The works hint at the building’s hidden histories, but won’t spell them out.
“
We all move through the world in a different way, and if we could understand more about why that is, I think moving through spaces would be so much less harmful.”
“My parents keep asking me when I’m going to make real art again.”
I contributed to this publication by Catherine Bertola and Rosie Morris, which takes a look at
less visible, marginalised and precarious practices.
“Lots of people in the arts have been working doubly hard to look after one another this year.”
“There can be as much stillness as joy.”
“I’ve got this stubborn idea that I can paint on anything.”
It’s the diary-like works that suck you in.
A conscious decision to discard the “baggage” of the traditional biennial format.
Mindless repetition and back-breaking toil does not simply vanish when a worker clocks off at the end of their shift.
She sensed a gulf between the studio’s hotbed of inspiration and the more muted experience of the gallery visitor, shuffling between compositions, catalogue in hand.
Serenely prohibitive, the pages seem like a nod to an era before rolling content, when television test cards told viewers when to call it a night.
Rather than the gleaming surface of a shop floor, traces of the workshop linger through wood offcuts and folded drapes of unused fabric.
The work is approachable, enjoys getting out of its comfort zone, and likes pizza (probably).
The show is no dusty tribute to a bygone movement, but proof that Bauhaus influence continues to be keenly felt.
It sprawls across the gallery floor like some kind of ominous subterranean network, bristling with data.
A tacit reminder that English identity isn’t simply about pastoral
landscapes and china teacups, but a story of exploitation and the ugly
legacy of the slave trade.
Paunchy magnates in powdered wigs jostle against cut-outs of Thatcher and Reagan.
It is precisely Himid’s commitment to challenging assumptions, and questioning embedded power structures, that makes her such a worthy candidate for the prize.
A cluster of withered red ‘SALE’ balloons slump in a corner.
The teenagers, in full petticoats and their mothers’ stilettoes, grin delightedly at the viewer.
Does creating meaningful work have to involve a tortured internal conflict, or simply picking out a can of Dulux?
I couldn’t help feeling that I might enjoy the work more if I had been born a computer.
S
cenes of vibrant red stalks plucked from the soil by candlelight.
The nose finally heads off on an odyssey of adventure, abandoning its owner to wallow in secondhand aromas.
If online swindles can offer up an escape route, then this one is a cul-de-sac.
P
ortraits are rarely neutral images, but rather coded representations of property, status and power.
There's a catch — full appreciation of this festival could take several hundred years.
You wanted to outsmart the bot, expose its machinery, ask it to marry you — anything to provoke a response.
A place for trying to explain postmodernism to your nan, testing fairweather friendships with offers of free wine, and justifying several grand's fallout to your parents.