contemporary art
Caitlin Merrett King: Always Open Always Closed review - looking for an approach while trying to do the approachTuesday, 22 August 2023
Always Open Always Closed is Caitlin Merrett King’s first published work of fiction, and it begins paratactically, with a list of displacements:MS REAL FEELS POSITIONLESS At her desk in the studio (not as often as she would like) or at the kitchen... Read more... |
Anselm Kiefer: Finnegans Wake, White Cube Bermondsey review - an awe-inspiring showFriday, 21 July 2023
As a child, Anselm Kiefer tells us, in a bombed out German city, he would play in the rubble, creating life out of ruin and destruction. As an artist who is remarkably consistent, without being predictable, he continues to play in the ruins,... Read more... |
Brian Clarke - A Great Light, Newport Street Gallery review - a British master proves his worthWednesday, 28 June 2023
The artist Brian Clarke, surely one of the leading British artists of our time, has been all too readily dismissed as a mere craftsman. So much for being an outstanding and highly original painter who’s also done more for contemporary stained glass... Read more... |
Sophia Giovannitti: Working Girl - On Selling Art and Selling Sex review - portrait of the artist as sex workerWednesday, 31 May 2023
Sophia Giovannitti begins selling sex because it promises to make her the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. She also has a “near categorical hatred of work.”I nearly – mentally – tweak that sentence to read “of conventional types... Read more... |
Moon Is the Oldest TV review - a fitting tribute to a visionary modern artistSaturday, 20 May 2023
Who created the term “electronic superhighway”? First described a system of linked communication that would become the internet? Envisioned a multichannel TV system where viewers chose for themselves what to tune into? Watch Amanda Kim’s excellent... Read more... |
Susan Finlay: The Lives of the Artists review - the knotted threads of memoir and artWednesday, 17 May 2023
Benvenuto Cellini’s My Life (1728) is not the artist-biography to which Susan Finlay’s The Lives of the Artists pays its most obvious homage, but it appears to have followed its advice. All men of achievement and honesty, Cellini argues, "should... Read more... |
Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons, Hayward Gallery review - spooky installations by a master of detailTuesday, 28 February 2023
Entry to Mike Nelson’s Hayward Gallery exhibition is through what feels like the store room of a reclamation yard. Row upon row of Dexion shelving is piled high with salvaged building materials including old doors, ancient floorboards and wrought... Read more... |
Remote review - an irredeemably silly first featureSaturday, 01 October 2022
Remote is Mika Rottenberg’s first feature film. The New York-based artist was commissioned by Artangel, an organisation renowned for its promotion of interesting projects. Support also comes from art institutions across the world – Beijing, Denmark... Read more... |
Gustav Metzger: Earth Minus Environment, Kestle Barton review - an illuminating glimpse of a visionary activist-artistWednesday, 10 August 2022
In later life Gustav Metzger appeared a marginal, eccentric figure. The diminutive, white-bearded artist, was often to be seen round London’s galleries in the early to mid-2010s, dropping off piles of hand-produced fliers urging his fellow artists... Read more... |
Venice Biennale 2022 review - The Milk of Dreams Part 1: The GiardiniWednesday, 08 June 2022
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.Never mind the national pavilions which tend to dominate... Read more... |
Anselm Kiefer Pour Paul Celan, Grand Palais Éphémère, Paris review - an installation of rare profundityTuesday, 21 December 2021
The exhibitions of the German artist Anselm Kiefer have always been spectacular: large works with a numinous presence, often breath-taking and always mysterious. His new installation in Paris’s Grand Palais Ephémère, the temporary structure at the... Read more... |
Sarah Hall: Burntcoat review - love after the end of the worldSaturday, 09 October 2021
Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat is one of those new books with the unsettling quality of describing or approximating a great moment in history and its aftermath, as the reader is still living through it. This could be trite, but Hall manages to make it... Read more... |
