1990s
Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker, Whitechapel Gallery review - absence made powerfully presentSaturday, 22 February 2025
Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the palm of his hand is a fragile dwelling whose flimsy walls are held together by pins. This tiny model is made from pieces of the... Read more... |
Surviving Black Hawk Down, Netflix review - the real story behind Ridley Scott's Oscar-winnerFriday, 14 February 2025
Ridley Scott’s 2001 film Black Hawk Down was a technically superb blockbuster bristling with thunderous action sequences and famous actors, though its gung-ho depiction of the heroics of American special forces during the appalling Somalian civil... Read more... |
Festen, Royal Opera review - firing on every frontWednesday, 12 February 2025
So the Royal Opera had assembled a dream cast, conductor (Edward Gardner) and director (Richard Jones). The only question until last night was whether composer Mark-Anthony Turnage would be at his remarkable best. His operatic journey has been... Read more... |
Album: Manic Street Preachers - Critical ThinkingWednesday, 12 February 2025
Manic Street Preachers’ earnest and literate pretentiousness is both their Achilles Heel and their superpower. Their greatest songs are amped by full investment in whatever awkward path they’ve cussedly marched down. At these times, their ever-... Read more... |
Album: ALT BLK ERA - Rave ImmortalSaturday, 25 January 2025
The utopian messiness of 1990s dance music culture is now so far back in time that what remains, for those under 40, is an idea, a meta myth. It is one that ALT BLK ERA embrace. Where the Nineties was a smorgasbord of futurism, vanguard electronic... Read more... |
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, Tate Modern review - an exhaustive and exhausting showMonday, 02 December 2024
Last month a portrait of Alan Turing by AI robot AI-Da sold at Sotheby’s for $1.08 million – proof that, in some people’s eyes, artificial intelligence can produce paintings worth as much as those made by human hands.Depending on your view of AI,... Read more... |
Kolesnikov, Hallé, Elts, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - the dude who dazzlesFriday, 08 November 2024
Pavel Kolesnikov returned to the Hallé last night with a bobby-dazzler of a concerto. He’s a laid-back dude in appearance, with no tie, flapping jacket and cool appearance – quite a contrast with the full evening dress worn by the orchestra members... Read more... |
Until I Kill You, ITV1 review - superb performances in a frustrating true-crime storyWednesday, 06 November 2024
The latest true-crime adaptation about a murderous man and his female victims turns its star into a bloody mess on a hospital table, her vital signs flatlining. And that’s just halfway through, with two episodes to go. At least the second half... Read more... |
How To Survive Your Mother, King's Head Theatre review - mummy issues drive autobiographical dramedyThursday, 31 October 2024
It is unsurprising to learn in the post-show Q&A that each audience receives Jonathan Maitland’s new play based on his 2006 memoir differently. My house laughed a lot (me especially) but some see the tragic overwhelming the comic, and the laughs... Read more... |
Book Extract: Where Songs Come From - The Lyrics and Origin Stories of 150 Solo and Carter USM Songs by Jim BobTuesday, 29 October 2024
For a few months a couple of years ago, when you googled the name Jim Bob, although you’d get a lot of information about me, Jim Bob, the lead singer from 1990s UK indie punk heroes Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, the main image would be a... Read more... |
Lygia Clark: The I and the You, Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation, Whitechapel Gallery review - breaking boundariesThursday, 10 October 2024
Brazilian artist Lygia Clark is best known for taking her abstract sculptures off the pedestal and inviting people to interact with them. Dozens of constructions named Bichos (Beasts or Critters) (pictured below right) are hinged... Read more... |
Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit, Tate Modern review - adolescent angst indefinitely extendedWednesday, 09 October 2024
Like an angry teenager rejecting everything his parents stand for, American artist Mike Kelley embraced everything most despised by the art world – from popular culture to crafts, and occultism to catholicism – to create what he ironically called “... Read more... |
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