Reviews of exhibitions in London and beyond, as well as books and performances related to the visual arts. 

Coldness and hostility

‘Hortus Conclusus’, by Peter Zumthor, Serpentine Gallery, London

The simple black exterior evokes no sense of intrigue, no yearning to discover what lies within. Moreover, it is a blot on the landscape, stark and unadorned. It does not invite you in, it is not welcoming, and, in fact, it verges on blandness.

Alight, Attack

The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World, Tate Britain, London

Mechanical shapes of peachy human flesh extend from the canvas appearing like counterparts of a weapon emerging from the depths of a white void. The slow agony of trench warfare soldiers and a creeping sense of death provides a cutting contrast to scenes reminiscent of the powerful resurrection of Christ in painting and drawings titled ‘Returning to the Trenches’ by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson.

The edge of the coffee table

In Search of a Masterpiece: An Art Lover's Guide to Great Britain and Ireland, by Christopher Lloyd (Thames & Hudson, 2011)

Lloyd’s tastes, while not cutting-edge, are not cosy. Yes, there are the striking but standard offerings we might expect. But there is also work which suddenly pulls us up short.

Belfast: Exposed

Where are the people? Contemporary photographs of Belfast 2002-2010, edited by Karen Downey

Ethical concerns can just as easily be motivated by an evasion of responsibility, as they can by a desire to capture the displacement of people from history-making. The absence of people in documentary photography can be an accurate picture of the position of the people in contemporary society, but this absence can also amount to an attempt to evade the question Where are the people?

2LDK

At Home in Japan – beyond the minimal house, Geffrye Museum of the Home, London

The facts to be learned range from the curious (we learn that towels are ‘very popular generic gifts’ in Japan, and most people therefore have far too many) to the crazy (‘It is also common to eat a bean for every year of your age’), and they document everything from rubbish collection etiquette to gardening habits.

Chance meetings of camera with character

London Street Photography, Museum of London, London

The depth of emotion conveyed in Ben Hardy’s ‘East End Boy’, in which a wailing child hangs fearfully in his mother’s arms, terrified after a bombing raid on 28 September 1940, is perfectly mirrored in the mournful embrace of John Chase’s ‘Old Compton Street, Soho, 1999’, following David Copeland’s nail bomb attack on the Admiral Duncan pub.

‘Tox,Tox,Tox’

Street art or vandalism?

Can graffiti, something associated predominantly with teenagers who are labelled antisocial, be called art, and is the spraying of a tag really street art? What does graffiti really represent apart from the artist?

Man-size cats, toilet threesomes and talking washing machines

Realism, Soho Theatre, London

At the end of Realism, protagonist Stuart’s girlfriend asks: ‘And what did you do today?’ ‘Fuck all,’ replies Stuart. Well, these pictures, scribbled frantically in the dark, tell a different story…

Into

Tracey Emin: Love Is What You Want, Hayward Gallery, London

My lines, my drawings, my sweethearts, wispy-haired and still blue
From an unfortunate birth that was quite dangerous
I am still here watching you

Using art to nudge the public

Culture and Class, by John Holden (Counterpoint 2010) / Arts Funding, Austerity and the Big Society: Remaking the case for the arts, by John Knell and Matthew Taylor (RSA 2011)

Today, Voltaire’s Enlightenment optimism has deteriorated into a deep pessimism about humanity and its place in the world.  In Britain, art is no longer seen by the elite as a way of dragging the lower orders up by their bootlaces, but as a sort of Valium to stop us getting any worse.

Joyful filth

Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life, Wellcome Collection, London

A startling illustration, a stipple engraving, of a cholera victim, created in 1831 and owned by the Wellcome Library, presents the monstrous presence of the disease. The diptych presents the transformation a neatly coiffed, nubile twenty three year old Venetian woman, into a gnarled, green-lipped hag.

I know a dirty word

Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life, Wellcome Collection, London

It makes you wonder, if we were all left to clean up after ourselves, from our houses and gardens to our schools and streets, whether we’d be so pernickety about that spot of dust on the kitchen surface, or that banana peel in the corner.

Camp followers

The Cult of Beauty: the Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

In the face of remaining negative attitudes about the Victorians, the case for reappraisal still needs to be made. For enquirers who are yet to be convinced of the aesthetic movement’s positive work, this exhibition is a good starting point.

Civilisation is power

Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World, British Museum, London

This exhibition reminds us that international involvement and influence in Afghanistan are nothing new. Like Belgium and Poland it has - because of its geographical location - found itself an unwilling cockpit in world affairs, the fate of countries when caught between competing power blocks. It also shows that cross-border trade is a centuries-old activity: it helped to bring about the ideas and art which these exhibits exemplify.

Talking proper

Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices, British Library

Lynne Truss’ war against everyone from Americans to teenagers to green grocers is a short sighted belligerent war on those-too-stupid to use the apostrophe or spell correctly. When, in fact, language changes so rapidly, to try and pin it to a set of rules is lunacy, and if these rules exist, who decided Truss was the one to make them?