sun 22/12/2024

conceptual art

Cory Arcangel, The Curve, Barbican

Cory Arcangel is firmly keeping all his balls on the ground

It is probably a worrying sign when the computer games of your youth become the historical butt of a conceptual art joke. Digital artist Cory Arcangel, who appropriates video-game technology, repurposes and redesigns it, has installed 14 10-pin...

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Martin Creed, Hauser & Wirth

Installation view of Martin Creed's 'Mothers' at Hauser & Wirth, Savile Row

Who could not love Martin Creed? The tweed-encased harumphers of the world adore him, because they can say, “That’s not art,” and, “My cat could do that,” and have an all-round wonderful time. Conceptualists have it easy: what could be more fun...

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Gabriel Orozco, Tate Modern

The show opens with his iconic 1991 piece, My Hands are My Heart, a double photograph of Orozco’s naked torso. In the first photograph his hands clutch a hidden object at chest-height; in the second the hands splay open to present to the viewer a...

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Cindy Sherman, Sprüth Magers London

Cindy Sherman, 'Untitled', 2010

One of the best things about a Cindy Sherman show is you never know what you’re going to get. And in this exhibition, of a new series of "Untitled" images, what you get is very surprising indeed. Sherman's photographs are not about her, but they...

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Never the Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts), Camden Arts Centre

Simon Starling’s wonderfully eccentric exhibition Never the Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts) will inevitably mean more to those who have visited the Camden Arts Centre regularly over the years. Places gradually acquire a patina of...

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A whip-cracking Christmas at Tate Britain

Giorgio Sadotti 'celebrates the power of nothing' with his unadorned Norwegian Spruce

It’s the time of year when Tate Britain unveils its much-anticipated, artist-designed Christmas tree. Over the years, we’ve had Fiona Banner decorating hers with unpainted Airfix models of fighter planes, while Sarah Lucas hung hers with stuffed...

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Art Gallery: GSK Contemporary - Aware: Art Fashion Identity

A masked lace dress by the late Alexander McQueen, from 1998, turns the catwalk into pure theatre

Fashion and conceptual art come together, sometimes awkwardly, often provocatively, in the Royal Academy’s third and final annual GSK Contemporary exhibition. Instead of celebrating glamour and excess, designers and artists – as well as those, such...

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Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography, Victoria & Albert Museum

Adam Fuss, with 'Invocation', above, is among the five photographers who have returned to the pioneering age of camera-less photography

Camera-less photography isn’t, as some might think, a 20th-century invention, discovered by experimental Modernists such as Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray. Thomas Wedgwood, before the invention of the camera and at the very beginning of the 19th century,...

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Tilbury, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Volkov, Royal Albert Hall

A metallic shower rained down upon us as five percussionists of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's percussion sextet unleashed the meteoric potential of five huge metal thundersheets on our unsuspecting ears, and percussionist number six, a...

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The The Things Is (For Three), Milton Keynes Gallery

'1... 2': Has this artist chosen anonymity out of protest, or is it an act of suicidal perversity?

It’s not often you find yourself in an art gallery with the business end of a bullwhip whizzing inches from your nose. Wielded by a disconcertingly slight, black-haired woman who can barely be half its length, the terrifying instrument defines the...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Mark Wallinger

Mark Wallinger is fascinated by the idea of 'mirroring' and has recently ventured into unconventional self-portraiture

For his new show at Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger will be unveiling a first: a life-sized, three-dimensional "self-portrait". But it won't be a straightforward representation of the 50-year-old...

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Antony Gormley: Test Sites, White Cube

Many people use that weaselly phrase about Antony Gormley, saying he “divides the critics”. For the most part this is not true: for the most part the critics loathe Gormley’s work. They suggest he is either a bad figurative sculptor masquerading as...

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