Dale Lewis’ Discerning Eye
The Discerning Eye (19 Nov- 31 Dec) is a show – usually in the Mall Galleries, online only this year… Read More
Author: Paul Carey-Kent
Art critic and curator, based near Southampton. I write most regularly for Art Monthly, Frieze, Elephant, State, Photomonitor... and, of course, FAD.
Less is More Online?
If the first round of ‘lockdown art online’ was characterised by the sheer volume of material, from galleries and fairs alike, the second UK lockdown coincides with attempts to enhance the focus. That was visible in two recent fairs: Art Basel and TEFAF (The European Fine Art Fair, here in its New York edition but online). ‘OVR:20c’, Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms.
Clare Price: Trauma, Glamour and Luck in Abstraction
I like it when you can track an artist’s development through their own account…
Clare Price hasn’t followed a conventional path:
Do Try This at Home
For the ‘festival in a box’ – in Director Shoair Mavlain’s words – ‘the artworks travelled to people’s homes, classrooms and community spaces’, so eliminating the reliance on personal travel ‘which itself relies on economic privilege’ and allowing the viewer to ‘become the curator’ by choosing how to hang the work.
What is that Really?
‘What is that really?’ is often a sensible question once you’re used to the tricky ways of artists. Four current shows are evidence.
1:54 – Real Life Art from Africa
You could say that 1:54 is the Frieze fair this week – at any rate it’s the only real life fair in the city during ‘Frieze week’. So it seems only fair to pay it attention.
Review: ‘Five Hides’
It’s not a criticism of the art in ‘Five Hides’ to say that the biggest wow moment is seeing the space, a vast Victorian hall close to Kennington tube station which is hosting its first exhibition. The soaring 800 square metres of Manor Place, which has been left empty over the last decade, has a colourful history.
Do’s and Don’ts of Instagram
You can’t put everything on the increasingly central art medium of Instagram, as it’s censored. Specifically, any photographic image of genitals, naked buttocks or bare female breasts are out. The fact that it’s art isn’t held to make any difference, which has caused some annoyance.
Small was Splendid: Tintype 2010-20
I was sorry to hear that the small but splendid Tintype Gallery is sailing into the sunset.
Jacqueline Poncelet’s Multiplicities
The New Art Centre in Wiltshire combines the ideal socially distanced art experience – sculpture in the landscape – with three indoor galleries.
A Big Hand for Baselitz
The past few years have tended to see Georg Baselitz in fine, adventurous form, at least in the studio (less so in the interview room, where his ludicrous generalisations about female painters have tended to put people off). And you have to hand it to him here: well into his ninth decade, Baselitz has come up with a series of works quite unlike anything he has done before – a whole show of hands, many of them monumental
This Year’s Cubism
107 artists have made works in a Perspex cube for the third edition of Cure3, which provides the triple good of keenly-priced chances to obtain interesting art in a good cause – The Cure Parkinson’s Trust, which has described sufferers as feeling ‘boxed in’.
London Grads Now
It’s obvious enough that this year’s graduates have missed out on the traditional benefits of a degree show. But the Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery has teamed up with the Saatchi Gallery to do something about it by facilitating students to curate a ‘best of ‘ selection through an open call to all those graduating this year.
Why visit the Eden Project?
I guess no one visits the Eden Project in Cornwall to look at art: to enjoy the plant life, take in the biomes and reflect on environmental sustainability, yes; to zip across the half-mile SkyWire, maybe. But there is an art trail, along with a map identifying sixteen works to see, and I followed it last week.
Parasol unit 2004-2020
It did mean that the end of Parasol unit at Wharf Road programme in London came rather unnoticed, but a handsome tome* now commemorates more than 50 major exhibitions held over the sixteen years 2004-20.
Shane Bradford’s Authentic Editions
Another, proposed as the leitmotif of the new edition-driven project ‘Assembly Line’ by Shane Bradford, is to use the fact of multiplicity as the inherent driver of editioned art.
Ceramic Paintings
The ceramic painting seems to be a form on the rise. Ceramics have been a trend for some years now, triggered perhaps by a desire for the visibly hand-made in the era of outsourced and / or digital production.
Virtual with Virtue – 3 more artists to see IRL
I have also been newly interested in artists now on my list of ‘see IRL when you get the chance’. Such as these three
Virtual with Virtue- 3 artists to see IRL
Three months of lockdown… that’s a lot of online art. It’s easiest, for sure, to appreciate the virtual offerings of artists whose work you have already seen ‘for real’. But I have also been newly interested in artists now on my list of ‘see IRL when you get the chance’. Such as these three…
Running Around the Park with Richard Schur, John Peter Askew and Emma Cousin
Three artists mentioned that they liked the poems, and Richard Schur titled a painting after one of them. Then I asked the other two if they would like to link a work to a poem, so here I am virtually running around with three of my favourite artists, replacing my photos of the park with their art:
Surprises from Art UK
Art UK is the online home for every public art collection in the UK, recently represented to make 250,000 works easily searchable with a facility to curate your own show. Faced with so many options, I took took the simple approach of looking for less usual examples from some of my favourite C20th artists.
Trouble Online at Art Basel
Art Basel’s online viewing rooms can be visited until 26 June. There is plenty of trouble in the world for that art to reflect: not just the virus, the economy, wars, terrorism and global warming but also bad attitudes. Here’s my selection of work which addresses the anti-discriminatory agenda so effectively foregrounded by ‘Me Too’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’…
3 from The #artistsupportpledge
Perhaps the most heartening coronavirus development in art has been the development of the Artist Support Pledge, whereby works are offered for sale for up to £200, and when an artist sells £1,000-worth they pledge to spend £200 supporting another artist. Over 250,000 works have now been posted on Instagram at #artistsupportpledge, generating over £20m! Naturally, quality is variable at that quantity, but it is easy enough to access artists you like through their own Instagram accounts. I posted some examples in my 22 April column. Here are three more who appealed to me…
The Way Mark Manders Thinks
Mark Manders makes striking work which originates in a unique way of thinking. Antwerp’s Zeno X Gallery is currently showing two typical pieces in the online version of Art Brussels.