual neoliberalization of the European public art institutional landscape,
actors within a number of critical art museums and galleries have attempted to reform their institutions
from within through a process that is largely commensurate with Chantal Mouffe’s radical political strategy
of ‘critique as hegemonic engagement-with’. This article focuses on Manuel J. Borja-Villel’s attempt to
implement such a strategy at the Museu D’Art Contemporani, Barcelona (MACBA) in the early 2000s.
Through an examination of two key projects – Las Agencias (The Agencies) (2001) and Com Volem ser
Governats? (How do we want to be governed) (2003-2004) – it considers the efficacy of such an approach.
In so doing, it calls into question the public art institution’s ability to perform a self-critique when embedded
within the hegemony of the neoliberal order and constrained by bureaucratic institutional limitations. It
concludes by noting that Mouffe’s strategy of engagement does not give sufficient consideration to the
dependence critical public art institutions have on local and national political support and its funding
channels, making them extremely susceptible to instrumentalization. In response to this constraint, it
makes the recommendation that, rather than curbing their experimentation, these critical actors should
embrace the potentially temporary status of their institutions, and intentionally push them to and even
beyond their bureaucratic limitations.

In the art institutional landscape, a blurring of boundaries between the state and the market is effectively transforming public art institutions into semi-private ones. In response to these developments, a New Wave of critical institutionalism has recently emerged with the goal of contesting the neo-liberalization of the public art institution. Existing literature in this field reduces the strategies these critical institutions employ to a dichotomy between attempting to reform public art institutions from within, or abandoning them completely in order to set up alternatives that exist outside the state system and its market logic. The former thinking follows a strategy of ‘engagement-with’ as theorized by Chantal Mouffe, while the latter adheres to the post-Operaist strategy of ‘exodus’. Within the field of left-wing political philosophy these strategies have been challenged by a third position put forward by Simon Critchley, which proposes that radical politics should take place at an ‘interstitial distance’ from state institutions, a strategy that involves opening spaces of opposition against the state from within state territory. Although Critchley does not apply this thinking to the field of art, it is my contention that his strategy of interstitial distance offers a third path for the critical institution, one which, I argue, is exemplified in the practices of the UK-based art collectives: Freee and Liberate Tate.

This paper takes the public seminar, What Do You Stand For: Who’s Afraid of Solidarity?, held at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin in 2012, as a case study for an analysis of the relationship between visual art institutions and left-wing political ideologies. It seeks to contextualise the oppositional practices of its four panellists: Valerie Connor (representing Blue Funk), Mark Garry, Garrett Phelan, and Sarah Pierce, in relation to how they align their practices with the liberal democratic state and the art institutions it funds. The relationship of the state to the politics of resistance that operates against it is the starting point for this analysis. This framework is then mapped onto the art institutional landscape and onto the activities of the panellists. The question then becomes: where do these deviant institutions stand in relation to the state-funded established art institution?

On 18 May 2016, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht hosts an evening initiated by the curatorial team of Strijd ∞, an activist, curatorial, and artistic project that began during the student protest at Maagdenhuis, University of Amsterdam, 2015. The program consists of short lectures and a panel discussion with Charles Esche, Emma Mahony, Ahmet Öğüt, Gregory Sholette, and Strijd ∞ representatives Ezra Benus, Tamara Breugelmans, Jeroen de Smalen, Astrid Kerchman, Prof. Dr. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, Emily Rhodes, and Frederike Sperling. The presentations revolve around the practices of art, activism, and protest that position themselves within and against the neoliberal university and art institution. The origins of this event are to be found in the ongoing student protests at the University of Amsterdam, images of which Strijd ∞ captured through photos displayed in a DIY exhibition. The exhibition traveled to the Free University Berlin; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and, on the occasion of this presentation, a makeshift iteration is also installed within BAK’s current exhibition Unstated (Or, Living Without Approval).

Dr. Emma Mahony examines how a new wave of student movements in Europe are rejecting the neoliberal values that increasingly shape and warp their institutions of higher education; through three recent case studies: the 2015 student protests at the University of Amsterdam; Central Saint Martins, London; and the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, she argues that today’s student movements instead uphold a belief that a “new university” is possible. Mahony is a lecturer in the School of Visual Culture at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. She is also a visiting lecturer at the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, University College Dublin (UCD). She has just completed a PhD in Visual Culture that examines how critical art institutions can subvert and rewrite the neoliberal value system that has shaped the public art institutional landscape since the 1990s. From 2004–8 she was exhibitions curator at the Hayward Gallery, London, where she curated the national touring exhibitions Cult Fiction, 2007–8, Bad Behavior from the Arts Council Collection, 2003–5, and organized British Art Show 6, 2005–6.

