Tony Cokes : If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late: Vol I

28 Sep 2019-19 Jan 2020

Overview

The exhibition provides an opportunity to see a broad range of powerful artworks made by Cokes since the 1980s, alongside two newly commissioned films. Cokes’ video works are eviscerating critiques and affective art works, bringing together colour theory, sound, music, and texts quoting a polyphony of voices such as Louis Althusser, Malcolm X, David Bowie, Public Enemy and Donald Trump. Meeting political and social commentary with cultural theory and a critique of capitalism, Cokes’ films viscerally confront the social condition, as well as the specific prejudices and threats suffered by black subjects. Recent works range across minimal techno, the Bush administration’s use of colour to engender a perpetual culture of fear, and music used to torture detainees during the so-called ‘war on terror’.