Visual arts
Francis Alÿs: Ricochets, Barbican review - fun for the kids, yet I was moved to tearsFriday, 28 June 2024
Belgian artist, Francis Alÿs has filled the Barbican Art Gallery with films of children playing games the world over. Many of them are familiar; they’re playing five stones in Nepal (pictured below left), conkers in London, stone skimming in Morocco... Read more... |
Gavin Jantjes: To Be Free, Whitechapel Gallery review - a sweet and sour response to horrific circumstancesWednesday, 19 June 2024
Born in Cape Town in 1948, Gavin Jantjes grew up under apartheid. He openly criticised the regime in his work and, forced into exile, was granted political asylum in Germany in 1973.Nearly 10 years later he moved to England and his Whitechapel... Read more... |
Laura Aldridge / Andrew Sim, Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh review - lightness and joyThursday, 06 June 2024
Two shows at Jupiter Artland, one in a barn, one in a ballroom, showcase two Scottish artists, whose work shares a sense of lightness and joy. The sun was out, there was happiness all round. Laura Aldridge had painted the walls of her barn space a... Read more... |
Judy Chicago: Revelations, Serpentine Gallery review - art designed to change the worldFriday, 31 May 2024
Being a successful artist is not Judy Chicago’s primary goal. She abandoned that ambition six decades ago when the Los Angeles art world greeted her with hostility. Now she’s having the last laugh, though. At 84 she is being heaped with accolades,... Read more... |
Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920, Tate Britain review - a triumphTuesday, 28 May 2024
Tate Britain’s Now You See Us could be the most important exhibition you’ll ever see. Spanning 400 hundred years, this overview of women artists in Britain destroys the myth that female talent is an exotic anomaly.We were led to believe there’d been... Read more... |
Brancusi, Pompidou Centre, Paris review - a sculptor's spiritual quest for form and essenceWednesday, 08 May 2024
One hundred and twenty sculptures, and so much more: the current Brancusi blockbuster at the Centre Pompidou, the first large Paris show of the Romanian-born sculptor’s work since 1995, provides an exhilarating and in many ways definitive... Read more... |
Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider, Tate Modern review - a missed opportunityTuesday, 30 April 2024
In 1903, Wassily Kandinsky painted a figure in a blue cloak galloping across a landscape on a white horse. Several years later the name of the painting, The Blue Rider (der Blaue Reiter) was adopted by a group of friends who joined forces to exhibit... Read more... |
Eye to Eye: Homage to Ernst Scheidegger, MASI Lugano review - era-defining artist portraitsThursday, 25 April 2024
With a troubled gaze and a lived-in face, the portrait of artist Alberto Giacometti on a withdrawn Swiss banknote is strange currency indeed. One need only think of the confidence and pomp with which national heroes gaze at us from Great British... Read more... |
Stephen review - a breathtakingly good first feature by a multi-media artistWednesday, 24 April 2024
Stephen is the first feature film by multi-media artist Melanie Manchot and it’s the best debut film I’ve seen since Steve McQueen’s Hunger. It’s gripping from the first frame to the last; the tension rarely lets up as we watch the main character... Read more... |
Fantastic Machine review - photography's story from one camera to 45 billionSaturday, 20 April 2024
The first photograph was taken nearly 200 years ago in France by Joseph Niépce, and the first picture of a person was taken in Paris by Louis Daguerre in 1838 (main picture). Some 20 years later, in California, Eadweard Muybridge settled a bet... Read more... |
Yinka Shonibare: Suspended States, Serpentine Gallery review - pure delightWednesday, 17 April 2024
Yinka Shonibare’s Serpentine Gallery exhibition opens with a piece of cloth twirling in the breeze; except that it’s a bronze sculpture probably weighing a ton or more – such is the power of art (pictured below right: detail of Wind... Read more... |
Jane Harris: Ellipse, Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA, Bordeaux review - ovals to the foreThursday, 14 March 2024
In a sixth-floor gallery, flooded with natural light, four paintings and a handful of works on paper compete with views across the River Garonne in Bordeaux. They also vie for attention amidst a history of abstract painting, in which it can feel... Read more... |
