Visual arts
sue.steward
The thin line between Art and Craft gets slimmer as artists like Carlos Zuniga ignore the borders and delve into hands-on production processes. This Chilean photographer, architect and graphic designer works compulsively on large, imposing portraits and landscapes using intensely obsessive techniques.His earliest portraits featured young people from his home town, Santiago de Chile, but the collection has now expanded literally and metaphorically into images which represent the generation born during the era of Latin American dictators - in Zuniga’s case, during the Pinochet years. The Read more ...
Joe Muggs
I once passed up the chance of meeting Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, who - it was announced by his Throbbing Gristle bandmates on Twitter - died in his sleep last night aged 55. In the late 1990s I was invited to interview him and his long-term partner Geoff Rushton aka John Balance at the country house where they recorded their ritual electronic music as Coil, but being a young and inexperienced writer at the time, I got scared off by their reputation as exploratory occultists and opted instead for a phone interview with Rushton. He proved to be a spectacularly charming and fascinating Read more ...
fisun.guner
Lovers of the beautiful game may already be familiar with the name Philippe Parreno, or at least with his best-known work. In 2006 he collaborated with artist Douglas Gordon (24-hour Psycho) on Zidane: A 21st-Century Portrait, a film that trained 17 cameras on the footballing genius for the duration of a game. Following Zidane’s every move, the 90-minute feature proved an especially intimate portrait: the cameras stayed close, never straying, never hinting at the 80,000 strong crowd nor bringing the other players into view. Zidane, who was also miked up, appeared oblivious to the intense Read more ...
judith.flanders
Well, we all make mistakes. Or, in my case, we (I mean “I”) sometimes just fail to look. This new, small but perfectly formed exhibition of Bridget Riley’s work in the National Gallery’s Sunley Rooms follows the pattern that the gallery has developed over the years, with a single artist entering into a conversation with the great art of the past. Riley’s conversation is gripping, and one of the things it says (to me) is, “Shame on you for not looking.”Shame on me indeed, for I have for far too long looked but not seen, tagging Riley as an Op Art operator, shrugging her off as “very good Read more ...
sue.steward
“Hot sweaty tight jammed in can’t breathe heart pumping centre of the universe Monday night action in town. Racing down to Bar Rumba at midnight through the blaring siren wailing darkness of south London to the tinsel town wet streeted fakeness of the West End and the That’s How it Is sessions, Gilles Peterson, James Lavelle, UFO, Patrick Forge, Roni Size spin…” [sic] Peter Williams, London, 1994.That was written by the photographer whose 70 black-and-white photographs are showing at a blink-and-you-miss-it gallery in east London until Saturday. Since the heyday of London’s New Jazz scene in Read more ...
josh.spero
If you found yourself thinking that you were watching Mission: Impossible rather than Imagine, you could have been forgiven. Alan Yentob had clearly been banned from meeting Ai Weiwei in China, and so one of their interviews was conducted over a webcam, with Yentob sitting in the dark, like some spymaster of the arts.This was even before Ai had been put under house arrest to prevent him from attending a party he arranged to celebrate the demolition of his studio in Shanghai (a studio which the Chinese Government had asked him to put up in the first place...). All of which prompts the question Read more ...
hilary.whitney
Peter Blake (b 1932) seems to have gone seamlessly from a groovy Sixties mover and shaker – he would probably dispute that but, after all, he did hang out with The Beatles – to National Treasure. His new one-man exhibition, Homage 10 x 5 – Blake’s Artists, is a tribute to 10 of the artists who have excited and interested him over the past 50 years. “These are my nod of appreciation,” he says. “A way of saying thank you to the artists I like.”Trained at Gravesend School of Art and the Royal College of Art, Blake quickly decided to paint the subjects that had enthralled him since his teens - Read more ...
fisun.guner
It’s amazing what you might have found in your average bathroom cabinet 100 years ago. For those niggling aches and pains, what could be more effective than a bottle of Bayer’s Heroin Hydrochloride? Or how about a soothing spoonful of Sydenham’s Laudanum? If you’re simply in need of a quick pick-me-up, a sip or three of Hall’s Coca Wine – the “Elixir of Life” (basically liquid cocaine) - might put a jolly spring in your step. Oh, and don’t forget those cocaine eyedrops after a particularly long day staring at the officer ledger.In your great-grandmother’s bathroom cabinet, you’ll find Read more ...
fisun.guner
The winner of the National Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Prize was announced yesterday, and as with most prizes you know there must be an element of compromise when it comes to selecting the shortlist. David Chancellor’s winning portrait of a 14-year-old game hunter from Alabama, mounted on a horse with a dead buck draped across its neck (2), is certainly striking. So too, are the second and third prize-winners - the second, Portrait of My British Wife by Panayiotis Lamprou (9), doubly so, since it reveals more than one might expect to see in the context of this annual award.Meanwhile, Read more ...
sue.steward
The National Portrait Gallery was early in picking up on the momentum gathering around photography in 2003, and committed itself then to an annual prize for portraiture. Today it’s one of the most anticipated competition exhibitions in the UK, and always exciting, fascinating and memorable. For many of the 60 exhibited photographers, it is often life-changing. This year’s submission exceeded 6,000 entries, all physical prints as the gallery still fends off digital domination. Part of the fun of the show is spotting any new trends in style, technique or subjects.The competition has a Read more ...
sue.steward
Cider, bulls and a beautifully restored cathedral which hosts the annual Three Choirs Festival are probably the key elements used to brand Hereford. But for 20 years, the city has also been home to the UK’s first photography festival. This month, its anniversary is being celebrated in several venues with the focus on Twenty, an exhibition at the charmingly old-fashioned Museum and Gallery where 20 significant photographers share wall space with a gigantic stuffed pike.Hanging over the Market Square, banners printed with portraits of African women in brightly coloured robes represent the UK’s Read more ...
sue.steward
Nottingham always had an eye for beauty. When I was growing up near there, the boast was that its women were the most beautiful in England. Today, it could and should be boasting about Caruso St John’s magnificent concrete landmark adorned with green and gold, the Nottingham Contemporary Gallery and the seventh British Art Show. The Contemporary is linked (magically for London Tube riders) by trams to the two other venues, the film-based New Art Exchange and Nottingham Castle's Museum and Art Gallery where the legendary Sheriff’s Long Hall is now a series of glass-ceilinged galleries, and Read more ...