Visual Arts Reviews
Turner Prize 2015, Tramway, GlasgowMonday, 05 October 2015![]()
What’s going on? It seems the Turner Prize judges not only ran out of Scots to nominate this year, but actual artists. The socially enterprising architect-design collective Assemble don’t even call themselves artists so what must they make of the novelty of being shortlisted for the UK’s premier contemporary art prize? I’ve no doubt they’re delighted, especially since they appear favourites to win, but what a turn up. Read more... |
Ben Rivers: Earth Needs More Magicians, Camden Arts CentreWednesday, 30 September 2015![]()
Filmmaker Ben Rivers is drawn to outsiders and misfits, people who prefer solitude over society and live in shacks in the sticks rather than bungalows in the suburbs. Living in the Kent cottage she shared with her painter husband Roy Oxlade until his death last year, Rose Wylie hardly fits the bill; yet one can see why Rivers was drawn to her. Read more... |
Ai Weiwei, Royal AcademyTuesday, 29 September 2015![]()
Ai Weiwei’s first major survey in the UK is a better looking exhibition than I had anticipated, but what it gains in looks it sadly lacks in substance – backstory and information not being quite the same. Read more... |
The World Goes Pop, Tate ModernSaturday, 19 September 2015![]()
There’s no sign of Oldenburg, Warhol or Lichtenstein and British pioneers Eduardo Paolozzi and Peter Blake are notably absent from this gritty vision of Pop art. Only in the final room do we come face-to-face with a Campbell’s Tomato Soup tin, the comforting bright colours and clean, supermarket-aisle lines blackened, singed and fragmented as if salvaged from some unimaginable disaster. Read more... |
Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns, British MuseumThursday, 17 September 2015![]()
Unlike Venice, where colour reigned supreme among artists such as Titian and Veronese, Florence was the city where drawing – disegno – was held up as the cornerstone of the artist’s education. Think of the well-defined musculature of Michelangelo’s figures. Florentine artists of the Renaissance practiced an art of detailed precision, mastering clarity of line and structural rigour. Read more... |
The Gap: Selected Abstract Art from Belgium, Parasol UnitMonday, 14 September 2015![]()
From its title, you could be misled into dismissing this show as narrow and self-referential: a small exhibition in a small gallery curated by a Belgian artist concerned only with his own countrymen. In fact, it is something of a survey, featuring works with influences that range from Piet Mondrian, Ad Reinhardt and Lucio Fontana, to the Color Field painters. Read more... |
Soup Cans and Superstars, BBC FourTuesday, 25 August 2015![]()
Pop went the easel, and more, as we were offered a worldwide tour – New York, LA, London, Paris, Shanghai – of the art phenomenon of the past 50 years (still going strong worldwide). We were led by a wide-eyed interlocutor, the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Alastair Sooke, to the throbbing beat of – what else? – pop music, Elvis and much else besides. Read more... |
Shirley Baker, Photographers' GalleryThursday, 30 July 2015![]()
When a photographer is as little known as Shirley Baker, it is probably only natural that we scour her work for clues to the personality behind the camera. Certainly, Baker’s photographs of inner city Salford and Manchester, taken over a period of 20 years, seem to offer as full and intriguing a picture of Baker herself as of the disappearing communities she was committed to recording. Read more... |
Alice Anderson, Wellcome CollectionFriday, 24 July 2015![]()
A flight of golden stairs gleams seductively under the spot lights; free of architectural constraints, it serves no practical purpose other than to encourage the mind to wander and perhaps to imagine it as the stairway to heaven. The beauty, simplicity and purity of the structure promise a trouble free ascent to astral spheres; one can almost hear the strings of angelic harps twanging celestial harmonies up above. Read more... |
Out of Chaos: Ben Uri - 100 Years in London, Somerset HouseThursday, 16 July 2015![]()
The exhibition Out of Chaos is a powerful dose of specific human experience, here presented almost exclusively in the form of portraits and group scenes. The selection comes almost entirely from the more than 1,300 works of art owned by Ben Uri Gallery, whose centenary commemoration this is; the gallery was founded in 1915, primarily to explore the work of Jewish artists in Britain. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...

“I can’t move my arms or legs, but apart from that I’m good to go.” Moth (Jason Isaacs) has to be pulled out of the tent in his sleeping bag by...

This charmingly eloquent semi-autobiographical show – which first played at the Bush Theatre in 2022 – tells the story of a girl whose...

Nick Mulvey’s first two albums, First Mind in 2014 and Wake Up Now in 2017, are among the loveliest singer-songwriter fare...

MOR. Twee. Unashamedly crowdpleasing. Are such descriptors indicative of a tedious night in the stalls? For your reviewer, who has...

For the first half-hour of this show – on the day before the release of his new album Alan Sparhawk With Trampled by Turtles – Alan...

Michael Gira (born 19/2/54) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, author and artist. He founded Swans, a band in which he sings and plays...

A couple of months ago, I wrote here that Lady Gaga was the godmother of the new generation of ostentatiously “theatre kid” pop stars – but...

As this two-part documentary vividly illustrates, it...