However badly this year has treated us – and in the UK, it has treated those working in the arts very badly indeed – we have still been lucky enough to hear an astonishing amount of great music. Before joining ArtMuseLondon, I would normally assemble a couple of ‘round-up’ posts for my own blog ‘Specs’…
Category: review
Queen’s Dutch and Italian masterpieces go on display
A Girl Chopping Onions by Gerrit Dou 1646 Dripping wet from a heavy downpour I was very relieved to step inside the rarefied atmosphere of the Queen’s Gallery to see Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace. The exhibition is the latest offering from the Royal Collection with sixty-five priceless Dutch and Italian works on display. The first blue…
Past presence: Dead Space Chamber Music and Kate Arnold
Two brilliantly-timed records that for me sum up the word ‘spirit’: both in the eerie, evocative atmospheres they conjure up, and the sheer inventive brio with which the music was created. * Dead Space Chamber Music are an intriguing collective from Bristol, UK, who seemingly belong to all genres or none. Within the first few…
‘Owen Wingrave’. A Family at War
For its Interim Season, Grange Park Opera is offering several new filmed operas to the public. Owen Wingrave, filmed in September of this year, is a rarely performed work by Benjamin Britten and was originally conceived as a TV opera. It was broadcast on BBC2 in 1971. For this reason alone I was very curious to see it. For…
Black Artists’ Experience in Britain: Sir Frank Bowling and Sonia Boyce
Guest article by Dr Chris Davies IntroductionIt was two hundred and thirty seven years before the Royal Academy of Arts elected a black Academician. And since its inception in 1984, only two black artists have been nominated out of one hundred and twenty five for the Turner Prize. For the two artists explored in this…
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…
From Novichok to Neophyte
The horrendous poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury city centre on the 4th March 2018 was the inspiration for Sergei Lebedev’s latest novel Untraceable. Set in the opaque world of Russian Intelligence, it covers a particularly sticky period in Russian history, from the 1930s right up to the 1990s. Three people power the story: Professor…
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2020
Guest review by Sarah Mulvey Featured: Nijdeka Akunyili Crosby, Blend In-Stand Out, Mixed Media, 243 x 314cm From July this year social life for gallery-goers returned almost to normal as many museums and galleries opened their doors to visitors. So, we re-inhabited the streets and met friends indoors, our smart phones tracking our movements around…
Pigment of the imagination: Roger Eno and Brian Eno, ‘Mixing Colours (Expanded)’
Almost perfect lockdown listening, this record takes the state of ‘very little happening’ and creates something beautiful and resilient in its care and restraint. Eno-watchers might feel that I’ve taken an appropriately glacial length of time to write about this album, but all is not quite as it seems: this is the third ‘Mixing Colours’…
Divine Debussy and Messiaen
Photograph by Jasper Grijpink Regards Sur L’Infini was recorded by soprano, Katharine Dain, and pianist, Sam Armstrong, during the first lockdown of this year and is a remarkable tribute to Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen. In many respects this musical project is a quite a feat for Dain. Both Debussy’s and Messiaen’s vocal work is…
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