Category: contemporary art

UK Exhibitions: February 2015

Welcome back to the new monthly survey of great shows from public institutions who’ve got their act together online. Cold outside, but it’s quite warm in the UK’s galleries. James Bridle: Seamless Transitions, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 6 Feb – 15 Apr. Using planning apps and first hand accounts, tech artist Bridle has visualised…

UK exhibitions: January 2015

Happy New Year to readers everywhere. Here’s the first of a monthly round up of shows in (usually) public sector spaces around the UK. So, if you’re in Britain in January 2015, you won’t want to miss… Grace Schwindt: Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society, Site Gallery, Sheffield,…

Nick Davies, From Tippex Forms (i-iv) (2014)

It’s a curious thing. It is hoped that not many typos find their way from this keyboard onto your screen. But a recent blog post for Bad at Sports had at least three. My very bad. What made it strange was that the subject of my review, Nick Davies, has…

Roberts, Selmes & Bartlett, Work Programme 71 (2014)

For those who don’t already know, Aston Villa FC are an underperforming English football team from the West Midlands. It might not be common knowledge in the wider art world. Three artists staged a gallery event last Saturday: Bartlett, Selmes and Roberts. We’ll drop the first names, in the spirit…

Sophie Dickson, Shooting Range (pt 2) (2014)

At a point of maximal chaos, the objects in this sculpture hang together and you feel you could take your finger off the pause button and return this scene to order. The tableau is composed of ‘junk’, but white paint gives it a wintry appearance, akin to a seasonal shop…

Sanja Iveković, The Disobedient (The Revolutionaries) (2012)

The fifty donkeys were cute and the labels were amusing. But it was the third element in this piece which packed a real punch. A photo of a real donkey behind barbed wire in a town square. It was a scene was staged by Nazi authorities in 1933 as a warning…

Dinh Q Lê, The Farmers and the Helicopters (2006)

War is a game for boys of all ages. So if that’s your violent gender you might especially enjoy this montage of vintage film in which helicopter gunships rain deafening misery on the Vietnamese. Dinh Q Lê’s film begins gently with innocuous footage of dragonflies and some peasant wisdom about determining…

Wang Yuyang, Breathing Books (2014)

“I like the traditional Chinese philosophy,” says Wang Yuyang, “Because it talks about the relationship between 1 and 0, on and off, black and white, something and nothing…” You have to imagine that the thirtysomething artist would also like the branch of post-structuralist theory known, confusingly, as deconstruction. If deconstruction…