Great Art for Great Places

Condo is the rather brilliant idea of Vanessa Carlos, co-founder of four year-old Carlos/Ishikawa gallery in Whitechapel. For the last week, just mentioning the gallery exchange project has invariably elicited nodding admiration from everyone who knows about it: in Read more

As the new year grinds in to gear after the slumberous holidays, and new shows are starting to open across town, I thought I would just catch up on a couple that opened before Christmas and that you can Read more

For those of you not sensibly leaving town for the holidays, the next week or two offers the opportunity to take a more leisurely approach to getting round town to see shows.  Down at White Cube in Bermondsey, Read more

Mark Leckey’s new film showing at Cabinet Gallery was premiered earlier this autumn at the BFI Film Festival in London. Leckey won the Turner Prize in 2008, and is an artist whose work sits in an important relation Read more

Take the time to visit the exhibition of Ragnar Kjartansson at the Brewer Street Car Park in Soho, as music and architecture create a rare emotional charge; an aspect typical of this artist trained and based in Read more

In approaching the work of Nicholas Byrne, one must first and foremost consider the physicality of his paintings. Yes, they do feature elements of figuration: isolated heads, disembodied lips and hands emerge from dense compositions of abstract devices, Read more

“(…) we are in a period in which you could say the digital explosion of the last few years has ushered in a period of mass extinction of objects, the smartphone has killed off your camera, your map, your Read more

An important mid-career survey of Fiona Banner’s work opened this month at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, offering a chance to look across two decades of work and appreciate the development of themes and concerns that have remained constant throughout.  Read more

Michael Landy takes a wry view of the world.  Since the 90s his work has addressed the pressing political issues of the day, as well as delivering a good portion of autobiography.  Talk to him about the Read more

“Have you ever tried to clean a squid?” – reads the first line of the text work that is part of Anna Barham’s new show at Arcade gallery in Shoreditch.  Well yes, actually, I have.  So it Read more

Thursday night and the ‘back to school’ September vibe was felt everywhere with a slew of openings across town. After dark, Mayfair buzzed with the traffic between galleries, snatches of conversation about where to go next and a sense Read more

The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation presents the work of the artists shortlisted for this year’s Daiwa Art Prize; Oliver Beer, Julie Brook and Mikhail Karikis. The winner was announced last night: Oliver Beer with Reanimation – Snow White, 2014. Read more

Just to mix things up a bit I am flagging not one but two shows this week.  Both are painting shows and both have opened in the last few days; there are no connections between them but for Read more

It is four years since we have had a chance to see a body of new work by George Shaw.  In 2011 he had an enormous solo show at Baltic in Gateshead, which some of you may Read more

Markus Amm, Josh Brand, Alexandra Bircken, Pablo Bronstein, Peter Coffin, Matt Connors, Matthew Darbyshire , Michael Dean, Ida Ekblad, Annette Kelm, Scott King, Cary Kwok, Christina Mackie, Djordje Ozbolt, Matt Paweski, Amalia Pica, Nick Relph, Tony Swain, Donald Urquhart, Read more

Given the focus on today as a very particular moment in this country’s political history, perhaps it is interesting to look at an artist for whom shifts, repetitions and rips in time are at the heart of his work. Read more

Simplicity is a paradoxical thing. One becomes wary, with experience, of presuming that works that ostensibly operate in a straightforward way are as innocent as they seem. The more one can talk to artists, the more it is to Read more

Roman Signer is not an artist over-familiar to UK audiences: he had shows at Camden Arts Centre in 2001 and Edinburgh’s lovely Fruitmarket Gallery in 2007, but shows far more regularly in Europe.  So it is very Read more

No Friday Dispatch this week due to ill health – but if you are looking for something to do this weekend why not head down to Dulwich Park, tomorrow Saturday 18 March, 14.00 to join the artist Conrad Shawcross Read more

Milan in the springtime is quite lovely.  Narrow yellow trams rattle through the streets, purple wisteria elegantly drapes tall buildings and the population is moving about, seemingly with a general air of delight associated with the idea that Read more

