contemporary art
Grayson Perry: Provincial Punk, Turner ContemporaryTuesday, 26 May 2015
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... Read more... |
Corin Sworn: Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Whitechapel GalleryFriday, 22 May 2015
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... Read more... |
Rachel Kneebone, Brighton FestivalSaturday, 16 May 2015
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... Read more... |
Nathan Coley, BrightonThursday, 07 May 2015
Thanks to its international festival and a thriving catalogue of fringe events, May brings a great deal of noise to Brighton. Putting artwork into this saturated landscape can never be easy. But Nathan Coley has managed to inject some critical... Read more... |
John Wood and Paul Harrison, Carroll/FletcherSaturday, 25 April 2015
Described by the Tate as the Laurel and Hardy of the art world, John Wood and Paul Harrison are best known for appearing in superbly timed, comic videos using their own bodies to explore spatial relations. Projected over the concrete stairwell of... Read more... |
theartsdesk in New York: On Kawara at the Guggenheim MuseumSunday, 05 April 2015
On a snowy day in early spring in New York, the On Kawara – Silence show at the Guggenheim is unlikely to warm you up. His date paintings, postcards, telegrams and other coldly ur-conceptual accountings spiral up those famous white Frank Lloyd... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bilbao: Niki de Saint Phalle at the Guggenheim MuseumThursday, 02 April 2015
This is work that wears its heart on its sleeve. That’s what gets you in the end in this big retrospective of the work of Niki de Saint Phalle. The French-American artist, who died aged 71 in 2002, is probably best known for two very different... Read more... |
Magnificent Obsessions, Barbican Art GalleryFriday, 13 February 2015
The title has it about right: no matter what it is they are busily acquiring, collectors seem to be an obsessive bunch, and their obsessions can achieve quite magnificent proportions. The stereotyped image of the collector as a socially challenged... Read more... |
Sci-Fi Week: Through the eyes of JG BallardFriday, 28 November 2014
A sci-fi special would be incomplete without the profoundly influential figure of JG Ballard, a writer who, when he began his career in the late Fifties, fully subscribed to the notion that “sci-fi is the literature of the 20th century.”... Read more... |
Pierre Huyghe/ Paul McCarthy, Hauser & WirthWednesday, 22 October 2014
In a tavern somewhere in Tokyo, two Japanese macaque monkeys work a daily, two-hour shift (under Japanese law, these hours are regulated). Dressed in miniature uniforms, the monkeys’ main task is to deliver hot towels to amused customers before... Read more... |
The spooky and the bold in the art of contemporary ChinaSunday, 19 October 2014
In China there are more than 100 million fans of Manchester United. At least that’s what I’m told when I get to the the city's National Football Museum. And in a sartorial decision unusual in the art world, we are greeted by artist Chen Wenbo... Read more... |
Richard Tuttle, Tate Modern / Whitechapel GalleryThursday, 16 October 2014
It could be an aircraft, hastily covered with some very inadequate wrappings and squeezed into the great hangar of the Turbine Hall. Or perhaps an eccentric sort of bird, its bedraggled wings missing chunks of orange plumage, in contrast to its... Read more... |
