conceptual art
Mona Hatoum, Tate ModernThursday, 05 May 2016
Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut of Palestinian parents. She came to London to study at the Slade School in 1975 and got stuck here when civil war broke out in Lebanon, preventing her from returning home. In effect, she has been living in exile ever... Read more... |
Conceptual Art in Britain 1964-1979, Tate BritainSaturday, 16 April 2016
The exhibition starts promisingly. You can help yourself to an orange from Roelof Louw’s pyramid of golden fruit. Its a reminder that, for the conceptualists, art was a verb not a noun. Focusing on activity rather than outcome, these artists were... Read more... |
Chantal Akerman: NOW, Ambika P3Thursday, 05 November 2015
Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman used her camera to record, with a sympathetic eye, the world around her – both in the immediate surroundings of her Paris flat and in the wider world. The news that she died last month, apparently by her own hand,... Read more... |
In Sol LeWitt's head is a machine that makes artSaturday, 31 October 2015
Any exhibition of Sol LeWitt’s work raises an interesting question. Why go and see it if it’s the idea that’s the most important aspect of the work? In his 1967 essay, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art”, he clearly outlined the predominance of the idea... Read more... |
Risk, Turner ContemporaryWednesday, 14 October 2015
Yves Klein staged a photo of himself, in November 1960, swallow-diving into the air from a first floor window, arms outstretched like a bird. Leap into the Void was faked – the friends waiting with a tarpaulin on the pavement below were montaged out... Read more... |
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Volkov, BarbicanSaturday, 10 October 2015
This Barbican concert began with a Mendelssohn overture and ended with a Haydn symphony. But on stage were the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov. What did you expect in between, a Mozart piano concerto? Not likely. Instead they gave the first... Read more... |
theartsdesk in New York: On Kawara at the Guggenheim MuseumSunday, 05 April 2015
On a snowy day in early spring in New York, the On Kawara – Silence show at the Guggenheim is unlikely to warm you up. His date paintings, postcards, telegrams and other coldly ur-conceptual accountings spiral up those famous white Frank Lloyd... Read more... |
First Happenings: Adrian Henri in the ’60s and ’70s, ICASaturday, 07 February 2015
If you bought a Beatles album in the Sixties, chances are you also bought The Mersey Sound, that best-selling collection of poems by the Liverpool poets Brian Patten, Roger McGough and Adrian Henri. It was launched at the Cavern Club in 1967 to... Read more... |
Pierre Huyghe/ Paul McCarthy, Hauser & WirthWednesday, 22 October 2014
In a tavern somewhere in Tokyo, two Japanese macaque monkeys work a daily, two-hour shift (under Japanese law, these hours are regulated). Dressed in miniature uniforms, the monkeys’ main task is to deliver hot towels to amused customers before... Read more... |
Ryan Gander: Make every show like it's your last, Manchester Art GalleryWednesday, 09 July 2014
When Ryan Gander’s wife wanted a designer lamp, the versatile artist knocked one up from junk. She was so impressed he sold it as an artwork and by now has made 55 in his garden shed. Three are here in Manchester, made from foil food trays, a guitar... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bilbao: Yoko Ono at the Guggenheim MuseumSunday, 16 March 2014
Addressing a crowd of journalists gathered at the press launch of her major retrospective at the Guggenheim Bilbao, Yoko Ono begins by telling us how cynical she is. It’s quite a claim considering it’s just about the last thing you’d ever think to... Read more... |
Richard Hamilton: The Late Works, National GallerySunday, 14 October 2012
This small, posthumous exhibition illuminates Richard Hamilton’s life-long engagement with both the art of the past and the latest techniques and technological possibilities available to visual artists in the 21st century. He played with photography... Read more... |
