fri 29/03/2024

Hayward Gallery

When Forms Come Alive, Hayward Gallery review - how to reduce good art to family fun

Under the guidance of director Ralph Rugoff, the Hayward Gallery seems hell bent on reducing art to the level of fun for all the family. And as though to prove the point, cretinous captions strip the work of all meaning beyond the banal, while press...

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Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine, Hayward Gallery review - a Japanese photographer uses droll humour to ask big questions

A polar bear stands guard over the seal pup it has just killed (main picture). How could photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto have got so close to a wild animal at such a dangerous moment? Even if he had a powerful telephoto lens, he’d be risking life and...

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Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis, Hayward Gallery review - hope is what we need, but inspiration is a rarity

Dear Earth, Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis is a mixed show of artists who address the parlous plight of our planet. The issue obsesses me, so anyone who braves the pitfalls of exploring this difficult subject has my sympathy.One challenge: how to...

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Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons, Hayward Gallery review - spooky installations by a master of detail

Entry to Mike Nelson’s Hayward Gallery exhibition is through what feels like the store room of a reclamation yard. Row upon row of Dexion shelving is piled high with salvaged building materials including old doors, ancient floorboards and wrought...

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Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child, Hayward Gallery review - the wife, the mistress, the daughter and the art that came out of it

Louise Bourgeois didn’t throw anything away and, during the last 20 years of her life, she used her own and her mother’s old clothes to create theatrical tableaux which revisit painful childhood memories. “These garments have a history,” she...

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Gerhard Richter: Drawings, Hayward Gallery review - exquisite ruminations

In 2015, an abstract painting by Gerhard Richter broke the world record for contemporary art by selling at auction for £30.4m, and the octogenarian is often described as the most important living artist. But I’ve always found the prices fetched by...

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Mixing it Up, Hayward Gallery review - a glorious celebration of diversity

The 31 artists in Mixing it Up all live in this country, but a third of them were born elsewhere – in countries including Belgium, China, Columbia, Germany, Iraq, Zambia and Zimbabwe – and they’ve brought with them immeasurable cultural riches. The...

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Matthew Barney: Redoubt, Hayward Gallery review - the wild west revisited

The focal point of Matthew Barney’s Hayward exhibition is Redoubt, a two-and-a-quarter-hour film projected on a giant screen that invites you to immerse yourself in the rugged terrain of the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho, where he grew up. The...

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Among the Trees, Hayward Gallery review - a mixture of euphoria and dismay

Paradise, according to German artist Thomas Struth, is to be found in the tropical rain forests of Yunnan Province, China. His gorgeous photograph Paradise 11 is the first thing I saw on entering the Hayward Gallery and, immediately it had a...

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Kiss My Genders, Hayward Gallery review – a shambles

Kiss My Genders may not claim to be a survey, yet it seems perverse to mount an exhibition of work by LGBTQ artists who address issues of gender identity without including some of the best known names. Particular emphasis is placed, says the press...

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Space Shifters, Hayward Gallery review - seeing is not always believing

There are some wonderful things in Space Shifters, the Hayward Gallery’s autumn exhibition. The selection of work plays with one’s perceptions of space and everything in it. You look through, round or over these sculptures and installations rather...

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Andreas Gursky, Hayward Gallery review - staggering scale, personal perspective

“Let the light in” has been the fundraising slogan for the two-year project to revamp and modernise the Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery, and adjacent Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room. And that is just what has happened, with two triumphs at...

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