contemporary art
Grayson Perry: Rites of Passage, Channnel 4 review - making meaning in deathFriday, 24 August 2018
Grayson Perry is at it again. The Turner Prize winner, Reith lecturer, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, curator, writer, British Museum trustee, CBE, RA – plus Britain's and the art world’s favourite transvestite – is trying to find sense... Read more... |
diep~haven 2018 review - a missed connection?Tuesday, 26 June 2018
The daily car ferry from Newhaven in Sussex to Dieppe in Normandy is an unlikely phenomenon. Neither port is very large; neither region very populous, and the journey sways you along for four contemplative hours. It enjoys the custom of truckers,... Read more... |
The London Mastaba, Serpentine Galleries review - good news for ducks?Thursday, 21 June 2018
It’s not as immersive as New York’s The Gates, 2005, nor as magnificent as Floating Piers, 2016, in Italy’s Lake Iseo – it has also, according to Hyde Park regular Kay, “scared away the ducks,” – but superstar artist Christo’s... Read more... |
Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA, BBC Four review - unexpected facts aplentyThursday, 24 May 2018
“Oh say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light” was a vision of the American flag, that star-spangled banner, riding proud from Francis Scott Key’s patriotic poem of 1814 based on an episode in the War of 1812. His sentiments were decades later... Read more... |
The New Royal Academy and Tacita Dean, Landscape review - a brave beginning to a new eraFriday, 18 May 2018
This weekend the Royal Academy (R.A) celebrates its 250th anniversary with the opening of 6 Burlington Gardens (main picture), duly refurbished for the occasion. When it was dirty the Palladian facade felt coldly overbearing, but cleaning it has... Read more... |
Red, Wyndham's Theatre - Mark Rothko drama paints a vivid pictureWednesday, 16 May 2018
The band’s back together. Alfred Molina plays Rothko for the third time in Michael Grandage’s revisiting of John Logan’s richly textured two-hander, first seen at the Donmar in 2009 and then bypassing the West End for Broadway. Another excellent... Read more... |
Taryn Simon: An Occupation of Loss, Islington Green review - divine lamentationTuesday, 24 April 2018
What a superb location for a performance! The flats on the north-east corner of Islington Green back onto a crummy atrium from which a staircase leads down to a vaulted, concrete pit (pictured below). A cross between a car park and a bull ring, or a... Read more... |
'There's a poetry in painting that gives endless possibilities'Tuesday, 20 March 2018
It was always my dream to be an artist but I never expected to be a curator. Graduates considering vocations in critical and curatorial practice went to the Royal College of Art or studied art history at university. Not me: I trained at Chelsea... Read more... |
Tacita Dean: Portrait, National Portrait Gallery / Still Life, National Gallery review - film as a fine artFriday, 16 March 2018
Sometimes you come across an artwork that changes the way you see the world. Tacita Dean’s film portrait of the American choreographer Merce Cunningham (main picture) is one such encounter. Occupying a whole room at the National Portrait... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Mystery of PicassoFriday, 02 February 2018
What a gallimaufry! The polymath Picasso (1881-1973) was one of the most prolific, obsessed and best-known artists in the history; in fact, without qualification, he remains the best-known, for his genius, his mastery of so many media, his public... Read more... |
Out from the Darkness: painting out prisonMonday, 13 November 2017
When I was sent to an adult high security prison aged 14 all the normal colour, shapes and movement that I saw around me each and every day as a child disappeared. It wasn’t there. Prison does that; it’s all straight lines, hard on the eye, hard to... Read more... |
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Tate Modern review – funny, moving and revelatoryWednesday, 18 October 2017
The Kabakovs' exhibition made me thank my lucky stars I was not born in the Soviet Union. A recurring theme of their work is the desire to escape – from the hunger and poverty caused by incompetence and poor planning, and the doublethink required to... Read more... |
