Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
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Bonington Building, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham
7 - 12 June 2008
How to condense 3 years endeavour into a final voice? How to combine 82 different voices into a coherent show? How to cover all of these in one review? Like the labyrinths of the corridors at Nottingham Trent that slink and sway deeper into Read on…
Reviewed by: Thomas Darby
The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
31 July - 28 September 2008
This artist duo have reminded me just how good installation art can be. I have seen numerous exhibitions where artists aim to create new environments within the gallery space; where the viewer is transported and narratives are alluded to. Mike Read on…
Reviewed by: Sara Fernee
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
31 July - 28 September 2008
So here is an exhibition to make you feel like a loser. Its not the content, the context, the images, video, sound, robots, old interconnected detritus, books, taped voices, video projections or general haphazard bewilderment of it all, but Read on…
Reviewed by: Alex Hetherington
Battery Maritime Building, New York
31 May - 24 August 2008
This is a giant musical instrument made from a decaying building which, as it happens, is located only a walk away from the World Trade Centre remnants. David Byrne, backed by New York based Creative Time, is responsible for the work. Read on…
Reviewed by: Micheal O'Connell
In and around Folkestone, Folkestone
14 June - 14 September 2008
I didn't know much at all about Folkestone, its history or the current exhibition there until two weeks ago when my boyfriend and I, by chance saw a little coverage about it on the local news and our curiosity led us down there for a few days to Read on…
Reviewed by: Christina Bryant
Folkstone Triennial (and other locations), Folkstone
19 - 20 July 2008
Celestial Radio, the creation of Zoë Walker and Neil Bromwich, appears firstly like an opportunity for the two artists to go on a jolly. Maybe it is and so what. They sail around the coast of Kent (and further afield) broadcasting Read on…
Reviewed by: Micheal O'Connell
twenty + 3 projects, Manchester
12 April - 17 May 2008
"Stories about places are always makeshift things. They are composed with the world's debris ... where things extra and other (details and excesses coming from elsewhere) insert themselves into the accepted framework, the Read on…
Reviewed by: Emma Cocker
Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth
2 August - 21 September 2008
This week I went along to see an interesting show organized by Portsmouth’s Aspex Gallery. The show, One thing against another, included work by five artist, Alice Walton, Eduardo Padilha, Sam Basu, James Ireland and David Kefford, who Read on…
Reviewed by: Sharon Mangion
The Art Shop, Abergavenny
19 July - 23 August 2008
One of the noticeably growing sectors on the art scene at the moment is the genre known as Book Art. Rallying to the hand-made ethic, Book-Art in all its diversity is a response to the throwaway mass-production culture of the age, and the Read on…
Reviewed by: Lyndon Davies
Wilson Rd Lecture Hall, Camberwell College of Art, and Peckham Square, Peckham
19 - 21 June 2008
The two events discussed here - 'Social Change/Contemporary Art' and 'Peckham TV' - were organised by Peckham Space. Both events fell under the banner Peckham TV, and were connected: the first representing, I guess, the Read on…
Reviewed by: David Lillington
alt.gallery, Newcastle
1 - 6 August 2008
In hindsight I was glad for the talk – a comfortable auditorium where Watson’s head was outlined in light and the black velvety curtains and night-sea coloured chairs rested our eyes: we listened to birds in treetops on a day that Read on…
Reviewed by: Rikki Blythe
Contemporary Art Projects, London
20 June - 27 July 2008
A hot and sultry day, the clouds building and everyone longing for a storm to relieve the tension: walking to the gallery everything was already too much, the city noises and smells strangely concentrated, sweat building clammily on my brow. Read on…
Reviewed by: Joanne Lee
Cornwall Contemporary, Penzance
26 July - 20 August 2008
Lower Gallery Maggie Matthews –Memento The current exhibition of mixed media paintings are as eye catching and attractive as ever but contain the additional element of 22 carat gold, 12 carat white gold and silver leaf embedded onto Read on…
Reviewed by: George Care
Teignmouth, Newton Abbot and Teign Village, Teignbridge
26 - 27 July 2008
'The Storytelling that thrives for a long time in the milieu of the work – the rural, the maritime, and the urban – is itself an artisan form of communication, as it were. It does not aim to convey the pure essence of the thing, like Read on…
Reviewed by: Mark Greenwood
The Old Truman Brewery, London
29 May - 2 June 2008
“All Smoke and No Fire”, not for some exceptional artists; “All Smoke and No Fire” inherently a metaphor utilised by Tether group to make an assertion of a certain nature, which does not weigh fully to its claims. Tether Read on…
