Visual arts
Venice Biennale 2022 review - The Milk of Dreams Part 2: The ArsenaleFriday, 17 June 2022
Part two of The Milk of Dreams, the central International Exhibition at the 2022 Venice Biennale, housed in the Arsenale shipyard, starts with the kind of massive, grandstanding gesture that’s necessary in a venue of this scale: a colossal bronze... Read more... |
In the Air, Wellcome Collection review - art in an emergencyThursday, 16 June 2022
Air is a weighty subject, and in both senses; if we did not contain its gases in our bodies, the air would crush us. Ninety-nine per cent of the world’s population breathe polluted air daily. There was a time on this planet, 3.5 billion years ago,... Read more... |
Whitstable Biennale review - a breath of fresh airTuesday, 14 June 2022
If you need an excuse to spend a day in the charming seaside town of Whitstable, the Biennale is it. After a four-year hiatus, the festival is back with a somewhat edgy, apocalyptic feel.For instance, Webb/Ellis’ film This Place is a Message (St... Read more... |
10 Questions for art historian and fiction writer Chloë AshbySaturday, 11 June 2022
“Is she at a pivotal point in her life but unable to pivot…?” Eve, the young heroine of Chloë Ashby’s dazzling debut novel, Wet Paint, asks this question standing in front of Édouard Manet’s painting "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" (1882). Yet she... Read more... |
Venice Biennale 2022 review - The Milk of Dreams Part 1: The GiardiniWednesday, 08 June 2022
Cecelia Alemani's vision for The Milk of Dreams, the International Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2022 had me excited – and perplexed – from the moment I heard about it.Never mind the national pavilions which tend to dominate... Read more... |
Cornelia Parker, Tate Britain review – divine intelligenceMonday, 23 May 2022
Cornelia Parker’s early installations are as fresh and as thought provoking as when they were made. Her Tate Britain retrospective opens with Thirty Pieces of Silver (pictured below left: Detail). It’s more than 30 years since she ran over a... Read more... |
Walter Sickert, Tate Britain review - all the world's a stageThursday, 12 May 2022
Who was Walter Sickert and what made him tick? The best way to address the question is to make a beeline for the final room of his Tate Britain retrospective. It’s hung with an impressive array of his last and most colourful paintings. Based on... Read more... |
Ming Smith: A Dream Deferred, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery review - snapping the BluesWednesday, 30 March 2022
Ming Smith is a Black female photographer. When she first dropped off her portfolio at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1978 the receptionist assumed she was a courier. When MoMA offered to buy her work she declined at first because the fee didn’t... Read more... |
Ali Cherri: If you prick us, do we not bleed?, National Gallery review - cabinets of curiosityMonday, 21 March 2022
I’m a sucker for traditional vitrines and the procession of old style display cases installed by Ali Cherri in the Renaissance galleries of the Sainsbury Wing look very handsome.During his residency at the National Gallery, the Lebanese artist has... Read more... |
Pionnières: Artistes dans le Paris des années folles, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris review - thrilling and slightly flawedWednesday, 16 March 2022
The hidden history of women artists continues to generate some ground-breaking exhibitions that contribute to a radical re-assessment of art and cultural history. This is a welcome trend, though not entirely without risk, as a new show in Paris... Read more... |
Surrealism Beyond Borders, Tate Modern review - a disappointing mish mashMonday, 14 March 2022
The night after visiting Tate Modern’s Surrealism Beyond Borders I dreamt that a swarm of wasps had taken refuge inside my skull and I feared it would hurt when they nibbled their way out again.If I painted a self-portrait with wasps escaping from... Read more... |
Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-65, Barbican review - revelations galoreFriday, 04 March 2022
The Barbican’s Postwar Modern covers the period after World War Two when artists were struggling to respond to the horrors that had engulfed Europe and find ways of recovering from the collective trauma.Perhaps inevitably, a considerable amount of... Read more... |
