Eliana Willis

The opening of the 14th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea on April 6 might have met with a rainstorm and communication breakdown that led to chaotic arrangements, but it was nonetheless a success.
It wasn’t due to the K-pop glamor brought by Super Junior’s Siwon Choi, who was appointed the ambassador of this edition’s biennale onstage; nor did it have much to do with the strong presence of the opposing Democratic Party, including the mayor of Gwangju, Kang Gi-jung. The real star was the stunning main exhibition curated under the theme of “Soft and Weak like Water” by the Tate Modern’s senior curator Sook-Kyung Lee, the first South Korean-born curator to helm the event since 2006.
Spanning five galleries in the Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall as well as four other off-site locations, the beautifully installed exhibition proved more than just a show to impress, but a platform for important dialogues that aim to inspire.
Featuring 79 artists from around the world, the show is divided into four main sections: Luminous Halo, Ancestral Voices, Transient Sovereignty, and Planetary Times. The biennale set in the South Korean city known for its struggle for freedom and democracy might not be overtly political at first glance, but there’s no lack of politically charged yet poetic works that question and respond to urgent issues related to resistance, decolonization, and the environment. The art here is like water—its softness and tenderness can be a powerful mediator that penetrates the hard surfaces to bring about transformation.
Ahead of a full review of this expansive biennial event, we highlight five artists featured in the show deserving of global attention.

Oum Jeongsoon
Oum Jeongsoon, Elephant without trunk (2023). Courtesy the artist and Gwangju Biennale Foundation. Photo: glimworkers.
Who: Born in 1961 in Chung-ju, South Korea, Oum graduated from Ewha Woman’s University’s College of Fine Arts in Korea before furthering her studies at Akademie der Bildenden Kunst in Munich, Germany, from which she graduated in 1988. She was previously a fine art professor at KonKuk University in the 1990s and has exhibited in Korea, Japan, and Germany. She is the founder and director of art exhibition and education centre Our Eyes. She is based in Seoul.
Work on show: Installation work Elephant without Trunk (2023), featured in the section Luminous Halo at the Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall. The work earned the artist the inaugural Gwangju Biennale Park Seo-Bo Art Prize, with a cash prize of $100,000 sponsored by the famed 91-year-old Korean artist.
Why you should pay attention: In her ongoing project “Another Way of Seeing,” Oum traces the journey of the arrival of the first elephant in Korea from Indonesia 600 years ago. Elephant without Trunk is an extension of this project, in which Oum reinterprets elephants through the experiences of the visually impaired individuals and plays them up in enlarged forms. These obscurely shaped “elephants”—some without trunks, others without a proper body—serve as reminders of how “no one can see properly, no one can see the whole. We can only see part of the world,” noted Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern and one of the five judges of the Park Seo-Bo Art Prize. Morris praised the artist for sending a strong message to the world in the post-pandemic era: “It defines life through strong connections transcending genres, and traditions which have been passed down to this day.”

Emilija Škarnulytė
Emilija Škarnulytė, Æqualia (2023), on view at Gwangju Biennale. Photo: Vivienne Chow.
Who: Born in 1987 in Vilnius, Lithuania, Škarnulytė is an artist and filmmaker working between documentary and the imaginary. The award-winning artist is a graduate of Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art in Norway and her works have been collected by in institutions the Kadist Foundation and Centre Pompidou. She is a founder and co-director of Polar Film Lab and is a member of artist duo New Mineral Collective. She is based between Vilnius and Oslo.
Work on show: Æqualia (2023), an immersive video installation featured in Planetary Times at the Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall.
Why you should pay attention: Škarnulytė made the news by turning down of the GASAG Art Prize last year in protest of Germany’s reliance on Russian energy amid its war with Ukraine. This year at the Gwangju Biennale, the artist might be back in the news for the art she’s made. Æqualia is an enigmatic and mesmerizing work that features a creature that looks like a mermaid navigating different bodies of water. The mythical creature swims across different rivers around the Amazon, and at one point cuts through the convergence point between the blackwater river of Rio Negro and whitewater of Rio Negro. At times, the mermaid is seen playing with the pink river dolphins, who are residents of the region. Echoing the theme of this subsection, the lyrical nine-minute film captures the beauty and mystery of nature. The mermaid’s navigation through different waters also inspires the way we should act around conflicts and unpredictable circumstances.

