sun 12/10/2025

Visual Arts Reviews

Turner Prize 2018, Tate Britain review - a shortlist dominated by political issues

Sarah Kent

I’ve just spent four hours in the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain. The shortlisted artists all show films or videos, which means that you either stay for the duration or make the decision to walk away, which feels disrespectful.

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Courtauld Impressionists: From Manet to Cézanne review - much loved treasures, seen afresh

Marina Vaizey

Heir to one of this country's great textile manufacturing firms, Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947) – highly original in his then unfashionable fascination with the art of his own lifetime  – bought some of the best known and best loved paintings now in the public domain.

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I object, British Museum review - censorship, accidental?

Katherine Waters

It’s the nature of satire to reflect what it mocks, so as you’d expect from a British Museum exhibition curated by Ian Hislop, I object is a curiously establishment take on material anti-establishmentarianism from BC something-or-other right up to the present day.

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Renzo Piano, Royal Academy review - worth the effort

Sarah Kent

Architecture is notoriously difficult to present in an accessible way and this survey of Italian architect Renzo Piano, who gave London the Shard, does not solve the problem.

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h 100 Young Influencers of the Year: Marina Gerner on Russian art

Marina Gerner

On a recent visit to the Royal Academy, I noticed a tall, elegantly dressed man who spent quite some time admiring a square object attached to the wall. I wondered whether to tell him that far from being Russian avant-garde art, which was the theme of the exhibition, it was in fact the temperature and humidity control box.

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Roderic O’Conor and the Moderns, National Gallery of Ireland review - experiments in Pont-Aven

Katherine Waters

In the autumn of 1892 Émile Bernard wrote home to his mother that, following the summer decampment to Pont-Aven of artists visiting from Paris and further afield, there remained "some artists here, two of them talented and copying each other.

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Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, V&A review - appearances aren't everything

Katherine Waters

When in 2004 Frida Kahlo’s bedroom  sealed on the command of her husband Diego Rivera for 50 years from her death  was opened, a trove of clothes and personal items was discovered.

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diep~haven 2018 review - a missed connection?

Mark Sheerin

The daily car ferry from Newhaven in Sussex to Dieppe in Normandy is an unlikely phenomenon. Neither port is very large; neither region very populous, and the journey sways you along for four contemplative hours. It enjoys the custom of truckers, school parties, and retired caravan-owners. But it also caters for art lovers with time on their hands.

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The London Mastaba, Serpentine Galleries review - good news for ducks?

Katherine Waters

It’s not as immersive as New York’s The Gates, 2005, nor as magnificent as Floating Piers, 2016, in Italy’s Lake Iseo  it has also, according to Hyde Park regular Kay, “scared away the ducks,”  but superstar artist Christo’s The London Mastaba looks quite absurdly unreal and is totally free for the public.

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Hidden Door Festival, Edinburgh - transforming spaces

Miranda Heggie

In just five years, what the team behind Hidden Door Festival has achieved is quite remarkable.

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