art blog since 2009
This post, about art hacks, has almost nothing to do with cultural journalists. It has more to do with a visit to the Cory Arcangel installation at the Barbican and computer hacking. Arcangel has taken 14 games consoles and fitted a chip which allows the system to play itself. His coding dictates that the central …
February 15, 2011
Since singer/songwriter Tom Verlaine cropped up in a recent post, it seems excusable to quote him with regards to the subject of this one: a re-staged gig by The Cramps. Both emerged from a scene based around New York venue CBGB’s during the mid 70s, but the gig in question was played in 1978 to …
February 10, 2011
Looking at art and reading can seem poles apart. Galleries are public spaces in which we move from one room to another. Reading is usually sedentary and usually in some way private. But The Wanderer by Franz Kafka, by Rory Macbeth, suggests otherwise. The title promises a mobile activity, while the reading which took place …
February 1, 2011
Written for Culture24. Unlike most investigations of Loch Ness, Gerard Byrne’s new show is not at all interested in the existence of a monster. His first major solo exhibition in a UK public space is about Nessie as a photographic phenomenon rather than a flesh and bone saurian. Speaking via phone, the Dublin-based artist explains …
January 14, 2011
Two or three millimetres are all that separate the showpiece in MichaÅ‚ Budny’s exhibition from the most workmanlike and mundane results of a bank holiday weekend’s DIY. Invited by the SLG to show in their Matsudaira Wing, the Polish artist has done what any new arrival to this domestic space might have thought to do. …
November 25, 2010
Work No. 117 by Martin Creed is a jokey little number. It consists of an audio tape on which can be heard, as advertised, every noise on a drum machine played in sequence. As it runs the gamut of automated sounds, it sounds like an ironic comment on the technology used. The machine sounds, well, …
September 7, 2010
To reduce it all to economics, which is often tempting, artists make product to make money, or a living at least. Those who do not manage this, still put value on their work. Say the artwork’s function is to generate revenue. It has done so historically by being beautiful and hence desirable, and from the …
August 27, 2010
Art has always had a close relationship with the frame around the work or the plinth on which it sits. At least one entire book has been written about this frequently overlooked object. In either case, the presentation brings something to the art. It adds value. No consideration of a painting is possible without some …
August 22, 2010
Just as there is decorative art, so too is there decorative news. The lightweight stories in freesheets like Metro are there to soothe. The editorial is designed to sell advertising, and this is more or less true for any commercial publication. But as soon as a newspaper is used to decorate a gallery, meaning returns …
August 22, 2010
Visitors to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth may be shocked by the imminent arrival of a charred and mangled car that was last driven on a suicide mission in Baghdad. “There’s a central atrium as you come in, which has all the planes and missiles and so on, and it’s going to be right …
August 21, 2010