Helaine Blumenfeld – Intimacy and Isolation at Hignell Gallery, London

Esteemed sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld has a new exhibition of both new and earlier works which focus both on her anxiety and her hope for the times in which we live. Mostly conceived in lockdown and created in 2022, these new, small-scale abstract sculptures are the result of an extended sculptural vocabulary and approach intimacy both as a personal as well as a global phenomenon.

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April 29, 2022 0

The Grand Tour – Claire Partington, Emily Allchurch, James B Webster, Matt Smith

In the 18th and 19th centuries, it became something of a rite of passage for upper class Europeans, mostly from Britain, to embark on the Grand Tour taking in cities such as Paris, Rome, Venice and Florence in order to learn about Classical and Renaissance art and architecture. They’d accumulate works and souvenirs as they did so. Four artists have given a contemporary spin on this phenomenon in Grand Tour at London’s James Freeman Galley.

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October 12, 2020 0

Kovet.Art – Delineating Dreams

One of the effects of this current pandemic is that many of us are wondering what changes the virus will have wrought upon our society after it goes away (if it ever does go away!).

In a broader sense, this zeitgeist has been taken up by Kovet.Art, a new arts organisation designed to help collectors discover the best emerging talent in the UK and to harness and mentor that talent. Its inaugural online exhibition, Delineating Dreams, invites eight of its artists to delve into a dream world expressing visually both the conscious and the subconscious. It’s a surrealism-heavy show just as our current plight has many such characteristics.

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June 10, 2020 0

Helaine Blumenfeld – Looking Up

For the art lover frustrated by the closure of galleries and museums during these fraught virus-infected times, there exists some possible respite with a new socially distancing-friendly exhibition by that maestro of public sculpture, Helaine Blumenfeld.

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March 22, 2020 0

Photo50 – London Art Fair

Overlooking the 126 galleries exhibiting at this year’s London Art Fair is Photo50, the fair’s annual guest-curated show devoted to the most distinctive elements of current photographic practice. This year, the curator is writer and gallerist Laura Noble who has assembled 10 esteemed female photographers all over the age of 50.

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January 21, 2020 0

Jeff Lowe – In the Close Distance

Jeff Lowe has been up there with the leading lights of British sculpture for decades. He secured his first solo exhibition in Cork Street while he was still a student at Central Saint Martins in the 1970s and has represented Britain at the Paris Biennale among many other achievements. His new exhibition at London’s Pangolin Gallery shows that his passion to innovate and test himself with new approaches and materials is as strong as ever.

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January 17, 2020 0

Counter Acts: Incomplete Histories 1984 – present

As the UK’s contemporary art scene gears up for the announcement of this year’s prestigious Turner Prize winner, University of the Arts London (UAL) has mounted a fascinating exhibition featuring the work of alumni, both teachers and students, who have either won or been nominated for the prize since its inception in 1984.

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November 29, 2019 0

Leo Villareal – Pace Gallery

A silver sun sends out waves in pulses that suddenly dissolve into a swirling mass of tadpole-like shapes. A molten core waxes and wanes while shooting stars erupt around it in seemingly endless and varied sequences. These white light installations, one nearly 40 foot wide, some as individual pieces, others as triptychs, are by American artist Leo Villareal in his first solo exhibition at London’s Pace Gallery.

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November 25, 2019 0

Patrick Altes – Tolerance

This new exhibition by Patrick Altes, a leading light in the emerging French-Algerian art movement, is something of a ‘cri de coeur’. As the title spells out, each work, be it digital print, painting, sculpture or installation, engenders a plea for understanding in a world beset by seemingly insoluble problems and dissension.

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November 19, 2019 0

Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan – Kettle’s Yard

Fierce nationalism and inter-religious tension in South Asia have been a constant feature of the region’s modern history, a legacy of Partition in 1947 and the struggle for independence for Bangladesh in 1971. Millions of people were displaced and millions were killed either directly or through famine. The resultant instability of concepts like home and nationality is explored by 11 acclaimed artists in a new and stimulating exhibition at Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard, curated by Dr Devika Singh, Curator of International Art at Tate Modern.

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November 14, 2019 0