Franz West, 6 Adaptives for Rolls Royce Silver Shadow (2007)

On some level you may already be offended. You don’t need to be a total petrolhead to find the addition to this prestigious bonnet to be something of a defacement. Let’s be honest, it lacks the easy romance of the flying woman usually found on the prow of a Rolls: The Spirit…

Ian Hamilton Finlay, In Revolution Politics Become Nature (1980)

A slogan is etched into a block of stone and the stone laid on a piece of red felt. There is something somewhat reverent about this inscription; the words carry weight and are to be handled with care. You read the title off the block. And then you read it in…

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…

Eduardo Chillida, From Within (1953)

It hangs like a chandelier designed to throw shade. You cannot walk beneath it without speculating on your own death. And it’s made of iron, technology of another age. The view’s not so great from this angle, but the form echoes a swastika. And that would be a treacherous swastika…

Rachael Champion, Naturally Occurring  Brutalist Structure (2013)

An observation: spheres of Perspex and pea shingle have gravity in the same way that planets do. This piece by Rachael Champion has neither colour nor much visual stimuli, yet it has pull. Taken in isolation, gravel, pebbledash, and industrial tiling are unlovely things. And no one could argue this sculpture…

Alan Magee, Return to glory (2014)

Two disks grace the gallery. One sits on the floor. One hangs on the wall. Looking closer, their outer rims can be identified as hula hoops. But there will be no gyrating here today. Both hoops have been measured up for a plasterboard inner, and worked over with filler to…

Photos: Museo Nacional de Escultura

A National Sculpture Museum is to be found in a small city, some 200 km north of Madrid. But don’t expect too much marble, bronze or mixed media here in Valladolid. During their golden age, Spain’s sculptors worked in wood. Presenting exhibit A: close up of a sizeable tiered seating arrangement for…

Photostory: Ryan Gander at Manchester Art Gallery

Ryan Gander is an artist who embodies the dictum by Jasper Johns, which goes: ”Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.”. His work is multi-faceted. Consider this homemade calendar for example. Populated by jottings from Gander’s notebooks, it comes with an evocative and seeming arbitrary title: And what if…