ART PODCASTS
The story of Icarus, the boy who ignored his father’s advice and flew too close to the sun, so melting the wax on his wings and causing his literal downfall, is the allegory at the centre of London-born artist Davina Jackson’s new solo exhibition, Close to the Sun.
Continue reading “Davina Jackson – Close to the Sun”
Rebecca Appleby is more than a ceramicist. She is an all-round artist who uses ceramics as her canvas. Her abstract pieces are sculptures informed by art, architecture and industrial archaeology. Her work over the past two decades has centred on an exploration of the contemporary urban landscape and its relationship with nature. Now she has a mostly new body of work, Inner Order, just opened at London’s Contemporary Ceramics Centre.
Continue reading “Rebecca Appleby – Inner Order”
As part of a double-header, The Flowers Gallery in Hoxton is staging in its upper space Tom Lovelace’s first solo exhibition here for four years. While the Ken Currie show downstairs comprises straightforward narrative paintings with albeit dark subtexts, Lovelace’s work could not be more different.
Continue reading “Tom Lovelace – Interval”
Brightly coloured horses rear, sharp-toothed lions roar, a blade from a cubist figure flashes, a French policeman appears (what’s he doing there?), helicopters and swans and cruise missiles hover while drill bits hang ominously above computer error messages.
Continue reading “Philip Colbert – Hunt Paintings”
As the latest in a series of artists who use Virtual and Augmented Reality as part of their working practice, the Gazelli Art House, London features a new exhibition by Russian duo, The Recycle Group, named because they use both recycled imagery and materials. The pair have won awards for their pioneering use of technologies and the way they bridge incompatible subjects such as the classic and the contemporary. They represented Russia at the 57th Venice biennale. Now they examine the relationship between man and machine.
Continue reading “Recycle Group – Nature of Non-Existence”
Me Somewhere Else is the latest installation by Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota to use thread as its medium. It forms part of a two-handed exhibition with Jonas Burgert’s Schlagen und Bleiben. A billowing cloud of blood-red thread hovers over the ground floor gallery, anchored by a pair of bronze feet. These are casts of the artist’s own feet and their solid, weighted nature contrasts with the ethereal quality of the rest of the work.
Continue reading “Chiharu Shiota/Jonas Burgert”
A few days ago I was sitting in a café in the east end of London when a couple of students came in and asked me some pre-prepared questions about how the area had changed over the past decades.
Without having to say anything, I pointed to my flavoured latte and to the vegan cakes on offer. We soon got on to the subject of gentrification, the high price of rents , the erosion of public amenities and the dominance of service industries. Continue reading “Elmgreen and Dragset – This is how we bite our tongue”
“I want to take the sting out of vulnerability,” says Charming Baker at the unveiling of several of his new works on this theme in a solo show at Jealous Gallery. “I want to take the things we’re frightened of and make us feel better about them.” Continue reading “Charming Baker – So It Goes…”
Like most ceramic artists, Bev Bell-Hughes began by making functional slipware, producing cups, saucers, pots and suchlike and selling them in markets in London. At Harrow art school, she began intuitively pinching the clay, a technique she has refined and which is in abundant evidence at her latest exhibition of 45 new works at London’s Contemporary Ceramics Centre entitled Tidal Echo. Continue reading “Tidal Echo – Bev Bell-Hughes”
For 10 years until 2017, Sophie Morrish was a familiar sight to many of the 1200 inhabitants of North Uist, the remote island in the Outer Hebrides and one of the most bio-diverse places in the UK. It’s a windy place where the calmness of the top image, Evening light from Kyles Beach, 2013, is an all-too rare occurrence for more than a few days at a time.
As a self-confessed obsessive, Morrish would walk the beaches of the 100 square mile island, observing, finding, photographing and collecting some of the remains of the fauna washed up on the shore. Continue reading “Sophie Morrish – Island Time: North Uist Works”
Considering Art 