art blog since 2009
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
The UK’s biggest art prize, Artes Mundi, is vying to become the most talked about. At £40,000 it is worth twice as much as the Turner, which should provide twice as much scope for controversy. While installing work by shortlisted artists at National Museum Cardiff, the organisers make clear their intent. “We’ve taken down a …
March 18, 2010
Marcus Coates, The Plover’s Wing, 2009. Courtesy the Artist and Workplace Gallery. Marcus Coates arrives wearing neither badger fur nor stag antlers. He drinks tea, not peyote, and does not bark, yelp or fall into a trance. In fact there is no evidence at all this man has a hotline to the animal kingdom. His …
March 11, 2010
Exhibition: Imogen Stidworthy, Arnolfini, Bristol, until April 25 In some ways the work of Imogen Stidworthy goes beyond the limits of visual art, because her main area of interest is speech. Accent, slang and speech therapy are all explored in her new show at Arnolfini. It is the first UK survey of the Liverpool-based artist. …
March 6, 2010
Ai Weiwei, best known for helping create a ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium for the Beijing Olympics, is bringing his talents for grand scale work to the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. Ai becomes the eleventh artist to accept the Unilever-sponsored commission, yet still the first who lives and works in the Asia-Pacific region. Vicente Todolà described …
March 6, 2010
Exhibition: Richard Hamilton – Modern Moral Matters, Serpentine Gallery, London, until April 25 2010 More than 50 years since Pop Art began, it is a 1960s aphorism which best explains the varying effects in this show. Marshall McLuhan may have coined the phrase, but it is Richard Hamilton who really demonstrates the adage that “the …
March 4, 2010
Here are my visual arts picks from around the UK for March. Written for Culture24. Richard Hamilton – Modern Moral Matters, Serpentine Gallery, London 60 years after his first solo show, Richard Hamilton is still making loaded images. His show at Serpentine is a mixed media commentary on conflict in Northern Ireland, the Middle East …
March 4, 2010