London galleries
LS Lowry, Richard Green GalleryTuesday, 29 November 2011
How can you review LS Lowry? The Salford rent-collector-cum-painter simply did what he did: sending his bendy, pipe-cleaner people through white-floored industrial streets, in scenes that seemed hardly to change in decades. While Lowry fully... Read more... |
Artist-run spaces enjoy the fun of the fairFriday, 14 October 2011
Whilst acknowledging the huge impact the Frieze Art Fair has made on the cultural landscape of the capital since its inception in 2003, the frenzied annual event definitely doesn’t float every art lover’s boat. With about 170 – mainly blue-chip... Read more... |
Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 40 Years, 12 Exhibitions, Annely Juda Fine ArtSunday, 18 September 2011
A retrospective of an artist’s work is not usually a history of a working relationship, but in the case of Christo, this impressive exhibition of works from the past 40 years also marks two crucial partnerships: with his wife, Jeanne-Claude, who was... Read more... |
Charles Matton: Enclosures, All Visual ArtsMonday, 12 September 2011
There is nothing new, nor inherently artistic, about making miniature models. Otherwise everyone who's ever stuffed a small ship into a glass bottle would be in the National Gallery. (Yes, Yinka Shonibare's fourth plinth ship-in-a-bottle outside the... Read more... |
Power of Making, Victoria and Albert MuseumFriday, 09 September 2011
Hands on! Power of Making has it all: one of the most surprising and exciting collections of contemporary stuff on view for many a while. Some is functional, from coffins to bicycles, wine caskets, guns, bespoke shoes. Some would not be out of... Read more... |
Phyllida Barlow: RIG, Hauser & Wirth, LondonThursday, 08 September 2011
Every surface in my house is covered in plaster and brick dust, and wood, sand, cement, plaster and wire mesh are strewn all over the place. Furniture, carpets and pictures are covered in dust sheets and piled into two sealed rooms. You’ve guessed... Read more... |
Ryan Gander: Locked Room Scenario, Artangel in Hoxton, N1Wednesday, 07 September 2011
What are the most common responses to a work of contemporary art? I can think of two: “A six-year-old could have done that” (feel free to substitute “I” or “anyone”) and “But what does it actually mean?” Ryan Gander is an artist who is rather... Read more... |
Taryn Simon: A Living Man Declared Dead..., Tate ModernFriday, 05 August 2011
For her latest project, A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII, American photographer Taryn Simon spent four years searching out families the world over whose lives have been defined by circumstances largely beyond their control – not... Read more... |
Thomas Struth: Photography 1978-2010, Whitechapel GalleryWednesday, 03 August 2011
In Düsseldorf in the 1970s there was an astonishing art academy, the Kunstakademie, with amazing teachers – and amazing students. Düsseldorf was a proud art city, and published at the time a book of photographs called Düsseldorf City of Artists. The... Read more... |
Art for the Nation: Sir Charles Eastlake, National GalleryThursday, 28 July 2011
We are still acknowledging our 21st-century debts to the energy, curiosity, determination and passion for discovery of a host of Victorian polymaths, and here is another. Sir Charles Eastlake (1793-1865) was a painter, scholar, author, collector and... Read more... |
The Jameel Prize, Victoria & Albert MuseumTuesday, 26 July 2011
Hadie Shafdie, Iranian-born and now living in America, uses phrases and words taken from mystical Sufi poetry, incantations of sequences of the names of the divine. She handwrites and prints the devotions, usually spoken or chanted, on thousands... Read more... |
Forests, Rocks, Torrents: Norwegian and Swiss Landscapes, National GalleryWednesday, 20 July 2011
The National Gallery has in recent years made a speciality of examining the hitherto unexamined. Just for starters, a surprise hit some years ago was Spanish Still Lifes, 2007 saw Renoir Landscapes (who knew?), last year there was the ravishing... Read more... |
