MODERN technologies often have their origins in scientists’ philosophical or even playful experiments. They are almost immediately taken over by State institutions – for example, photography became very quickly in […]
Bertha Husband
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
Specific Lines
The art of the 20th century avant garde was geared towards the destruction of the idea of the artist as creator. As Max Ernst put it, “I believe the myth […]
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
‘Succession’
FLOWERS CHANGED the face of the planet. Without them, the world we know – even man himself- would never have existed. Francis Thompson, the English poet, once wrote that one […]
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
Passing Time
One of the basic shapes of human habitations – four walls and sloping roof – is generally seen by children as a living organism, with its windows for eyes and […]
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
Matt Toole’s “Kinetic”
The alchemist is a Master of Fire. It is with fire that he controls the passage of matter from one state to another. –Mircea Eliade In ancient cultures, before the […]
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
Art Review: Elemental
FIVE OR SIX YEARS AGO I went to look at a landscape exhibition on Broughton at a gallery that no longer exists. The landscapes didn’t interest me, but in the […]
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
Picturing Savannah
Objective drawing and painting from life in European art was once mostly confined to studies for large compositions based on biblical or mythological narratives. Somewhere in the 17th to 18th […]
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
Remapping Savannah
The word “mapping” crops up everywhere lately. It has become an over-used piece of art jargon, usually meaningless because its traditional meaning has been stretched beyond sense. But standing in […]
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
Art review: John Spurlock and Sandra Reed
Sandra Reed works en plein air in oil on canvas. You might have seen her somewhere in town, putting up her easel and concentrating her attention on the simple, static […]
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
Art in Opposition
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT EXHIBITION not for aesthetic reasons, but because it initiates a discussion on the subject of protest art and takes place in an alternative gallery space, something […]
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
‘Painting Undone’ by Titus Kaphar
THERE IS NO AMBIGUITY or poetic metaphor in the title of this exhibition. It means exactly what it says. Titus Kaphar does his paintings and then, literally, undoes them. He […]
Posted inArts, Entertainment & Film
‘Memorial Grounds’
Portraits painted from photographs, however the artist applies the paint, always reveal the same recognizable contradictions in time and space. The fleeting facial expression that was caught by the camera […]