Visual Arts Buzz
South Bank goes Brazilian for the summerMonday, 08 February 2010
As Jude Kelly put it today, the Southbank Centre’s Festival Brazil this summer is about a country "living its future now" (link here... Read more... |
Is it too late to save the Cultural Olympiad?Friday, 05 February 2010
We’d almost blown the so-called Cultural Olympiad, and if the appointment of Ruth Mackenzie as artistic director had come a moment later than the turn of this year, we would have done. Not my opinion: this from Tony Hall of the Royal Opera House, and he chairs the board that appointed her. More than that, on Friday Hall was given a cross-bench seat in the House of Lords to thump the tub for the arts in 2012, and we’ll take notice then. Won’t we? Read more... |
Scaling the heights in HoxtonFriday, 05 February 2010
Everything was green at 20 Hoxton Square this week as Kilimanjaro Magazine Edits opened: forget the environment, it was the plentiful absinthe imparting a verdant hue. Read more... |
So farewell to the FoundryThursday, 04 February 2010
My abiding memory of The Foundry is being held aloft by my throat by the landlord, Falklands veteran and notorious band manager Alan "Gimpo" Goodrick, as he accused me of stealing a Shirley Bassey album. I had been DJing for a book reading by Mark "Zodiac Mindwarp" Manning, and there was a lot of absinthe being drunk thanks to some fellow from The Idler. I knew at that point I shouldn't have begun the evening by playing the line "there may be trouble ahead" from Bassey's version of "... Read more... |
Original Cultures London announcedThursday, 04 February 2010
Original Cultures is an artistic collective with bases in the UK, Italy and Japan, dedicated to audiovisual collaborations inspired by street art, graffiti, hip hop and electronic music. It is staging its first London event over the course of a week from 27 February to 5 March this year, in which artists Ericailcane, DEM, Will Barras, Hiraki Sawa, Om Unit, Tatsuki and Tayone will be joining to create new works in a series of public events and workshops in and around the Old Truman Brewery,... Read more... |
theartsdesk an essential site of 2009: BBC Radio 5 LiveFriday, 01 January 2010
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Boxing Day Bloat: theartsdesk recommendsSaturday, 26 December 2009
The morning after the day before has dawned. If you're not inclined to join the shopping queues, theartsdesk is happy to suggest alternatives. Our writers recommend all sorts of cultural things you could get up to in the next week. Read more... |
Richard Wright wins the 2009 Turner PrizeTuesday, 08 December 2009
Richard Wright's work celebrates impermanence but his election last night as the 2009 Turner Prize winner - an award which brings with it a purse of £25,000 - has guaranteed it a sort of immortality. The Glasgow-based painter's major piece currently on display at Tate Britain is an enormous, luxuriant and ornate symmetrical fresco painted in... Read more... |
Wunderbar FestivalThursday, 05 November 2009
With the launch of the Wunderbar Featival this week, Newcastle continues to demonstrate just what 2008’s European Capital of Culture judges missed when they anointed Liverpool. The 10-day celebration, which starts tomorrow, is international in content but thoroughly North-East in spirit: unpretentious, clever and surprising. There are 28 free and ticketed events taking place throughout the city, from conventional cultural venues such as the Baltic, Northern Stage and Gallery North to people’s... Read more... |
theartsdesk in New York: Extreme BlakeSunday, 18 October 2009
Outwardly the Morgan Library & Museum is a citadel of sedateness - inside it may be the locus of turbulence. Thirteen years ago I walked around one of the rooms with the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, on whom I was writing a profile. Read more... |
theartsdesk received a New Year's gift last night when we were given a significant accolade from BBC Radio 5 Live. In Web 2009 with Helen and Olly, the station's podcasters and self-styled "internet obsessives" Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann recognised theartsdesk as one of the five "essential sites of 20...
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Frang, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - every beauty revealed
When Vladimir Jurowski returns to what used to be “his” London Philharmonic Orchestra, you’d better jump. I would have done on Wednesday had I...
Kenny Garrett, Ronnie Scott's review - a mixed bag
The sax-player Kenny Garrett established a reputation as one of Miles Davis’s band in the Amandla (1989) period. He was also a member of...
Album: Sofia Härdig - Lighthouse of Glass
The titular “lighthouse of glass” is a place where the narrator is “crying into the sun,” in which there is a need to “stand by my solitude.”...
Music Reissues Weekly: Ibex Band - Stereo Instrumental Music
Stereo Instrumental Music was recorded in July 1976 and originally issued only on cassette. The release was organised by...
Blu-ray: Yojimbo / Sanjuro
Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught...
Levit, Sternath, Wigmore Hall review - pushing the boundarie...
Igor Levit is a master of the unorthodox marathon, one he was happy to share last night with 24-year-old Austrian Lukas Sternath, his student in...
Rhinoceros, Almeida Theatre review - joyously absurd and abs...
Is the theatre of the absurd dead? In today’s world, when cruel and crazy events happen almost daily, the idea that you can satirize daily life by...
Mr Burton review - modest film about the birth of an extraor...
Many know that the actor Richard Burton began life as a miner’s son called Richard Jenkins. Not so many are aware of the reason he...
