Leanne Ross, Dirty Dancing Flowers
18 November 2024 • Toby Upson
Leanne Ross’ exhibition Dirty Dancing Flowers transforms the clerical ‘white cube’ into a party, quite literally a karaoke party, one we are all invited to.
Author: Toby Upson
Toby Üpson is an art writer currently based in London.
Blue Now, a reimagining of Derek Jarman’s final film.
4 November 2024 • Toby Upson
Indeed, it’s hard to compete with any of the artist, film maker, costume and stage designer, writer, poet, gardener, gay rights activist’s work.
Three to buy at the Art Car Boot Sale
26 October 2024 • Toby Upson
Now in its sixth year, the Art Car Boot Sale (Tramway, Glasgow) is something of an art fair antidote. One of Scotland’s biggest contemporary art events
Preview: Art Car Boot Sale, Glasgow
21 October 2024 • Toby Upson
Time to pitch up and feel part of the community: Art Car Boot Sale, 2024
Various Others 2024 made me think about perception.
11 September 2024 • Toby Upson
I have been thinking about perception; how one comes to know the world and how artists work with this process of knowing.
Rineke Dijkstra, The Krazy House Espace Louis Vuitton München
7 September 2024 • Toby Upson
Cool and confident with a hint of performativity, the protagonists in these photos face out, with each of their mascara-laden lashes pressed towards the means of their filmic production: Rineke Dijkstra and her camera.
Various Others 2024, my long list
27 August 2024 • Toby Upson
I’m kicking the season off in Munich with Various Others. An “international format”, the event enlivens the city’s art scene through collaboration and reciprocity.
Chris Ofili, The Caged Bird’s Song
15 August 2024 • Toby Upson
To start with a bold statement: I do not like ‘the make of’ type exhibitions. Not moving nor sublime, wall texts and reportage never provide the romantic materialist in me with the space to get all wayward and dreamy; what I seek in exhibitions is never an ‘“interesting” …[full-stop]’.
Three to see at EAF 24 – (Edinburgh Art Festival)
12 August 2024 • Toby Upson
As the ‘vigintennial’ festivities get going, here are three things I would like to celebrate from this year’s EAF.
Two to see at Liste Art Fair, Basel.
13 June 2024 • Toby Upson
Writing from this year’s Liste Art Fair, Basel two booths, each featuring a single series of artworks, presented artists who embrace the formalities of their chosen media to shine a new light on the flows of quotidian life and the habitation of domestic space.
Maxime Bichon, La poursuite [The chase]
26 March 2024 • Toby Upson
To think about Maxmine Bichon’s first institutional exhibition analogously, I will begin with a quote from Tracy Chevalier’s novel Girl… Read More
Review: Ghislaine Leung, Holdings
24 February 2024 • Toby Upson
Composed from a minimal range of surplus materials, Ghislaine Leung’s exhibition Holdings lovingly rescores the ‘infrastructures of dependency’ that animate… Read More
Alexis Hunter: 10 Seconds
12 February 2024 • Toby Upson
Not a flash pan fad but thick formal plots. Alexis Hunter’s 10 Seconds images acts of revolt which demand we… Read More
Review: Nari Ward, Balance Fountain.
21 November 2023 • Toby Upson
Balance. Fountain. Personally, the title of Nari Ward’s first UK exhibition is patterned with a joyous feel.
Tomo Savic-Gecan, Untitled, 2023 galerie frank elbaz, Paris
28 October 2023 • Toby Upson
It felt harrow. The weight of white-washed walls rising. Here, that is there, space was made thick, or disturbingly claustrophobic, through an empty, automated, ambience.
Various Others- three encounters
14 September 2023 • Toby Upson
Various Others is an initiative based on collaboration. Its format is simple: museums, galleries, artist-run-spaces, collectors, curators (etc. etc.) based in Munich (Germany) invite museums, galleries, artist-run-spaces, collectors, curators (etc. etc.)
WangShui, Toleranzfenster [Window of Tolerance]
9 September 2023 • Toby Upson
Let’s suspend the narrative. Toleranzfenster [Window of Tolerance], WangShui’s first institutional exhibition in Europe, is a super-real entanglement.
Five to see at Various Others 2023
30 August 2023 • Toby Upson
Personally, I’m off to Munich for Various Others; an ‘international format,’ where art spaces across the city invite galleries, curators, artists and various other art entities from elsewhere to realise a project together as part of the 17-day celebration.
5 things to see at June Art Fair, Basel
13 June 2023 • Toby Upson
It is hot. Things are heating up. Steaming. Basel Art Week marks the start of high summer; a time of… Read More
Grace Ndiritu. Two solo exhibitions in Belgium give museums a haptic body
17 May 2023 • Toby Upson
Across two museological sites—the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art Ghent (S.M.A.K.) and The FOMU Fotomuseum of Antwerp (FOMU)—Grace Ndiritu takes up something of the poetic sentiment flowing beneath Borges’ softly spoken words.
Ghislaine Leung, Fountains, Simian, Copenhagen
9 April 2023 • Toby Upson
The exhibition space is bare. White walls and concrete floors, regimented columns and weepy skylights. Skylights that clatter and pour;… Read More
Iris Touliatou, Gift
3 March 2023 • Toby Upson
The gift of poison and bodies in affectful space. Iris Touliatou at Kunsthalle Basel.
Decolonial Ecologies. Understanding Postcolonial After Socialism – Riga Art Space
16 December 2022 • Toby Upson
Decolonial Ecologies. Understanding Postcolonial After Socialism (Riga Art Space, November 1 2022 – January 15 2023)
Nebojša Yamasaki Vulkelic, Walking Within A Slow Future
1 December 2022 • Toby Upson
Nebojša Yamasaki Vulkelic’s Walking Within A Slow Future (Galerija Doma Omladine Beograda, November 15-17, 2022)is a touching exhibition. Curated by Lav Mrenovic, the show brings together a series of recent drawings, with an ambient soundtrack and poem.