• Artist's Statement: Oliver Beer on Deep and Meaningful

    Here’s the first of a series of new features in which artists talk about their own work. This is what Oliver Beer had to say about his film Deep and Meaningful: “For some time I had been quite fascinated by the structure of hidden architectural spaces, but also I read about these urban explorers. They …

    July 24, 2010
  • Frederic Geurts – A Fine Line, at Fabrica

    The work invites you to walk around it, to weave a path between its fragile legs. The viewer cannot grasp it until having gazed from both ends and upwards at points between. A Fine Line by Frederic Geurts is another work about space and the human form. It there any other subject? We take spatial …

    July 23, 2010
  • Oliver Beer, Deep and Meaningful (2009)

    Three locations are evoked by the film Deep and Meaningful by Oliver Beer: the sewer in which the original choral performance was filmed; the type of church where you might expect to hear such a thing; and the gallery environment in which it might end up. The correspondence between church and art gallery is self-evident. …

    July 12, 2010
  • Diane Arbus/Chicks on Speed/Arabicity/July must-sees

    Here’s another round up of stories written in the past week for Culture24: Preview: Diane Arbus – Artist Rooms, Nottingham Contemporary Preview: Chicks on Speed – Don’t Art, Fashion, Music, Dundee Contemporary Arts Preview: Arabicity: Such a Near East, the Bluecoat Culture24’s art must sees for July

    July 11, 2010
  • Why do so many artists choose The Fall?

    This blog entry is being put together to the sound of The Fall, in an attempt to understand why so many artists claim, or are said, to draw or paint to the sound of Mark E Smith’s timeless band. Usual conditions for producing these musings are, for the record, a joyless silence. There seems to …

    July 7, 2010
  • Tabaimo, yudangami (2009) at Parasol Unit

    Tabaimo’s animations are without doubt unsettling. But the more you watch yudangami (2009) the more you want to watch and the same can be said for her entire show at Parasol Unit. It would be rational to look away, but the films deal in revealing the hidden. No wonder they are compelling. In yudangami the …

    July 4, 2010
  • Book review: The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell

    Book review: The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, pp.992, published by Chatto & Windus Of all the millions killed in WWII, the fate of a fictional character has concerned me more than any. Stranger still, I have found myself rooting for a German and a high ranking SS officer at that. The same might be …

    July 1, 2010
  • Fiona Banner – Harrier and Jaguar (The 2010 Duveens Commission at Tate Britain)

    Perhaps all art has ever done is provide visual enjoyment, depsite the questionable values inherent in traditional, modern or contemporary subject matter. Fiona Banner’s latest commission at Tate Britain is indeed problematic, but without question it is still enjoyable. The London-based artist has installed two decommissioned fighter planes in the neoclassical Duveens Gallery. One, upside down, …

    June 29, 2010
  • Whitstable Biennale/Persistence of Vision/Wolfgang Tillmans

    Here’s another round up of my week’s output for Culture24. Happy reading… Review: Lucienne Cole, Karen Mirza & Ruth Beale, Phil Coy and Alex Pearl at Whitstable Biennale Preview: Persistence of Vision at FACT, Liverpool Preview: Wolfgang Tillmans at Serpentine, London

    June 26, 2010