Tribal Taster
4 September 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
The first fair of the new art season (Sept 3-7 at the Mall Galleries) covers an area I find interesting without knowing much about it. In Tribal Art London,
Tag: Paul’s Art Stuff on a Train
Life in Perm
28 August 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
The Russian city of Perm, 1,500 kilometres east of Moscow, is the start of Europe if you travel from Asia. Photographer John Peter Askew has visited regularly for two decades
Saatchi Changes…
21 August 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
If you haven’t been to the Saatchi Gallery lately, the current shows might surprise you. Free presentations of Saatchi’s own acquisitions, typically foregrounding big paintings, are absent. The two main shows are pay-to-enter affairs
I found myself in Colchester last week
14 August 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
I found myself in Colchester last week. Obviously, it’s known mainly for its Roman history, but there is also contemporary art interest. At the purpose-built Firstsite, there are four shows well worth seeing.
Frank Bowling, full of colour and tactility, chance and control
7 August 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
Yet Frank Bowling hasn’t generated the same publicity, though he has arguably been consistently good over a longer period
Modes of Performance
31 July 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
Performance is present in many – maybe even all – artworks in some way, given that making is itself a performance. Here are three performative works I’ve liked recently:
Portrait of the NPG
24 July 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
The National Portrait Gallery’s mixture of history, people and art can is currently at its strongest. The pay-for exhibition, of Cindy Sherman, is a convincing presentation of 40 years of self-images which includes some fascinating rarely-seen early works and new-to-Britain late works as well as her most seminal series, including all 70 ‘screen tests’.
Destination Bracknell
17 July 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
I like it when art takes me somewhere I might not otherwise go. Bracknell, the Berkshire new town of 100,000 where many IT companies have their offices, has something of Slough’s unglamorous cachet without the double-edged compensation of having been the setting for ‘The Office’.
Textile Arts of Peru
10 July 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
Textile art has an increasing profile, witness Phaidon’s new ‘Vitamin T: Threads & Textiles in Contemporary Art’, which presents 100 current practitioners. A logical place to see it must be the Fashion & Textile Museum in Bermondsey.
Animal Alert at Masterpiece
2 July 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
Masterpiece (which runs on to Wed 4th July) prides itself on quality and variety, both in evidence in my selection of lively animals from the 10th edition:
Looking up and down the Royal Academy Summer Show:
26 June 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
This year’s RA Summer Show features several rooms more obviously ‘curated’ than I recall previously: animals; climate change; abstraction; politics; light and time… But the essence isn’t about to alter:
Art Basel 2019, four things I liked among the thousands at 290 galleries
12 June 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
Art Basel is, I’d say, a bit safer than usual this year: hardly any film, plenty of ‘another one of those’ moments, artists from the Venice Biennale out in force. But if course there are plenty of works of fresh interest. Here are four things I liked among the thousands at 290 galleries:
Confusing Times at the Venice Biennale
6 June 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
Ralph Rugoff’s theme for the 58th Venice Biennale (to 24 November) is ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’. There was plenty of work to confuse on show, and that may well be a consequence of such an age. So I found myself asking…
Ravens and Red Lipstick: Japanese Photography since 1945
29 May 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
Why are there so many good Japanese photographers? Lena Fritsch, talking at the Japan Foundation launch of her impressive book ‘Ravens & Red Lipstick’ (Thames & Hudson, £35), didn’t feel any ‘national style’ could explain that – rather she cited the diversity of approaches and thought it more likely a numbers game
Photo London: All the Nudes Not Fit to Put On Instagram
18 May 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
The nude is potentially difficult territory in the #MeToo era, the more so as almost all of the examples at… Read More
Let’s Talk About Normal: Peter Fischli
15 May 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
If you attend exhibitions of contemporary photography – or Photo London, opening today – it won’t be long before you see what look at a glance like everyday images of everyday subjects presented as art. What’s that about?
Through a Glass, Clearly
8 May 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
It’s hard, you might think, to get too excited about a glass of water. Yet not only did Michael Craig-Martin famously present such a glass as an oak tree, the subject of a simple glass without so much as a still life to complement it crops up pretty often in paintings.
Sophie Layton’s Japanese Prints
1 May 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
I recently visited Sophie Layton at her workshop in the Shakespeare Business Centre in Brixton. It’s a print studio which operates on a hot desk basis so that some 30 printmakers can share the impressive facilities.
Hair Today
24 April 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
Hair is an interesting subject for art: of the body, and yet at a remove; and its own aesthetic area in the day to day. The most famous sustained body of work featuring its styles is probably the work of the Nigerian photographer J.D. Okhai Ojeikere
We are still mused
10 April 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
There seem to be plenty of idealised beauties-come-muses, 19th-century style, in London galleries just now – though maybe there are always some around if you look
Art of the Franz Jest
3 April 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
The Tate’s Franz West retrospective catches the irreverent humour of the Austrian artist – and how his art often lay in its pretending not to be art.
Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico
27 March 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
I’ve had the chance to look comprehensively at the work of Graciela Iturbide, through an extensive show of her work in Frankfurt (which itself has a sizable catalogue) and the sumptuous and informative catalogue of an even bigger show in Boston.
A visit to Elephant West
13 March 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
The launch of Elephant West, a big new space in a former garage next to White City tube, and linked to Elephant Magazine, is one of the most welcome recent developments in London’s art scene.
Art or Design at Collect…
6 March 2019 • Paul Carey-Kent
What’s the difference between art and design?