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Bad at SportsAuthor: Bad at Sports
Bad At Sports is a weekly podcast about contemporary art. Founded in 2005, the series focuses on presenting the practices of artists, curators, critics, dealers, various other arts professionals through an online audio format. Language: en Genres: Arts, Visual Arts Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Bad at Sports Episode 936: Damon Locks
Episode 936
Wednesday, 8 April, 2026
Locks' exhibition operates as a split composition: the back gallery leans into layered, exploratory collage rooted in his teaching experience with Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville Correctional Center, while the front gallery delivers sharper, declarative works built around text and figuration. The conversation frames this as a kind of A-side / B-side logic, with one space functioning like improvisational jazz and the other like a stripped-down, urgent punk track. Locks pushes back on easy analogies, but embraces the underlying idea: that both bodies of work are driven by different modes of attention and response. A major thread is process. Locks describes an almost anti-archival system of working, where stacks of Xeroxes, prints, and sampled sounds are mentally cataloged rather than digitally organized. This produces a practice grounded in rediscovery and accident, closer to crate-digging than database searching. Equally central is pedagogy. His decade-plus engagement with incarcerated students becomes a generative force, not a side project. The "homework" he assigns becomes his own studio method, expanding into the work shown here and into related musical output like List of Demands. Throughout, Locks positions his work within a lineage that moves fluidly between comic books, punk ephemera, Black radical print culture, and contemporary art. The result is a practice that refuses clean categorization, operating instead as an ongoing negotiation between sound, image, politics, and community. Names Dropped Duncan MacKenzie — https://kurasmackenzie.com/ Ryan (Peter Miller) — http://ryanpetermiller.com/ Damon Locks — https://damonlocks.black/ Goldfinch Gallery — https://goldfinch-gallery.com/ Lumpen Radio — https://lumpenradio.com/ Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project — https://pnaep.org/ Stateville Correctional Center — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateville_Correctional_Center Artists / Art References Charles White — https://www.artic.edu/artists/23067/charles-white Raymond Pettibon — https://gagosian.com/artists/raymond-pettibon/ Emory Douglas — https://www.moma.org/artists/13246 Kerry James Marshall — https://kerryjamesmarshall.com/ Music / Punk References Bad Brains — https://www.badbrains.com/ Minor Threat — https://dischord.com/band/minor-threat Government Issue — https://dischord.com/band/government-issue The Clash — https://www.theclash.com/ Siouxsie and the Banshees — https://www.siouxsieandthebanshees.co.uk/ The Damned — https://www.officialdamned.com/ Big Black — https://touchandgorecords.com/bands/big-black/ Naked Raygun — https://www.nakedraygun.org/ Black Flag — https://sstsuperstore.com/collections/black-flag Comics / Illustration Influences John Byrne — https://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/byrne_john.htm Neal Adams — https://nealadams.com/ George Pérez — https://www.marvel.com/comics/creators/126/george_perez Marshall Rogers — https://www.lambiek.net/artists/r/rogers_marshall.htm
