April 2013
5 posts
Doris Salcedo, White Cube Mason's Yard - until...
White Cube Mason’s Yard presents new work by Colombian artist, Doris Salcedo. Well known for her creation of what have been termed, ‘memory sculptures’, Salcedo, works in her own words, ‘with materials that are already charged with significance, with meaning they have required in the practice of everyday life’. Often taking specific historical events as her point of departure, Salcedo is...
'Rose Bush', Sadie Coles Gallery- until 30th...
Sadie Coles Gallery presents, ‘Rose Bush’, an exhibition of largely new work by Not So Young Anymore British Artist, Sarah Lucas in a space dedicated to her work on the first floor of the gallery.
‘Situation’ channels the spirit of the artist-led exhibitions of the late 1980s and 1990s with which Lucas and her contemporaries launched their careers. It is a wonderfully unpolished, starkly lit...
'The Bruce Lacey Experience', Camden Arts Centre-...
Bruce Lacey is one of Britain’s greatest visionary, exuberant and eccentric artists. His indefatigable pursuit of ‘making and doing’ has been a kind of personal psychotherapy or rather, a cathartic working-through of his life’s experiences, an approach which begun in his early 20s when whilst serving with the Royal Navy he was hospitalised and diagnosed with tuberculosis. It was during this...
Excuse the anachronistic nature of the posts I am currently uploading, they are archived pieces originally written for Who’s Jack Magazine.
'The Uncanny', Ronchini Gallery- 16 January-16...
Ronchini Gallery London presents ‘The Uncanny’, an exhibition of recent work by Adeline de Monseignat and Berndnaut Smilde. Curated by James Putnam, ‘The Uncanny’ takes its title from Sigmund Freud’s completely compelling and yet ‘strange theoretical novel’[1] of the same name. Published in 1919 and intended as a mode of ‘aesthetic investigation’, ‘The Uncanny’ is unique not only within Freud’s...
January 2013
1 post
Future Map 2012: A University of the Arts London...
On Thursday 17th January I was lucky enough to attend the opening of ‘Future Map’, an exhibition of the work of 50 graduating BA and MA students selected from across the University of the Arts London. Now in its 15th year, ‘Future Map’ is London’s leading annual exhibition of the finest emerging talent. Curated by University of the Arts London College Deans Mark Dunhill (Central Saint Martins...
December 2012
4 posts
'Here's looking at you, kid'
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman filming ‘Casablanca’ c. Warner Bros
Just a quick note to say, ‘Casablanca’ is such a great film isn’t it? I watched it again for the second time this afternoon. Released in 1942 ‘Casablanca’, filmed and set during the Second World War in Morocco, was initially well received but has since grown in popularity becoming...
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I meant to upload this piece, an edited version of which I wrote for the Mulberry blog (masterminded by my lovely friend Carli Humphries), back in October but somehow it slipped my mind, so anyway, voilà:
The Best of British at Frieze Art Fair 2012:
Frieze London, which celebrates its tenth edition this year, opened to the public yesterday showcasing new work by over 1000 artists from all over the...
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Rain, rain go away; come again another day!
Amalia Pica, Catachresis #18 (legs of the table, neck of the bottle, head of the screw), 2012.
Photography: Sander Tiedema
I’m seriously wondering when it will ever stop raining as I’m hoping to venture out at some point, while I’m in this waterlogged part of the world, to pay a visit to Modern Art Oxford. A year ago I reviewed ‘An Unfinished World’, MAO’s...
September 2012
1 post
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'Parlour Jardin', Oxford's Botanical Gardens,...
I am super excited about attending ‘Parlour Jardin’ tomorrow night. Billed as ‘An Evening of the Uncanny’, ‘Parlour Jardin’, the result of a collaboration between Parlour Collective and the Botanic Gardens, will see the work of 17 international contemporary artists performed within the gardens.
Saturday 8th September 5.30-7.30pm. Click here to book online...
May 2012
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FINAL WEEKS: ‘Lucian Freud Portraits’, The...
Lucian Freud, Girl with a Kitten, 1947
‘I’ve always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It’s people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.’ Lucian Freud.
Lucian Freud (1922 – 2011) was undoubtedly one of the most important and influential artists of his generation and paintings of...
April 2012
13 posts
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‘Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed’,...
Louise Bourgeois, Janus Fleuri (1968)
The Freud Museum hosts a select exhibition of works by Franco-American artist, Louise Bourgeois curated by literary archivist of the Bourgeois collection, Philip Larratt-Smith. The Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens, was the house where Sigmund spent the last year of his life, September 27 1938 to 23 September 1939 and the house in which his wife...
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Having recently visited Art Sensus’ Eve Arnold exhibition I am super excited about an exhibition of photographs entitled ‘Magnum on Set’ opening on 21st April to mark the opening of a new gallery at the London Film Museum, London SE1. The Magnum Agency founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour has selected close to 150 of its most famous film images...
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A great friend gave me for my Birthday recently, Camilla Morton’s Manolo Blahnik and the Tale of The Elves and The Shoemaker a charming fashion fairy tale memoir of high heels and happy endings complete with Blahnik’s delightful illustrations of fantastically frivolous shoes. The tale of The Elves and the Shoemaker originally by the Grimm brothers is reimagined within the context of Blahnik’s...
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‘Mondrian and Nicholson: In Parallel’, The...
The Courtauld presents a selection of works by modernist giant Piet Mondrian and great British abstract artist, Ben Nicholson in order to illustrate the creative relationship between the two that developed throughout the 1930s, culminating, at Nicholson’s suggestion, in Mondrian’s move to London in 1938, when, for a short period the city was an international centre of modernist art and...
