art blog since 2009
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
For many on the Left, the Spanish Civil War may have been a somewhat romantic affair. But it soon turned into an epic disappointment. It was a disappointment on the scale of WWII. Pallant House in Chichester is currently showing the first exhibition devoted to British artists during the Iberian conflict. It makes a good …
January 8, 2015
Of course, buildings cannot have souls. We are cannot even install them in computers. But a new 3D film by six directors, which began life as a TV series, sets out to demonstrate the improbable. You have to admit these are personable buildings. The roving cameras are accompanied by first person voiceovers which bring us into the …
January 2, 2015
Happy New Year to readers everywhere. Here’s the first of a monthly round up of shows in (usually) public sector spaces around the UK. So, if you’re in Britain in January 2015, you won’t want to miss… Grace Schwindt: Only a Free Individual Can Create a Free Society, Site Gallery, Sheffield, 10 Jan – 28 Feb. …
January 1, 2015
The LED blinks on and off. We could be here a while. As deep history has shown, a rock like this can take its own sweet time to breathe forth life, or yawn and swallow us all. Just whose hand might go to the remote to activate a 80kg lump of sandstone? Would it be a …
December 18, 2014
There are two Barbicans, we soon learn on a tour of the East London council estate: the multi-purpose arts centre; and the mysterious residential units which sell for seven figure sums. Most visits to the former involve passing beneath the latter. But there is so much more to this brutalist landmark and unlikely home than …
December 14, 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 been doing fantastic things with …
December 10, 2014
Nothing like the Turner Prize to deliver half an hour of overwrought excitement. Not that the writer of this blog was there. He was wound like a spring on the sofa, as the reportage photo above implies. But how close can you get to this Prize? Like the man in a Kafka parable, you wait and …
December 1, 2014
Let’s get a comparison out of the way. Art is like an infinite game of chess. An artwork will reorient all the pieces round it, and inevitably change the game. But chess fans visiting Beswick in East Manchester may be frustrated by the inscrutable configuration of pieces in Ryan Gander’s third major artwork for the public. It’s a checkmate, apparently. But …
November 27, 2014