MAYER WAKEFIELD speaks to Urielle Klein-Mekongo about activism, musical inspiration and the black British experience
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Statues of limitation
MICHAL BONCZA draws attention to the problematic position that statues of historical figures have in our public spaces
VEXED PRESENCE: (L to R) Stepan Bandera monument in Ternopil, western Ukraine; Colston, from the Hew Locke series Restoration, 2006; ‘Shame’ painted on the Karl Lueger statue in Vienna, 2020
[(L to R) Mykola Vasylechko/CC - Kasa Fue/CC - Hew Locke/Spike Island] 
KEVIN BRYAN reviews new releases by The Outlaws, Mark Radcliffe & David Boardman, Clarence White
BOB NEWLAND reviews a book that will take many back to the final years of apartheid in South Africa
GAVIN O’TOOLE examines the fatal relationship between environmental crimes and politics in Brazil and the inspiration provided by Indigenous people
MARIA DUARTE and LEO BOIX review Little Trouble Girls, Big Boys, The Roses, and Caught Stealing
MARY CONWAY admires a study of environmental idealism that aspires to Chekhov but is arrested in a deluge of middle-class opinion
EVERY JANUARY, and this one’s no exception, witnesses a ritual of defacing or bringing down of statues of James Cook in Australia in well-planned interventions by those who protest against linking Australia Day to his arrival on the continent in January 1788 and the genocide of native people that followed.
Nearly 20 years earlier, in 2006, British artist Hew Locke mercilessly ridiculed slaver Edward Colston by adorning his statue in Bristol with glittering, ersatz-gold regalia and trinkets as part of his Restoration series.
Locke’s intention to expose Colston’s involvement in corruption and enrichment through slavery was abundantly clear but, at the time, the message remained largely within the realm of contemporary art.
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