ART PODCASTS
It’s not often you can say that you can actually affect the nature of a sculpture. In Johannes Girardoni’s first solo exhibition in the UK, entitled Sensing Singularity at London’s Lévy Gorvy Gallery, the viewer gets to be part of the action. Continue reading “Johannes Girardoni-Sensing Singularity”
Like so much good art, ceramicist James Oughtibridge’s work only begins with a vague idea of what he wants to end up with. His sculptures grow and evolve from slabs of clay to round, curvaceous forms in which perspectives change and deceive around undulations, peaks and troughs defined by sometimes smooth, sometimes sharp edges. There are openings like blowholes, spheres resembling bubbles with a certain lightness enhanced by the interplay of light and shadow that contradicts the weight of the medium. Continue reading “James Oughtibridge – Ebb and Flow”
The London Open 2018, which was launched on Thursday at The Whitechapel Gallery, claims to feature some of the best contemporary art around by those resident in the capital. It happens every three years in a tradition dating back to 1932. Its judging panel, including the Gallery’s Emily Butler, whittled 2,600 applications down to those representing just 22 artists. They were chosen not only for the quality of their work, but also for representing various themes current in London over the past three years and for having a long-term engagement with their subject matter. Continue reading “The London Open 2018”
A group of students from the Masters in Fine Arts course at London’s Goldsmith College have come up with an usual sculpture exhibition at a most unusual venue.
In the backstreets of London near Borough Market, a stone’s throw from the site of the old Marshalsea debtor’s prison made famous in Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit, lies a small patch of derelict land that has been turned into a wild garden. In the short distance one can see the towering buildings of the City, and closer still, the dominating presence of The Shard, London’s tallest skyscraper. The garden’s railings have become a shrine to honour those recently departed. Continue reading “Outside – Crossbones Garden”
Surrealism has come to Islington in a most macabre form as the James Freeman Gallery exhibits two masters of the contemporary style of the genre in Carolein Smit and Ray Caesar. The pair are quite unalike and work in different media. Yet both share a penchant for unsettling the viewer with images intended to disturb. They also both reference art history in their own ways. Continue reading “Carolein Smit and Ray Caesar”
A group of female runners complete with all the typical paraphernalia – caps, earphones, water bottle, Nike swooshes on their trainers – are caught in mid-flight and their features reduced down to cartoon-like images and colour. It’s classic Julian Opie. Running Women represents an everyday occurrence, distilled down and given a new dynamic by becoming an amalgamation of different moving figures. Continue reading “Julian Opie”
If you like Banksy, then you will love Nancy Fouts. The two artists share that same subversive humour, cleverness and imagination. With Fouts, however, you get a new dimension, literally, as she expresses herself through a variety of styles of sculpture as well as painting.
In particular, she loves to juxtapose seemingly disconnected objects in order to subvert their function in a playful way. As she puts it, “the real and the surreal go together”. So, a gun is covered in rose thorns to make it impossible to use without hurting oneself, a hummingbird’s long bill acts as a stylus on a record turntable, a rabbit is wearing curlers, a peacock’s fan becomes an Indian chief’s headdress, a lovebird plays with the ring pull of a grenade, a crow wears a ponytail and so on and so forth. As Sir Peter Blake once said, “she makes everyday objects extraordinary”. Continue reading “Nancy Fouts, Down the Rabbit Hole”
Considering Art 