Reviewed by: Jasmin Fatima
Conference at Winchester School of Art, Winchester
15 - 17 July 2008
Knitting has enjoyed somewhat of a renaissance in recent years. Publications such as Stitch n’ Bitch in 2003, by US knitter and feminist writer Debbie Stoller have contributed towards a “re-discovery” of knitting as pass time Read on…
Reviewed by: Rosemary Shirley
Aspex, Portsmouth
2 August - 21 September 2008
Sam Basu, James Ireland, David Kefford, Eduardo Padilha and Alice Walton are the exhibiting artists collaborating to create One Thing Against Another, held at Aspex, Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth. The exhibition incorporates contemporary Read on…
Reviewed by: Laura Ball
Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester
27 June - 28 September 2008
Basing a piece of art, however flimsily, on another cultural product is not uncommon and fraught with problems. Sure, the artist can use the other piece as a hook to pull in people and provides grist for the PR mill, but it can invite unhelpful Read on…
Reviewed by: Bryan Eccleshall
Spike Island, Bristol
11 July - 14 September 2008
Three artists are showing separate visions of a not so pleasant future for the 21st century at Spike Island in Bristol. The first gallery is filled with Georgie Hopton’s plinths topped with various flowers and plants. Her sculptures, some Read on…
Reviewed by: Theo Wood
Central Art Gallery, Manchester
23 May - 26 July 2008
Drawing as an art form has perhaps more to do with the body than any other art forms. The hand becomes the instrument of the eye. Physicality is employed as the body is drawn by the body. In drawing the senses link up from Read on…
Reviewed by: Bec Garland
Tatton Park , Cheshire
3 May 2008 - 28 September 2009
The garden at Tatton Park, Cheshire, home to the first Biennial at the country estate, is already full of wonderful things. A glimpse of something exciting through the colossal trees that run through the grounds tempts you to Read on…
Reviewed by: Helen Thompstone
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
1 June - 27 July 2008
Approaching the ‘problem’ of Palestine/Israel within a contemporary gallery space calls for curatorial risk-taking and a substantial commitment from its viewers. Where The Object Quality of the Problem lacks in building a Read on…
Reviewed by: Lara Eggleton
South london Gallery, London
28 June 2008
The main gallery of the SLG is blacked out. Two monitors on opposite sides of the space flash intermittently with stills of tanned and glamorous fashion models with 1980’s hairdo’s - women on one screen and men on another. The two Read on…
Reviewed by: Rachel Lois Clapham
Crookhall, Durham
19 July - 31 August 2008
I needn’t have gone within the castle wide stone walls of Crookhall though I was glad I did. I heard a lecturer of cosmic physics open the event – it was an unusual connection, a pleasant conjunction of imagination on earth and in Read on…
Reviewed by: Rikki Blythe
Whitstable Biennale, Whitstable
21 June - 6 July 2008
The use of re-enactment as artwork is by now an entirely familiar form. Whilst the common phrase would have it that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, I do not wish to jump off from such an extreme position but instead amend the phrase to Read on…
Reviewed by: Niki Russell
LiveArt 08, Wellington Terrace studios, Falmouth
6 - 8 June 2008
the Sorbonne, 1968: an exposition given by Jacques Derrida on the notion of différance (re: writing and the Saussurian/structuralist theory of language) provokes the remark that, "in your work, the expression is so important that Read on…
Reviewed by: Alexandra Glanville
National Portrait Gallery, London
12 June - 14 September 2008
The overwhelming number of photorealistic works at this year's BP Portrait Award exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, show a preference for the mediated image - the fixity and exactness of the camera lens. Fifty-five artists Read on…
Reviewed by: Eva Pryce
Theatre de l'Archeveche, International Festival d'Art Lyrique, Aix-en-Provence
27 June - 23 July 2008
Standing in a darkened room on a dais in front of a full length video screen, filled with an elusive shadowy void, and placing your hand over a luminous blue spot of light requires an act of faith, a willingness to confront the unknown, to connect Read on…
Reviewed by: Catherine Wilson
Compton Verney, Warwickshire
21 June - 7 September 2008
The Fabric of Myth until September 7th 2008 A Family Day Out This month I visited Compton Verney on a cultural family day out, my wife and I dropped our daughter off at her grandma’s and we picked up our niece. Hannah Read on…
Reviewed by: Nathaniel Pitt
g39, Cardiff
3 July 2008 - 9 July 2009
If You Build It They Will Come. Until 9th August. On the 3rd of July 1998 a small gallery space opened in Cardiff – ‘g39’ opened at a time of great optimism in a changing art market. We were in the throws of cool Read on…
Reviewed by: Nathaniel Pitt
