25 November 2011
Review of Louise Lawler’s No Drones at Sprüth Magers, her first solo show in the UK for four years Lawler’s photographs capture artworks in compromising positions; from a Koons Rabbit next to the refrigerator (Foreground, 1994) to Jasper Johns’ White Flag in the bedroom (Monogram, 1984). This short but sweet exhibition – her first solo show in the UK […]
25 November 2011
Ancient mummy coupled with latest medical technology produces stunning contemporary art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford After walking through centuries of ancient Egyptian history at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, the visitor is finally confronted with a strange, disconcerting – and oftentimes difficult to fathom – box containing 111 vertical panes of glass. Closer inspection reveals […]
24 November 2011
We review the show dedicated to the work of two contemporary Swedish artists Cecilia Edefalk and Gunnel Wåhlstrand Edefalk presents us with a series of twelve (very) different painted versions of the same nude statue, all called ‘Double White Venus’. While there is no sense of direction, repeated action, or consistent approach in this […]
23 November 2011
Alex Hartley, the artist responsible for the controversial Nowhere Island Olympic project, proves his salt at Victoria Miro Alex Hartley: The World is Still Big is an innovative collection of original works that proves his credentials for representing the UK in the major Cultural Olympiad project, Nowhere Island. Hartley’s practice (when he’s not sailing lumps […]
22 November 2011
ArtLyst reviews Lee Maelzer’s first solo show at Poppy Sebire The Hypnosis of Error is Lee Maelzer’s first solo exhibition and takes place, quite appropriately, in a hidden converted Victorian church hall, AKA ‘Poppy Sebire’. I say ‘appropriately’, since it is the idea of the ‘hidden’ that fascinates Maelzer, her work bringing to our attention […]
19 November 2011
All Visual Arts presents Alastair Mackie’s Copse, an instantly appealing piece of formal design, no more and no less Alastair Mackie’s new and largest installation to date, Copse, fills the blinding white gallery space with a forest of naked trees, each one balancing delicately upon ornate and spindly table legs carved in at their bases. Instantly […]
18 November 2011
Promising 1982 Young Contemporary emerges from the wilderness Since she first exhibited in the ICA’s 1982 Young Contemporaries show alongside Grayson Perry, Michele Howarth Rashman has been the shrinking violet of contemporary art. Having been kept afloat through the 1990s by the patronage of The Who’s John Entwhistle – ‘my only fan’ –, it was […]
16 November 2011
Paul McCarthy’s energetic new London exhibition at Hauser & Wirth does not disappoint, turning out to be one of 2011’s ‘must-see’ shows Paul McCarthy’s major new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth is a joyous sprawl of pop cultural reference, creaky robotics, and splayed legs. Straddling both the Savile Row and Piccadilly galleries, as well […]
15 November 2011
Ellen Altfest’s White Cube exhibition ‘The Bent Leg’ grants viewers with intimate but uninspiring look at the male body Ellen Altfest: The Bent Leg is the second White Cube exhibition by the New York-based artist, and represents the culmination of a series of works started in 2006. The downstairs show presents us with a near-complete male nude […]
10 November 2011
Leading British artist Paul Noble presents the culmination of 15-year project at Gagosian gallery Paul Noble’s exhibition begins In the Beginning, with the Word, in a series of panels re-envisioning the opening passages of the book of Genesis. But Noble depicts not the creation of our world; rather, a faecal-phallic deity breathes life into a […]
9 November 2011
Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery grants deeply intimate insight into the practice of the quintessential celebrity artist Visitors to the National Gallery hoping to find the Leonardo of Dan Brown novels and printed tea towels will leave this exhibition disappointed. With only 9 of Leonardo’s oil paintings on display, ‘The Painter at the Court […]
27 October 2011
From Battersea to Hampstead AAF proves art has mass appeal Last night, the Affordable Art Fair broke into new London territory with the opening of its first ever fair on Hampstead Heath. This new fair – the fourth in the UK, and set to run from 27th to the 30th October – brings together 90 […]
22 October 2011
Lisson Gallery presents its seventh solo exhibition of Shirazeh Houshiary, No Boundary Condition, addressing invisible forms within the observable realm The solo exhibition of Shirazeh Houshiary at the Lisson Gallery, No Boundary Condition, displays her recent large-scale paintings, sculptures and animation. The show reveals her preoccupation with the sub-observable, the ethereal, and the […]
22 October 2011
Frank Stella’s first major London show in 25 years presents his spectacular early works alongside recent failings 25 years since his last major London exhibition and Frank Stella is finally back. Haunch of Venison presents us with ‘Connections’, an in-depth look at the work of one of the most important and influential American […]
20 October 2011
BALTIC opens 2011 Turner Prize Exhibition For the first time in its 27 year history, the Turner Prize is to be hosted by a non-Tate venue; and today, Gateshead’s BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art has opened the doors on the Turner Prize exhibition. Four shortlisted artists – Karla Black, Martin Boyce, Hilary Lloyd, and […]
