Rosemary, heather and hops. These are just a few of the ingredients included in a special blend of herbal tea created by artist, Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape. Subtle yet deep in flavour, the amber coloured tea has a calming, if not soporific and dream-inducing effect. Picked by Bopape on the Frantsila herb farm in Hämeenkyrö, Finland, the tea was then packaged and delivered to the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, and there partly incorporated into the artist’s current exhibition. Today, a sachet of this blend – aptly titled Raisibe Dreaming – sits on the counter in my small Read more ...

"Beautiful outside, unmissable inside" is the is the new tagline for the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. If the restoration of James Thornhill’s painted hall wasn’t enough to prompt a journey on the Thames Clipper, Paul Cocksedge’s installation, Coalescence might do the trick. Though contemporary critique is nothing new (think of Flora Yukhnovich’s interpretations of the Rococo style), Cockridge uses the hall as a backdrop for 2,500 pieces of anthracite, a high carbon coal, suspended in front of scenes depicting the Hanoverian dynasty. The resulting orb is remarkably striking and though Read more ...

To take a trip into the world of Issy Wood is to be embraced by paradox. A richness of imagery that can at time shock with its blandness and at others seduce with a sense of wonder; a perfectly accomplished surface that reveals, with familiarity, a labyrinth of unexpected depth and sensuality; a confrontation with the glitz of hyper-reality that’s constantly playing with the illusory nature of all images; collections of apparent trivia bathed in an aura of mystery.She has a large show right now at the splendid Lafayette Anticipations, a very well-run showcase for cutting-edge contemporary art Read more ...

The vast and various spaces of Frank Gehry’s monumental Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris suit the needs of the thrilling Mark Rothko exhibition now inhabiting its labyrinthine multi-storey suite of galleries.Some of the 115 works on display require a kind of intimacy – enclosed spaces with the feel of a chapel rather than the classsic antiseptic white cube – and others benefit from wider vistas, in which his relentless explorations can breathe, standing alone while being connected with other works from the same period. With help from the artist’s son Christopher Rothko, the curator Suzanne Read more ...

The soundtrack to Tate Britain’s seminal exhibition Women in Revolt! is a prolonged scream. On film, Gina Birch of the punk band The Raincoats gives vent to her pent-up anger and frustration by yelling at the top of her lungs for 3 minutes (main picture). And in many ways, this whole exhibition is a scream of rage.Sick of being marginalised by the male-dominated art world and tired of being treated as second class citizens in every other walk of life, in the 1970s women artists went on the offensive. They began organising, protesting and demonstrating and making work that is, in itself, Read more ...

The introductory panel to Tate Modern's exhibition of photography, film and installation contains some stark facts that remind us of the history informing the work of these 36 African artists. Some 10 million Africans were sold into slavery and by 1914, 90 per cent of this vast continent was under colonial rule (a third of it British), which one could describe as a lesser form of enslavement.Not surprisingly, many of these artists try, through their work, to reconnect with their pre-colonial heritage while at the same time relating to contemporary reality. But bridging the gap between a half- Read more ...

The enormous volume of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall has overwhelmed many of those invited to exhibit there, but Ghanaian artist El Anatsui responded to the challenge with magnificent hangings that tame the huge, industrial space.Made from thousands of bottle tops and slivers of metal sewn together by an army of helpers, the cloths are monumental yet intricately detailed. Suspended just inside the door is a billowing sail, pinkish red on one side and golden yellow on the other. Glinting under the spotlights, tiny reflective surfaces create a shimmering impression of movement.Above the bridge is Read more ...

RE/SISTERS is a show about the brave women who’ve been fighting to protect our planet and the artists whose work – mainly in film and photography – is, in itself, a form of protest. The opening section, Extractive Economics demonstrates the problem – companies trashing the planet for profit, regardless of the cost to people and the environment.Simryn Gill’s photographs offer horrifying evidence of a mindset which views the earth as resource to be polluted and plundered at will. A mangrove forest in Malaysia is festooned with rubbish washed in by the tide while in Pilbara, Western Read more ...

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 limb. And what a perfect shot! Every hair on the bear’s body is crystal clear; in fact, it looks as if her fur has just been washed and brushed.Once you start peering more closely, other anomalies begin to emerge. The sea ice looks suspiciously like expanded polystyrene dusted with flour rather than snow, and the distant ice hills are clearly Read more ...

It’s incredible to think that the Turner Prize has been going for nearly 40 years. It was initially set up to generate interest in contemporary art by sparking debate. Not surprisingly, the media took this as an invitation to stir up controversy by focusing on work they considered shocking and this, in turn, encouraged artists to be provocative.These days, though, it’s hard to imagine anyone getting hot under the collar about art when there are more serious issues to worry about, like climate change, inflation, racism, sexism, the NHS and the self-inflicted wound of Brexit. And this more Read more ...

At last, after waiting several years, we get to see Philip Guston’s paintings at Tate Modern. His retrospective was scheduled to open in summer 2020 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, but the murder of George Floyd made the institution nervous. The problem? Guston’s absurdist paintings of Klu Klux Klan (KKK) members. They could be seen to condone white supremacy or, at least, to make light of it. So the show was postponed until the artist’s intentions could be made clear.Hannah Arendt’s phrase “the banality of evil” sums up the ethos of these cartoon-like pictures. Made in the late Read more ...

I think of Sarah Lucas as the bad girl of British art, the one who uses her wicked sense of humour to point to rampant misogyny and call out the perpetrators. Of her generation of YBAs (Young British Artists), she has produced the edgiest, funniest and most disrespectful work.She enlarged the pages of The Sunday Sport to giant proportions, for instance, to bring home the nastiness of their attitude towards women. In Fat, Forty and Flab-ulous (pictured below) an overweight woman is derided for wanting to be sexy and desirable and in Pairfect Match readers are invited to match up women’s Read more ...