Paul Black Archives

The Best Exhibitions Of 2016 – Chosen By Paul Black

Paul Black chooses his best exhibitions of 2016 and delves deeper than the blockbusters and often further afield from London.

Jimmy Cauty Delivers A Post-Brexit, Post-Trump Disaster-Scape. Merry Christmas

A shipping container covered in graffiti sits among the dreaming spires of Oxford, and my partner hears a rather haughty voice remark ‘…Well I don’t think it’s appropriate for the setting of the university, …and not very Christmassy!’,

Modern Art Oxford, The Vanished Reality: Temporal, Sociological, And Cultural Locations

Modern Art Oxford presents its final exhibition in a series of shows celebrating the Gallery’s 50th anniversary; concluding its KALEIDOSCOPE series with ‘The Vanished Reality’. This multi-generational exhibition presents work by Marcel Broodthaers, Hans Haacke, Iman Issa, Darcy Lange, Louise Lawler, Maria Loboda, Kerry James Marshall, Katja Novitskova, and Hardeep Pandhal.

Hepworth Prize For Sculpture: Conceptual, Kinetic, Buoyant And Poetic

Finally, the UK has a sculpture prize – The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture – at The Hepworth, Wakefield. The prize has been created to celebrate the Gallery’s 5th anniversary and is named after one of the country’s most celebrated sculptors: Barbara Hepworth.

JMW Turner And John Akomfrah: Ocean Drama At Turner Contemporary

Turner Contemporary is presenting the exhibition ‘JMW Turner: Adventures in Colour’; and in association with the great British painter’s reflections on light, colour, and the sea, contemporary British artist John Akomfrah OBE presents his installation: the video triptych ‘Vertigo Sea’.

Hercules Segers And Frans Post: A Very Contemporary Golden Age At Rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam is currently presenting a particularly experimental and mysterious artist from the Dutch Golden Age: Hercules Segers. This exhibition is the first complete exploration of the artist’s oeuvre, piecing together the fascinating strands of Segers’ practice in an attempt to separate fact from the apocryphal. The show is also rather neatly juxtaposed with […]

Mirren Kessling: Performative Reflections Of Identity At Modern Art Oxford

Modern Art Oxford is currently presenting the final exhibition from Platform 2016, created to support the work of up & coming graduate artists. This is the fifth edition of the annual region-wide project – consisting of a series of consecutive solo exhibitions hosted in Modern Art Oxford’s Project Space, with exhibitions by participating artists – […]

Marina Abramovic, Richard Long, And Dorothy Cross At Modern Art Oxford

‘It’s Me to the World’ is Modern Art Oxford’s fourth exhibition and iteration of KALEIDOSCOPE, a celebration of 50 years as an internationally acclaimed gallery. The exhibition features works by Marina Abramović, Mohammed Qasim Ashfaq, Dorothy Cross, Richard Long, Agnes Martin, Otobong Nkanga, Yoko Ono, Hannah Rickards, and Richard Long. Upon entering the gallery the […]

Photo Feature: Richard Long Walking A Labyrinth At Modern Art Oxford

Modern Art Oxford is soon to unveil its fourth exhibition ‘It’s Me to the World’ in KALEIDOSCOPE, a celebration of 50 years as an internationally acclaimed gallery. The latest iteration will feature works by Marina Abramović, Mohammed Qasim Ashfaq, Dorothy Cross, Richard Long, Agnes Martin, Otobong Nkanga, Yoko Ono and Hannah Rickards. But the work […]

Maria Lassnig: Baconian Inevitability Lingers At Tate Liverpool

Artlyst has travelled to Tate Liverpool which is currently presenting the first UK retrospective of late Austrian artist Maria Lassnig in an exhibition that runs in parallel with the gallery’s survey of Francis Bacon’s use of the space frame in ‘Invisible Rooms’. The show features 40 large scale paintings, the exhibition spans the Lassnig’s entire […]

The Ruskin School Of Art Degree Show 2016: The Highlights

Artlyst has returned to the Ruskin School of Art, for the BFA and MFA exhibitions 2016, after investigating the school’s ‘Preliminaries’ exhibition, which highlighted the burgeoning talents of Ruskin’s first year; now we explore the graduating artists of this prestigious school, bringing you some of the best work on offer from a collection of young […]

