art blog since 2009
It’s just a working carousel in an art gallery, no big deal. We are not only used to such wholesale borrowings from the real world, we might expect as much from Carsten Hölller. This Belgian, after all, is the artist responsible for turning Tate Modern and Hayward Gallery into theme parks (as if they weren’t …
October 18, 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 space in an urban environment. …
October 9, 2015
There’s a great warmth that comes from the ragged, woolly presence of Brent Wadden’s large (two by two and a half metres) woven work. You might even say its tactile qualities are cosy. But the design is less comfortable: irregular, patched together in haste, an austere black and white. He doesn’t use much technology, but …
October 8, 2015
There are certain areas of human experience which don’t get on the news, don’t get written into soap opera plotlines and evade the attention of reality TV. They are pretty much off the menu. But testimony does survive around, say, mind control, belief in ESP, perception of extra-dimensional beings, witchcraft, fringe religious beliefs and a general …
October 6, 2015
The less seriously he takes himself, the more his audience appear willing to suspend disbelief. This – it seems to me – is the peculiar genius of artist, and sometime shaman, Marcus Coates. His East London gallery is currently showing a four-year-old film in which he visits ‘ordinary’Â people in their homes or workplaces and, prompted …
October 5, 2015
There are two epicentres under consideration in this monumental installation at the Royal Academy right now. One was in Wenchuan County in Sechuan; the other is the government in Beijing. The first meant a quake that destroyed 20 schools. The second has monitored the ongoing work of China’s best known artist and kept him at …
October 1, 2015
In a rare moment of colour footage, this film by Shona Illingworth features figures with torches who work their way around a green twilight landscape, riddled with stony ruins. The searching orange beams bring to mind the point of our consciousness, while the vastness of the terrain stands for all we know and remember but cannot …
September 22, 2015
Abstract and irregular it might be, but this geometric artwork is as comforting as a picnic blanket. On first glance at the reproduction, you may not realise why. But get closer… This sharp, monochrome composition, which promises so little on screen, is in fact rendered in a dense yarn weave of yarn. Black/grey/white may be tonally …
September 13, 2015
The greenest show in London right now is at Chisenhale, where Nicholas Mangan powers two films with solar panels on the gallery roof. In terms of power, it’s a closed circuit. But this isn’t so much concern for the environment. The Australian artist’s air miles might have scotched that. It’s about the economy of sunlight on this troubled planet …
August 26, 2015
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 off as badly as you. …
August 14, 2015