Visual Arts Reviews
Tracey Emin: She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea, Turner ContemporaryMonday, 28 May 2012
“I realise how lucky I am coming from Margate. It’s a most romantic, sexy, fucking weird place to come from. I didn’t come from the suburbs.” Tracey Emin’s relationship to her hometown mirrors a familiar trajectory. Like all difficult relationships, it has chipped away at her psyche for years. Not surprisingly, we’ve sensed it played out in her work: first defiance and rejection, then a kind of ambivalent reconciliation, and finally a deep affection. Read more...
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Yael Bartana: And Europe Will Be Stunned, Artangel at Hornsey Town HallMonday, 28 May 2012
In the cool, dim, municipal modernist interior of Hornsey Town Hall you’re confronted with a neon sign: And Europe Will be Stunned. It's the title of the trilogy of films at the heart of this Artangel-commissioned show by Israel-born Yael Bartana. The films are split in location around the building in an exhibition which includes neon slogans and posters which can be taken away, bearing manifestos in different languages. Read more... |
Burtynsky: OIL, The Photographers' GalleryWednesday, 23 May 2012
After a £9.2 million renovation of its new home on Ramillies Street by the Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey, the Photographers’ Gallery re-opened to the public on Saturday with a slick new look and an expertly curated exhibition of works by the veteran Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky. Read more... |
The Queen: Art and Image, National Portrait GallerySunday, 20 May 2012
The Queen is the first mass-media monarch, and still probably the most ubiquitously depicted person in history. Her 60 years on the throne is only exceeded by Victoria, and her reign has coincided, of course, with photography, film and television. The profusion of royal imagery is exaggerated and exacerbated by the cult of celebrity and the new technology of the internet and social networking. Read more... |
Prunella Clough, Annely JudaThursday, 17 May 2012
Prunella Clough, 1919–1999, was one of the most idiosyncratic and original British artists of the postwar period. Her art is reticent, shy, subtle - yet in both life and aesthetics she was a free and generous spirit. Now there is a fine selection of works large and small, but all domestic in size, on view in the West End, marking the publication of a magisterial new biography by Frances Spalding. Read more... |
Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands, British LibraryMonday, 14 May 2012
Wordsworth would not be happy. The bard of Grasmere once wrote a poem deploring the new-fangled habit of tourists wandering about the lakes with a book in hand. “A practice very common,” he harrumphed, before crossing out the whole poem. The preference, as he saw it, should be to engage directly with the landscape rather have one’s responses fed to us through the prism of literature. Read more... |
Edmund de Waal, Waddesdon ManorFriday, 11 May 2012
From Caro at Chatsworth and now de Waal at Waddesdon, the grandest of the stately homes are invigorating their historic collections with seasonings of the contemporary. Like Chatsworth, Waddesdon also has a growing permanent collection of contemporary sculpture housed in its famous gardens, from Michael Craig-Martin to Richard Long, as well as a small group of Lucian Freud indoors, including a portrait of the current Lord Rothschild. Read more... |
Picasso Prints: The Vollard Suite, British MuseumTuesday, 08 May 2012
The Vollard Suite is Picasso’s most celebrated series of etchings. Named after Ambroise Vollard, the influential avant-garde art dealer who gave the 19-year-old Picasso his first exhibition in Paris in 1901, the series was commissioned by the dealer in 1930. For the next seven years Picasso worked on it in creative bursts, completing a series of 100 etchings. Read more... |
Bauhaus: Art as Life, BarbicanFriday, 04 May 2012
As an art school the Bauhaus has a reputation for being the cradle of modernism, famous for establishing an alliance between art and industry which produced enduring design classics such as Marcel Breuer’s tubular steel chairs, Josef Albers’ silver and glass fruit bowl and Marianne Brandt’s elegant globe lamps. But that is only part of the story. Read more... |
Out of Focus: Photography, Saatchi GalleryFriday, 27 April 2012
Exhibitions at the Saatchi Gallery tend to start with a bang and end with a whimper; so to avoid the experience of diminishing returns, I started upstairs – hoping to save the best until last. The stratagem worked perfectly; my final encounter was with 20 portraits by American photographer Katy Grannan, undoubtedly the star of the show, that fill the first gallery to knock-out effect. Read more... |
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