Incidentally, I note Justin has up-graded his website voiding all previous file paths for his JPGs, so the links in the 2013 review no longer work. :cry: Personally, I find those little Flash slideshow presentations more trouble than they're worth, but each to his own I suppose. I note the Parafin s...
22 May – 27 June 2015 Justin’s back! An artist I have a bit of a soft spot for and rambled on about at some length a couple of years ago, re-appears at a new gallery: Parafin . Is Parafin good enough for our little Juzzy-Wuzzy? Is it hot enough? Well, all things considered, probably yeah. ;) This y...
APRIL 30 - MAY 30, 2015 I suppose we can rope the artist in with the recent Zombie Formalism muster although he strikes me as a lot more exciting than fellow travellers like Oscar Murillo, Jacob Kassay or Parker Ito, or those from a similar age bracket included in MoMA’s recent survey of current pai...
Until 28th June 2015 Like a dog returning to its vomit, I once more contemplate writing a review of a Natalie Frank show . Obviously I shall choose my words carefully, lest I draw another relentless tirade from the artist . Well, someone has to put me in my place, right? Actually we’re the best of ...
[2,739w] Strong criticism in recent months of MoMA’s high-profile shows has only built upon the public disquiet over the museum’s plans for massive expansion, unveiled in 2014 and the views on art driving them. While there has been a number of discreet efforts (often from academics) to soften or def...
A site run by London-based art consultant Mike Brennan that offers articles (mainly by Brennan as far as I can see and pretty low-brow or lite - hey, market speak, right?) and an online gallery for prints (hence the title). Useful for a little background on 'emerging talent' as they say, or market ...
There are a couple of You Tubes of a panel discussion that took The Forever Now as its starting point to a more general discussion of contemporary painting. One video is by James Kalm (in two instalments) the other by David Surnam. The discussion was organised by Brooklyn Rail and Hunter College and...
There are a couple of You Tubes of a panel discussion that took The Forever Now as its starting point to a more general discussion of contemporary painting. One video is by James Kalm (in two instalments) the other by David Surnam. The discussion was organised by Brooklyn Rail and Hunter College and...
Being a bit of an Assayas tragic , I was always going to get around to this one. I haven’t seen all of the noted French cineaste’s work, but from what I have seen, Clouds of Sils Maria stands as a bit of departure in various ways – English language, set in Switzerland, focussing on a middle-aged fem...
Looking at Steven Allen's website, I was reminded of Ryan Moseley's work and started thinking it would be good to show them together, a group show of sorts. But then I was stuck thinking of other London painters sort of working in that carnival-esque mode.
I was expecting a bit more from this one , having only recently discovered the artist’s work , but there’s delicate, cursory first touches in a restrained palette and then there’s just wishy washy. The artist has always favoured washes (some of his best things are smaller watercolours) and a somewha...
This is an OK group show – don’t ask about the stupid title. I’m mentioning it mainly because it has a Lee Maelzer painting in it. Her stuff has moved into more stylised, kind of theatrical territory by the look of it. 8-) Remember Lee from the old days on the London Painting blog.... :)
Yes the SNG’s example is from the 30s – as are most online examples. And for the reader who can’t be bothered googling – here’s a very Currin-like, Venus with Gloves from 1932, Vanity of Vanities also from 1932, and this one I didn’t catch the title of, but I think you’ll agree VERY Currin-esque. I ...
Well Richard Watham springs to mind – shudder. Although he’s hardly as sleazy. But he has the same stylistic coyness, disingenuousness. Wince. And there are a couple of German painters I’ve seen doing something vaguely similar to Currin – but that’s because of the example of Otto Dix. Not sure how m...
Almost nothing about this band anywhere on the web, but the videos are just raw, stripped-down blues again. Here - I think the track is called +Komment and Here as Th' Birthday. Not quite as strange and exciting as 75 Dollar Bill – but rootsy...
The other side of Chicago music, I guess. It’s funny, even when I heard this on the radio, something about the woozy arrangement behind the melancholic baritone made me think of Engelbert Humperdinck meeting David Lynch. And sure enough, Knox is a huge fan of the old Eraserhead himself and actually ...
I haven’t researched this guy at all. But the videos are great fun and the beat irresistibly danceable... or at least clappable – Wenu Wenu and Warni Warni – the latter possibly an Arabic tribute to the great Australian leg spinner? Who can say?
Chicago rock trio in the great tradition of Chicago bands – think Halo of Flies, Jesus Lizard, Big Black. It’s all there. Loved it then - Love it now. Here’s Brother, Panopticon and Sham King.
Remember Metz, The Toronto trio? - I file that stuff here as well.
