gb agency

The artists in Speak (Cally Spooner, Tania Bruguera, Douglas Gordon and Laure Prouvost) each extend and update Latham’s radical world view with their own sense of urgency. The Sackler has become a transformed space with an installation of video, light, sound and sculpture in the Powder Rooms, and, in the gallery, a bid for Cuban presidency and a composition of drawings, sound and a single live body. Each artist explores language as a medium for action, exchange and disruption. Together, they reveal how Latham’s ideas continue to resonate: from taking an unconventional approach to the reception and transference of knowledge to prioritising the role of the artist in society as an agent for change.

Cally Spooner’s diverse practice includes film, audio, hired bodies, drawing, writing, and live events. She presents a constellation of sound, drawing, data and a live body; a proposal for continuous restlessness and rehearsal – a warm-up for our position as individuals facing an uncertain political future. She has written new texts Early Research Methods 9 – 10 for the exhibition catalogue, John Latham: A World View, which may also take physical form as a new work within the exhibition.

Speak takes its title from a 1962 film by John Latham, in which the artist experiments with pulsating sound and image. A series of screenings, performances, study evenings and symposia at venues across London has been programmed alongside the exhibitions Speak and A World View: John Latham.