wed 18/12/2024

Hayward Gallery

DVD: Every Picture Tells a Story

James Scott’s filmography is wide-ranging, including the 1982 short film A Shocking Accident, based on the Graham Greene story, which won an Academy Award the following year, and other works on social questions. But these documentaries, several...

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Imagine… Antony Gormley: Being Human, BBC One

Metal figures on the foreshore of Crosby Beach, Liverpool, set against a sunset, signify the preoccupations of Antony Gormley. The sculptor has been concerned consistently with the human figure, manifested in metal – lead or iron – casts of his own...

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Carsten Höller: Decisions, Hayward Gallery

A steel corridor stretches as far into the distance as you can see (pictured below right); the gleaming sides and gently sloping floor invite you to step inside but, as you venture further in, it gets darker and darker until you are groping your way...

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History is Now: 7 Artists Take On Britain, Hayward Gallery

A Bloodhound Mark 2 surface-to-air missile points to the sky from the terrace outside the Hayward Gallery. From 1963–1990, the missiles were stationed along the east coast, from Humberside to the Thames, to intercept Soviet planes coming to drop...

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The Human Factor, Hayward Gallery

When a large and ambitious group exhibition is mounted on a particular theme or subject, in this case the human figure in contemporary sculpture, it’s always interesting to note what gets left out as well as what goes in. It’s reasonable to ask what...

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Martin Creed: What’s the point of it? Hayward Gallery

If you're suffering from the January blues, hurry to the Southbank Centre where Martin Creed’s exhibition is bound to make you smile. The man best known for winning the Turner Prize in 2001 by switching the lights on and off at Tate Britain has...

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Dayanita Singh: Go Away Closer, Hayward Gallery

In the 25 years she has spent taking photographs, Dayanita Singh has accumulated a huge body of evocative and memorable images. For instance, there’s the girl lying face down on a bed (main picture), dressed in what looks like her school uniform....

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Ana Mendieta: Traces, Hayward Gallery

Gazing out of my window pondering how to start my review of Ana Mendieta, I noticed a creeper engulfing the house at the end of my garden. Having covered the wall, one window and a chimney, the tentacles are spreading along the gutter and over the...

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Alternative Guide to the Universe, Hayward Gallery

The Alternative Guide to the Universe, an exhibition of work mainly by self-taught practitioners, encourages one to speculate on the merits of orthodox art and science compared with the wild schemes pursued by these eccentrics and visionaries, some...

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Light Show, Hayward Gallery

Central to this thoughtful show is not really the use of light in art per se but how light appropriately serves a post-minimalist shift from the work of art to the environment itself. For the most part, the works here endeavour to shape the space...

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Punk on Show: Was England Dreaming?

On the 35th anniversary of the year punk met the mainstream, it’s to be expected that retrospection and nostalgia are in the air. Television has had a go, albums are being reissued and old soldiers are telling their stories. By its very nature an...

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Art of Change: New Directions from China, Hayward Gallery

At the Hayward Gallery a young woman falls over backwards; her flight is magically arrested at a gravity-defying point of imbalance. Since she is blinking, one can safely assume that she is alive, present, and human rather than a waxwork or an...

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