Goldsmiths CCA presents Tony Cokes: If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late: Vol 1 (2019)

If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late: Vol.1 was the first UK solo exhibition of US-based artist Tony Cokes, featuring a range of powerful artworks made since the 1990s, alongside two new commissions. The exhibition was co-organised by Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University and ARGOS centre for audiovisual arts, Brussels.

Cokes’ videos bring together colour theory, sound, music, and texts quoting a polyphony of voices such as Aretha Franklin, Mark Fisher, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Edouard Glissant, Louis Althusser, Public Enemy and Donald Trump in a perfect meeting of ‘pathos and politics’. In his work Cokes’ tests the limits of the constitutive elements (image, text and soundtrack) of short form media such as adverts, trailers, and music videos, viewing these as expressions of consumer capitalism.

As part of a university, Goldsmiths CCA has a specific stake in the way Cokes’ (himself a professor at Brown University) engages with theory. In his work Cokes exploits the potential of video to re-distribute theoretical texts beyond academia, creating conditions for powerful encounters with critical voices that provide counter-narratives to prevailing social conditions.

Virtual Tour with Natasha Hoare, Curator at Goldsmiths CCA

Join curator Natasha Hoare as we take a deeper dive at Goldsmith CCA's revival of Tony Cokes' vibrant video works and hear a polyphony of voices.