art blog since 2009
This sunday calls for a religious artwork, a blasphemous one even. What you see is a bird cage, a fishing lure and two pairs of mean looking hooks. It looks like a remake of Why Not Sneeze Rose Sélavy?, a birdcage which in 1921 Marcel Duchamp filled with sugar cubes. But we live in vicious times. …
April 20, 2014
In terms of medium, Steve McQueen is in unusual territory with his celebrated philatelical artwork Queen and Country. Just don’t expect to see any of this piece come through your letterbox. 179 sheets of stamps now occupy a large filing cabinet at Imperial War Museum North. Visitors can pull out trays and encounter, one by …
October 21, 2013
This sculpture makes a meal of a piece of gum. It may be marble, but it was once a remnant piece of a habit-forming chew. And now it is the size of a torso. Visitors may be struck at the muscularity, which marble will always suggest. There is a body trapped in here, perhaps a …
October 2, 2013
Sculptor Gavin Turk is perhaps best known for work about Gavin Turk. He has dressed as Sid Vicious and posed for a waxwork, or dressed as a vagrant. He has posed for photos as Andy Warhol or Che. And his degree show consisted simply of a blue plaque confirming his historic residence at the RCA. …
May 12, 2013
It’s a freedom of speech issue. If you are a global corporation like IKEA you can afford to take out a full page in a national broadsheet. If you are a little known artist you can barely afford to reply. What IKEA tells us some 200,000 times at a go is that Harry’s passion now …
March 13, 2013
You cannot see them, but you believe them to be there. Sewn into the lining of this greatcoat are hundreds of coins. They give it both physical and metaphorical weight. But were it not art, the monetary value would still not amount to much. Gallery notes reveal the coinage to be nickels and dimes. Not …
November 26, 2012
Just as Joseph Beuys once declared his reciprocal love for America, in this film you will see a Haitian artist state: “I like vodou and vodou likes me.†He goes so far as to add, “Everyone likes vodou.†But whatever ghetto sculptor Guyodo might think or say, not everyone does like vodou. Not unless you …
October 30, 2012
There’s a rug shop in Brighton called GAFF (Great Art For Floors). This might raise a few eyebrows and concerns for art’s proper place in the world. But then there’s this piece Mona Hatoum. Perhaps great art does belong on the floor. Quality rugs, such as this one, demand a measure of true respect. They …
October 17, 2012
This piece floats on a perilous sea of style mags; they buoy up a marble-effect plinth. Matthew Stone is not cool, he is stone cold. But these publications have more gravity than usual. Their covers are stuck to blocks of wood, giving each more permanence than a sheaf of glossy pages. A muted printing technique …
September 18, 2012
Whether you call it a weatherbox or, more correctly a Stevenson Screen, this object provokes even more curiosity than usual. It doesn’t belong in a gallery. It doesn’t often exude a blue light. The light comes from a speaker wired up in there to make this sculpture appear sentient twice over. It glows and it …
June 7, 2012