Contemporary art
Damien Hirst should burn down his gallery
I love my friends at the loucher fringes of the art world, but every now and again, someone does something…
Head to Deptford for one of the exhibitions of the year
Grim news from gallery-land, where even Manhattan’s mega-blue chips are shedding jobs by the truckload. ‘The market’s fucked,’ one soundbite-handy…
The Venice Biennale was just that bit worse than usual
The 61st Venice Biennale arrived freighted with portent. To cut a long story short: Russia and Israel were invited to…
Brooklyn’s answer to Nathan Barley has struck gold
I was on the way to Cecily Brown’s exhibition at the Serpentine last week when I heard that Kensington Gardens…
I miss post-internet art
I got my first paid writing gig back in the early 2010s, for an online magazine fixated on the then-current…
The art of ageing
More than 30 contemporary artists have contributed to the Wellcome Collection’s latest exhibition, which asks what it’s like to age…
Does Tate’s director care about art?
I met the Tate’s outgoing director Maria Balshaw only once, back when she was in Manchester running both the Whitworth…
Am I a useful idiot visiting Uzbekistan’s first art biennial?
In the ruins of a 16th-century mosque, in the heart of the ancient silk-road city of Bukhara, dozens of abstract…
Why is divorce so seldom addressed in art?
Two years ago I was flown to Reykjavik to interview the Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson. It was a weird…
London’s stupidest gallery
Everyone loves a private view, and I am no exception. I don’t know how many hours I must have spent…
The best artist alive? Probably
Taking place every October in Regent’s Park, the Frieze fair is probably the biggest event in London’s art calendar. It…
The best Turner Prize in years
So, the Turner Prize: where do we start? It’s Britain’s most prestigious art award, one that used to mean something…
Wittily wild visions: Abstract Erotic, at the Courtauld, reviewed
If you came to this show accidentally, or as a layperson, it could confirm any prejudices you might have about…
Beguiling grot, TfL surrealism and Insta-art: contemporary art roundup
Last month, I got the train down to Margate to interview the Egyptian-Armenian artist Anna Boghiguian (b. 1946), whose exhibition…
London’s best contemporary art show is in Penge
If you’ve been reading the more excitable pages of the arts press lately, you might be aware that the London…
Absorbingly repellent: Ed Atkins, at Tate Britain, reviewed
In the old days, you’d have to go to a lot of trouble to inhabit another person’s skin. Today you…
If ‘wokeness’ is over, can someone please tell the Fitzwilliam Museum?
Optimists believe that the tide of ‘wokeness’ is now ebbing. If so, the message has not yet reached Cambridge, whose…
In defence of decommissioning
There’s more than a grain of truth in the popular caricature of a curator as a mother hen clucking frantically…
Are kids’ games under threat?
We hear a lot about the rights of the child, but the first I heard of the child’s right to…
The mesmerising Olympic posters designed by the likes of Warhol and Whiteread
You could be forgiven for assuming that the citizens of Paris weren’t exactly bursting with joy at the prospect of…
It’s time to free art from being ‘interactive’ and ‘immersive’
The American artist and critic Brad Troemel once pointed out that art galleries have all turned into a kind of…
The latest Venice Biennale is ideologically and aesthetically bankrupt
Last week’s opening of the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale marks a watershed for the art world. In much…
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’: Sophie Calle interviewed
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’ Thus Sophie Calle objected to the first line of…
Master of all trades
The busiest show in Edinburgh must be Grayson Perry: Smash Hits which, a month into its run, still has people…
