Brian Clarke died on 1 July 2025, after a long illness. He was one of the most original British artists of our time – wide-ranging, ground-breaking and influential. His painting was first-class, but it was in the field of architectural stained glass, which he approached as a fine artist, and in a radically innovative manner, that he truly made a name for himself. 

The artist Bill Viola died, after a long illness, early in the morning of Friday 12 July. I had the privilege of getting to know him while making a documentary about his life and work in 2001-2003. He quickly became a friend, as did his wife Kira and his sons, Blake and and Andrei. He felt like a kind of brother, who’d grown up through the same changes that shook culture up in the 1960s and 70s. Although he was American, I felt that we spoke the same language.

“Is she at a pivotal point in her life but unable to pivot…?” Eve, the young heroine of Chloë Ashby’s dazzling debut novel, Wet Paint, asks this question standing in front of Édouard Manet’s painting "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" (1882). Yet she could easily be asking herself the same question.

Cecelia Alemani's vision for The Milk of Dreams, the International Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2022 had me excited – and perplexed – from the moment I heard about it.

It’s been a turbulent week for British artist Kate Daudy. Am I My Brother’s Keeper, her refugee tent (main picture), the art installation and seminal work that propelled her to international fame is gone, thrown out with the trash.

"A nun destroyed the tent," Daudy explains. The work, a UNHCR tent embroidered with words and pictures, was being stored at a convent in Spain where it was unintentionally thrown into a skip. It’s a big loss.

Jacqueline de Jong doesn’t want to talk politics. But this should have been foreseeable. After all, she has travelled to Mostyn, in Llandudno, for her first solo exhibition in a UK art institution. And this is a painting show, not a political rally.

The death of Christo, aged 84, was announced on Sunday, marking the end of a visionary and flamboyant artistic career.

Arguably one of the most poignant effects of the lockdown has been to simultaneously draw attention to the connections between the arts and the distinct ways they have evolved into their own forms.

As the art world adjusts to our new reality, social media has allowed galleries and museums to remain open in spirit at least. Tate has kept up a stream of pictures, films and activities for children, while the often brilliant Royal Academy twitter account dispenses a daily dose of silliness via #radailydoodle.

Over the weekend, exhibitions and installations have started to bubble-up on the riverside walkway in London. Still-life photography of mudlark finds and a "scented history" of Barking Creek outside the National Theatre. Artwork from a dozen national and international river cities at the Royal Docks. An installation of 550 jerry cans at the Oxo Tower. A 60-foot wooden Ship of Tolerance on the Thames (main image) by Millennium Bridge.