sun 13/07/2025

Visual Arts Reviews

Renzo Piano, Royal Academy review - worth the effort

Sarah Kent

Architecture is notoriously difficult to present in an accessible way and this survey of Italian architect Renzo Piano, who gave London the Shard, does not solve the problem.

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h 100 Young Influencers of the Year: Marina Gerner on Russian art

Marina Gerner

On a recent visit to the Royal Academy, I noticed a tall, elegantly dressed man who spent quite some time admiring a square object attached to the wall. I wondered whether to tell him that far from being Russian avant-garde art, which was the theme of the exhibition, it was in fact the temperature and humidity control box.

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Roderic O’Conor and the Moderns, National Gallery of Ireland review - experiments in Pont-Aven

Katherine Waters

In the autumn of 1892 Émile Bernard wrote home to his mother that, following the summer decampment to Pont-Aven of artists visiting from Paris and further afield, there remained "some artists here, two of them talented and copying each other.

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Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, V&A review - appearances aren't everything

Katherine Waters

When in 2004 Frida Kahlo’s bedroom  sealed on the command of her husband Diego Rivera for 50 years from her death  was opened, a trove of clothes and personal items was discovered.

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diep~haven 2018 review - a missed connection?

Mark Sheerin

The daily car ferry from Newhaven in Sussex to Dieppe in Normandy is an unlikely phenomenon. Neither port is very large; neither region very populous, and the journey sways you along for four contemplative hours. It enjoys the custom of truckers, school parties, and retired caravan-owners. But it also caters for art lovers with time on their hands.

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The London Mastaba, Serpentine Galleries review - good news for ducks?

Katherine Waters

It’s not as immersive as New York’s The Gates, 2005, nor as magnificent as Floating Piers, 2016, in Italy’s Lake Iseo  it has also, according to Hyde Park regular Kay, “scared away the ducks,”  but superstar artist Christo’s The London Mastaba looks quite absurdly unreal and is totally free for the public.

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Hidden Door Festival, Edinburgh - transforming spaces

Miranda Heggie

In just five years, what the team behind Hidden Door Festival has achieved is quite remarkable.

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Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One, Tate Britain review - all in the mind

Katherine Waters

Not far into Aftermath, Tate Britain’s new exhibition looking at how the experience of World War One shaped artists working in its wake, hangs a group of photographs by Pierre Anthony-Thouret depicting the damage inflicted on Reims.

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David Shrigley talk, Brighton Festival review - comedic stroll through a career in art

Thomas H Green

As the Brighton Festival 2018 draws towards its closing weekend, its Guest Director, the artist David Shrigley, has committed to an illustrated talk about his work that “will contain numerous rambling anecdotes but not be in the slightest bit boring”. In the programme, he claims to have promised this signed in his own blood. Such drastic assurance proves unnecessary.

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Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA, BBC Four review - unexpected facts aplenty

Marina Vaizey

“Oh say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light” was a vision of the American flag, that star-spangled banner, riding proud from Francis Scott Key’s patriotic poem of 1814 based on an episode in the War of 1812.

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