Emma Mahony, Locating Simon Critchley’s ‘Interstitial Distance’ in the Artistic Practices of The Freee Art Collective and Liberate Tate.

In spite of the resistance towards anarchism that the majority of left-wing political philosophy perpetuates, I argue that the ‘anarchic meta-politics’ Simon Critchley sets out in Infinitely Demanding (2007) offers a refreshing interpretation of classical anarchism that has a direct relevance to the field of critical artistic practices. Although Critchley does not apply his thinking to the field of art, there are arguably a number of key aspects of his understanding of ‘meta-anarchism’ that resonate with the practices of Liberate Tate and The Freee Art Collective (Freee) (despite the fact that the latter are self-declared Marxists). They are: the emphasis he places on ethics and non-violent resistance (following Emmanuel Levinas and Walter Benjamin), his understanding of democracy as dissensus (following Jacque Rancière), his recourse to a counter-hegemonic war of position (following Chantal Mouffe and Claude Laclau) and finally how, in opposition to classical anarchism, Critchley advocates an understanding of anarchism that is not premised on the revolutionary overcoming of the state, but instead chooses to operate from within its interstices.

Firstly, I argue that ethics is the driving force behind Liberate Tate’s campaign against BP’s sponsorship of Tate. It also forms the backbone of Freee’s mission to politicize and democratize the institutions of art, making them more radically inclusive – an ambition which is also completely in keeping with Herbert Read’s conception of a re-imagined, post-capitalist culture.

Secondly, the stance that Liberate Tate and Freee take with regard to the role of violence in their work is commensurate with Critchley’s understanding of ‘divine violence’ after Benjamin. This ‘divine violence’ is evident in the manner in which their work seeks to counter the mythic violence perpetrated by the state and the market: Liberate Tate’s interventions bring to public attention the mythic violence BP perpetrates on the environment, and Freee, in their Functions series, highlight the mythic violence concealed in the seemingly innocuous methodologies of Third Way cultural policy.

Thirdly, Critchley’s understanding of democracy (after Rancière) as necessarily encompassing the dissenting voice of the ‘anarchic demos’, is compatible with Freee’s conception of the philistine as the figure who brings to light the divisions inherent in art and culture by virtue of her/his absence from it. The philistine, then, is culture’s ‘demos’; her/his inclusion is the prerequisite for a democratic art. Furthermore, in their post-Habermasian conception of a ‘public spherian art’, Freee publish their dissensual opinions in the public sphere, thereby seeking to overturn consensual hegemonic discourses. Liberate Tate also publish oppositional discourses in the public sphere in order to explode the consensus that surrounds the acceptability of big-oil sponsorship for the arts. Unlike Freee, however, Liberate Tate’s discourses are not primarily text based, instead they take a visual form.

Fourthly, the counter-hegemonic war of position that Critchley mobilizes (after Mouffe and Laclau) is also evident in Liberate Tate and Freee’s work. Liberate Tate’s practice can be interpreted as a war of position against Tate for its complicity with the unethical practices of BP. And Freee, for their part, channel Mouffe and Laclau’s thinking through public sphere theory, arriving at a strategy where counter-public spheres challenge the hegemony of the debased bourgeois public sphere.

Finally, and commensurate with Critchley’s strategy of assuming an interstitial distance to the state, both Liberate Tate and Freee operate from within the art establishment, but at its margins. They each have a parasitical relationship with the art establishment, whereby they use publically funded institutions as strategic platforms to perform their political grievances: Tate is host for Liberate Tate’s parasitic interventions, and Freee are reliant on public art commissioning bodies in order to commission and fund their critique of Third Way cultural policy in public art.

Cult Fiction explores the reciprocal relationship between comics and art, foregrounding links between the two genres where current social and political issues are aired in frank visual narratives. An essay by Paul Gravett illuminates the long-standing love affair between fine art and comics, while Hayward Curator, Emma Mahony sets the contemporary context in her introductory essay.

This lecture examines the role politicized art practice can play in radicalizing democracy. It considers how, by mobilizing a number of values that are the antithesis of the normative values disseminated within our liberal democratic and neoliberal order – including dissensus, philistinism, imagination, possibility and love – Dutch artist Jonas Staal and Irish artist Kerry Guinan are variously testing out and disseminating alternative democratic forms.