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‘All About Eve’: The Photography of Eve Arnold,...
‘A friend once commented on my life as a one-woman cultural exchange’, Eve Arnold,
Art Sensus presents an exhibition of photographs by American photojournalist, Eve Arnold who died in January of this year aged 99. ‘All About Eve’, curated by great friend Zelda Cheatle and former Magnum Photos employee, Brigitte Lardinois, is a celebration of a an impressively heterogeneous career, a career which...
March 2012
18 posts
Up next, my thoughts on the ‘Mondrian/Nicholson: In Parallel’ exhibition at The Courtauld, The National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition of Lucian Freud portraits and ‘All About Eve’: The Photography of Eve Arnold.
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Sandrine Estrade Boulet
Earlier today I had the pleasure of interviewing French photographer and street artist Sandrine Estrade Boulet for Who’s Jack magazine. Sandrine lives and works in Boulogne Billancourt and sees her role as an artist to ‘create sensitive work that is fun, positive and totally disinhibited’. ‘Putting a smile of people’s faces’, she says, ‘is what...
'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and The Little...
Earlier this week I was at the Royal Opera House to see ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, a ballet in three acts choreographed by former Royal Ballet dancer, Christopher Wheeldon. ‘Alice’ is the Royal Ballet’s first new, full length ballet danced to a commissioned score in twenty years. It was a magical performance, wonderfully humorous and visually...
‘Two in One’, Charlotte Mayer and Almuth...
Almuth Tebbenhoff, Five Star
Pangolin London presents a uniquely dialogic exhibition of sculpture, prints and drawings by Czech artist Charlotte Mayer and German artist Almuth Tebbenhoff. ‘Two in One’ encourages us to view the artists’ work in juxtaposition so as to encourage reflection on the similarities and differences in both the form and content of their sculptural creations whilst...
Yayoi Kusama, Tate Modern- on now until 5th June...
Yayoi Kusama, Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show, 1963
‘…a polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement… Polka dots are a way to infinity.’ (Yayoi Kusama, Manhattan Suicide Addict, 1978)
Yayoi Kusama is...
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‘Queen Elizabeth II’: photographs by Cecil Beaton,...
Cecil Beaton photographed by Paul Tanqueray, 1937
Although the main focus of this exhibition, as indicated by the title, is the Queen and her royal family, the real star of the show in my opinion is the man behind the camera, the one and only Cecil Beaton. Finding Jubilee jingoism and all things related somewhat jejune, the most interesting section of this exhibition (sadly rather measly in size...
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Ozymandias
Oddly enough it was Sunday night’s episode of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ that brought back to me lines from Shelley’s sonorous and rather sinister sonnet, Ozymandias, originally published in Leigh Hunt’s The Examiner in January 1818. As it is a short poem I thought I would reproduce the whole below:
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast...
Up next: my thoughts on the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at Tate Modern, ‘Queen Elizabeth II’: photographs by Cecil Beaton at the Victoria and Albert Museum and ‘Mondrian/Nicholson in Parallel’ at The Courtauld Gallery… watch this space!
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'The Romance of the Middle Ages', The Bodleian...
My literary explorations of Oxford also took me, somewhat inevitably to the Bodleian Library where there was an exhibition entitled ‘The Romance of the Middle Ages’ designed to explore the ways in which medieval romances have inspired writers and artists throughout the centuries. The exhibition’s curator, Dr Nicholas Perkins, brings together an incredible selection of the Bodleian’s rare and...
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Musings on Oxford’s literary history… literary...
C. S Lewis looking rather incredulous, smoking a pipe.
University College, London, was, in 1828, the first higher education institution to offer English as a subject of study at degree level. However, it was not really English as we know it, a combination of literary and linguistic components, being instead, principally the study of English language. English literature as such was first taught...
February 2012
30 posts
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P.B Shelley Memorial, University College, Oxford
‘Till the future dares
Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity.’
P.B Shelley, Adonais, 1821
Above is a picture of Edward Onslow Ford’s memorial to poet Percy Bysshe Shelley on display at University College, Oxford, the college that he briefly attended and from which he was expelled after disseminating a pamphlet entitled The Necessity...
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'Queery Leary Nonsense'
Also in my great grandmother’s portfolio, which I was fortunate enough to be able to look through the other day, was a sketch book featuring a selection of beautifully illustrated nursery rhyme fragments including old favourites such as ‘Little Jack Horner’, ‘Lucy Lockett’, ‘Mary, Mary Quite Contrary’, ‘Jack and Jill’ and ‘Sing a...
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Musings on 1920s fashion
The subject of my previous post, ‘The Cat’s Pyjamas’ has inspired me not only to rediscover a white ovoid coat from Wallis’ 1923 collection that had thus far been neglected since last winter when I bought it, but also to think about twenties fashion more generally. Indeed twenties fashion is, for the umpteenth time, very much back in vogue and is one of a number of key...
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'The Cat's Pyjamas', 24th February, Guildhall Art...
Unfortunately I can’t make it but this event looks like a ‘must-see’ for all those yearning to revive the glamour of the ‘Golden Twenties’.
From the Guildhall Art Gallery website: ‘Inspired by the exhibition Age of Elegance: 1890 - 1930, join us for a Late View celebrating the Jazz Age in all its decadent splendour.
We will be kicking up our heels to the...
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Keats House, Keats Grove, Hampstead
John Keats (1795-1821) first visited Hampstead in 1816 because of his admiration for the poet and editor Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), who was living in the Vale of Health. Hunt was among the first to appreciate the great merit of Keats’ early poetry and published his first poem, ‘O Solitude!’ in The Examiner. Later, Keats and his brothers lodged with the local postman nearby in Well Walk. Keats...
