11 June 2019
I’ve just read a piece on the web complaining that the one area of the contemporary art world where gender equality is making no progress is in the exhibition programmes of big commercial galleries.
10 June 2019
The new Francis Bacon show at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill is something of a landmark event. It contains a sumptuous array of top-quality works. Only a very few of these come from museum collections, so see them while you can. The show is brutally frank about Bacon’s homosexuality, and about the role that his sexual orientation […]
9 June 2019
If you want to take the temperature of the London art world, here are two places to do so. One is the show for Keith Tyson, at Hauser & Wirth. The other is an exhibition for Enrique Martinez Celaya at Blain/Southern. These two dealers rank very high amongst the international commercial spaces in London.
2 June 2019
It’s rare to walk into an exhibition and be bowled over (forgive the pun). To encounter work that touches the heart as well as the mind in these insouciant times. Frank Bowling’s exhibition at Tate Britain is one such rare show, reminding us of what painting can do.
26 May 2019
It is bold of the British Museum to embark on an exhibition of Japanese Manga in their most significant and grandest temporary exhibition space – the one right at the back of the building, on the ground floor.
26 May 2019
Venice, the Pentland Hills, Prince Charles?” They may not have a lot in common, but all have provided Vicky Crowe with significant inspiration. They also encapsulate her three main concerns: still life, landscape and portraiture. That she excels in each is a cause for admiration and astonishment!
25 May 2019
I can’t see an Anish Kapoor exhibition at the moment. I can’t talk about Anish Kapoor at the moment. Not without the first thing on my mind being that infamous black paint copyright purchase.
25 May 2019
This will be a great year of Leonardo celebrations because 2019 marks five centuries since the great artist died and Leonardo is now one of the great monuments of Western culture. Various countries are squabbling over who can do his memory the most honour.
18 May 2019
Self-taught artist and avant-garde predecessor to the Arte Povera movement, Piero Manzoni was born to an aristocratic family in Soncino, Italy in 1933.
14 May 2019
May you live in interesting times is the overarching theme of this year’s Biennale. Dystopia and dissonance are everywhere played out in the themes of climate change and post-human CGI that take us to some dark places.
14 May 2019
Whatever happened to Anthony Caro? In Jonathan Jones’ new book about the history of British art from Hogarth to Banksy, Caro gets about half a page. It describes how his abstract sculptures climbed down off the pedestals that three-dimensional works had previously been displayed on and placed firmly on the floor. If you want to […]
5 May 2019
Jonathan Jones’ new book from Laurence King Publishing is a quality job. Entitled Sensations, it bears on its back cover a recommendation from none other than Tracey Emin, which reads as follows:“I never loved Jonathan’s writing when he slagged my work off! He is a true thinker: a brilliant art historian who can back up his opinion with more than just criticism.”
Native New Yorker Lorna Simpson has creatively explored race, gender and history for over thirty years.
2 May 2019
In a trough after its immediately pre-Easter excitements – Rembrandt at Gagosian, Sean Scully at the NG – the London art world looks faintly dreary right now.
2 May 2019
The noted writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent gives us his rolling ten recommended contemporary art exhibitions May 2019
1 May 2019
I,I,I,I,I,I,I Kathy Acker is a fitting title for this quasi-retrospective exhibition which opened at the ICA on Tuesday night. In fact, it would have been even more spot on to have called the show Me,Me,Me,Me,Me,Me,Me Kathy Acker.
27 April 2019
Chantal Joffe Victoria Miro London: In his seminal 1972 book Ways of Seeing, the late John Berger claimed that: ‘A woman must continually watch herself…From earliest childhood, she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself…
23 April 2019
Currently, Huxley Parlour in Swallow Street, a location better known for its restaurants rather than for art, has a show rather mysteriously entitled Figurative Abstraction in Contemporary Painting.
At first glance, the Sean Scully show that just opened at the National Gallery in London couldn’t be more different from the exhibition not far away at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill. It features just one artist, rather than a series of well-known names.
14 April 2019
Kashmiri born, London based Raqib Shaw has created his first dazzlingly immersive and multicultural landscape series.
13 April 2019
The Gerhard Richter show currently in the smaller of Gagosian’s three London galleries is maybe best described as “a bit of a tease”.
11 April 2019
A new exhibition of work by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch now at the British Museum claims to be the biggest ever devoted to his work here in Britain.
11 April 2019
Unit London & their emergence as a leading gallery brand on Instagram, (355K people can’t be that wrong?) are a serious force to be reckoned with. Surprisingly very few galleries have attempted to learn from these young social wizards, despite the fact they’ve proven how effective their approach to selling art via social media can be. The second solo show of the Flemish artist Johan Van Mullem is on display in the gallery until 13 April.
10 April 2019
The GHost Parlour, Sarah Sparkes’ solo exhibition at New Art Projects London, intimately explores the theme of ghosts and spirits, a subject which has fascinated Sparkes and been the centre of her artistic practice for many years.
8 April 2019
It is not often that one comes across a book on contemporary, or near contemporary, art that shifts one’s view of what it is, how it has developed, and that direction those developments are likely to take in future.
Shows To See: Up Now in London: Paul Carey-Kent gives us his focus on the London galleries and what to see for April 2019.
31 March 2019
The art of painting is to still time and motion. As a result, the moment at which the artist chooses to freeze time is of real significance. The moments selected by John Kirby are those that reveal dis-ease.
28 March 2019
For 34 years the wonderful Roger Malbert headed up Hayward Gallery Touring, overseeing literally thousands of contemporary art exhibitions that toured to public galleries & museums outside London & were seen each year by half a million folk in over 45 places. An amazing career, & a hard act to follow.