sculpture
Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, British MuseumSaturday, 08 October 2011You might think that a sharp-talking, cross-dressing potter-artist with a teddy bear obsession would present a challenge to the British public. Not a bit of it. Grayson Perry is music hall, he’s pantomime – there’s even a touch of Brideshead in... Read more... |
Frank Stella: Connections, Haunch of VenisonFriday, 30 September 2011Art about art is one of my favourite kinds of art. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, films - works of art which talk about what art is, what the image is, what art can represent and what it can't - all appeal. It is not just a picture of some... Read more... |
Barry Flanagan: Early Works 1965-1982, Tate BritainThursday, 29 September 2011"The sheer adventure and life of the touch is the only relevancy," wrote Barry Flanagan in his graduation thesis for St Martin’s School of Art in 1966. "I must allow my hand to touch and feel, my eyes to look and see, my tongue to lick and taste, my... Read more... |
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 40 Years, 12 Exhibitions, Annely Juda Fine ArtSunday, 18 September 2011A retrospective of an artist’s work is not usually a history of a working relationship, but in the case of Christo, this impressive exhibition of works from the past 40 years also marks two crucial partnerships: with his wife, Jeanne-Claude, who was... Read more... |
Charles Matton: Enclosures, All Visual ArtsMonday, 12 September 2011There is nothing new, nor inherently artistic, about making miniature models. Otherwise everyone who's ever stuffed a small ship into a glass bottle would be in the National Gallery. (Yes, Yinka Shonibare's fourth plinth ship-in-a-bottle outside the... Read more... |
Phyllida Barlow: RIG, Hauser & Wirth, LondonThursday, 08 September 2011Every surface in my house is covered in plaster and brick dust, and wood, sand, cement, plaster and wire mesh are strewn all over the place. Furniture, carpets and pictures are covered in dust sheets and piled into two sealed rooms. You’ve guessed... Read more... |
Edinburgh Art Festival: A Festival woven together by the city itselfFriday, 26 August 2011A few days visiting the Edinburgh Art Festival and the city itself becomes the encircling gallery. Under great canvases of lowering grey cloud, plunging up and down the different levels of the Old Town and the New, things unfold against the intense... Read more... |
Jake or Dinos Chapman, White Cube Mason's Yard and HoxtonFriday, 15 July 2011It begins in a so-so fashion. The ground-floor gallery at White Cube’s Mason’s Yard features a sea of Constructivist sculptures on plinths. These are made from bits of torn cardboard and loo rolls, sloppily painted. Jake and Dinos Chapman love corny... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Folkestone: Art Echoes by the SeasideWednesday, 29 June 2011The locals are understandably proud of Folkestone; Everywhere Means Something to Someone is an idiosyncratic guidebook offering an insider’s view of the town that bears witness to the depth of people’s attachment to it. Put together for the ... Read more... |
The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World, Tate BritainWednesday, 15 June 2011Who were the Vorticists? Were they significant? Were they any good? And does this little-known British avant-garde movement – if it can be called anything as cohesive - really deserve a major survey at Tate Britain? Many of the group’s paintings... Read more... |
Fred Sandback, Whitechapel GallerySunday, 29 May 2011Fred Sandback is one of the great overlooked of the Minimalist movement that developed in the 1960s. Both those words are important – “great” and “overlooked”: his work is genuinely great, and part of its greatness is the way it has overlooking... Read more... |
Tessa Farmer, Danielle Arnaud Art Gallery/Crypt GallerySaturday, 28 May 2011The world of artist and entomologist Tessa Farmer really is a world, wholly self-contained and free of human kind – unless you see her tiny warring fairies as symbolic of mankind’s conscience-free decimation of our planet’s environment and co-... Read more... |