Yuko Mohri
Yuko Mohri, I/O (2011-23), on view at Gwangju Biennale. Photo: Vivienne Chow.
Who: Born in Kanagawa in 1980, Mohri is a graduate of the Tokyo University of the Arts and has held solo shows around the world. Her residencies with Asian Cultural Council in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Camden Arts Centre in London have enlarged her global exposure. Her works are in the collections of Centre Pompidou in Paris, M+ in Hong Kong, and Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. She is based in Tokyo.
Work on show: Installation work I/O (2011-23), on view at the glass pavilion of Horanggasy Artpolygon, one of the off-site venues.
Why you should pay attention: The installation artist has been a regular at biennales around the world since 2017, according to our survey last year, and it is not hard to understand why after seeing her work at Gwangju. I/O, which features a set of kinetic sculptures, is an ongoing series. But the artist has given it a new spin, adapting the site-specific work to a local context. By collecting the almost invisible dust and debris from the floor, and sampling environmental elements such as air flow and humidity, Mohri’s work transforms these odd components into a “music score” that is uniquely Gwangju. The artist also links the work to Han Kang’s novel The White Book (2016) and the multi-layered history of the city, symbolizing the creation of a “tone of history that was never written.” She’s expecting to show at the upcoming Art Basel in Switzerland with Mother’s Tankstation, with a solo show at gallery’s London space slated to open in September.

Anne Duk Hee Jordan
Anne Duk Hee Jordan, So long, and thank you for all the fish (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Gwangju Biennale.
Who: Jordan was born in Korea in 1978 and grew up in Germany. A free diver since a young age, Jordan’s installation work explores the intertwined relationships between the humans and non-humans, as well as marine life, technology, food, and sexuality. Humor also often has a role to play in the artist’s inspiring and delightful work. Jordan is based in Berlin.
Work on show: So long, and thank you for all the fish (2023), on view at the basement of Horanggasy Artpolygon, one of the off-site venues.
Why you should pay attention: Jordan has created a mysterious yet whimsical world with her elaborate installation spanning three rooms in the basement of this community art center located on Yangmin mountain. The mirrored rooms, doused in black light and fluorescent colors, are filled with obscure objects and creatures that are inhabitants of a unique ecosystem that exists solely in these rooms. There are also robotic, non-human inhabitants that can sense the presence of humans, as they start making joyous moves to greet the visitors. As it turns out, these robotic critters are part of Jordan’s ongoing series “Artificial Stupidity” (2016–), and the work’s title is taken from Novacene, a 2019 book by James Lovelock, the late scientist, environmentalist, and futurist who has long inspired the artist’s contemplation of our futures through an environmental lens.

Oh Suk Kuhn
Oh Suk Kuhn, “Enemy Property” series (behind, on the wall) and “Prosperity” series (front). Photo: Vivienne Chow.
Who: Born in 1979, Incheon in South Korea, Oh studied photography at Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. before embarking on an artist career. He works with photography, a medium he picked to document and investigate the confluence between his personal and collective memories, and the ongoing trauma of the country’s war-torn and colonial history. Oh is based in Incheon.
Work on show: Photography series “Enemy Property” and “Prosperity,” on view at the Gwangju Exhibition Hall.
Why you should pay attention: At first glance, Oh’s subtle photography series may not be the most eye-catching compared to the elaborate installations surrounding his work. But these seemingly uneventful pictures are telling important stories about the history of Korea that has long been forgotten or even unknown to outsiders. The series “Enemy Property” captures the “enemy houses” in Gwangju built by the Japanese during the colonial period that have been transformed over the years from their original state. His images depict enemy houses seen in Incheon and Busan (where the artist created a series and showed at last year’s Busan Biennale). The “Prosperity” series captures longevity symbols found in Korean culture that were in fact created by appropriating patterns and motifs from other cultures, such as Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and even art nouveau. These very still pictures are like time capsules, which Oh has created to process and question the history and narratives that are still affecting Korea today.
The Gwangju Biennale runs until July 9.
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This year’s Gwangju Biennale has yet to open to the public, but its organizers are already set on scaling up the event by doubling its national pavilion section in its next edition, hoping to seal its position as Asia’s answer to the Venice Biennale.
