Category: contemporary sculpture

Richard Deacon, Never Mind (1993-2017)

Does a ship replaced beam by beam remain the same vessel? Does a broom with 17 new heads and 14 new handles remain the same broom? Does a refabricated sculpture remain an original? Never Mind once looked like a hull. So it is apt that Richard Deacon’s long running artwork…

Chris Burden, Beam Drop Antwerp (2009)

I once knew a live music review to open with the following line: “Blur used the minimum of props to the maximum of effect. Damon was lowered from the roof in a giant TV set.” The author, who was a colleague on the student newspaper I wrote for, accosted me…

Bedwyr Williams, Strafed (2012)

“Strafing is the military practice of attacking ground targets from low-flying aircraft using aircraft-mounted automatic weapons ranging from machine guns to auto cannons or rotary cannons.” Armed with this knowledge, if not this hardware, we can safely say that Williams’ picnic suite appears to be the worse for an encounter…

Nicole Wermers, Untitled Chairs (2015)

Last night I dreamed about this, my least favourite piece of art from the 2015 Turner Prize exhibition in Glasgow. What you see, is what I thought I was getting: fur coats on chairs. The coats are actually sewn around the chairs. So this is presented as a comment on claiming…

Ben Woodeson, Rat Trap Neon (2013)

There are plenty of ways into this show-stopping piece by UK artist Ben Woodeson. But explore just a little and you may find no way out. One or more of those rat traps will hold you fast. Of course, that’s not an invitation to touch. The art itself would come…

Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988)

It’s the hair on the chimp. It’s as tousled as that of a Greek god. It’s as gilded as that of a Catholic saint. But it renders Bubbles more human than even Michael himself could have hoped for. Growing up in the 1980s, the name and existence of this pet…

The Chapman Brothers, Sturm und Drang (2015)

To hear this described, you might imagine something on a more imposing scale: a blasted tree hung with bodies of soldiering age, the reconstruction of a Goya etching. But the truth is, Sturm und Drang looks a bit like a toy. This wicked bronze plays out in the shadow of the…

Nathan Coley, You Imagine What You Desire (2014)

What a difference a new occasion makes. The last installation of You Imagine What You Desire was over 17,000 km away at a Biennial in Sydney. Now it appears in a festival in Brighton. But geography is the least of it. In Sydney it was on a gallery facade; in…

Jeremy Deller, The Bruce Lacey Experience (2012)

This in-depth documentary about a great living artist premiered at Brighton Festival not so long after network TV screened an in-depth doc about its maker Jeremy Deller. The results were two quite different films. But the subjects have more in common than both having worked together on The Bruce Lacey…