Photo Feature: Louise Nevelson, Iconic Groundbreaking Sculptures At Pace London

Pace London is currently presenting an exhibition of works by Louise Nevelson, surveying the artist’s practice from the mid-1950s until her death in 1988, and is the fourth solo presentation of the artist’s work ever in London and the first since 2009. Nevelson was an iconic and vital figure in post-war New York, regarded for […]

The Slade School Of Art Postgraduate Degree Show 2016: The Highlights

Artlyst has attended The Slade School Of Art MA MFA PhD Degree Show 2016 to investigate the fresh and exciting new talent that the prestigious London art school will soon offer up to an unsuspecting art world. This renowned institution dates from 1868 when solicitor and philanthropist Felix Slade bequeathed funds to establish three Chairs […]

Photo Feature: Mystics And Rationalists At Modern Art Oxford

Modern Art Oxford is currently marking 50 years as an internationally acclaimed powerhouse of contemporary visual culture. Celebrating the role art plays in shaping our perception of the world, KALEIDOSCOPE offers a shifting prism on an illustrious history founded upon the vision of artists. Iconic works from the past return to the gallery from across […]

Dorothy Cross: Mystics, Rationalists, And Temporal Ponderings At Modern Art Oxford

Modern Art Oxford is currently presenting works by Cork-born artist Dorothy Cross, as part of KALEIDOSCOPE: Mystics and Rationalists, the Gallery’s year-long programme of unfolding exhibitions to celebrate their 50th anniversary. The show Features Karla Black, Daniel Buren, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Dan Graham, Sol LeWitt, Yoko Ono, Amy Sillman, and Dorothy Cross. Cross works in sculpture, […]

The Ruskin School Of Art Preliminaries Exhibition 2016: The Highlights

Artlyst has attended the Ruskin Preliminaries 2016 to investigate the burgeoning talent that the prestigious Oxford art school may unleash upon the art world in the not too distant future, and examine the student’s potential response to the school’s historical relationship with drawing. The Ruskin dates from 1871, when John Ruskin first opened his School […]

Andy Warhol: ‘Brand-Warhol’, Celebrity Friends And Soup Cans At Halcyon Gallery

Halcyon Gallery is currently presenting its first exhibition devoted entirely to the works of Andy Warhol. The show has over one hundred pieces on display, including graphics, portfolios and original works on paper and canvas. The exhibition explores Warhol’s works from the artist’s early illustrative works of the 1950s, through to Warhol’s Pop Art heyday […]

Martine Syms: Inherited Images, Inherited Identities At ICA London

The ICA London’s Upper Gallery is currently presenting the exhibition ‘Fact & Trouble’ by American artist Martine Syms, exploring the space between lived experience and its representation in everyday life, and contemporary media. The artist presents her latest video series ‘Lessons’ – an ongoing project – which the gallery describes as a long, incomplete poem […]

Guan Xiao: The Victor’s Privilege – Rewriting History At The ICA London

The ICA London is currently presenting the work of Chinese artist Guan Xiao. The artist employs mainly sculpture and video, exploring the influence of the proliferation of the digital image as the primary form of information exchange. Xiao works with appropriated video clips found on the internet juxtaposed with sculptural elements and installation, exploring ‘ways […]

Photo Feature: Dense Mesh: Exploring The Global Technological Apparatus At Carroll/Fletcher

Carroll/Fletcher is currently presenting ‘Dense Mesh’, a group exhibition of seven artists exploring technological progression in society via a collective response to Czech-born philosopher, writer and journalist Vilem Flusser’s book ‘Into the Universe of Technical Images’. Described as society ‘Poised between hope and despair for a humanity facing an urgent communication crisis, forecasting either the […]

Keith Coventry: A Disposable Modernist Dystopia At Pace Gallery London

Pace London is currently presenting White Black Gold, an exhibition of new works by London-based artist Keith Coventry. The artist has been exploring the relationship between Modernism and its manifestations in the contemporary via two new bodies of work; Coventry questions Modernism’s ‘utopian promise’, deconstructing its power via juxtapositions with post-modern contexts. With more-than-telling titles […]

Thomson & Craighead: Orwellian Party Paranoia At Carroll/Fletcher

Carroll/Fletcher is currently presenting Thomson & Craighead in ‘Party Booby Trap’, the art duo’s second exhibition with the gallery, filling the space with a plethora of 21st century post-millennial fears. The show even includes the artists first fragrance ‘Apocalypse’, 2016, not as unpleasant as the concept of this paranoia-inducing assault on the nervous would have […]

