contemporary art
Jean-Marc Bustamante, Timothy Taylor GalleryWednesday, 20 April 2011
Who or what is Jean-Marc Bustamante? This, surely, is the question we are supposed to ask of this artist of the affectless, who has skated in his three-decade-long career across the genres – first photography, then Minimalist sculpture, then a... Read more... |
Nathaniel Mellors, ICATuesday, 15 March 2011
I will confess, the emotion which engulfed me when watching three films from Nathaniel Mellors’s Ourhouse series was not (initially) admiration but aggravation. The temporary plyboard cinemas of the ICA show episodes one, two and four of this... Read more... |
Mona Hatoum: Bunker, White Cube Mason's YardWednesday, 02 March 2011
The latest exhibition from Beirut-born, sometime Turner Prize-nominee Mona Hatoum – best known for sending a camera through her inner tubes and projecting the results – explores themes of displacement and geographical and political tension. I know... Read more... |
Southbank Centre, 2011 SeasonMonday, 17 January 2011
Mahler, Mahler and anyone who even remotely knew Mahler. There is, of course, more to the South Bank's 2011 season listings than this but the great symphonic agoniser (and his many chums) forms the bedrock of the classical programming as we all go... Read more... |
Gabriel Orozco, Tate ModernMonday, 17 January 2011
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... Read more... |
Cindy Sherman, Sprüth Magers LondonFriday, 14 January 2011
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... Read more... |
Manon de Boer, South London GalleryMonday, 10 January 2011
A well-groomed, middle-aged woman walks into view and lights a cigarette. She stands, she smokes, the camera gives us a steady close-up of her face. As she appears to reminisce, her face subtly registers a range of emotions. Is she agitated, sad,... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Belfast: Scenes from the 48th Belfast FestivalSunday, 31 October 2010
In National Anthem, the debut play by bestselling novelist Colin Bateman, a composer lies prostrate on the floor. Half hungover, half waiting for inspiration, he has been commissioned to co-write an anthem for Northern Ireland with a poet and has... Read more... |
Film: Over Your Cities Grass Will GrowFriday, 15 October 2010
Action-movie season ain't over quite yet, folks. Sure. OK. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow isn't exactly your conventional salute to Armageddon. No guns, no baddies, no hot babes, no long-haired hunks. The pace is slow. The dialogue's pretty non-... Read more... |
Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography, Victoria & Albert MuseumFriday, 15 October 2010
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,... Read more... |
Opinion: Frieze Art Fair spells bad news for artThursday, 14 October 2010
With the Frieze Art Fair now upon us, the only sane response for anyone interested in art is to leave London until the wretched event is over. Art fairs are for art what pimps are for virgins, to misquote Barnett Newman. The work, in other words,... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Los Angeles: Dennis Hopper (RIP) On ShowSunday, 25 July 2010
While most will be familiar with him as an actor, and some will know him also as a photographer and painter, few will be aware of the full extent of the late Dennis Hopper’s artistic practice. Hopper, who died in May of this year, did everything... Read more... |
