Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded. This quote from Virginia Woolf is printed on the back cover of Frances Spalding's Virginia Woolf Art, Life and Vision. How true, how true, I want to say. I recognise this sentiment; it's the source of my early and on-going compulsion to write a journal. To …
Continue reading Virginia Woolf at the National Portrait Gallery
Sunday afternoon. The previous night, England lost. It seemed a good idea to stretch our legs and get a breath of fresh air, and an even better idea to take advantage of the fact that in under 45 minutes we can walk to Tate Britain. Grey skies and a stiff breeze hurried us on, through …
Friday evening. Fifty or so people gather in a corporate art venue, the Bloomberg Space, for Errors Hit Orient. Nick and I are here because I saw a tweet from Studio Voltaire about the event, mentioning B.S. Johnson. We're not quite sure what to expect. The idea sounds a bit mad, but definitely unmissable. Someone …
Fun. Play. Inquisitiveness. Encountering the everyday at an odd angle. Provocation. Or no point at all, IT just IS. And the 'it'? Art. Specifically, the Martin Creed retrospective What's the point of it? at the Hayward Gallery, which we visited on Thursday evening. Although some of the work was familiar to me, there was a …
I am struggling to articulate my response to the Australia exhibition at the Royal Academy, which ends next Sunday. I've visited three times now. It's a big show. Each time I've spent around two hours in there. It definitely has the sense of a journey. There are some interesting echoes or counterpoints as you wander …
Last Saturday I avoided the mayhem of the fireworks display in Battersea Park and instead took in the Mira Schendel exhibition at Tate Modern. And a thoroughly rewarding experience this was. I hadn't come across Schendel's work before, and the Tate show is a wonderful introduction to her prolific and varied output. Schendel emigrated to …
Biblical weather last night as we ventured far north, deep into zone 3 and along the Seven Sisters Road, to the private view of an exhibition of posters at G511ERY. A fabulously unlikely location for a gallery, next to a kebab shop in Tottenham, but just the spot to showcase some maverick printmaking. The work on …
Friday 7th June For some time , I've wanted to visit Aldeburgh and see the places where Benjamin Britten lived and worked, to wander along the beach and immerse myself in the landscape that inspired him. This weekend, at last, we're going, coinciding with the opening of the 66th Aldeburgh Music Festival, which was originally …
Straight from work yesterday evening to the Lisson Gallery for two exhibition previews. Canadian artist Rodney Graham has new and recent work on show at 29 Bell Street. Striking photographic tableaux are mounted in large lightboxes, the colours rich and intense, the images hyperreal. And also very witty. A scientist in his lab stares pensively …
Yesterday evening we strolled along to the opening of Change of Signature, billed as a multimedia installation, at Testbed 1, a local exhibition space that I hadn't come across before. And it proved to be a fascinating show. The venue is a large, stripped out industrial space: uneven concrete floors, distressed iron girders, ceramic tiled …
Hilaire 