Nell Allen, Edward Allington, Maggi Hambling, Richard Hawkins, Rachel Kneebone, Tory Lawrence, Sarah Lucas, Ged Quinn, Ryan M Pfeiffer + Rebecca Walz, Mary Reid Kelley and Alexandre Singh

Back in 1990, the Tate mounted an exhibition called  Read more

20 March 2015

Let’s think about painting this week.  And in particular Maaike Schoorel, whose fourth show with Maureen Paley opened a few days ago. Originally from the Netherlands, educated there and in London, Schoorel is having Read more

What Will They See Of Me? is the second iteration of the finely judged collaboration between venerable commissioning agency Film and Video Umbrella and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.  The first version of this commissioning and development award Read more

Peles Empire, Esther Ferrer, Sunil Gupta, Lubaina Himid, Fred Lonidier, Eline McGeorge, Ruth Proctor, Joachim Schmid

This is very much a last-chance-to-see call to action as the current show at Hollybush Gardens closes tomorrow, in advance of Johanna Billing Read more

It’s been a beautiful afternoon.  Even in the city, you can’t escape the sense of the hastening of spring.  Whitechapel High Street bustles with people carrying fresh fruit and veg in thin, blue plastic bags; there is Read more

Allora & Calzadilla, Broomberg & Chanarin, Liu Xiaodong, Haroon Mirza, Rashid Rana, Wael Shawky, Santiago Sierra

With a bit of a change of tone in relation to the last few weeks, today I want to recommend you take a Read more

Luc Tuymans, one of the giant figures in contemporary painting, landed in London again last week, with his second show for the David Zwirner gallery here.  For anyone pretending to be interested in what is current in Read more

Let us start the year with a pair of must-see solo exhibitions that both opened last night. Danh Vō and approach the proposition of object making from very different angles, and viewed at such close proximity – at Marian Read more

The fortieth, and final Dispatch of 2014 reports from the ICA which on a dark, cold and blustery December night was absolutely hopping with energy yesterday.  For anyone crazy enough to brave the a) weather, b) crowds and Read more

It is always quite exciting when the Chisenhale Gallery turns itself over to a painter. We are more used to walking down the concrete ramp and entering a darkened space to view time-based works, or negotiating installations that cram Read more

Andrew Bick, Katrina Blannin, Natalie Dower, Kenneth Martin, Mary Martin, Jeffrey Steele 

Emma Hill set up The Eagle Gallery, in a beautifully proportioned room above the Eagle Pub on Farringdon Road in 1991 – long before the Read more

This week I am going to try and tempt you out of London and up to Yorkshire, where in a day trip you can take in an amazing variety of contemporary art of the highest order. And on the Read more

For the next three weeks, as the nights draw in and the colour seems to drain out of the natural world with the falling of the leaves, should you wander down Lever Street in the late afternoon you will Read more

One of the distinguishing features of the offerings of Frieze week this year has been the relative absence of the moving image work that had dominated in previous years.  Performance and the immersive experience have been the themes Read more

Neil Beloufa, Simon Denny, Matias Faldbakken, Cyprien Gaillard, Nicholas Hlobo, Yngve Holen, Rashid Johnson, Moshekwa Langa, Klara Liden, Glenn Ligon, Sarah Lucas, Ernest Mancoba, Julie Mehretu, Nandipha Mntambo, Chadwick Ratanen, Sterling Ruby, Gerda Scheepers, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Gedi Sibony, Read more

Olivier Castel’s exhibition at ANDOR Gallery on Hackney Road begins before you step off the pavement and into the gallery.  Installed over the gates is a large scale LED display, showing looped images in striking red and Read more

Rob Tufnell’s gallery – for those who have yet to visit – is located just a five-minute walk from Tate Britain, in the direction of Horseferry Road. It occupies one of the rather lovely neo-classical pavilions that punctuate the Read more

This week’s Dispatch is an urgent call out to all those serious collectors of photography who have not yet seen the current exhibition at Richard Saltoun’s gallery, just an aerodynamic stone’s throw from Oxford Circus. John Hilliard  Read more