Francis Bacon: Alice Herrick And Clive Jennings Discuss The Ravarino Drawings

The Herrick Gallery, London is currently presenting a selection of drawings purportedly by the great British painter Francis Bacon, lent by Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarino to David Edwards, the brother of John Edwards, to whom Bacon left everything when the artist died in 1992. These works are juxtaposed with new paintings by Darren Coffield. But the […]

Barry Flanagan: The Absurdist Subversion Of Form At Waddington Custot Galleries

Waddington Custot Galleries is currently presenting the maverick Clement Greenberg-chewing Barry Flanagan in ‘Animal, Vegetable, Mineral’. The show is a survey of Flanagan’s works from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, curated by Dr. Jo Melvin, including displays of material from the Estate archive, including preliminary works, and photographs. Fifty years after the artist’s first solo […]

Bosco Sodi: The Alchemist Of Aesthetics At Blain|Southern London

Yūgen is Blain|Southern’s first exhibition by artist Bosco Sodi, and takes its title from a multi-layered Japanese concept, describing the evocation of inexplicably deep emotions in response to aesthetic creation, which extends to a sense of awareness and acceptance of impermanence. Sodi’s new work features rock sculptures ranging in size, and large-scale impasto paintings made […]

Darren Coffield And Francis Bacon: Magicians of Matter And Light

The Herrick Gallery, London is currently presenting a selection of drawings by Francis Bacon and new paintings by Darren Coffield. It is stated that both artists create figuration with a twist: both manipulate the language of the human figure in art, reinterpreting the form through disturbing subversion. But there is another twist to this exhibition: […]

Richard Prince: The Joke Is In The ‘Re-telling’ At Sadie Coles HQ

Sadie Coles HQ is currently presenting an oeuvre of twelve works by the great American appropriation artist Richard Prince. ‘Cartoon Over Cartoon’ is a reprisal of the artist’s preoccupation with jokes and cartoons, and shares a relationship with the artist’s ‘Hippie Drawings’ from the late eighties. Prince’s practice is appropriation. As the inventor of Re-photography […]

Gustav Metzger, Yoko Ono, David Maljkovic – Among Artists At Modern Art Oxford

Modern Art Oxford presents the second exhibition in KALEIDOSCOPE, the Gallery’s year-long programme of unfolding exhibitions to celebrate their 50th anniversary. The second show in the gallery’s programme, ‘A Moment of Grace’ takes its title from an observation by German artist Gustav Metzger – founder of the Auto-Destructive art movement in the 1960s – that […]

Warrior Artists At OVADA: Paul Black Reviews The Collective’s Latest Work

Warrior Studios Collective consists of 12 artists – founded in the late 1980s in a railway arch in South London – and currently finds itself residing at the OVADA Gallery in Oxford, for a month-long residency creating an ongoing multi-media installation inspired by and referencing the Hannover Merzbau of Kurt Schwitters, referring back to Cubism […]

Eileen Cooper, Wang Guangle, Eduardo Chillida: Paul Black’s West End Review

Wang Guangle: Yellow – Pace Gallery London – until 16 Apr 2016 Image: Wang Guangle, Yellow, installation view, Pace Gallery London. Photo: P A Black © 2016. Pace Gallery London is currently displaying ‘Yellow’, the first solo exhibition of work by Chinese artist Wang Guangle in Europe. The artist’s practice is an attempt to address […]

Yinka Shonibare: End Of Empire, Conflict, And Dominion At Turner Contemporary

Artlyst travelled to sunny Margate and Turner Contemporary’s Sunley Gallery to view two major works by leading contemporary artist Yinka Shonibare MBE. The new pieces have been created as part of the 14-18 NOW programme of World War 1 Centenary Art commissions, and coincides with the gallery’s fifth anniversary. Image: Yinka Shonibare, The British Library, […]

A Restoration: Elizabeth Price And Paul Black In Conversation

Paul Black has visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford to meet Turner Prize, and 2013 Contemporary Art Society Award winner Elizabeth Price, and view Price’s latest video work; a response to the collections and archives of the Ashmolean and Pitt Rivers museums, in partnership with the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, where the artist teaches. […]