installation
mark.hudson
That Anselm Kiefer is one of the great elder statesmen of contemporary art goes without saying. His work’s precise relevance to now is less clear. In the early 1980s, when he sprang to fame as part of the New Image Painting phenomenon (with Schnabel, Baselitz et al), the Berlin Wall was still up and the post-Holocaust Teutonic angst that Kiefer has relentlessly mined felt far more immediate and problematic than it does today. The great Monetarist showbiz-art wave hadn’t yet broken. It left Kiefer and his fellow New Imagers overshadowed and, in a paradox that is absolutely typical of the art Read more ...
fisun.guner
George Shaw might have been the popular favourite, but it was Martin Boyce who carried the vote to win this year’s Turner Prize. The 44-year-old artist from Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, follows fast on the heels of two fellow Scots: Susan Philipsz won the prize in 2010 and Richard Wright in 2009. But neither seemed as much of a clear-cut choice as Boyce, for although the public vote wasn’t his, the critics were pretty much united in backing him.Boyce’s installation (main picture), which takes as its starting reference a series of sculptures by French Modernists Joel and Jan Martel, is Read more ...
David Nice
It would be hard to say which was the more breathtaking: a sunny autumn morning walk around the woody-banked loop of the River Wear, looking up at Durham’s monumental Norman cathedral from every perspective, or seeing the great edifice illuminated the previous evening with pages of the Lindisfarne Gospel, centerpiece of the city’s LUMIERE festival. For dynamic outdoor art to rival one of the world’s most spectacular natural-urban scenes is quite something; for the citizens, who must almost take Durham’s hilly location for granted, the festival offers a bewitching chance to renew a sense of Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Until recently, on YouTube, you could watch Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley’s Heidi (1992), one of the funniest and most transgressive videos ever made. In a Swiss chalet, the children Heidi and Peter are being “educated” by their abusive grandfather, who freely indulges his propensity for bestiality, incest, onanism and scopophilia. Played out with the help of masks, inflatable dolls and numerous props, life in this dysfunctional family reveals both childhood innocence and parental responsibility to be a myth. Recently, though, even a cleaned-up version of this black comedy has been deemed too Read more ...
fisun.guner
The Turner Prize has headed to the North East. It’ll be back in London next year, thence to Derry for 2013. Tate Britain plan to host the prize biennially, with a regional public gallery presenting it in the years in-between. This must be hailed as good news for those who complain of London-centricity. But as well as gaining new audiences, I do hope the prospect of leaving the capital won’t put others off, for this year the Turner Prize exhibition is looking very good indeed, and for that the Baltic must be commended for doing a fine curatorial job.In fact, I can’t remember the Turner Prize Read more ...
Sarah Kent
In 1997 the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist produced one of the most delightful videos ever made, and it won her the Biennale. Ever is Over All shows a young woman skipping down a city street gaily smashing car windows with a red-hot poker; and since it is shaped like a knobkerry, the flower makes a surprisingly convincing weapon. Oh dear, though, here comes a policewoman; but instead of admonishing or arresting the vandal, the bobby gives her an encouraging smile, salutes and walks on by. On the adjoining screen meanwhile, close-ups of the orange bloom reveal that, although its overall Read more ...
fisun.guner
A 50th birthday is a landmark occasion. One has plenty to look back on, whilst still having much to look forward to. Plus there’s all that life experience to draw on. What’s not to feel positive about? In the case of a gallery that’s built up a remarkable reputation as an innovative space for contemporary art outside London, sheer staying power is surely to be cheered and celebrated – "hear hear" for the next 50 years, and so forth.But it’s also worth asking whether middle age hasn’t precipitated some kind of quiet crisis for Bristol's Arnolfini gallery. It’s not fair, of course, to judge on Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Every surface in my house is covered in plaster and brick dust, and wood, sand, cement, plaster and wire mesh are strewn all over the place. Furniture, carpets and pictures are covered in dust sheets and piled into two sealed rooms. You’ve guessed it, I’ve got the builders in and while the scaffolding was up, I spent days nose to wall repointing the brickwork, restoring the pediment and painting the windows.What a relief to escape from such squalor to a gallery – only to find that Phyllida Barlow’s exhibition is much like home! Bog-standard building materials are her stock-in-trade and Read more ...
fisun.guner
What are the most common responses to a work of contemporary art? I can think of two: “A six-year-old could have done that” (feel free to substitute “I” or “anyone”) and “But what does it actually mean?” Ryan Gander is an artist who is rather exercised by the latter. He is interested in the way we piece together scraps of evidence – overlooked details, context, history – in order to create meaning. We try to fill in the gaps. And when meaning eludes us we are often dismissive, even rather angry. Hence the protestation: “A six-year-old could have done that.” And indeed, that may well be true. Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
The High Line Park on the far west side of Manhattan, built on an old elevated train track, is a unique combination of everything New Yorkers love - fabulous views, a piece of history, a traffic-free zone (no dogs, skateboards or bicycles), unusual plantings, and the chance to gawp at people and real estate. And with the recent opening of its second section, there’s even more space to see and be seen in."That’s awesome. That’s the kitchen right there," says a young man, peering enthusiastically into a new apartment building situated right beside the raised walkway.
The High Line’s Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The locals are understandably proud of Folkestone; Everywhere Means Something to Someone is an idiosyncratic guidebook offering an insider’s view of the town that bears witness to the depth of people’s attachment to it. Put together for the Folkestone Triennial by the artists’ collective Strange Cargo, this compendium of facts, memories and musings makes for compulsive reading.Ghosts feature large among the 250 snippets of information alongside memories of childhood games, frequently involving dens built from rubbish dumped in wasteland. For the visitor they bring the town to life. We Read more ...
howard.male
The world of artist and entomologist Tessa Farmer really is a world, wholly self-contained and free of human kind – unless you see her tiny warring fairies as symbolic of mankind’s conscience-free decimation of our planet’s environment and co-inhabitants. And it’s hard not to when you see them relentlessly picking over the corpse of a bird, mugging a mouse, or scrapping with a hornet, their tiny skeletal forms so industriously yet somehow amusingly destructive.Working more as a mischievous Dr Frankenstein or Surrealist taxidermist than as a sculptor, Farmer (pictured right) assembles her Read more ...