Visual Arts Buzz

South Bank goes Brazilian for the summer

Peter Culshaw Monday, 08 February 2010

As Jude Kelly put it today, the Southbank Centre’s Festival Brazil this summer is about a country "living its future now" (link here...

Is it too late to save the Cultural Olympiad?

Simon Tait Friday, 05 February 2010

We’d almost blown the so-called Cultural Olympiad, and if the appointment of Ruth Mackenzie as artistic director had come a moment later than the turn of this year, we would have done. Not my opinion: this from Tony Hall of the Royal Opera House, and he chairs the board that appointed her. More than that, on Friday Hall was given a cross-bench seat in the House of Lords to thump the tub for the arts in 2012, and we’ll take notice then. Won’t we?

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Scaling the heights in Hoxton

Josh Spero Friday, 05 February 2010

Everything was green at 20 Hoxton Square this week as Kilimanjaro Magazine Edits opened: forget the environment, it was the plentiful absinthe imparting a verdant hue.

So farewell to the Foundry

joe Muggs Thursday, 04 February 2010

Raging, but not always pretty, creativity is everywhere in The Foundry

My abiding memory of The Foundry is being held aloft by my throat by the landlord, Falklands veteran and notorious band manager Alan "Gimpo" Goodrick, as he accused me of stealing a Shirley Bassey album. I had been DJing for a book reading by Mark "Zodiac Mindwarp" Manning, and there was a lot of absinthe being drunk thanks to some fellow from The Idler. I knew at that point I shouldn't have begun the evening by playing the line "there may be trouble ahead" from Bassey's version of "...

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Original Cultures London announced

joe Muggs Thursday, 04 February 2010

Original Cultures is an artistic collective with bases in the UK, Italy and Japan, dedicated to audiovisual collaborations inspired by street art, graffiti, hip hop and electronic music. It is staging its first London event over the course of a week from 27 February to 5 March this year, in which artists Ericailcane, DEM, Will Barras, Hiraki Sawa, Om Unit, Tatsuki and Tayone will be joining to create new works in a series of public events and workshops in and around the Old Truman Brewery,...

theartsdesk an essential site of 2009: BBC Radio 5 Live

theartsdesk Friday, 01 January 2010

theartsdesk received a New Year's gift last night when we were given a significant accolade from BBC Radio 5 Live. In Web 2009 with Helen and Olly, the station's podcasters and self-styled "internet obsessives" Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann recognised theartsdesk as one of the five "essential sites of 20...

Boxing Day Bloat: theartsdesk recommends

theartsdesk Saturday, 26 December 2009

The morning after the day before has dawned. If you're not inclined to join the shopping queues, theartsdesk is happy to suggest alternatives. Our writers recommend all sorts of cultural things you could get up to in the next week.

Richard Wright wins the 2009 Turner Prize

Sheila Johnston Tuesday, 08 December 2009

Untitled, Richard Wright's Turner Prize-winning exhibit at Tate Britain

Richard Wright's work celebrates impermanence but his election last night as the 2009 Turner Prize winner - an award which brings with it a purse of £25,000 - has guaranteed it a sort of immortality. The Glasgow-based painter's major piece currently on display at Tate Britain is an enormous, luxuriant and ornate symmetrical fresco painted in...

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Wunderbar Festival

Alice Vincent Thursday, 05 November 2009

With the launch of the Wunderbar Featival this week, Newcastle continues to demonstrate just what 2008’s European Capital of Culture judges missed when they anointed Liverpool. The 10-day celebration, which starts tomorrow, is international in content but thoroughly North-East in spirit: unpretentious, clever and surprising. There are 28 free and ticketed events taking place throughout the city, from conventional cultural venues such as the Baltic, Northern Stage and Gallery North to people’s...

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theartsdesk in New York: Extreme Blake

Graham Fuller Sunday, 18 October 2009

Outwardly the Morgan Library & Museum is a citadel of sedateness - inside it may be the locus of turbulence. Thirteen years ago I walked around one of the rooms with the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, on whom I was writing a profile.