art blog since 2009
Taking a break from her hallmark candy-coloured sculptures, Karla Black has responded to a former warehouse at Fruitmarket with an installation comprising a ton or so of black soil. The light is low, here, in the gallery’s new space. But the minimal illumination is amplified by the introduction of gold and copper leaf, a multitude …
July 10, 2021
Where you might expect to find a detail such as ‘oil on canvas’, or ‘cast bronze’, or even ‘car engine’, Vo gives us the full scoop on his indecorous found object. A wall plaque opens the bonnet. Indeed. This contemporary sculpture is comprised of “The engine of the artist’s father Phung Vo’s Mercedes Benz.†Provenance is all: …
October 26, 2014
For no real reason, this week is a Bank Holiday special: It’s always good to hear what the animal world might have to tell us. Guardian chats with their spokesman Marcus Coates (via @LizzieHom.) Beverley Knowles writes up a pleasing memory feat and takes in art, human rights and, emo. Intrigued? 90% of guns seized …
April 9, 2012
Truth, it is sometimes argued, is an effect of discourse. And discourse in this case has given rise to a nebular, eerie-glowing alien life form. You cannot hear it, but it speaks many tongues. We realise almost at once this is a sound installation. Those are not tentacles and suckers but speakers hanging from the …
February 7, 2011
Studio Apparatus for Camden Arts Centre – An Introductory Structure: Introduction; a lexicon of phenomenon and information association; futurobjectics (in three sections), mysterious island*, or Temporary Monument *See Introduction The full title of Mike Nelson’s work is so verbose there’s no room for anything else in that opening paragraph. It is, like the work itself, …
January 22, 2011
For all the world you expect this image to move. It is a back lit screen with a casing as substantial as a cathode ray tube. We have come to expect computerised tablets to sing and dance, why not this? But no matter how long you watch, the piece is static. The TVs in the …
January 13, 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
As Tate Modern blew out ten candles on its birthday cake this year, there was reason to think it has been lucky. The Bankside gallery has lived through a decade of turbulence in the wider world. This century has been filled with war, terror and recession, not the best conditions for an infant. But if …
August 30, 2010
Recent reviews and previews written for Culture24. Check ’em out: Review: Antony Gormley – Critical Mass, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea Review: Tomoko Takahashi – Introspective Retrospective, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea Review: Alice Neel – Painted Truths, Whitechapel Gallery, London Preview: Ed Pien – Memento, New Art Exchange, Nottingham Preview: Jorge Santos – the …
August 21, 2010