The penultimate exhibition at Henry Kinman’s subterranean space in Curtain Road is an engaging and confident solo show by 27-year-old Rebecca Ackroyd, who is still studying for a Post-Graduate Diploma at the Royal Academy School in London. The Read more

On a sultry morning I threaded my way from Liverpool Street, through the narrow alleys around Spitalfields market to the wonderful Raven Row gallery. Alex Sainsbury has established a widely admired programme here that regularly includes museum quality examinations Read more

Today’s dispatch comes to you from Arles, baking beneath the intense blue skies of Provence. Poised on the brink of change, this ancient walled city of pale golden stone is offering up the very last Rencontres Read more

Phillip Allen Forrest Bess Vittorio Brodmann Stuart Cumberland Clive Hodgson Allison Katz Alastair MacKinven Lucy Stein Walter Swennen Caragh Thuring Sam Windett

What happens in the “summer slot” in a gallery’s programme is a bit of a test of Read more

A late lunch, a quick detour to drop something at the framers, and then a solitary walk through the backstreets to Hollybush Gardens. These last days of June in London are warm and sultry; rain is coming. There is Read more

Rachael Champion is another noteworthy alumnus of the Royal Academy schools and her first solo show at Hales Gallery in the Tea Building near Liverpool Street Station is an opportunity to get a handle on an artist who is Read more

Laurence Kavanagh‘s first exhibition at Marlborough Contemporary employs a determinedly lo-fi, hand-made aesthetic. Old fashioned collage is central here – conjure the sound of razor-sharp blades slicing through paper – incisions, excisings and graftings dominate in the sculpture Read more

Spring is here and with it the latest episode in the uxorious love-affair between Artangel and the grande dame that is the city of London. Previous episodes of note have included the unforgettable House by Rachel Whiteread Read more

This week I am sending you to Hoxton Street, and to the redoubtable PEER, an institution which has been an important, critically independent voice on the London scene since 1997.  Currently showing there is a young artist called Read more

Unless you have a particular interest in sub-Saharan Africa, it would be quite easy to be blithely unaware of the horrors playing out in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Such is the lack of mainstream news coverage of a Read more

Walking into the first room of Benedict Drew’s new installation at Matt’s Gallery the flat screen monitor that confronts you somehow seems to sense your presence and, showing an image of some smart Sennheiser headphones, instructs “You Will Need Read more

Sarah Jones is at the top of her game. No question. In her sixth show with Maureen Paley in Bethnal Green she demonstrates a technical mastery and the finely tuned sensibility for composition that are the product of Read more

Becky Beasley’s fourth exhibition with Laura Bartlett Gallery, now in Bethnal Green, has all the elements that we have come to expect of her subtle practice as an artist. There are multiple literary references, from the ideograms of Laurence Read more

Time was when being picked up by Charles Saatchi was all a young artist needed to launch them commercially, but our world is a more complex place now, and so four years after he was included in Newspeak:British Read more

Figurative sculpture is having a bit of a moment in 2014, with a potential peak due in June when the Hayward Gallery opens its thematic summer show The Human Form, curated by director Ralph Rugoff. Simon Fujiwara’s Read more

The first I ever heard of Helen Marten was in 2010 when distinguished critic and art historian Michael Archer literally came up and whispered in my ear at Frieze London.  “You’d better move fast”  Read more

Rather than a ‘last chance to see’, this week’s commercial gallery tip is a ‘be among the first to see’, because everyone is going to be talking about this show. The cavernous upper space at Victoria Miro’s Wharf Road Read more

Friday Dispatch this week is Agnes Denes at firstsite, Colchester and The Psychotropic House at Guest Projects, London.

In the week that two great shows by women artists of different generations make waves in London – Hannah Hoch at Read more

Responding to popular demand, here is my first Friday Dispatch: a couple of pointers each week to suggest shows that might otherwise escape your attention. Departing from the previous model, I am going to select some museum Read more