Already this year, nine countries are featured with national pavilions at the South Korean exhibition—these include Ukraine, China, France, Canada, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, April 5, ahead of Friday’s public opening of the 14th edition of Gwangju Biennale, Yang-Woo Park, president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, revealed that the show’s organizers are seeking to host 20 national pavilions for its 15th edition, set to take place in September 2024.
The renowned South Korean art show will have the next exhibition coincide with the 30th anniversary of the inception of the biennale, which was launched in 1994.
Charwei Tsai, A Temple, A Shrine, A Mosque, A Church series (2022). Gwangju Biennale 2023. Photo: Vivienne Chow.
Gwangju Biennale introduced the national pavilion section in 2018; back then, it had only three countries participating, and was down to just two in 2021 (the original 2020 edition was postponed a year due to lockdowns). The show opening on Friday sees its biggest national pavilion section yet, but this is, apparently, only the beginning of a new era.
“It will be the biggest next year,” Park said, speaking to international press via an interpreter. The foundation has already begun the primary outreach for the upcoming show, as not every country is familiar with the Gwangju event.
“We will come up with a pool,” added Park. “We will then send requests and try to reach out to embassies and consulates.”
Gwangju Biennale 2023 exhibition hall. Photo: Vivienne Chow.
Gwangju has a ways to go if the aim is to catch up with Venice, which hosted 80 national pavilions last year. The main reason to host more national pavilions in Korea in addition to the main exhibition, Park noted, was to have greater diversity. “We hope to see more artists and their works from different countries represented in their respective pavilions,” he said. “Art lovers visiting the show can appreciate different voices seen through the medium of art, which can be interpreted differently from the main show.”
The 14th edition has been curated by Sook-Kyung Lee, senior curator of international art at London’s Tate Modern, with the theme “soft and weak like water.” The phrase, borrowed from the ancient Chinese text Dao De Jing, dates to around 400 B.C.; the description of the unique qualities of water is a metaphor for the power of softness, which can be even more forceful in face of hard surfaces as it penetrates and seeps through cracks in order to bring about transformation. Resistance, solidarity, coexistence, and care are key words throughout the 79-artist exhibition that spans across five venues. Park noted that the national pavilion exhibitions staged across the city have also responded to the theme.
Sopheap Pich, La Danse (2022), on view at Gwangju Biennale 2023. Photo: Vivienne Chow.
Meanwhile, the Gwangju event will also be handing out the first Park Seo Bo Art Prize this year to an artist participating in the biennale. The 91-year-old Dansaekhwa master who recently revealed that he has been diagnosed with lung cancer, donated $1 million to the biennale. The sum is being divided into 10 awards of $100,000 for the next 10 editions.
The award, which aims to support younger artists, is dubbed the Golden Dove prize as the winner will be presented a golden dove emblem in addition to the cash prize.
When asked if the name of the award was inspired by Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion, Park noted that dove is the bird that symbolizes the city of Gwangju, and that the biennale was created to honor the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, a traumatic yet instrumental historical event that laid the foundation for South Korea’s transformation into a democracy. “Gwangju is a city of human rights, peace, and democracy,” Park said.
The Gwangju Biennale opens on Friday, April 7 and runs until July 9.

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A dog may be a man’s best friend, but the robotic canines set to take up residence at National Gallery of Victoria’s Triennial are potentially an artist’s worst nightmare.
Among the more than 100 artists and designers that will be on display when the third NGV Triennial opens in December is Agnieszka Pilat, a Polish-American technology-centric artist who is training a trio of robotic dogs to paint autonomously for the Australian art event.
Is Pilat worried about machines threatening human creativity? No. She’s a tech optimist, one who finds Bonnie, Archie, and Basia, the dogs’ names, cute.
One of Agnieszka Pilat’s paintings alongside Boston Dynamics’ SPOT robot. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Throughout the four-month show, visitors will be able to watch as artistically finessed versions of the Boston Dynamics robots paint inside a large white cube. The robot dogs will be armed with sticks of oil paint that they will cast onto an acrylic canvas affixed to the wall. Their decision-making will be based on a series of commands programmed by Pilat, such as the movements of their painting arm, the pressure they exert on the canvas, and whether to paint dots or lines.
Early versions of the robo-art appear like a marker-wielding child dashing off something in between an architectural plan and a family tree—fitting, Pilat believes, since the robots are young in human years and blessed with great knowledge but little understanding.
