‘Hallyu’ – the eye-catching title of this big-ticket exhibition at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum (‘V&A’) – translates as ‘Korean wave’, the phrase used to describe Korean culture’s steady rise to prominence over the last 25 years or so. Informed by a K-pop aesthetic, it’s a heady, day-glo, assault-on-the-senses experience. Throw yourself into it and…
Category: contemporary art
Picture This : Serge Bloch
Ce qui m’intéresse dans le collage, c’est le contraste, la rencontre entre le trait et l’objet que je colle ou l’élément graphique que je rapporte. C’est aussi la relation entre le temps de la collecte et le temps du dessin. Pour moi le collage, c’est l’humour, la poésie de ces associations, la complicité de ces…
Lightbulb moments: Cornelia Parker at Tate Britain
The exploding shed is probably the image familiar to most. But the joy of seeing so much of Cornelia Parker’s work all in one place shows just how consistently she has sought to reach the heart of the (subject) matter by systematically taking it apart or changing its form – violently or otherwise. * The…
Picture This : Featuring Artist Oliver Merrington
The original idea for this painting, which is part of a series, started with images of polluted skies and landscapes blacked by industrial waste. The bright colours of chemicals being poured into rivers and streams for example. When I start painting, I have these images in my head, that evolve very quickly and become something…
Hang about: Andreas Gursky (White Cube, Bermondsey); ‘For the Record’ (Photographers’ Gallery)
A few Saturdays ago, I went to two photography exhibitions. When you see two shows more or less together like this – even though they are nothing to do with each other – it’s hard to stop unlooked-for, and occasionally revelatory, connections popping into your head and affecting how you perceive the work. Both the…
Field work: Zadok Ben-David, ‘Natural Reserve’ at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Art emergency! If you are planning – or even vaguely considering – a visit to Kew Gardens over the next week or so, make sure you take in its current exhibition: ‘Natural Reserve’, the latest show from Zadok Ben-David. I first came across Ben-David’s art through being a Peter Gabriel fan. Even since his early…
Spirit levels: ‘Unsettling Landscapes’, St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, Lymington
How appropriate that on this occasion, during the walks between the car and St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, the chill in the coastal air was icy enough to penetrate my fleece, and the wind strong enough to bend the bare branches of the trees further in, over our heads. St Barbe has an admirable…
Barbican Show of Sculptor and Lighting Designer Isamu Noguchi 1904-1988
In 1988, in the last year of his life, Japanese American artist, Isamu Noguchi, remarked “Art for me is something which teaches human beings how to become more human”. Having just visited the Barbican Centre’s Noguchi show, I can see to what extent art was therapeutic for him. In his sculptures he seems to have…
The American Art Tapes. Voices of Twentieth-Century Art
In 1965 English artist John Jones set off to the US, his objective, to spend a year interviewing America’s greatest artists. The resulting taped interviews provide the material for The American Art Tapes. It’s been a while since I’ve been so gripped by an art book. All of America’s key artists feature, and through them it…
Boakye’s Show at Tate Britain Alluring and Enigmatic
The Matters 2016 Of Ghanaian descent, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye was born in London in 1977. Now into her fourth decade, she has already achieved so much as an artist. Her oil paintings are to be found in museum collections across the world and since 2015 she has had solo shows in London, Munich, Basel…
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