art blog since 2009
It was not a day you would think you might need protection. My recent visit here was on a mild Spring afternoon. But once inside the skyspace, the breeze up there carried the force of a roar. The clouds or perhaps the Earth appeared to be moving twice as fast. It brought to mind footage …
April 12, 2011
Ai Weiwei’s arrest has been a gift to the blogosphere with much better coverage at Hyperallergic and Eyeteeth than you will find here. But here’s a curious thing: the dissident artist’s collected blog posts are briefly reviewed in the Guardian today. He posted every day for 4 years. Meanwhile Russia’s most troublesome artists have just …
April 9, 2011
This sign is at once ironic, illusory and completely superfluous. So it ticks a lot of boxes to signal that it really just labels itself. Arcadia is after all the name of this artwork. More irony comes from the introduction of roadside signage into such a wild, mythical realm. A nearby motorway would kill the …
April 7, 2011
It seems about time criticismism did some aggregation. So from now on I’ll try to post links to some of the news stories, features, blog posts, videos etc, which I’ve enjoyed on any given week. So here goes: My first virtual found object has to be the first show by Dead Hare Radio. It features …
April 3, 2011
If you’re heading out to look at some art this weekend, it may be with some relief. Chances are that on Wednesday your nearest gallery made it onto Arts Council England’s list of National portfolio organisations. NPOs will continue to get funding, albeit reduced by some percentage figure: typically 11%. So most galleries are going …
April 1, 2011
Leading agriculturalists, politicians and intellectuals got together this March to explore how Roman farming techniques can help us protect the environment in 2011. The setting was Italy’s leading school of agriculture in Florence and the occasion was to mark 50 years of a journal of farming history, namely Rivista di storia dell’ agricoltura. This publication …
March 29, 2011
There is nothing like an early death to fuse an artist’s biography and work in the minds of his audience. Here is Pino Pascali, beside one of his best known works, inseparable. Common sense tells us that a motorcycle crash should not affect the worth of the Italian sculptor’s art. Yet it does, and this …
March 25, 2011
Antonin Artaud only wrote one play, said to be impossible to restage. So we might now find the best example of the writer’s so-called Theatre of Cruelty at a Nancy Spero show Certainly, the only performance of Spurt of Blood which this blogger ever witnessed would be difficult to review. Shouts, cries and physical convulsions …
March 21, 2011
Most of those lucky enough to see Edwina Ashton’s performance at Jerwood Space in the next five weeks will be, presumably, non-plussed. How else to react to people dressed as lobsters? For three hour stretches the lobsters may be seen to rearrange objects. There may be more to it, but that’s the gist. It’s a …
March 18, 2011
Brand power is interesting because brands are power. They can attract money and votes. They can set the conditions for certain types of behaviour. Even weapons have brands. This show makes a target out of one luxury fashion brand and at first you wonder why. It is after all only a designer label. Chanel is …
March 15, 2011