art blog since 2009
The end of the world is nigh in the art of Richard Grayson. But we might just be saved by work like this. It has a light touch, which never gives way to despair. There is irony even in the title of Ways The World Ends. Competing prophecies are ranged against one another in acid-coloured …
February 22, 2010
Exhibition: Tatton Park Biennial 2010 – Framing Identity, Tatton Park, Knutsford, May 8 – September 26 2010 Stately homes and historic properties may often throw open their doors, but they don’t usually open themselves up to critical interrogation. For the 2010 Tatton Park Biennial, 21 contemporary artists were invited to respond to the mansion and …
February 18, 2010
Exhibition: Anthony Schrag – Wrasslin’, The Punch and Judy Gazebo, Margate Beach, February 20 2010 Scrapping on Margate beach sounds like the antithesis of art, but this Saturday artist Anthony Schrag will be on hand to wrestle with the public. Advance publicity offers the chance to use him as a “human punchbag”. It claims that …
February 18, 2010
In coming weeks the Youth Advisory Board from the Institute of International Visual Arts (aka the Inivators from Iniva) have planned three events to focus on diversity in the arts. Teaming up with artist Yara El-Sherbini, they have produced an alternative version of popular board game Guess Who? Visitors to the Education Space at Rivington …
February 18, 2010
Exhibition: Marcus Coates – Psychopomp, Milton Keynes Gallery, until April 4 2010 It is amazing what Marcus Coates gets away with. A film called Journey to the Lower World shows him inform tower block residents that he has been to the spirit kingdom to consult animals about their fate. To get there, he reveals, he …
February 16, 2010
Exhibition: Here and Now – 2nd Year Fine Art BA (Hons), University of Brighton, until February 23 2010 It will typically take an art student three years to hone their technique, but to give a piece a great title can be the work of seconds. Here and Now is a group show by second year …
February 16, 2010
Picking up his gong in the Breakthrough category at The Times/South Bank Show 2010 Awards, artist David Blandy might have thanked the man who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. During WWII, his grandfather was a prisoner of war and Japan’s surrender is said to have saved his life. “How do I reconcile my life and …
February 16, 2010
Exhibition: Urbis Has Left The Building: Six Years of the Best Exhibitions In Pop Culture, Urbis, Manchester, until February 27 2010 “Best of” compilations are usually the preserve of the music industry. So if any museum has the shows to get away with the same trick, it would have to be Urbis. Manchester’s poppiest gallery …
February 12, 2010
Exhibition: Back Buffer: New Arena Paintings, The Hannah Maclure Centre, Dundee, February 13 – April 30 2010 It is hard to imagine Jackson Pollock on a computer. But artist and inventor Julian Oliver has developed what you might call virtual action painting. Instead of attacking a canvas, Oliver uses software which gamers have long been …
February 12, 2010
Exhibition: Ian Breakwell – The Elusive State of Happiness, QUAD Gallery, Derby, February 13 – April 18 2010 Ian Breakwell led a well-recorded life. Between the 1960s and his death in 2005 he captured many of its details in a largely unpublished visual diary. Some is typed, some handwritten. There are drawings, photos and collages. …
February 12, 2010