17 October 2011
George Condo’s much-anticipated Mental States finally arrives at the Hayward Gallery Having provided album artwork for Kanye West, and won the hearts of American critics, artist George Condo’s first major UK retrospective opens today in the upper galleries of the Hayward. ‘Mental States’ provides a survey of a period of 28 years, from when Condo […]
17 October 2011
Richards solo show at Chisenhale Gallery reveals the oh-so-grey void behind our vernacular visual landscapes For his solo exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery, ‘Not Blacking Out, Just Turning the Lights Off’, James Richards has created a new series of video works from montaged and digitally manipulated ‘vernacular visual content’ – from found-footage such as […]
13 October 2011
ICA’s Autumn exhibition of art-market-darling Jacob Kassay, his first in a public gallery. Review – Jacob Kassay exploded onto the contemporary art scene with surprising force, when a piece priced at auction for $8,000 soared to $86,500. And then, when a similar piece was estimated in the latter bracket, it more than tripled […]
13 October 2011
After the success of its 2010 debut SUNDAY Art Fair is back to challenge the hegemony of the Sharp-Slotover Frieze machine. Frieze’s most dangerous rival, SUNDAY Art Fair has returned to Ambika P3, Baker Street’s 14,000 square foot, triple height warehouse, where last year it received more than 5,000 visitors in just 3 days. Unlike […]
11 October 2011
‘New Sensations’ exhibition upstaged by ‘The Future Can Wait’, but both lack punch Two schemes for emerging artists, both launched in 2007, have in this year joined forces to create a museum-scale survey of emerging art at B1, Victoria house in Bloomsbury Square. The first is New Sensations run by the Saatchi Gallery and Channel […]
11 October 2011
The Shock Of The Old Invades Berkeley Square You’ve seen this year’s major exhibitions, now’s your chance to recreate them in your living room by buying your very own masterpiece! That’s right, the Pavilion of Art & Design has works for sale by all the names of the moment – Gerhard Richter (currently exhibiting […]
10 October 2011
FILM: a low-tech love letter to the magic of cinema For the twelfth commission in the Tate Modern Unilever Series, and the first to be devoted to the moving image, Tacita Dean has created ‘FILM’ – an homage to analogue film-making and to what is unique in this dying art. With the Tate Modern’s monolithic […]
7 October 2011
Review of Camden Arts Centre Autumn Exhibitions Today, Camden Arts Centre opens two exciting new exhibitions: Nathalie Djurberg’s A World of Glass, with music by Hans Berg; and Haroon Mirza’s I Saw Square Triangle Sine. Both these artists have created forms of 3D collage, each layering seemingly-opposing elements; tangible objects and intangible sound, light […]
5 October 2011
Review – In The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry invites us on a pilgrimage: saluting the ‘travel’ experience generated by the museum, we are to call at the historical and cultural stations that have informed our imaginative world and material output. ‘Few civilisations spring up spontaneously or develop in isolation’, […]
4 October 2011
Panorama – Tate Modern’s most exciting and significant exhibition this year Gerhard Richter stated today – at the opening of his major retrospective at Tate Modern – that he considers his most successful works to be ‘incomprehensible’: instead of creating work with one specific reading, it seems that Richter’s primary concern is to question and […]
4 October 2011
Review – Pipilotti Rist’s new exhibition at Hayward, ‘Eyeball Massage’, is an aptly named sight for sore eyes. This major survey show, the first of its kind in the UK, presents the Swiss pioneer of video art in all her glory, bringing together over 30 different works – from her early single-channel videos of the […]
28 September 2011
Review – On first appearances, Laurel Nakadate is an artist fascinated by sexual violence and the fetishes of men. The body of work on display at this US artist’s first solo UK show – which includes a video piece shot with male strangers picked up at truck stops and gas stations, who play strip poker […]
25 September 2011
New performance based series launches on the Web Last night, Auto Italia South East, an artists-run project space committed to developing alternative approaches to practice and exhibition formats, filmed the first of three live TV episodes scheduled for the coming weeks. These 45 minute programs are conceived and created by a circle of collaborating artists, […]
24 September 2011
US Artist’s old school multimedia vinyl shop opens to the public From NYC, through Liverpool, and Derry, Never Records has finally arrived here in London. Having given musical Londoners a three-week window of opportunity to cut their own record (and, yes, I actually mean ‘cut’, on an old-school record lathe) at a pop-up recording studio […]
21 September 2011
Victoria & Albert Museum move on to the next chapter The V&A’s autumn show ‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990’ represents the climax of a long-running series of exhibitions devoted to exploring the ‘style movements’ of the twentieth century. From Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, through Modernism and Post-war Modernism, we have now arrived […]