Visual Arts Reviews
Zineb Sedira: Dreams Have No Titles, Whitechapel Gallery review - a disorientating mix of fact and fictionWednesday, 21 February 2024
The downstairs of the Whitechapel Gallery has been converted into a ballroom or, rather, a film set of a ballroom. From time to time, a couple glides briefly across the floor, dancing a perfunctory tango. And they are really hamming it up, not for the people watching them – of whom they are apparently oblivious – but for an imaginary camera. Read more... |
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind, Tate Modern review - a fitting celebration of the early yearsFriday, 16 February 2024
At last Yoko Ono is being acknowledged in Britain as a major avant garde artist in her own right. It has been a long wait; last year was her 90th birthday! The problem, of course, was her relationship with John Lennon and perceptions of her as the Japanese weirdo who broke up the Beatles and led Lennon astray – down a crooked path to oddball, hippy happenings. Read more... |
Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, Barbican review - the fabric of dissentThursday, 15 February 2024
Judy Chicago created Birth Project in the 1980s, recognising with typical perspicacity that the favouring of “the paint strokes of the great male painters” over “the incredible array of needle techniques that women have used for centuries” has implications far beyond the precedence of one art form over another. Read more... |
When Forms Come Alive, Hayward Gallery review - how to reduce good art to family funFriday, 09 February 2024
Under the guidance of director Ralph Rugoff, the Hayward Gallery seems hell bent on reducing art to the level of fun for all the family. And as though to prove the point, cretinous captions strip the work of all meaning beyond the banal, while press pictures showcase kids gazing at large sculptures. Read more... |
Entangled Pasts 1768-now, Royal Academy review - an institution exploring its racist pastTuesday, 06 February 2024
In Titian’s painting Diana and Actaeon,1559, a cluster of naked beauties bathes beside a stream. Scarcely visible in the right hand corner is a black woman helping the goddess hide her nudity from Acteon who has stumbled into her private glade. The servant’s clothing and dark skin contrast with the pearly pink flesh of the nymphs – so much so that she almost merges with the tree trunk behind her, as though she were just part of the scenery. Read more... |
Barbara Kruger, Serpentine Gallery review - clever, funny and chilling installationsMonday, 05 February 2024
American artist Barbara Kruger started out as a graphic designer working in advertising, and it shows. Her sharp design skills and acute visual intelligence now produce funny, clever and thought provoking installations in which words and pictures illuminate the way language is (mis)used to cajole, bully, manipulate and lie. Read more... |
Richard Dorment: Warhol After Warhol review - beyond criticismTuesday, 09 January 2024
2023 was a good year for Andy Warhol post-mortems: after Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special, after Alexandra Auder’s Don’t Call Home, Richard Dorment’s Warhol After Warhol. Read more... |
Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape: (ka) pheko ye / the dream to come, Kiasma, Helsinki review - psychic archaeologyMonday, 08 January 2024
Rosemary, heather and hops. These are just a few of the ingredients included in a special blend of herbal tea created by artist, Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape. Subtle yet deep in flavour, the amber coloured tea has a calming, if not soporific and dream-inducing effect. Read more... |
Paul Cocksedge: Coalescence, Old Royal Naval College review - all that glittersThursday, 21 December 2023
"Beautiful outside, unmissable inside" is the is the new tagline for the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. If the restoration of James Thornhill’s painted hall wasn’t enough to prompt a journey on the Thames Clipper, Paul Cocksedge’s installation, Coalescence might do the trick. |
Issy Wood, Study for No, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris review - too close for comfort?Tuesday, 19 December 2023
To take a trip into the world of Issy Wood is to be embraced by paradox. A richness of imagery that can at time shock with its blandness and at others seduce with a sense of wonder; a perfectly accomplished surface that reveals, with familiarity, a labyrinth of unexpected depth and sensuality; a confrontation with the glitz of hyper-reality that’s constantly playing with the illusory nature of all images; collections of apparent trivia bathed in an aura of mystery. Read more... |
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