Pilat has been developing this project ever since she was commissioned to paint a portrait of Boston Dynamics’ Spot in 2020. She has since lived with a 60-pound yellow-and-black beast in her New York and San Francisco homes. Together, they have produced a series of brightly colored works, one of which sold for $31,500 at Sotheby’s in 2021.
Pilat’s presence at the NGV Triennial may represent something of an art world breakout for the trained illustrator who moved to San Francisco in 2004. While Pilat has received considerable attention for the novelty and provocation of her robot paintings, patronage has largely stemmed from the minted Silicon Valley set rather than the art world collectors.

The NGV Triennial will feature more than 75 projects, of which 25 are world premieres, under three main themes—magic, matter, and memory—meant to highlight the concerns of artists featured in the exhibition.
Tracey Emin, David Shrigley, Yoko Ono, Tao Hui, and Schiaparelli are among the artists set to present work, alongside 14 Australian artists, and digital practitioners such as Smac McCreanor and SMACK. It opens on December 3, 2023 and runs through April 7, 2024.
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“Hip-hop is a canon. It’s only 50 years old and it belongs in museums,” Asma Naeem, director at the Baltimore Museum of Art told Artnet News. “It doesn’t just belong in temporary exhibitions; it belongs in the permanent collections of museums.”
To coincide with the 50th anniversary of a genre born in the Bronx at a birthday party hosted by DJ Kool Herc, the institution is presenting its first hip-hop-themed exhibition, titled “The Culture: Hip-Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century,” to consider how the form has shaped all manner of cultural production. The show, which opens today, is not alone in commemorating the movement’s 50th year—Fotografiska and the Museum at FIT are also doing so—but it’s one that’s weaving the overarching culture with works of art in a collage of consequential objects and imagery.
Installation view of “The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century” at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Photo: Mitro Hood/BMA.
One of the exhibition’s goals, set by Naeem and her team of curators including Gamynne Guillotte, is to dismantle the divide between hip-hop and high art. As Guillotte said in her opening statement before a preview tour of the gallery: “The separation between street and gallery is a fallacy,” with perhaps an unintentional rhyme recalling the wordplay of Biggie Smalls, the rapper who inspired a piece by Mark Bradford draped behind her.
Titled Biggie Biggie Biggie (2002), Bradford’s piece, which is made of gauze “endpapers” used to curl hair, form an abstract rendering of the Brooklyn M.C. in the first section of the exhibition. Within this same room, described by Guillotte as a “tasting menu” of the sections to come, there is also Baltimore transplant Zéh Palito’s hot pink double portrait, It was all a dream (2022), a 1983 Basquiat canvas dedicated to jazz musician Charlie Parker, and a Dapper Dan down jacket from 2018.
Zéh Palito, It was all a dream (2022). Photo courtesy of the artist, Simoes de Assis, and Luce Gallery.
This collage of styles offers a positive response to a text-based work by New York artist Shirt, installed in the following section of the exhibition centered on Language, which reads in bold black letters, “CAN A RAP SONG HAVE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ART.” It’s a statement, less a question, that bears out the exhibition’s thesis, but also emphasizes the timeless messaging that runs throughout hip-hop.
Across its elements, hip-hop has always been a way for Black artists in particular to express the grind of systemic oppression, with rap and fashion offering aspirational counterpoints to reclaim painful narratives and history. The Adornment section of the exhibition offers such a juxtaposition of trauma and beauty.
Hank Willis Thomas, Black Power (2006). Photo courtesy of Barrett Barrera Projects.
We see Robert Pruitt’s arrangement of gold chains mirroring the passageways of the transatlantic slave trade, Hank Willis Thomas’s Black Power (2006) gold grills, and Deanna Lawson’s portrait of two men with bold African facial jewelry next to a snapshot of George Washington’s rotting dentures. Naeem described such fashions as a “graspable language” to translate hip-hop’s cultural messaging to a far-reaching audience.
Baltimore sculptor Murjoni Merriweather and her hair braid-crafted sculpture Z E L L A (2022) are also included to center a more personal perspective. “The section is a lot about adornment and I feel like it caters to the purposes of my piece, but also to myself, as a person,” the artist explained. “With hair, we use it in a way to adorn ourselves, to make ourselves feel proud.”
Murjoni Merriweather, Z E L L A (2022). Photo courtesy of the artist, © Murjoni Merriweather.
