art blog since 2009
You might think it’s a first world problem or a high class issue, but just how does a human being get through a seven hour traffic jam? Such was the predicament of Micheál O’Connell, aka Mocksim, snarled up on the M25 in what it soon emerged would be a history-making tailback. But while his phone …
May 14, 2012
Blimey, there is a lot to read this week: The New Aesthetic was much discussed. JJ Charlesworth puts it into a wider context of post-humanist thinking and behavioural economics. Writing for the L Magazine, Paddy Johnson meanwhile dismisses the movement, calling the New Aesthetic a “tumblr paired with a lecture circuitâ€. Hyperallergic, meanwhile, opt to …
May 14, 2012
“Okay, we’re 30m underwater on a ley line and we’re heading for some squid,†or words to that effect. Such is my greeting from artist Kaffe Matthews. My response is helpless excitement. I lie on my back on the shark platform and look up at the murky green light. You can well imagine the hammerheads …
May 8, 2012
Between headline auction lots and art fair admission fees, it’s been an expensive week in the artworld: So, The Scream provokes an outcry. You can see the final suave, diabolical moments of its public appearance in this Telegraph video But do high prices merely advertise the auction system itself? Jerry Saltz thinks so and hates …
May 7, 2012
New touring exhibition Tainted Love positions itself somewhere between group show and group therapy. Twelve artists have produced work with the theme of obsessive, one-sided love. At least they will now have company. “We’ve transformed the gallery with these partitions,†says artist and curator Corinna Spencer, speaking on the phone midway through the installation at …
May 4, 2012
This bench-like sculpture is made with showermats. The candy covered suckers draw the eye and hold the attention, so this work could be the most attractive in its show. But it seems perverse to pick out one artwork from an exhibition which was all about the interplay between pieces by Kox and her friend the …
April 29, 2012
One of the more surprising things you might hear about the work of Francis Bacon is that one of his paintings hangs in a museum at the Vatican. The work is a study for a better known painting of Pope Innocent X. In the subsequent work his holiness appears in a gold cage screaming blue …
April 28, 2012
Another frenzy of links from the last seven days: Is anyone using Artstack yet, or is everyone using it already? *panics* Whatever the case here’s an enticing primer from the Guardian. As a victim of procrastination, I love this curated twitter stream by media artist Cory Arcangel: wrknonmynovel or “working on my novel”. Daily Serving …
April 23, 2012
It is the largest cultural celebration in the history of the modern Olympics, but you could be forgiven for letting the 2012 Cultural Olympiad pass you by so far. And if it conjures images of community dance projects and corporate sponsors holding up giant cheques at photo calls, you may be trying to ignore it …
April 19, 2012
More links to edify and entertain: Plimack Mangold demonstrates you can stay at home, paint and still be conceptual. That’s what gets so well argued in this essay by John Yau on Hyperallergic (Parts one, two and three) Everyone’s favourite least-favourite art critic now has his own two part sampleboard on a website dedicated to …
April 16, 2012