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

Make some NOISE

The case for NOISE, the 'virtual' talent festival

In an industry where nepotism is truly rife, it seems that unless your parents are celebrities, or rich, it’s getting tougher to get a foot in the door. But for most people, art is something to be done during down-time, with the ‘McJob’ acting as an inconvenient yet altogether necessary cover for an alter-ego as a zeitgeist-defining fashionista or future Rock God.

‘Step off the stage’

The Live Art Almanac, edited by Daniel Brine

Together, the texts collated in the Almanac cover myriad ideas and areas, some are firmly grounded in their sense of the performative and what ‘Live Art’ as a strategy includes, others cross and expand the borders of what it means to be ‘Live’ or even what it means to be ‘Art’. But happily the Almanac has much more to offer than a definition of Live Art.

Playing the building

Battery Maritime Building, New York

Participants queue up to operate the instrument on busy days, but to my untrained ear every tune sounded similar. This is amusing. In all probability players hope to add something new, imagine they are being empowered by the artist.

Whirligig of war

Wyndham Lewis Portraits, National Gallery, London

For Lewis, as for many others, the war had rendered the 1914 socio-political work order irrelevant; it was the left like the ‘old battalion’ of the wartime soldiers’ song ‘hanging on the old barbed wire’. For Lewis, as for many others, the political future was to be found on the right with some form of authortarianism.

A veneer of the carnivalesque

Mike Kelley retrospective, Wiels Centre for Contemporary Art, Brussels, April - July 2008

Kelley’s strength as an artist as highlighted by this retrospective is his position as a modern day Rabelais, refusing to romanticise the material he appropriates and the ideas he works from, any more than denigrate them.

Dinner with America

A reading of ‘Dinner with America’ by Rajni Shah, Pinter Building, Queen Mary University, London; 29 March 2008.

The fuel for both this individualism-for-liberty and individualism-for-consumption is neither liberty, nor capitalism – nor even a shabby looking American dream. Instead, it’s desire.

A familiar language?

The De Brays: Painting Family, Master Painters of 17th Century Holland, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

Humanity (insofar as it is here represented by the Dutch bourgeoisie of course) is shown in black and white, precisely because it has set itself apart from the imaginary and the natural world: it has created its own language for representing itself.

Chinese normality

Reflections on China Design Now at the V&A, London

China Design Now announced modern China as a global cultural presence, and offered its exhibits as a cultural parallel to its economic advancement since the 1980s.

Running out of ideas

Martin Creed: 'Work Number 850', Tate Britain, London

The reviews are hilarious; the thing itself is more problematic. The antics of gullible critics are harmless fun that does no great damage. But turning an art gallery into a play pen imposes real costs.

The truths of the street

Street & Studio: An Urban History of Photography, Tate Modern, London

If at times the juxtapositions of works are somewhat jarring, both in date and content, this is nonetheless a show that develops well the story of photography, our fascination with it, and how well we have learned to read images.

Celebrated interiors

Vilhelm Hammershøi: the Poetry of Silence, Royal Academy, London

People have tried to fit Hammershøi into categories, and he is often described as a symbolist. But these paintings resist incorporation; Hammershøi stood alone and we should not try to reduce him to an addendum to a movement. He worked within his limitations, and was amply successful on those terms.

A modern curiosity store

SHOW RCA Part Two, Royal College of Art, London

The Show RCA Two is an excellent glimpse of emerging talent, and an insight into the questions and answers of today’s international socio-environmental universe.

Behold the Parallel World

'China Design Now' at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Walking into the room dedicated to Beijing is like being ten years old again and watching Star Wars for the first time. Extremely futuristic and unrecognisable shapes float, stand, flash and surround you.

Not so easy and poetic

'Myth’ by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Sadler's Wells, London

Fantasy is born to fight repressed feelings and ridicule conventions. When watching the spinning, chaotic and muttering movement, choreographed by Cherkaoui, one cannot help but feel the enchanted curiosity of Lewis Carroll’s character, Alice who stumbled upon a mirror-like world, true in its shadow resemblance but exaggeratingly twisted.

Thrills from arts TV

Vision On: Film, Television and the Arts in Britain, by John Wyver (Wallflower Press)

We have populist programming which isn’t popular, arts programming that is scared of art. What happened? Wyver demonstrates this shift isn’t simply down to a new generation or a major change of personnel. Many controllers today were involved in good TV twenty years ago. Something more profound has taken place.