Basel’s new buy-annual
11 July 2025 • Toby Upson
Opening up the art world means exposing the systems that most don’t want to see.
Author: Toby Upson
Toby Üpson is an art writer currently based in London.
From Paris to the Pier Arts Centre on Orkney, Jonathan Anderson shows an enduring spirit.
8 July 2025 • Toby Upson
Art, as I come to know it, is nonchalant in the face of novelty for its own sake, seeing the past as an enduring spark, continually resonant and generous
Art Basel in Basel is double B big.. Toby’s Journey
19 June 2025 • Toby Upson
I want to recall my journey through the fair in writing, speaking about some of the stuff I saw.
LISTE 30 Five to see…… ‘the Art Fair for Galleries of a New Generation’.
18 June 2025 • Toby Upson
Specifically young and emerging galleries — or those not as yet run ragged in an attempt to stay on the art world’s hamster wheel.
June Art Fair is my respite. Three to see …
17 June 2025 • Toby Upson
The perfect place to actually see and discuss the artworks on offer. Now I am no buyer, but if I were, June would be my place to splash out
Osamu Shikichi, When the Eyes Lick Images
17 May 2025 • Toby Upson
Osamu Shikichi is a dancer — a choreographer and artist too.
Littlewhitehead, Now the east wind hunts
13 May 2025 • Toby Upson
Littlewhitehead expose the affect of ideological landscapes on the human body.
Amelia Barratt, Out of Hours at A_Place Glasgow
2 May 2025 • Toby Upson
my laptop is an odd place to start a review of Amelia Barratt’s solo exhibition Out of Hours
First look: Various Others Munich 2025
28 April 2025 • Toby Upson
Ahead of this year’s VO, which has shifted from September to May, here are five things I look forward to talking to friends about.
Steve McQueen, Grenfell Tramway, Glasgow
10 March 2025 • Toby Upson
This is a film which demands witnessing. It is a monument, a memorial, a hard work of art that demands our affective labour.
Shop Windows in The City, Basel
21 January 2025 • Toby Upson
I want to focus on one para-exhibitionary example of the fusion of art and life which suffuses Basel
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.
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