art blog since 2009
Exhibition: Helen Frik – Difficult, Chapter, Cardiff, until May 9 2010 Most art shows demand just time and attention. This one put out an urgent appeal for homemade soft toys. Along with the usual mental graft, it required considerable craft. Many snips and stitches later, these objects can be enjoyed with childlike wonder. Helen Frik …
April 7, 2010
Introducing a new section of the blog in which I collate comments overheard while in galleries. Part One: Miroslaw Balka – How It Is. Description: a vast metal crate which you can walk inside and experience near total darkness. “That is so freaky.” “It’s really weird. Go out there and walk back in again.” “I …
April 7, 2010
Painting merges with sculpture, sculpture merges with sound, and sound merges with light this month – in a UK-wide guide to the best of contemporary art written for Culture24. Brian Eno – 77 Million Paintings, Fabrica, Brighton Religion was never so chilled out. Brian Eno offers a slow-changing digital stained glass window and soporific ambient music …
April 7, 2010
Turin Brakes were better than expected, on the last night of their UK tour at the end of March. Here’s a review I wrote for News of the World. The paper also recently sent me to Editors, who were so-so at Brighton Dome, and Grizzly Bear, who were outstanding at the city’s Corn Exchange.
April 6, 2010
Exhibition: Ron Terada – Who I Think I Am, Ikon, Birmingham, until May 16 2010 A brief digression on Vancouver may be needed. Thanks to a generation of artists that includes Jeff Wall, the third largest city in Canada has become an unlikely art world capital. So Ron Terada has emerged from a local scene …
April 2, 2010
Exhibition: Susan Collis – Since I Fell For You, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, until May 16 2010 There are 25 pieces in this show by Susan Collis, but if it wasn’t for a gallery handout and some helpful attendants, you could easily miss the lot of them. The walls do not look ready for art. Nails …
April 1, 2010
Exhibition: Laura Taylor – Speedboat Matchsticks, Surface Gallery, Nottingham, March 27 – April 8 2010 In a gallery, it may be impossible for an object to become completely useless. Laura Taylor will strip away the functionality from her ready-made sculptures, only to find new purposes for each assemblage. Her raw materials are oddments of motorised …
March 29, 2010
Exhibition: Billy Childish – Unknowable But Certain, The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, until May 2 2010 In a poem on the wall, we find that Billy Childish once wrote: “I am a desperate man who loves the simplicity of/painting/and hates gallarys [sic] and white walls.” Now that his recent paintings hang on the white …
March 26, 2010
Exhibition: Lu Chunsheng and Jia Aili – Counterpoints, Rivington Place, London, March 31 – May 15 2010 With the commission of work by Ai Weiwei for the turbine hall of Tate Modern later this year, contemporary art from China is very much on the capital’s cultural agenda. So this new exhibition at Rivington Place can …
March 26, 2010
Exhibition: Christen Købke – Danish Master of Light, The National Gallery, London, until June 13 2010 This is an exhibition in which each painting’s title is as precise as the brushwork. View of a Street in Østerbro Outside Copenhagen, on the Right ‘Rosendal’, in the Background ‘Petersberg’ is a case in point. The picture itself …
March 26, 2010