God Save the Village Green at Cob Gallery
The ideas behind ‘God Save the Village Green’ are rooted in the past – in the pastoral sentiment of the countryside and the communities that gather on these village greens. The question Dmitri Galitizine asks in this unconventional exhibition is: can this Little England sustain itself? The exhibition ‘God Save the Village Green,’ goes about … Read more
Spaces in Transition at Hanmi Gallery
I didn’t take Hanmi Gallery’s claims about ‘Spaces in Transition’ seriously enough. I read the disclaimer they attached to the exhibition literature lightly – the forewarning that this exhibition was being held in the midst of the gallery’s major renovation project. I took it as a side note – a self-deprecating remark on the gallery’s … Read more
Dan Witz: Prisoners 2012-13 at Lazarides Gallery
Dan Witz has been in the street art ‘business’ since street art began in the seventies – he’s a master of his genre. But, from that introduction, what you find at Lazarides (Rathbone Place) is more Old Master than you might expect. That is: finely layered oil paints that build up soft-to-the-touch illusionistic paintings. Subtle … Read more
Cartier-Bresson: A Question of Colour at Somerset House
The Cartier-Bresson exhibition at Somerset House raises the debate: will we ever be able to see art through anything but modern eyes? What I came to the exhibition feeling (and not so incidentally left the exhibition feeling) was that I struggle to imagine we ever will; for so vivid is our picture of the world … Read more
Mauro Bonaventura at Venice Projects
Venice is, asides from the Biennale, a traditional city. It’s changed very little since its golden age, desperate to still shine of that golden age. This includes the production and sale of Murano glass. If I’d have known this … Read more
Look What The Cat Dragged In – Tom Beard at Cob Gallery
‘Look What the Cat Dragged In’ is an intimate and sideways look at the work of photographer Tom Beard and what he has become known for in his so-far short but very successful career. Since the age of 17 he has been shooting portraits of celebrities in their glamourous guises, particularly including Florence and the … Read more
Architettura Biennale, Venice
Architecture has always felt to me a limited breed of art: tied as it is to functionality but often desperate to be more than just a good solution to the repetitive problems of how and where do we live. David Chipperfield – the convenor of the thirteenth Architecture Biennale – opens the citywide exhibition with … Read more
The Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition 2012
It seems a daring thing to suggest an outcome to an open art exhibition before knowing what has been entered. I was unsure how the brief that curator-in-chief Tess Jaray RA had set for this year’s Summer Exhibition was going to implicate the success of this, the 244th’s show. Her request was that the art … Read more
Pollock and Klein: A Bigger Splash at Tate
What makes Pollock and Klein the heroes of painting after performance? Contemporary art came to do many things differently. Just one, was the manner in which painting re-aligned maker with product. Avant-garde art challenged capitalists’ claims to art as a commodity; and one way this was seen in the fifties, was Jackson Pollock’s refashioning of … Read more
Filed under Comment, Contemporary Art, Exhibitions, London, Painting, Visual Arts · Tagged with A Bigger Splash, Abstract Expressionism, colour, International Blue, Jackson Pollock, Tate Modern, Yves Klein