art blog since 2009
What to make of a flicker between a bandaged head and a face carved in a brieze block. Or an unshaven mouth which hi-jacks a news report. Or self-immolation illustrated as if for a kids’ book. Quite a bit happens in the Plastique Fantastique show at Grey Area. Not all is easy to describe and …
May 27, 2011
In April this year the story broke that now ubiquitous iPhones and 3G iPads are recording details of everywhere their owners go, storing locations and timestamps on a secret file. This may not be a conspiracy, but it would seem to be one more step towards a transparent world in which privacy belongs to a …
May 25, 2011
You are in the HEROIN ROOM. You can see: a painting, a broken chair, a lighter and some tin foil. There are exits: SE, SW. What do you want to do? _ That’s not meant to be the worst dropped intro ever written, but a faithful reproduction of the game-like dynamics of one of Mike …
May 18, 2011
From the pencil shavings and strewn magazines on the floor, it looks something like Maxime Angel has been living in the gallery. Indeed, there are reports she has slept on several works. She may even have slept inside the containerboard on the wall. The gallery assistant tells me the college-trained artist was also for a …
May 17, 2011
We’ve had seven more days of neuron-firing stories on-line, including: Scientists told the media that art can boost dopamine levels. But can it also give you the munchies? (from The Telegraph) On artnet, Ben Davis considers the Vatican’s decision to put the Sistine Chapel online and asks how they can get their heads round Flash …
May 15, 2011
KutluÄŸ Ataman has got into the spirit of the Brighton Festival with a carnivalesque metaphor for the recent turmoil in the Arab world: a waterfall which defies gravity. (This reading of Mayhem needs its full context, a series named after a region encompassing Iraq, Iran and Syria. And nearby here is another piece (Su) in …
May 13, 2011
When a gallery is a deconsecrated church and the artwork is a piece of religious music, walking in is a hair’s breadth from turning up for Sunday worship. It’s humbling, even humiliating. The early choral work, Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis, is drawing people in off the street, nevertheless. This is one church that’s …
May 11, 2011
Some favourited links from the last seven days: Big news of the week. Osama Bin Laden may have been a frustrated architect? Steve Rose builds a case in the Guardian. The Telegraph reports Art dealer Philip Mould was victim of a poison pen campaign. When it was alleged that he couldn’t afford a painting, that …
May 8, 2011
The universe, it seems, has good taste. Here is a painting it did. Or rather, here is a painting John Cage allowed to happen, letting the I-Ching direct his brushstrokes if true to form. Observe the wispy sfmuato effect, created by students with burning straw. Look at that delicate use of colour and the almost …
May 6, 2011