thu 31/07/2025

contemporary art

We Made It: Hauser & Wirth Somerset

Zurich, London, New York…Somerset. It may seem unlikely, but an 18th-century farm in the West Country is the new place to be for contemporary art aficionados. Last year, renovations were completed on the 10 buildings of Durslade Farm, left to fall...

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James Turrell: Lightscape, Houghton Hall

Enzo Green, Shirim, Raethro Red, Raemar Magenta. Everything has a name. But beyond the meaningless but musical sounds of their titles, the light projections and installations on view at Houghton Hall by the leading American light, land and skyscape...

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Grayson Perry: Provincial Punk, Turner Contemporary

Imagine if broadcasters thought the only living pop star worth giving air time to was Lady Gaga. Imagine – the horror. It would be wall-to-wall Gaga for the foreseeable future. And then imagine if the only living contemporary artist commissioning...

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Corin Sworn: Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Whitechapel Gallery

Glasgow-based Corin Sworn is the fifth winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. Every two years a British artist is chosen on the basis of a proposal, rather than existing work. The fashion house then supports the project with funding, a bespoke...

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Rachel Kneebone, Brighton Festival

In an oft quoted moment of self-deprecation, WH Auden once described his own face as looking like “a wedding cake left out in the rain”. But the poet might have thought twice if confronted with the Porcelain confections of Rachel Kneebone. The...

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Nathan Coley, Brighton

Thanks to its international festival and a thriving catalogue of fringe events, May brings a great deal of noise to Brighton. Putting artwork into this saturated landscape can never be easy. But Nathan Coley has managed to inject some critical...

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John Wood and Paul Harrison, Carroll/Fletcher

Described by the Tate as the Laurel and Hardy of the art world, John Wood and Paul Harrison are best known for appearing in superbly timed, comic videos using their own bodies to explore spatial relations. Projected over the concrete stairwell of...

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theartsdesk in New York: On Kawara at the Guggenheim Museum

On a snowy day in early spring in New York, the On Kawara – Silence show at the Guggenheim is unlikely to warm you up. His date paintings, postcards, telegrams and other coldly ur-conceptual accountings spiral up those famous white Frank Lloyd...

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theartsdesk in Bilbao: Niki de Saint Phalle at the Guggenheim Museum

This is work that wears its heart on its sleeve. That’s what gets you in the end in this big retrospective of the work of Niki de Saint Phalle. The French-American artist, who died aged 71 in 2002, is probably best known for two very different...

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Magnificent Obsessions, Barbican Art Gallery

The title has it about right: no matter what it is they are busily acquiring, collectors seem to be an obsessive bunch, and their obsessions can achieve quite magnificent proportions. The stereotyped image of the collector as a socially challenged...

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Sci-Fi Week: Through the eyes of JG Ballard

A sci-fi special would be incomplete without the profoundly influential figure of JG Ballard, a writer who, when he began his career in the late Fifties, fully subscribed to the notion that  “sci-fi is the literature of the 20th century.”...

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Pierre Huyghe/ Paul McCarthy, Hauser & Wirth

In a tavern somewhere in Tokyo, two Japanese macaque monkeys work a daily, two-hour shift (under Japanese law, these hours are regulated). Dressed in miniature uniforms, the monkeys’ main task is to deliver hot towels to amused customers before...

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