This year sees a change in format with commissions and performances taking place across the UK and online
Art Night’s 2021 edition launches today, with a programme of commissions and performances taking place across the UK and online – a change in format for its fifth edition. The all-night contemporary art festival traditionally takes place in London. But this year’s edition comprises a month-long programme with events throughout the country, running from June to July to coincide with the Summer Solstice.
The festival is curated by Art Night Artistic Director, Helen Nisbet and is titled Nothing Compares 2U, after the song by Prince. The programme ‘takes inspiration from defiance in small acts and moments of self-determination, both personal and collective’. ‘It is about how we continue and what gets us through, when so many of the dominant economic, institutional, political and cultural structures are against us or are trying to break us,’ Nisbet says.
As the exclusive media partner of this year’s festival, ArtReview is screening Alberta Whittle’s HOLDING THE LINE: a refrain in two parts, a new commission that takes the voice of the River Thames as a launch point, draws on the work of science fiction writer Ama Josephine Budge, and explores colonial histories and police brutality. You can watch it here.
The festival’s billboard commission with the Guerrilla Girls also kicks off today – The Male Graze can be seen in Eastbourne, Dundee, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Cardiff, Warwick, Swansea in partnership with arts organizations around the UK. Other commissions include work by Oona Doherty, Sonya Dyer, Adham Faramawy, Mark Leckey, Isabel Lewis, Imran Perretta and Paul Purgas, Philomène Pirecki, and OOMK. More information about the programme can be found here.
