Visual arts
Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons, Dulwich Picture Gallery review - teeth with a real biteSaturday, 14 June 2025
I first came across Rachel Jones in 2021 at the Hayward Gallery’s painting show Mixing it Up: Painting Today. I was blown away by the beauty of her huge oil pastels; rivulets of bright colour shimmied round one another in what seemed like a joyous... Read more... |
Yoshitomo Nara, Hayward Gallery review - sickeningly cute kidsThursday, 12 June 2025
It’s been a long time since an exhibition made me feel physically sick. The Hayward Gallery is currently hosting a retrospective of the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara and the combination of turquoise walls and oversized paintings of cute kids turned... Read more... |
Hamad Butt: Apprehensions, Whitechapel Gallery review - cool, calm and potentially lethalSaturday, 07 June 2025
Hamad Butt studied at Goldsmiths College at the same time as YBAs (Young British Artists) like Damien Hirst and Gillian Wearing; but whereas they would become household names so their work is now familiar, he disappeared from view. It makes his... Read more... |
Bradford City of Culture 2025 review - new magic conjured from past gloriesTuesday, 03 June 2025
Botanical forms, lurid and bright, now tower above a footpath on a moor otherwise famed for darkness and frankly terrible weather. But the trio of 5m-high contemporary sculptures grow in place here, drawing life from limestone soil. These metallic... Read more... |
Bogancloch review - every frame a work of artSaturday, 31 May 2025
Director Ben Rivers is primarily an artist, and it shows. Every frame of Bogancloch is treated as a work of art and the viewer is given ample time to relish the beauty of the framing, lighting and composition. Many of the shots fall into traditional... Read more... |
Do Ho Suh: Walk the House, Tate Modern review - memories are made of thisFriday, 02 May 2025
A traditional Korean house has appeared at Tate Modern. And with its neat brickwork, beautifully carved roof beams and lattice work screens, this charming dwelling looks decidedly out of place, and somewhat ghostly. Go closer and you realise that,... Read more... |
Ed Atkins, Tate Britain review - hiding behind computer generated doppelgängersFriday, 04 April 2025
The best way to experience Ed Atkins’ exhibition at Tate Britain is to start at the end by watching Nurses Come and Go, But None For Me, a film he has just completed. It lasts nearly two hours but is worth the investment since it reveals what the... Read more... |
Echoes: Stone Circles, Community and Heritage, Stonehenge Visitor Centre review - young photographers explore ancient resonancesTuesday, 04 March 2025
Stonehenge is about 5,000 years old; three photographic artists currently exhibiting in the visitor centre are all under the age of 25. The juxtaposition of 21st century and the ancient world has been facilitated by Shout Out Loud, a youth... Read more... |
Hylozoic/Desires: Salt Cosmologies, Somerset House and The Hedge of Halomancy, Tate Britain review - the power of white powderMonday, 03 March 2025
The railways that we built in India may be well known, but I bet you’ve never heard of the Customs Line, a hedge that stretched 2,500 miles across the subcontinent all the way from the River Indus to the border between Madras and Bengal – the... Read more... |
Help to give theartsdesk a future!Saturday, 01 March 2025
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.It followed some hectic and intensive months when a disparate and eclectic team of arts and culture writers went ahead with an ambitious plan – to... Read more... |
Mickalene Thomas, All About Love, Hayward Gallery review - all that glittersWednesday, 26 February 2025
On walking into Mikalene Thomas’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery my first reaction was “get me out of here”. To someone brought up on the paired down, less-is-more aesthetic of minimalism her giant, rhinestone-encrusted portraits are like a kick... Read more... |
Interview: Polar photographer Sebastian Copeland talks about the dramatic changes in the ArcticTuesday, 25 February 2025
Sebastian Copeland’s images of the Arctic may look otherworldly – with their tilting cathedrals of ice, hypnotic light, and fractured seascapes that seem to stretch to infinity – but it would be a mistake to see them that way.For Copeland’s whole... Read more... |
