art blog since 2009
Two or three millimetres are all that separate the showpiece in MichaÅ‚ Budny’s exhibition from the most workmanlike and mundane results of a bank holiday weekend’s DIY. Invited by the SLG to show in their Matsudaira Wing, the Polish artist has done what any new arrival to this domestic space might have thought to do. …
November 25, 2010
One thing we can know about cave paintings is they tended to show stuff outside the cave. So art got started as a way of showing what was not actually visible at the time. Take this scene of a passenger jet stranded in a jungle. A film crew would have gone all the way to …
November 22, 2010
The first words which spring to mind are of course ‘dogs’ and another beginning with F. Whichever order you put them in will depend on your attitude to the animals and act in question. But either way, it first reduces the painting to a cheap joke at the expense of painting itself. Although there seems …
November 18, 2010
Despite better intentions, this blog post is all about me. And you can see none other than myself in this Polaroid taken by artist, academic, and sometime futurologist John Maeda. I met John earlier today in a sandpit where he is spending four days in performance as a sort of live interactive fortune cookie. That …
November 17, 2010
Interlocking plywood is not the stuff of classical sculpture. It is too rough and ready. It puts one in mind of model making kits or, here, a model of a stage set. You might use it to build a mock up or something provisional. But Anna Parkina confounds this expectation. Her components are cut, punched …
November 13, 2010
This is not what you expect to see when you look in a mirror. Yet all visual art is surely a reflection of the artist and, if it resonates, the viewer. Mohamed Bourouissa works with young adults from beyond the periphique in Paris, les banlieues. And despite showing life in a culturally excluded zone, this …
November 7, 2010
It costs 10p to play. When you plug your money in the coinslot, five speakers strike up an orchestral version of The Star Spangled Banner. The speakers are black and shaped like coffins. This seems like an attack on video game culture. For some £30-40 you can buy highly realistic battle simulators such as Call …
November 4, 2010
It appears there was a steel fence preventing access to the rubble. But the barrier has been pulled away and we can now see what perches at the top of the steps: chaos on an epic scale. This is an inversion of the expected order, which puts chaos below and clouds and serenity above. It …
October 31, 2010
First please allow this bold claim. The appeal of a model train set lies not in the sexual inadequacies of a certain type of man, but in the chance to see a world made of cycles. Watching Murmur by Ray Lee puts one in mind of these maligned toys. It has been installed in a …
October 27, 2010
In most fields of human endeavour, many people put certain people at the top of the tree. But why should a few household names eclipse all contemporaries, precursors and descendants in this way? So any attempt to replace trees with a less hierarchical grass-like model of appraisal and influence is to be applauded. Something like …
October 19, 2010