A raw duo, Che Chen, a Chinese American plays prepared electric guitar and Rick Brown on various percussion. They play stripped-down instrumentals that sound like serial blues loops or field recordings from some new rural outlands or ghetto. Think Junior Kimborough produced by Terry Riley. They had ...
Been around for a few years now, I’ve only just got interested. Couldn’t download any of his albums. Boo hoo. But there’s a live number that shows Kieran at his most charismatic – although not a great audio recording - and a studio version of Geraldo’s Farm that shows the band in a more polished lig...
Some interviews should just never be granted, no matter how desperate your career is. Yuskavage, whose career has pretty much stagnated from a critical point of view (but she is with Zwirner and probably still selling loads) unburdens herself in The Paris Review about her working class roots, her ha...
This is a blog by Rodrigo Cañete, who also blogs with Huffpo (or is this an outpost of Huffpo...?) but seems a regular, fairly astute observer of both the New York and London scenes. Rod actually gives his supposed address (Holland Park) a phone number and email address, so he seems a pretty straig...
A local spat in New York between Robert Storr – eminent curator and currently head of Yale School of Art - and the Fred and Ginger of New York art criticism, husband and wife team Jerry Saltz (Vulture.com) and Roberta Smith (NYT). Some of the transcription is missing from the above link (via Taboof...
There’s an array of mainstream reviews for this one but I’d not actually heard of the author or title before I came across it in a local Op-shop. I’m out of touch with recent fiction. The title stood out on a shelf surrounded by Blood Justice , Estimated Time of Death , Hellfire Minstrel , No Surviv...
I’m reviewing a couple of novels for a change. Not really my beat, as a glance down the WWR forum list will attest, but I need a break from fine art - and even movies. Unbelievably. I’m not quite ready to step back into the studio either, so I’m just writing stuff.... Anyway, first cab off the rank ...
Unfortunately I’m too slow to review this show while it was running (6th March - 2nd April). Shame. But it’s still worth a mention, if only to watch for the artist in future. The rest of the gallery stable are none too thrilling, but Lumsden strikes me as worth a little more attention. I was trying ...
[4,135w] Zombie Formalism is the name coined by New York critic Walter Robinson to a recent trend in abstract painting, although the zombie part is anticipated by painter and blogger Martin Mugar ) in his characterisation of 'zombie abstraction'. The trend has been eagerly embraced by the market sin...
Fighting two of my most deep-seated aversions, - 1) ‘mixed media’ artists and 2) people who use ‘critique’ as a verb – I hereby recommend Art Critiqued – Bradley Hayman’s diary on the London art scene. Brad seems to be connected to Goldsmiths as well, which would normally be a third strike, but it’s...
This is the news and reviews section to the Artspace.com site, which contains occasionally interesting articles. Artspace seems to be a sort of successor to Artnet.com, for chief editor Walter Robinson, at least. Lately I've tracked various links to this site for critical pieces, so I'm taking note....
A serviceable obit in The Guardian this week for venerable London art school insider 'Bert' Irwin. I remember him best from the 70s and his switch to acrylics when he used to show in little galleries in Covent Garden, just before it got redeveloped. Old Bert the quinessential journeyman or plodder, ...
This is just a 16 minute short available on You Tube ( here ) but I felt like reviewing it. It’s written and directed by Harmony Korine in 2010 – amazingly. It has to be the first thing I’ve seen of his that I’ve unreservedly liked (well there is one little frantic cross-cutting sequence in it, but ...
This is a comic mystery thriller, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, set in Los Angeles in 1970 about a down-at-heel doctor of some sort (gynaecologist? - to be tactful - abortionist? - to be tactless - guessing from the examination table in his surgery) Larry "Doc" Sportello (J...
Interesting development being fanned by Village Voice’s Christian Viveros-Fauné here on artnet.com , over the predictable slagging of the Björk retrospective at MoMA – mainly for its poor staging, which rests squarely with the curator and bottle blonde show-pony, Klaus Biesenbach. The crits have bee...
David Salle for Art News weighs in on this exhibition as well, particularly criticising Oscar Murillo's work and while I agree with pretty much everything he says, frankly the same rigour needs to be applied to Joe Bradley, Matt Connors, Josh Smith and Michael Williams - all equally lame. But press...
New Art From Africa and Latin America 11 MARCH - 6 SEPTEMBER 2015 There are one or two things here worth noting, although the general concept of underlying cultural affinities between Africa and Latin America, alluded to in the title, doesn’t really come to much. And as usual, Saatchi’s selection h...
This is a British site dedicated to abstraction, a bit like Abstract Critical, (some of the same authors) or Abcrit, as it become, but without the grumbling comments threads – which are 80% of the fun of course.