art blog since 2009
Don’t get me wrong. BBC4 presenters do their jobs well. As they pace their way through churches and galleries. As they strike up instant rapports with curators. You’ve got to love ’em. But there’s little doubt that things ain’t what they used to be. If you look at an Alastair Sooke, next to a Kenneth Clark or a …
October 13, 2014
War is a game for boys of all ages. So if that’s your violent gender you might especially enjoy this montage of vintage film in which helicopter gunships rain deafening misery on the Vietnamese. Dinh Q Lê’s film begins gently with innocuous footage of dragonflies and some peasant wisdom about determining the weather from their flight patterns. …
October 11, 2014
“I like the traditional Chinese philosophy,†says Wang Yuyang, “Because it talks about the relationship between 1 and 0, on and off, black and white, something and nothing…†You have to imagine that the thirtysomething artist would also like the branch of post-structuralist theory known, confusingly, as deconstruction. If deconstruction itself has been sparked into …
October 8, 2014
The perversity on display here is not the a tergo position adopted by the blonde mistress or the rake so drunk he has fallen out of the large double bed. No the perversity is that Wächtler uses a medium as gentle as watercolour to incriminate the bad behaviour of this fornicating sot and his willing …
October 7, 2014
It’s been a sheltered low-rise sort of upbringing for this blogger. So the chance to ride a steel elevator up 24 floors to flat 130 of the Balfron Tower was not to be missed. This masterpiece of social housing is Grade II listed, and the flat in question is a pop up showpiece of 1960s …
October 6, 2014
An observation: spheres of Perspex and pea shingle have gravity in the same way that planets do. This piece by Rachael Champion has neither colour nor much visual stimuli, yet it has pull. Taken in isolation, gravel, pebbledash, and industrial tiling are unlovely things. And no one could argue this sculpture has much conventional beauty. But, …
September 23, 2014
Two disks grace the gallery. One sits on the floor. One hangs on the wall. Looking closer, their outer rims can be identified as hula hoops. But there will be no gyrating here today. Both hoops have been measured up for a plasterboard inner, and worked over with filler to produce an artwork. So that …
September 10, 2014
A National Sculpture Museum is to be found in a small city, some 200 km north of Madrid. But don’t expect too much marble, bronze or mixed media here in Valladolid. During their golden age, Spain’s sculptors worked in wood. Presenting exhibit A: close up of a sizeable tiered seating arrangement for a church choir. Its makers …
September 3, 2014
When confronted with a work of contemporary art, it is common to look for a handle. But it is not always easy to get to grips with an abstract sculpture or an assemblage. You could go to the press release. After all, that’s what a reviewer will do. But then every so often a piece …
August 19, 2014
Ryan Gander is an artist who embodies the dictum by Jasper Johns, which goes: ”Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.”. His work is multi-faceted. Consider this homemade calendar for example. Populated by jottings from Gander’s notebooks, it comes with an evocative and seeming arbitrary title: And what if no one believes the truth? …
July 14, 2014