Hip-hop fashion has also had a terrific commercial appeal, as explored in the Brand section of the exhibition. The gallery opens on a graffiti panel, directly contrasting it with an encased Travis Scott Air Jordan 1 and a Cross Colours denim bucket hat—spotlighting how a criminal act of vandalism has, over the decades, helped birth a commodified culture.
There is even a display of Pharrell Williams’s now-legendary Buffalo Hat (debuted at the Grammys in 2014), which was originally designed by Vivienne Westwood and inspired by Malcolm McLaren’s 1983 Duck Rock album. The curators had to borrow the hat from the fast food brand Arby’s, which recently purchased the hat at auction.
Installation view of “The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century” at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Photo: Mitro Hood/BMA.
“It’s always been multidisciplinary and it’s always been about the hustle,” said Guillotte about hip-hop. “So it finds a very natural allegiance with the idea of commerce.”
Naeem’s favorite section, Tribute, adds to this conversation between generations with an homage to Tupac Shakur, who elevated gangsta rap into a veritable art form. The most stirring of three pieces dedicated to the late rapper here is Alvaro Barrington’s aluminum and cardboard hessian spelling Shakur’s potent lyric, “They got money for war but can’t feed the poor,” in yarn.
Joyce J. Scott, Hip Hop Saint, Tupac (2014). Photo: © Joyce J. Scott and Goya Contemporary Gallery.
“Hip-hop is about youth. But how that gap between youth and respect for the previous generations constantly jumps and collides all happens in this section,” said Naeem, who added that Tribute remains her favorite gallery of the exhibition. “I just love Tupac.”
“The Culture” wraps with two rooms, themed Ascension and Pose, that each hold pieces exploring hip hop’s complex relationship with grief and the afterlife (the genre, unfortunately, continues to see many early deaths). Here, John Edmonds’s white-on-white silk print and Baltimore’s own Ernest Shaw Jr.’s dazzling portrait, I Had A Dream I Could Buy My Way To Heaven (2022), encapsulate both the gains and the losses across hip-hop culture.
Installation view of “The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century” at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Photo: Mitro Hood/BMA.
The exhibit itself extends, intentionally, into the BMA’s contemporary art wing. In the midst of this crossover hangs Devan Shimoyama’s sculpture, made of Timberland boots, rhinestones, silk flowers, epoxy resin, and coated wire. A showstopper. This blend of street accoutrements and gallery-tier fabrics evokes a beauty that encompasses the street. “Hip-hop conveys different kinds of beauty—other forms of beauty that belong side by side with the Western canon,” said Naeem.
“These worlds have always been in dialogue,” Guillotte added about the coexistence of hip-hop, fashion, and art. “That’s enormously important because there’s power in that. It serves somebody to assume that there is this thing that we call ‘the street’ and there is this thing that we call ‘the gallery.’ How scary would it be if there wasn’t?”
“The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century” is on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, through July 16.
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When I visited John Costi near the end of his six-month residency at South London Gallery’s Fire Station, he plugged a pair of Gucci loafers into his computer. 
Both shoes are dipped in thick shiny black paint and wired up with speakers which play sound from the heel. One of them plays a rap that Costi wrote as a teenager, while the other spouts a poem written by the artist as an adult, considering his time spent incarcerated for armed robbery. 
“You have to laugh, don’t you?” he smiled while the shoes played his teenage rap. He refers to Gucci loafers as aspirational for young London gang members.
John Costi, ART CRACK PIPE (2020). Courtesy of the artist. Photo by John Costi.
The work is on view in “Found Football Difficult” (through June 18), the conclusive exhibition of his residency. “There are a lot of personal sound pieces in the show that are quite dark, but still a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor there,” he later told Artnet News.
The multi-disciplinary artist’s distinctive work is formed from deeply personal subject matter, woven through with musings on masculinity, family and the U.K. prison system. The show takes its title from feedback Costi received in a childhood report card: In lieu of football, he had to find other ways of forging his own definition of masculinity.
The aural overload of two shoes delivering different recordings at the same time is characteristic of Costi’s work, which grabs visitors’ attention from all angles. There is a lot going on in the exhibition, which awakens multiple senses through scent, sound, a cacophony of visual stimuli, and the invitation to take part in his installation by dancing or flicking pennies at the wall. “There are gaps that are left for people to figure out things for themselves,” he said. “But if you don’t notice the references then maybe they aren’t for you.”
