art blog since 2009
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
Both artworks and fossils can be forged. That’s the alliance revealed in a new film by Barrada which takes an artistic look at the forgery of prehistoric life forms. The forgery takes place in eastern Morocco between the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara Desert. This region was once the bed of a pre-Cambrian ocean, so …
August 13, 2015
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 of Ecstasy by Charles Robinson …
June 28, 2015
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 monkey was household knowledge. It boosted …
June 17, 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 viewer, as if these dead …
June 5, 2015