Completely Coconuts at the British Museum
22 August 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
It’s not easy to get a grip on the boggling scale of the British Museum: it has around 8,000,000 items.
Tag: Paul’s Art Stuff on a Train
Lorenzetti, Mantegna, Bellini: Fragment or Part?
8 August 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
The aesthetic appeal of the fragment is well known, and though it tends to arise accidentally in older work it’s not so rare to wonder whether the whole would really have been much better.
Similarly Different: Isa Genzken and Caroline McCarthy
1 August 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
It’s fairly common to find that two artists arrive, by different means, at a somewhat similar looking endpoint. That’s the time to remember that the motivating force is part of the work. A different case arises, though, when the effect obtained is the reverse of the other artist’s
The RA’s Types of Thing
25 July 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
Who doesn’t like a good typology? Certainly the Royal Academy hanging committee do, judged by the number in its Summer Exhibition, from which I’ve chosen four.
Liverpool Biennial 2018: 14 July – 28 October
16 July 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
The 18th Liverpool Biennial, with 40 artists from 22 countries,
The Downside of Germany’s World Cup Failure
11 July 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
I can’t claim – even ahead of England’s big match – that the combination of art and football in a magazine excited me when the new magazine OOF was announced. Yet the first two issues have been excellent.
Saturday night is ART NIGHT
5 July 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
London’s Art Night shifts zone each year, encouraging exploration beyond Mayfair (2016) to the East End (2017), the South Bank (this year) and on to Waltham Forest (2019) and Brent (2020). Judged by last year, the free fare on offer on 7-8 July will be very lively and crowded. With 70-odd projects ..
Darkness, Tea and Art
27 June 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
Only after I had attended a tea ceremony at Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix (* 19 Goulston Street to 3 August) did I receive a beautifully written formal invitation.
Bricks in Basel
20 June 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
Brick sculptures were one characteristic stream of work by Per Kirkeby, who died in May at 79. Michael Werner showed one of his last at Art Basel.
Subversion at the Royal Academy
13 June 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
I’m not sure one could claim that the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (12 June – 19 Aug) is now cool. But in its 250th anniversary year it is no longer so uncool that it is simply ignored. Instead, it is ripe for being subverted.
Werner Büttner and Markus Lüpertz: all sorts of happiness and tents
6 June 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
If you want fascinating early work in a two floor show by an established German painter – complete with umlaut – you have, surprisingly, two current choices: Markus Lüpertz (born 1941) at Michael Werner or Werner Büttner (born 1954) at Marlborough
No Sweat?
23 May 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
Summer is close! Before you know it we’ll have the RA Summer Show (the 250 th, running 12 June – 19 Aug,), Wimbledon (2-15 July) and the PROMS (13 July – 8 Sept). I’ve already seen some art matched to hot weather.
The Auction as Show
16 May 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
Unsurprisingly, the leading auction houses are all selling photographic work to coincide with Photo London (18-21 May). By way of a warm-up, I looked at them as exhibits rather than as potential purchases. Do they make for a good visit?
Richter in Southampton
9 May 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
Gerhard Richter is the most expensive and famous living painter, so it is quite a coup for Southampton’s John Hansard Gallery to reopen with a major show of his work (in conjunction with Artist Rooms, to 18 August).
William Tucker: Thingness, Thoe and Patina
2 May 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
William Tucker’s retrospective covering 65 years (Pangolin Gallery to 2 June) impresses with three bodies of work which feel quite distinct: 1960’s geometric objects; 1970’s tubular forms, and, from the 1990’s on, the often-massive ‘lumps which are more than lumps’ – often hands or torsos.
Women Can Paint
25 April 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
Well it’s hardly news. But suddenly it you can’t move for top shows of female painters! The point of ‘Women Can’t Paint’ at the ASC and Turps Banana galleries is to prove that they can, contrary to Georg Baselitz’s notorious barb.
Picasso’s Visual Puns
18 April 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
Picasso isn’t strongly associated with setting up ambiguity in his paintings in the same systematic way as Dali is through his ‘paranoiac critical’ method in which elephants become swans etc. However, a couple of motifs from the tremendous show at the Tate may change your mind..
Atypicalia
11 April 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
What’s the value of early or atypical work by a highly marketable artist? Such work is doubtless consigned for sale in the hope that some of the repute of more characteristic work will rub off.
If Mayfair is London’s main gallery hub, what comes second?
28 March 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
A couple of years back, Fitzrovia and the East End would spring to mind. Now a case also could be made for Vauxhall or Peckham.
Alexandra Bircken: Capsizing the Gallery
21 March 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
There is what amounts to a tradition of single work installations which radically transform the architecture of the gallery.
Are We Virtually There Yet?
14 March 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
Is virtual reality the way ahead for art? Like any new technology, it can have its clunky moments and effect can come at the cost of substance. Yet I have already experienced a persuasive work..
Marvin Gaye Chetwynd: After-Performance
7 March 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
What’s the gallery life of performance art? For years, said Marvin Gaye Chetwynd at the opening of the suitably fluid-sounding ‘Ze & Per’ at Sadie Coles, she was restricted to the opening night of shows and not even included on the official list of participants. Now she, and performance generally, are more fully acknowledged, but it’s still hard to present the after-action successfully.
Queasy does it at the Grant Museum of Zoology
28 February 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
If you want striking art interestingly set yet conveniently placed, I can currently recommend the Grant Museum of Zoology near Euston.
Cadaverous in Croydon
21 February 2018 • Paul Carey-Kent
Would a visit to Turf Projects, which has taken over disused units in the Whitgift shopping centre, prove stimulating enough to make me wonder if I’ve been missing out?