Serpentine Gallery
Sarah Kent
Her name sounds like a brand of cigarettes, and an aura of corporate anonymity seems remarkably apt for this American artist who specialises in replicating other people’s work and sampling clips from online video libraries. Borrowed from the BBC’s Motion Gallery, the ingredients for Rock & Rap Act 3 Simulacra (2012) include a hooting owl (pictured below right), a bright green tree frog, a predatory spider, buds unfurling into gorgeous blooms, gurgling water, and a sprinter, diver and weight lifter – the kind of feel-good images often found on glossy birthday cards. They are intercut into Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
On the evidence of this Serpentine exhibition of huge sculptures, small sculptures, photographs, drawings, watercolours and prints, the German artist Thomas Schütte is obsessed, but obsessed, with faces. It is billed as the first show to focus entirely on his portraiture, of himself, his friends, and from the imagination. And the focus helps the visitor to grasp how playfully serious – or seriously playful – the artist is. He shows us he can do any idiom in various media. He can distort representation making faces almost unbearably malleable. Are these people menacing, sneering, Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Oh yes, I remember it well. Luise Kimme, a German sculptor who shared my flat in the early 1970s, used to buy plaster copies of Michelangelo’s David, paint them garish colours and give them to friend as presents. More a conceptualist than a lover of kitsch, I meanwhile set projects for my students requiring them to photograph every item of clothing in their wardrobes or to empty their bags and present the contents as self-portraits.Ideas like these were in the air – part of the zeitgeist – and most of us moved on to other things; but German artist Hans-Peter Feldman spent the next 40 years Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The Serpentine’s north gallery has been transformed into a magical space (main picture). Strung from floor to ceiling of the darkened room, shafts of copper wire glimmer in subdued lighting like sunbeams, or the searchlights that scanned the night sky for enemy aircraft during World War Two.As you walk around them, the threads visually overlap to produce shimmering moiré patterns. The structure is extremely simple, but rather than diminishing its impact, figuring out how it is done only enhances its mesmeric effect. The installation is titled Web and weaving threads of light through Read more ...
Sarah Kent
A single snare drum greets you on entry to the Serpentine Gallery; there’s no one playing it, yet in response to an inaudible cue, the drumsticks begin to vibrate autonomously. Meanwhile on a nearby wall, a pair of blue rubber gloves revolves slowly as if searching for something; every now and then they take on the shape of human hands, as though embodying the gestures of the absent drummer.The various parts of Anri Sala’s installation are in continual dialogue with each other, and the uniting factor is sound. The ghostly drumsticks are activated by low frequency vibrations emanating from the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A sliderule of 11-15 per cent reductions in annual grants by 2015, compared with this year, has been applied to Britain's major orchestras, opera, dance, theatre and music organisations. One major gainer is London's Barbican Centre - one major loser is the now world-famous Almeida Theatre, which loses almost 40 per cent of its current annual subsidy despite its reputation for innovation and discovery. However, the Arcola Theatre, another small innovative theatre, gets a big boost. Companies to lose all their grant from next year include Hammersmith's Riverside Studios and Derby Theatre. Read more ...
judith.flanders
It takes a lot of work to make a show look as unconsidered and chaotic as this one: thought and care and time and attention all have to be paid before something so random can be achieved. But as so often with Tillmans, the nagging questions persist: is randomness, are the offhand and the casual, valid as ends in themselves? Because Tillman’s über-hip affectless cool has become very tiresome indeed. Even worse, it’s becoming predictable and dull. Tillman's eye, as ever, remains wonderful, but I remain doubtful about the form in which he chooses to convey his ideas.Some of the most recent Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Sir Frederick Ashton, Britain's unrivalled genius at creating ballets, had a simple attitude towards posterity. "You've heard his famous remark, 'Fuck posterity'?" says his nephew, Anthony Russell-Roberts, smiling but eyeing me apprehensively.Ashton's attitude to posterity has not at all pleased a hefty section of his admirers who, since his death in 1988, have consistently accused Russell-Roberts and the Royal Ballet (where he is administrative director) of neglecting Ashton's work. People for whom Ashton was, as the critic P W Manchester remarked, "our youth, and our growing up, and our Read more ...