art blog since 2009
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
Exhibition: Artes Mundi 4: Wales International Visual Art Exhibition and Prize, National Museum Cardiff, until June 6 2010 Olga Chernysheva’s photos of a natural history museum in Moscow can now, by a strange quirk of fate, be seen in a natural history museum in Wales. But the scenes captured by the Russian artist are a …
March 19, 2010
Exhibition: Jenny Holzer, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, until May 16 2010 After more than 30 years making art from text, Jenny Holzer’s most recent work concerns censorship and the deletion of politically sensitive words and phrases. US Government documents relating to the Middle East comprise the source material for her new Redaction Paintings, …
March 19, 2010
The pristine white walls of the gallery and the paint splattered chaos of the studio are no longer art world opposites. Studio/galleries have now joined the establishment but are artists still running the show? Many begin as anarchic, entrepreneurial experiments like the do-it-yourself-art-centre at The Old Police Station in New Cross, London. Revenue from 40 …
March 18, 2010
The largest artist-led arts organisation in the South-East of England aims to get bigger, or at least better. Phoenix Brighton, which currently provides studio space and a gallery for 100 artists, last week announced plans to revamp their city centre building at a projected cost of more than £2 million. Development Manager David Litchfield hopes …
March 18, 2010