Visual Arts Reviews
Modern Couples, Barbican review - an absurdly ambitious survey of artist loversSaturday, 13 October 2018
What an ambitious project! Modern Couples: Art, Intimacy and the Avant-garde looks at over 40 couples or, in some cases, trios whose love galvanised them into creative activity either individually or in collaboration. Read more... |
Mantegna and Bellini, National Gallery review - curated for curatorsMonday, 08 October 2018
Pitched as “a tale of two artists”, the National Gallery’s big autumn show promises a history woven in shades of friendship and rivalry, marriage and family, privilege and hard graft. Read more... |
The Everyday and the Extraordinary, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne review - the ordinary made strangeThursday, 04 October 2018
There’s a building site outside the Towner Art Gallery and a cement mixer seems to have strayed over the threshold into the foyer. This specimen (pictured below right) no longer produces cement, though. David Batchelor has transformed it into an absurdist neon sign by outlining it with fluorescent tubes. Read more... |
Oceania, Royal Academy review - magnificent encountersTuesday, 02 October 2018
In the video, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner smiles shyly before beginning. As she speaks, her voice gains conviction, momentum, power. Her poem tells of the Marshall Islands inhabitants, a “proud people toasted dark brown”, and a constellation of islands dropped from a giant’s basket to root in the ocean. She describes “papaya golden sunsets”, “skies uncluttered”, and the ocean itself, “terrifying and regal”. Read more... |
Space Shifters, Hayward Gallery review - seeing is not always believingFriday, 28 September 2018
There are some wonderful things in Space Shifters, the Hayward Gallery’s autumn exhibition. The selection of work plays with one’s perceptions of space and everything in it. Read more... |
Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt, V&A review - gaming for allThursday, 27 September 2018
Design/Play/Disrupt at the V&A covers a wide variety of games that are spearheading the gaming world at the moment. It takes a closer look at eight of the most innovative and different games that have changed the world of gaming in the last five years. Read more... |
Turner Prize 2018, Tate Britain review - a shortlist dominated by political issuesTuesday, 25 September 2018
I’ve just spent four hours in the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain. The shortlisted artists all show films or videos, which means that you either stay for the duration or make the decision to walk away, which feels disrespectful. Read more... |
Courtauld Impressionists: From Manet to Cézanne review - much loved treasures, seen afreshMonday, 24 September 2018
Heir to one of this country's great textile manufacturing firms, Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947) – highly original in his then unfashionable fascination with the art of his own lifetime – bought some of the best known and best loved paintings now in the public domain. Read more... |
I object, British Museum review - censorship, accidental?Saturday, 22 September 2018
It’s the nature of satire to reflect what it mocks, so as you’d expect from a British Museum exhibition curated by Ian Hislop, I object is a curiously establishment take on material anti-establishmentarianism from BC something-or-other right up to the present day. Read more... |
Renzo Piano, Royal Academy review - worth the effortFriday, 14 September 2018
Architecture is notoriously difficult to present in an accessible way and this survey of Italian architect Renzo Piano, who gave London the Shard, does not solve the problem. Read more... |
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