The Venice Biennale, long regarded as a hothouse for artistic and political exchange, is again embroiled in controversy as thousands of artists have joined forces, signing an open letter…
28 February 2024
It’s a long time since I braved a visit to (GSA) Glasgow School of Art. Since the two tragic fires, a nightmare-burnt edifice covered in scaffolding and now shrouded in a white veil of plastic…
13 February 2024
AI has been all over the papers lately. It has even prompted Government intervention on both sides of the pond….
26 July 2023
The Venice Biennale sparks surreal conversations between past and present in ‘Milk of Dreams’, curated by Cecilia Alemani
2 May 2022
Cornelia Parker exploded a garden shed with the help of the British army. She’d contacted them for advice and was invited to the Army School of Ammunition
28 April 2022
Love them or loathe them, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have now established their place in the art world firmament and, in doing so, have hogged the headlines.
11 April 2022
A recent Opinion piece on the website Hyperallegenic fiercely condemned Frida Kahlo, long one of the patron saints of contemporary feminist art.
18 July 2021
The new over-life size statue group of Princess Diana, just unveiled at Kensington Palace, to celebrate what would have been her sixtieth birthday, shows the late princess surrounded by three children.
10 July 2021
The Royal Academy of Arts has backed down and apologised to the German textile artist Jess de Wahls over transphobic row.
23 June 2021
What’s up for art here in London, once the pandemic is finally over? Will we all be able to go back to the state of things as they were, in the jolly days before the plague?
17 February 2021
The Ben Uri Gallery in London has just come up with a new operation model, better suited to the needs of relatively small outfits, such as itself. Or should I say that those who run it have been savvy enough to recognise that the contemporary art world has been massively changed.
13 January 2021
Looking at official galleries here in Britain (all temporarily closed as of this publication) – more especially at those situated in London – it is immediately evident that a revolution has taken place.
30 December 2020
The appearance of a new Banksy graffito in Bristol more or less confirms his position as the genuine top dog… Read More
12 December 2020
On 21 September, a statement quietly appeared on the website of the National Gallery Washington. It announced the postponement, of the “Philip Guston Now” exhibition
6 October 2020
At the moment there is an undeclared contest going on, both within the British art world and also, on a much larger scale, in the international sphere. This contest takes several inter-related forms. For example, there is the competition between official and semi-official galleries and commercial ones.
29 July 2020
The debate about the continuing use of the term ‘Old Master’ has been re-energised by exhibitions shortly to open or reopen, such as ‘Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company’ at the Wallace Collection and ‘Women Modern Masters’ at The Scottish Gallery.
8 July 2020
The BLM protests in recent weeks have shown us how relevant issues of race still are. It’s shocking to see that racial discrimination still exists in this day and age. It is our role as cultural influencers to give our attention and support to the fight against systemic racism.
13 June 2020
As a sculptor who has used Victorian and other found sculptures in my work for some time, the increasingly heated debate on the future of public Victorian statues, buildings and street names across the country has resonated with me.
11 June 2020
Sotheby’s announced this week that a small, delicate Rembrandt self-portrait is to be auctioned on July 28th, here in London. The painting is unusually intimate, (about 17 x 22cm) and was painted in 1632 when the artist was 26 years old.
11 June 2020
Tate Modern is easily the most popular gallery of modern art in the world… For a location that consists mostly of open spaces, lightly sprinkled with the odd moment of art, that is some achievemen
2 June 2020
Who would have thought early February when Art Basel Hong Kong was cancelled that the coronavirus crisis was going to spread like lighting to everywhere else on the planet
13 April 2020
As the contemporary art world goes dark, and as galleries – official spaces and commercial ones – slam shut their doors, one inevitably starts to wonder what the art world will be like once all this is over—the British art world, and also the global one.
22 March 2020
First, the Louvre in Paris closed. Then the galleries in London started to shut their doors, one by one, like the “lamps going out all over Europe” as the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey remarked on the eve of the First World War, adding “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”
18 March 2020
Penny Macbeth has been appointed as the new director of the Glasgow School of Art. Following a tumultuous week of uncertainty, as reported by Clare Henry on Artlyst, the institution has been in flux needing a pair of safe hands to sort it out.
26 February 2020
Today’s terrible news, a local Glasgow council is closing Mackintosh’s iconic Scotland Street School Museum. I despair. Soon there will be nothing Mackintosh left in Glasgow. Ironically the city needs Mackintosh as a focal point for culture and tourism. Glasgow’s love affair with Mackintosh is far from over.
22 February 2020
There have been few iconic institutions more beloved that Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art.
16 February 2020
On Monday, January 13 the Times (London) published a chirpy article by Ben Luke promising wonders to come in London’s official galleries during the coming year. I have to say that the prospects he offered didn’t look so wonderful to me – that is to say where contemporary art is concerned.
15 January 2020
A New Year, a new decade – I’ve been thinking about all the things I currently don’t like about the contemporary art scene here in Britain. Most of all, I don’t like its pervasive self-righteousness, the ever-increasing assumption that ‘official art’ has all the answers.
1 January 2020
In 1987, in a eulogy given at a Memorial Mass for Andy Warhol, the art historian John Richardson revealed the… Read More
29 December 2019
Art has incredible power. It is a force for cultural reflection, social change and an invaluable medium through which we challenge existing assumptions, broaden our outlook and catalyse change.
9 December 2019
The Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize has come round once again, just as the announcement went out that the NPG will very soon close its doors for a much-needed update, and won’t be accessible again for three years. It’s hard to be entirely regretful about the hiatus.
8 November 2019
Recently the Guardian newspaper here in Britain offered yet another of those ‘best of’ lists to which both the print press and websites of various kinds are now addicted. In this case, what it listed was ‘the best art of the 21st century’.
29 September 2019
