art blog since 2009
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 a different way off the …
April 9, 2015
To be fair, all years have some groundbreaking music to recommend them. But 1975 was a good year for both jazz and urban planning in Germany. Who knew the two could go together? In Köln, Keith Jarrett played an improvised concert, the recording of which was to become the best-selling solo piano album of all …
March 21, 2015
4000 years after their first use in Egypt, Wael Shawky has made marionettes a central part of his art practice, spooking the viewer with what some say is the oldest form of theatre. These puppets are not found objects. The artist has them made using glass and ceramic to render a cast of plenty, in …
March 16, 2015
I’ve been picking a monthly round up of art for a few years now, first on Culture24 and now on criticismism. If it’s not my imagination, this is getting more difficult. Cuts coming home to roost? It’s my unscientific impression galleries have got less likely to list forthcoming shows. It could be a sign they’re …
March 1, 2015
Seeing this film, you’d want to allow a certain innocence to the terrorist gunmen who haunt our dreams here in the West. They too, it seems, are only doing their job. In found audio, we hear onesuch maniacal footsoldier entertain doubts before taking a pair of lives. We watch another confess that he was on the mission to raise …
February 25, 2015
Do vast spaces bring forth big art, or does big art call for vast spaces? I ask because the current production at the South London outpost of White Cube is a monster of wholesale appropriation. Artist Christian Marclay occupies all five galleries and includes a performance space, a screen-printing operation by Coriander Studios, along with …
February 17, 2015
“There’s a metaphor in there somewhere,” says Guardian critic Adrian Searle, as he contemplates this film. criticismism would like to pick up on those words: parrot fashion, naturally. But that is what Glossolalia makes me think of: art criticism, mimicry and even plagiarism. To look at reviews for this pair of Portuguese artists certain phrases do …
February 12, 2015
While this show must have been a logistical headache, the extensive catalogue of objects in Back to the Fields points to an impossible dream. And it’s the most beautiful and sad dream: revolution. This is not the first time Ewan has visited post-revolutionary France. You can read about her doomed experiment at Folkestone in 2011. That was …
February 12, 2015
Welcome back to the new monthly survey of great shows from public institutions who’ve got their act together online. Cold outside, but it’s quite warm in the UK’s galleries. James Bridle: Seamless Transitions, The Photographers’ Gallery, London, 6 Feb – 15 Apr. Using planning apps and first hand accounts, tech artist Bridle has visualised some of the buildings which …
February 1, 2015
Since the days of King Cnut, few public figures can have had such an impossible relation with the sea. In the paintings of John Virtue the viewer finds themselves lost in the surf. But each work represents the most fleeting of moments, as waves break quicker than the hand can sketch. And this artist’s hand …
January 27, 2015