Visual Arts Reviews
Brian Clarke - A Great Light, Newport Street Gallery review - a British master proves his worthWednesday, 28 June 2023
The artist Brian Clarke, surely one of the leading British artists of our time, has been all too readily dismissed as a mere craftsman. So much for being an outstanding and highly original painter who’s also done more for contemporary stained glass than any other artist in the world. Read more... |
Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now, Barbican review - going from strength to strength on an epic journeyMonday, 26 June 2023
Carrie Mae Weems is the first live black artist to have a solo show at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, yet she is hardly known here at all. So the Barbican’s retrospective is timely, especially since, at 70, Weems is making her best work yet. Read more... |
Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis, Hayward Gallery review - hope is what we need, but inspiration is a rarityThursday, 22 June 2023
Dear Earth, Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis is a mixed show of artists who address the parlous plight of our planet. The issue obsesses me, so anyone who braves the pitfalls of exploring this difficult subject has my sympathy. Read more... |
Life is More Important than Art, Whitechapel Gallery review - themes of arrival, belonging and departure unite fascinating mixed showWednesday, 21 June 2023
Standing just inside the door of the Whitechapel’s downstairs gallery is a luggage trolley laden with parcels (pictured below, right). Read more... |
Capturing the Moment, Tate Modern review - the glorious power of paintingThursday, 15 June 2023
Billed as “a journey through painting and photography”, Capturing the Moment reveals many ways in which artists have responded to photography – either by taking up the camera themselves, as did Candida Höffer, Andreas Gursky, Louise Lawler and Thomas Struth, or by making some superb paintings. Read more... |
Carey Young: Appearance, Modern Art Oxford review - in the eyes of the lawThursday, 15 June 2023
A visitor to the city wishes to gain access to the law, but a gatekeeper blocks his entrance. The man petitions this imposing figure, who is only one of a series of legal bouncers. He is told there is gate after gate. He sits, he waits, he lies down, and eventually he expires. But not before making a close study of this implacable representative of the law. He even notes the fleas in the gatekeeper’s collar. Read more... |
Matter as Actor, Lisson Gallery review - living in a material worldFriday, 09 June 2023
It is fitting that I watch Otobong Nkanga’s performance on a stranger’s smartphone screen. Solid Maneuvers, 2015, is about the extraction of precious resources from the Namibian landscape. It is about the long-term devastation humans wreak on the natural world and the equally devastating consequences nature revisits on us.
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Moon Is the Oldest TV review - a fitting tribute to a visionary modern artistSaturday, 20 May 2023
Who created the term “electronic superhighway”? First described a system of linked communication that would become the internet? Envisioned a multichannel TV system where viewers chose for themselves what to tune into? Watch Amanda Kim’s excellent documentary Moon Is the Oldest TV and you find that the correct answer to all those questions is Nam June Paik. Read more... |
Sarah Sze: Metronome, Artangel at Peckham Rye station review - an installation of visual complexity and physical simplicityThursday, 18 May 2023
One of the great things about Artangel is the interesting sites which they seek out for the artworks they commission. The latest find is the disused waiting room at Peckham Rye station, a once gracious space with a vaulted ceiling, arched windows and two fireplaces, now ripped out. The space was later converted into a billiard hall, the sign for which is still visible on the staircase wall, but when that closed down in 1962, the room was left to rot. Read more... |
Isaac Julien: What Freedom is to Me, Tate Britain review - a journey from making documentaries to making artThursday, 04 May 2023
Isaac Julien was a student at St Martin’s School of Art when the Brixton riots broke out. Black youths took to the streets, frustrated by high rates of unemployment, police harassment, far-right intimidation and media hostility, and all hell was let loose. Read more... |
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