art blog since 2009
This was my first visit to The Hepworth and I was blown away by a) the David Chipperfield building and b) the setting by the River Calder. Here’s a view from one to the other. We were here for the biggest every show at the gallery and the UK’s first major survey of work by Franz …
June 24, 2014
Last Saturday I spent eight or so intense hours hot footing it around a coastal town in South East England in search of the many artworks which make up Whitstable Biennale. The coach dropped us at the Horsebridge Arts Centre, in which could be seen a wry excavation of 35-year-old television drama ,Sapphire and Steel, in …
June 8, 2014
Martin Creed has some good tunes. No, really. For the week following his gig in Brighton, there are still one or two which bounce around between the ears. His lyrics are to the point. Highlight of the show was a rendition of the alphabet, from “a-a a a a-a-a-a†through to “z-z z z z-z-z-zâ€. …
May 12, 2014
This sunday calls for a religious artwork, a blasphemous one even. What you see is a bird cage, a fishing lure and two pairs of mean looking hooks. It looks like a remake of Why Not Sneeze Rose Sélavy?, a birdcage which in 1921 Marcel Duchamp filled with sugar cubes. But we live in vicious times. …
April 20, 2014
Artists often go too far. Sometimes it can seem that any art worth its salt has to do just that, to show some form of excess, to do something inordinately repetitive, or of course skilled. Jakob Dahlgren’s thirteen year-long durational project will have many scratching their heads, asking what is the point? But to provoke …
April 9, 2014
The first human to live for 500 years has already been born. So suggests a digital graphic novel by artist David Blandy, illustrator Daniel Locke and writer Adam Rutherford. Helix launches next month and promises users the chance to interact with spider goats, DJ Kool Herc, Crick and Watson and the Great God Pan. But …
March 21, 2014
I lucked out with this: a press trip to the fifth Marrakech Biennale. Having never before visited North Africa, culture shock kicked in before we had even checked in at the (palatial) hotel. As you see from this piece of guerilla marketing, the event asks ‘Where are we now?’. On my first night I was …
March 7, 2014
It may have been said, but a full century before the meme took off, Stanley Spencer painted works which embodied the suggestion we should ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. Here you see orderlies in a military hospital who, instead of getting depressed or suicidal about the horrors of war, are busy making tea. But there …
February 23, 2014
As if they know what awaits them in adult life, children are drawn to castles, fortresses and hideaways. This was also perhaps the case for John Skoog. The Swedish artist tells me he grew up 40 minutes from the mother of all imaginary dens: a bunker, made in response to WWII, which took one man …
February 12, 2014
At the risk of over analysing a good joke, it’s worth considering this painting by Tala Madani. It’s as funny as anything in her scurrilous UK survey in Nottingham. The dude with the erect torch, well, in his mind he’s a sex god. He appears to think that red shaft is a part of his …
January 28, 2014