Reviews
Inside Reviews
Where Three Dreams Cross, Whitechapel Gallery, London
Sunday, 24 January 2010
A century and half of photographs from the subcontinent wrong-foots Kipling and the post-colonial blow-hards
Ryan Mosley, Alison Jacques Gallery, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Two years ago, this newspaper talent-spotted a young painter. Ryan Mosley, who is from Chesterfield, that small market town with a crooked spire at its heart, had recently graduated from the Royal College of Art. Now he is enjoying his first solo show at a major West End gallery. What's the fuss all about?
Boyarde Messenger, Business Design Centre, London (Rated 4/ 5 )
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Entranced by shots in the dark
20:50 Richard Wilson, Saatchi Gallery, London (Rated 4/ 5 )
Monday, 18 January 2010
Another fine and sumptuous mess
On the Move, Estorick Collection, London
Sunday, 17 January 2010
A show curated by Jonathan Miller raises all kinds of questions, not only about how we perceive movement in still images, but also about what art is
Karla Black, Inverleith House, Edinburgh (Rated 4/ 5 )
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Plaster, powder, paint and dirt
Trompe l'oeil, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (Rated 3/ 5 )
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Every work of art contains a calculated element of deception. But the art of trompe l'oeil pushes deception to extremes. It is flagrant, almost hubristic in its wish to deceive, like some conjuror whose final hand is a risky act of sheer bravura at which he simply cannot afford to fail. Trompe l'oeil, in short, is optical illusionism overlarded with attention-grabbing special effects.
Visible Invisible, Parasol Unit, London
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Mind games, lies, deception – all are playfully and thoughtfully explored in this exhibition that sets off a new trend
Barbara Kruger, Sprüth Magers, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Staring out of a window into the wintry drizzle on London's Dover Street is a small black- and-white image of a man's face, streaked in blood, with wide, maniacal staring eyes. The image looks like a still from a Hammer horror film. Strips of bold text have been pasted onto the man's face, creating the appearance of a chic, ironic advertisement. "Our prices," it reads, "are insane". The work is a collage by the American artist Barbara Kruger, hanging in the window of Sprüth Magers gallery as part of Paste Up, a small exhibition of her collages from the 1980s. While hanging this piece in the window might be something of a joke on the commercial gallery's role as "shop", trying to entice in viewers during times of recession, there is something darker in the horror of the man's terrorised expression that hints at the true insanity of economics, an insanity that is now continually making itself felt.
Craftivism, Arnolfini, Bristol
Sunday, 3 January 2010
If you long for a dose of revivalist moral rectitude, talk to the hand
For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn't there, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
Sunday, 20 December 2009
This is the ICA at its best – a scattergun show that's funny, clever and impressive in its incoherence. See it if you can; if nothing else, it will make you think
Earth: Art of a Changing World, GSK Contemporary, Royal Academy, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Sunday, 13 December 2009
As global decisions are made in Copenhagen, artists offer their visions of our shared future
For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn't there, ICA, London (Rated 1/ 5 )
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Little reason to purr with delight
Earth – Art of a Changing World, Royal Academy of Arts, London (Rated 2/ 5 )
Monday, 7 December 2009
Timely, but not earth-shattering
Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, London
Sunday, 6 December 2009
The V&A;'s 10 new galleries cost nearly £32m; they tell the story of a millennium of bling, from Coventry to Cremona
Design Real, Serpentine Gallery, London (Rated 4/ 5 )
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Is this a chair I see before me?
Edward Bawden, Bedford Gallery, Bedford (Rated 4/ 5 )
Monday, 30 November 2009
Like Dufy, Edward Bawden looks easy to imitate, until you try. Unlike the ebullient French painter of pleasure, however, Bawden could not have been more English – in the manner of his time.
Nothing Matters, White Cube, London
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Britart's bad boy gets his paints out again, but the results are not exactly Bacon ... more like a dog's breakfast
The Hoerengracht, National Gallery, London
Sunday, 22 November 2009
The National Gallery is the unlikely setting for an artistic re-creation of Amsterdam's red-light district
David Hockney: 1960–1968: A Marriage of Styles, Contemporary, Nottingham (Rated 3/ 5 )
Thursday, 19 November 2009
When Hockney first made a splash
Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize Exhibition, Painters' Hall, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Subtle departures from real life
Frank Auerbach: London Building Sites 1952-62, Courtauld Gallery, London
Sunday, 15 November 2009
What a mess! But that's how it should be
Van Gogh's Letters: The Artist Speaks, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
The Arts of Islam, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Van Gogh was a prolific letter writer who illustrated his correspondence with sketches for fully-fledged pictures still to come
European Fields: Hans van der Meer, Host Gallery, London
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Rooney who? This is European football's grass roots exposed
Jann Haworth, Art Gallery, Wolverhampton (Rated 3/ 5 )
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Pop Art given a good stuffing
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FIVE BEST EXHIBITIONS
Mark Wallinger
(Anthony Reynolds, London)
(Anthony Reynolds, London)
The leading British conceptualiser: two concise, witty and brilliant variations on the “I”, including ‘I Am Innocent’, a spinning copy of Velázquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent.
(020 7439 2201) to 17 Jul
Quilts
(V&A;, London)
A historical survey of glorious quilts, from 1700 to now, documenting private and public lives: love, war, marriage, births, deaths, patriotism, fashion.
(020 7942 2000) to 4 Jul
Richard Deacon
(New Art Centre, Salisbury)
Tubes, blocks, houses, frameworks: a parade of small cardboard constructions, translated into white ceramic.
(01980 862244) to 25 Jul
Italian Renaissance Drawings
(British Museum, London)
Fra Angelico, Jacopo and Gentile Bellini, Botticelli, Carpaccio, Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Michelangelo, Verrocchio, Titian, Leonardo... quality stuff.
(020 7323 8299) to 25 Jul
Bridget Riley: From Life
(National Portrait Gallery, London)
hese early portraits were made before the dazzling abstracts: 15 life drawings, stressing her underlying commitment to structure and observation.
(020 7312 2463) to 5 Dec