Tate Britain
Florence Hallett
Today we amuse ourselves with Facebook clips of talking cats, but in the 1850s they had stereographs, pairs of identical photographs that, viewed through special lenses, become suddenly and gloriously three-dimensional. Vistas open up as if by magic, the illusion of space all the more beguiling for its transience. The act of looking through a special pair of glasses is a little bit like peeping behind a curtain, the intimacy of the encounter adding a slightly voyeuristic frisson to all manner of subject matter from landscapes to mock-ups of popular paintings. Stereoscopic photographs have a Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The exhibition starts promisingly. You can help yourself to an orange from Roelof Louw’s pyramid of golden fruit. Its a reminder that, for the conceptualists, art was a verb not a noun. Focusing on activity rather than outcome, these artists were committed to the creative process rather than the end product. The idea was what mattered, and if it led to an open-ended exploration, so much the better.For centuries, the whole point of art had been its longevity; now mutability and destruction were welcomed as part of the creative process. Left intact, Louw’s pyramid of oranges (pictured Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The individual colleges of the University of Cambridge can call, when needed, on an astonishing international network of alumni for expert advice, consultation and financial support. Such is the backing for an exquisite new public gallery on the site of Edwardian stables in the grounds of Downing College there.Now open to the public, the Heong Gallery is, as far as this reviewer can tell, unique in the university’s rich provision of arts and sciences museums. There are nine major such public institutions at Cambridge, among them the Botanic Gardens, museums of zoology, classical archaeology, Read more ...
Florence Hallett
There are some wonderful things in this exhibition, and that’s no surprise: the British Empire endured for over 500 years and at its peak extended across a quarter of the world’s land mass. Preparing an exhibition of corresponding reach must have involved considering a vast range of objects, but choosing well is another matter entirely. Severely overfilled, this is a show hampered by too broad a scope, but also by the sensitive nature of its subject; in its eagerness to present points of view other than that of the British colonists, there is a crippling reluctance to omit anything at all.So Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries are currently filled with a hauntingly beautiful sound installation by Susan Philipsz (main picture). The Scottish artist won the Turner Prize in 2010 for a sound piece that didn’t really work at the Tate. Intended to be heard under the bridges spanning the River Clyde in Glasgow, the recording of Philipsz's fragile voice singing sad folk songs was largely drowned out by ambient noise.This time, though, she has been able to design the installation especially for this awesome space, which stands empty for the occasion. A central line of speakers hanging from the Read more ...
Sarah Kent
This is Susan Hiller’s first exhibition since her Tate retrospective in 2011, and as it includes work from the 1970s to the present, it can also be seen as a retrospective of sorts. But since the selection was obviously governed by what was available for sale, it inevitably offers a piecemeal view of her achievements.Nor can I do full justice to the work, which is complex and multi-layered, so I’ll concentrate on one aspect – the importance of unorthodox views and marginal voices (especially those of women who have been silenced for centuries) that challenge the hegemony of received opinion Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
A finely honed and spacious selection dating from the 1950s to now, looks in acute focus at the work – a scatter of drawings, a print, but almost entirely paintings – of Frank Auerbach, (b 1931). An only child, he came without his family, from Berlin to England in 1939. His parents were murdered in the Holocaust. He is now one of the most remarkable painters of our time.Work chosen by the artist himself is arranged in six galleries each spanning a decade: each image is a commanding presence, and the paintings range in size, scale and subject matter from the substantial to domestic intimacy. Read more ...
Florence Hallett
One of the earliest surviving sculptures by Barbara Hepworth is a toad made from a khaki-coloured, translucent stone; you can imagine it cool and heavy in your hand, not so very different from the animal itself, in fact. Made nearly 30 years later, the monumental sculptures carved from African guarea wood are almost unbearably touchable, each one with its dark, glossy exterior cracked open to reveal an inside as creamy as a conker. But while we are denied the pleasure of touching these objects, looking at Hepworth’s work is in itself a gloriously tactile experience.This almost synesthetic Read more ...
Florence Hallett
For all the wrong reasons, the work of Dexter Dalwood serves as a useful metaphor for this exhibition. Trite, tokenistic and desperate to look clever, Dalwood’s paintings are as tiresomely inward-looking as the show itself, which is a dismal example of curatorial self-indulgence at the expense of public engagement. It’s not always a bad thing to give free rein to theorising curators, but this show compares unfavourably with exhibitions at, notably, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Courtauld Gallery that have successfully introduced the public to sound, but arguably arcane academic Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The English abstract artist Rebecca Salter has definitely made it. A major retrospective of her work in 2011 at the Yale Center for British Art, "Into the light of things: works 1981-2010”, included more than 150 works. She was elected a Royal Academician earlier this year. And her long involvement with Japanese art has produced two books which are the standard works in English: Japanese Woodblock Printing (2001) and Japanese Popular Prints (2006), both published by A&C Black. Here she talks about her extensive work in Japan interviewing craftsman involved in the woodblock process, and Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Recent attitudes to Victorian Britain have changed radically. The popular view used to be of a period filled with a kind of smug imperial confidence, underwritten by the increasing wealth of the industrial age. This ingrained assumption was perhaps epitomised by Lytton Strachey’s 1918 Eminent Victorians, which saw the eminences as bungling hypocrites. And although secret lives might have been as wild as may be, one characteristic myth was that even piano legs had to be obscured with frilly covers for decency. This simplistic summary was leavened by acknowledging geniuses from Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Captured in monochromes ranging from the most delicate honeyed golds to robust gradations of aubergine and deep brown, the earliest photographs still provoke a shiver of surprise and excitement. Even now, their very existence seems miraculous, and the blur of a face, or the lost swish of a horse’s tail signifies the photographer’s pitched battle with time, never quite managing to make it stop altogether. And with their chemical concoctions, their images emerging gradually, apparently from within the paper itself, it is no wonder that from the outset the photographer’s art was cloaked in the Read more ...