“John Costi: Found Football Difficult,” South London Gallery, March 2023. Installation View. Photo: Jo Underhill.
The exhibition covers two rooms, representing day and night; rebirth and death. The rebirth room draws on different elements of Costi’s family life. A collaged blue denim wall pays homage to the goddess Aphrodite and the artist’s Cypriot heritage; Versace’s Blue Denim perfume can be smelled; archive family photos of previous generations are enlarged on the walls; a totemic installation in the center of the room represents an IPP prisoner (Imprisonment for Public Protection sentences were imposed from 2005 to 2012 with indeterminate timeframes; nearly 3,000 imprisoned under the controversial sentence are still stuck in the prison system long after its dismantling). Visitors are invited to dance around it, with foot marks laid out on the floor. 
The death room pumps smoke from multiple points in a long gutter along one side wall; a huge photo of his brother as a child wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with Harry Enfield’s famous catchphrase “Loadsamoney” sits on another wall; a diffuser fills the room with the scent of Joop! for Men; along the back wall, a human form made of the Gucci loafers, a sculptural model of a head framed with rough wood and nails and other found objects, is pinned crucifix-like. The figure represents the artist, or at least a past version of himself, who he is trying to outrun. 
“John Costi: Found Football Difficult,” South London Gallery, March 2023. Installation View. Photo: Jo Underhill.
“Suicide is quite a big theme in the second room,” he said. “Dangling loafers is quite a potent image to me. The more that I go into my thirties the more I worry about finding dangling loafers: my uncle killed himself and then two friends have hung themselves. Suicide is the only thing I know that’s killing men. That and excess.”
This autobiographical exhibition draws on Costi’s lived experience; growing up in North London; aspiring to fit an ideal; his time spent in prison for armed robbery; discovering a new side of himself through making art; finding his own version of masculinity. The narrative could be framed as a redemption arc with a happy ending: “reformed convict finds joy through art.” But Costi’s work doesn’t tie everything up neatly: there is warmth and love to be found in references to his past, and a suspicion of the present, particularly the art world and its acceptance of working-class culture only when contained within the neat borders of the art itself. 
“It’s easy to patronize and talk about how charming working-class sensibility is,” he said. “It’s the same as any kind of activism being commodified or hijacked. Pain or joy. Art is not real and this whole thing is luxury. My parents didn’t have time to make art because they were too busy working. It might have taken me going to prison to make art. I think you have to be really careful with any kind of marginalized person. Their stories are always going to be fascinating to people who don’t have to go through shit.”
The idea of what it means to be a man is pervasive in Costi’s work. “I think in my life I have been lucky to have very strong women around,” he said. “Some gender lines have been blurred in terms of what strength and weakness is. Some of the things I associated with masculinity are kind of weak. The only emotion men are allowed to show is anger. Reactionary sort of behaviour. We can see masculinity as something silly and heteronormative like being able to change a tire in a car, or we could allow people to make artwork about their friends killing themselves.”
“John Costi: Found Football Difficult,” South London Gallery, March 2023. Installation View. Photo: Jo Underhill.
While a lot of the work reflects thoughtfully on his time spent in prison, there are irreverent moments too: three large blue metal panels in his studio that bear family photographs are in fact marketing boards from the North London bookie he went to prison for robbing. There are also highly sensitive elements to the show, including recorded readings of letters written by his mum and incarcerated friends at the time of his imprisonment. 
Costi sees his art practice as one of the key things that changed his life. While institutionalized he took part in an art therapy programme as part of the healthcare wing’s refurbishment. Then in the last six months of his sentence he was granted day release to take part in a fine art course at Kensington and Chelsea College. This was followed by training at Central Saint Martins. But the route for those incarcerated to explore their creativity is still hugely limited. He notes that his experience of prison was very much one of punishment rather than attempted rehabilitation. 
“This is something I’m not very hopeful about,” he said. “In prison you don’t really see rehabilitation or any kind of healing. You see segregation and punishment. The things I have seen help people, or at least give people the hope of being able to change, are things like the King’s Fund, or writing a song, or reading a poem. That’s where one can heal, but the system isn’t going to do that for you.”

“John Costi: Found Football Difficult” is on view through June 18 at South London Gallery.
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