fri 29/03/2024

Visual Arts Reviews

Caro at Chatsworth, Chatsworth House

Marina Vaizey

The first and most unusual aspect of Caro at Chatsworth is that it is there: 15 outstanding sculptures by Sir Anthony Caro, placed in an irregular pattern around the formal 950ft early-18th-century Canal Pond, situated facing the southern vista of the great Baroque house. For these sculptures are tough, the antithesis of any sentimental attachment to a rural Arcadia, almost relentlessly urban and even architectural. Caro once used the term "archisculpture" for his ambitious work.

Read more...

Brains: The Mind as Matter, Wellcome Collection

Fisun Güner

The mind is a beautiful mystery. We think, therefore we are. But how is the mind and physical body related? How does a lump of matter give rise to consciousness? Naturally, it’s a question that’s exercised great minds over many centuries, and will, I’m sure, continue to do so for another few. Unsurprisingly, you won’t find any answers in the Wellcome Collection’s spectacular exhibition, Brains: The Mind as Matter.

Read more...

Remote Control, ICA

Steven Gambardella

Remote Control and its accompanying series of events, Television Delivers People, coincides with the analogue to digital switch-over, marking a shift in the history of a medium which will soon be eclipsed by on-demand content. While this may sound mundane on paper, the humble light-emitting box has been the elephant in the room for the last half-century, profoundly transforming living habits and shaping political discourse.

Read more...

British Design 1948 - 2012: Innovation in the Modern Age, Victoria & Albert Museum

Marina Vaizey

The V&A has played a blinder. This extraordinary, exciting and unexpected exhibition provides endless trips down memory lane for many and will be a revelation for others. Ignore the clunky title, moving us from the postwar Olympics of 1948 to Olympic year 2012, and just go.

Read more...

Damien Hirst, Tate Modern

Fisun Güner

How long will it take for the penny to finally drop and to know we’ve been had all along? Months? Years? Ten years? Twenty? Will it really take that long before we come to our senses, and to wonder at our own gullibility? I’m talking not of Damien Hirst, who some now imagine has been conning us all for years, but of the execrable Lady Gaga. Yes, Gaga must be “exposed”! For is pap in pop really any lesser crime than art pap?

Read more...

Rose Wylie, Jerwood Gallery, Hastings

Steven Gambardella

The Jerwood Gallery on Stade beach in Hastings has so far had a fraught if very short history. Local opposition, largely from the neighbouring fishing community, have campaigned relentlessly against the gallery, fearing that it would ruin the Stade's rustic charm and bring little or no benefit to most locals.

Read more...

Gillian Wearing, Whitechapel Gallery

Marina Vaizey

The first major retrospective of the videos, photographs and sculptures of Gillian Wearing is a deeply disturbing experience. Her videos can be just a few minutes, or as long as an hour, but are not sequential narratives. They can be dipped in and out of - unlike many video artists you do not have to acquiesce to her time scale. But take a lot of time: they are more than worth it, and repay repeated viewings.

Read more...

Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude, National Gallery

Marina Vaizey

The British grand tourists not only fell in love with Italy. They fell in love with the landscapes of 17th-century ex-pat artist Claude Lorrain (1604/5-1682), depicting the Roman campagna in which the gods disported themselves. JMW Turner (1775-1851) also fell for the Frenchman, whose work he had seen in significant stately homes while visiting his patrons.

Read more...

Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed, Freud Museum

Fisun Güner

Louise Bourgeois tirelessly, obsessively documented her 32 years of psychoanalysis.

Read more...

Johan Zoffany: Society Observed, Royal Academy

Marina Vaizey

Royal families and royal academies. Aristocrats at ease in exquisitely landscaped gardens or inside in gorgeous drawings rooms. Actors emoting, notably Sir David Garrick and his troupe. Nabobs in India. All are depicted in Johan Zoffany’s rivetingly detailed paintings of Georgian society.

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

Bach's Easter Oratorio, OAE, Whelan, QEH review – the j...

Waiting, and hoping, may prove just as intense an experience as the fulfilment of a wish – or of a fear. Bach knew that, and infused his Easter...

Album: Jane Weaver - Love In Constant Spectacle

“Motif,” Love In Constant Spectacle’s fourth track, is the closest Jane Weaver has come in over a decade to the folk influences embraced...

First Person: author-turned-actor Lydia Higman on a play tha...

I first read Anne Gunter’s story about five years ago, when I was in my first year of university at Oxford, little knowing it would over time lead...

The Origin of Evil review - Laure Calamy stars in gripping F...

A young woman (Laure Calamy; Call my Agent!; Full Time; Her Way) is trying to pluck up the courage to call her...

Foam, Finborough Theatre review - fascism and f*cking in a G...

In a too brightly tiled Gentlemen’s public convenience (Nitin Parmar’s beautifully realised set is as much a character as any of the men we meet...

Album: Ride - Interplay

What a time to be alive it is for fans of late Eighties, early Nineties ...

Schubert Piano Sonatas 4, Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review -...

“Death doesn’t scare me at all,” said my friend Christopher Hitchens during our last telephone conversation. “After all, it’s the only certainty...

Vossa Jazz 2024 review - Norwegian festival embraces William...

“The name of this group is Mayan Space Station.” In spite of the billing as The William Parker Trio, their bassist – coolly introducing himself as...

First person: playwright Paul Grellong on keeping pace with...

I’m writing this in the lobby of the...