wed 23/07/2025

Visual Arts Reviews

Fighting History, Tate Britain

Florence Hallett

For all the wrong reasons, the work of Dexter Dalwood serves as a useful metaphor for this exhibition. Trite, tokenistic and desperate to look clever, Dalwood’s paintings are as tiresomely inward-looking as the show itself, which is a dismal example of curatorial self-indulgence at the expense of public engagement.

Read more...

Carsten Höller: Decisions, Hayward Gallery

Sarah Kent

A steel corridor stretches as far into the distance as you can see (pictured below right); the gleaming sides and gently sloping floor invite you to step inside but, as you venture further in, it gets darker and darker until you are groping your way in pitch blackness.

Read more...

James Turrell: Lightscape, Houghton Hall

Marina Vaizey

Enzo Green, Shirim, Raethro Red, Raemar Magenta. Everything has a name. But beyond the meaningless but musical sounds of their titles, the light projections and installations on view at Houghton Hall by the leading American light, land and skyscape artist James Turrell are an ineffable art whose presence and effect is subtle, substantial, utterly memorable and almost beyond words.  

Read more...

Agnes Martin, Tate Modern

Sarah Kent

It's impossible to overstate the reverence accorded the painter Agnes Martin by her fellow artists; in the panoply of American cultural goddesses, she is right up there with Emily Dickinson. Yet she is scarcely known in the wider world, partly because her work is relentlessly abstract, but also because she was deliberately evasive.

Read more...

Grayson Perry: Provincial Punk, Turner Contemporary

Fisun Güner

Imagine if broadcasters thought the only living pop star worth giving air time to was Lady Gaga. Imagine – the horror. It would be wall-to-wall Gaga for the foreseeable future. And then imagine if the only living contemporary artist commissioning editors at Channel 4 and the BBC even bothered looking at was… Grayson Perry. Imagine. 

Read more...

Perspectives: War Art with Eddie Redmayne, ITV

Marina Vaizey

The country is groaning under the weight of commemorations, exhibitions, publications and programmes all marking significant anniversaries of World War One, but the underlying message – lest we forget – remains as potent as ever, perhaps even more so in these tumultuous times.

Read more...

Corin Sworn: Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Whitechapel Gallery

Sarah Kent

Glasgow-based Corin Sworn is the fifth winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. Every two years a British artist is chosen on the basis of a proposal, rather than existing work. The fashion house then supports the project with funding, a bespoke, six-month residency in Italy and, following the Whitechapel Gallery show, an exhibition at the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, where the HQ of the family-run business is located.

Read more...

Edmund de Waal: I Placed a Jar, Brighton Festival

Florence Hallett

What strange things netsuke are. Tiny sculptures, usually made from wood or ivory and depicting anything from figures, to fruit to animals, they were first made in the 17th century as toggles to attach pockets and bags to the robes worn by Japanese men. For as long as they have existed they have been considered highly collectible, and perhaps it is this, and the rapturous appreciation they inspire in their devotees, that to me at least makes them seem hopelessly, unspeakably kitsch.

Read more...

Rachel Kneebone, Brighton Festival

Mark Sheerin

In an oft quoted moment of self-deprecation, WH Auden once described his own face as looking like “a wedding cake left out in the rain”. But the poet might have thought twice if confronted with the Porcelain confections of Rachel Kneebone. The London-based artist has brought three of her sculptures to the gallery of the University of Brighton; each one piles flora, vines and body parts onto a tomb-like plinth.

Read more...

Modigliani, Estorick Collection

Florence Hallett

Modigliani’s short life was a template for countless aspiring artists who, in the period after his death in 1920, were only too willing to believe that a garret in Montmartre and a liking for absinthe held the secret to creative brilliance. While Modigliani certainly compounded poor health with a ruinous drink and drug addiction, this exhibition plays down his reputation as a hellraiser, suggesting instead an altogether quieter, although no less romantic character.

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Tosca, Clonter Opera review - beauty and integrity in miniat...

At first sight, it seemed that Clonter Opera’s decision to tackle Tosca this year might be a leap too far. Its once-a-year complete...

Album: Paul Weller - Find El Dorado

Paul Weller occupies a strange place in the cultural sphere. Especially since he was adopted as an elder statesman of Britpop in the mid 1990s, he...

BBC Proms: McCarthy, Bournemouth SO, Wigglesworth review - s...

It started like Sunday afternoon band concert on a seaside promenade, a massive ensemble playing it light. But while there were several too many...

theartsdesk Q&A: writer and actor Mark Gatiss on 'B...

Having played Sherlock Holmes’s politically involved older brother Mycroft in the BBC’s hit crime series Sherlock...

Ballard, Prime Video review - there's something rotten...

Following the success of its screen version of Michael Connelly’s veteran detective Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver,...

Don't Rock the Boat, The Mill at Sonning review - all a...

Now 45 years in the past, its dazzling star gone a decade or so, The Long Good Friday is a monument of British cinema....

Blu-ray: The Rebel / The Punch and Judy Man

Comedian Tony Hancock’s vertiginous rise and fall is neatly traced in the two films he completed in the early 1960s. The warning signs were...

Bookish, U&Alibi review - sleuthing and skulduggery in a...

As a sometime writer of Poirot, Sherlock and Christmas ghost stories,...

Album: Spafford Campbell - Tomorrow Held

Guitarist Louis Campbell and fiddle player Owen Spafford started playing together as teenagers in the National Youth Folk Ensemble when Sam...