“Why is there so much sewing?” demanded The Art Newspaper’s Christina Ruiz after visiting Christine Macel’s exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale. “I get it: domestic work, women’s work, is important and undervalued. But is it in itself art? No it is not.” There was a time when so-called textile arts were prized above all… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Tangled Web – September 2017
Laura Gascoigne: It’s Not The Winning, It’s The Making Art – July 2017
Last month a new sort of museum opened in Sweden. The brainchild of psychologist Dr Samuel West, the Museum of Failure in Helsinborg is an unnatural history museum of commercial fossils, a repository of innovative products that flopped. “The majority of all innovation projects fail,” its website announces cheerfully, before expressing the hope that showcasing… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: It’s Not The Winning, It’s The Making Art – July 2017
Laura Gascoigne: Do You Want Ice With That? – May 2017
Ever since Anya Gallaccio made her name by exhibiting an ice block called Intensities and Surfaces in an East London pumping station in 1996, I’ve been monitoring the advance of ice through the contemporary art world, where it seems resistant to climate trends prevailing elsewhere. While the polar ice caps recede, the phenomenon of ice… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Do You Want Ice With That? – May 2017
Laura Gascoigne: Tainted by Experience – March 2017
When the former controller of BBC Radio 3 John Drummond published an autobiography in 2001, he called it ‘Tainted by Experience’ – an ironic reference to the reason given by a Birtist suit at the Beeb for his being ‘let go’ a decade earlier. I haven’t read the book, but the expression was used by… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Tainted by Experience – March 2017
Laura Gascoigne: Photography, Wrong Sort Of – January 2017
“And the Praemium Imperiale Award for Painting goes to… a photographer!” Yep, Cindy Sherman has won the Imperial Japanese gong for mastery of greasepaint for that interminable string of selfies in fancy dress we all wearied of circa 1980. If not for greasepaint, it would have to be for psychological insight – and despite her… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Photography, Wrong Sort Of – January 2017
Laura Gascoigne: Is It The Real World Or An Exercise? – November 2016
The Ukrainians have a lot of empty plinths where statues of Lenin once stood and last July, taking a leaf out of the Gormley Sutra, steps were erected around the one in Kiev’s Bessarabska Square so that people could climb up to admire the view and/or take selfies. The installation, Inhabiting Shadows, was the work… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Is It The Real World Or An Exercise? – November 2016
Laura Gascoigne: Reach for the Starchitects – The Switch House
A survey by the Office for National Statistics in May revealed that the British are changing their spending habits. Instead of filling our homes to the rafters with consumer durables and not-so-durables, we’re spending our spare cash on ‘experiences’, including recreation and, yes, culture. “People are interested in servicing a lifestyle rather than buying stuff,”… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Reach for the Starchitects – The Switch House
Laura Gascoigne: Crime Without Punishment
In May, policemen with shovels moved in again on 79-year-old mobster Robert Gentile’s Connecticut ranch. It’s the third time they’ve searched the property and the second time they’ve dug it up in the hope of finding the 13 masterpieces, including Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee, stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Crime Without Punishment
Giles Auty: Review of The New Philistines by Sihrab Ahmari
Although I no longer live permanently in Britain, I have been fascinated to learn about the apparent stir caused there recently by this worthy and unusual little book. The feelings of indignation and outrage which underwrite it are understandable. Yet even the fiercest cultural arguments seldom seem to stir much in the way of violent… Continue reading Giles Auty: Review of The New Philistines by Sihrab Ahmari
Giles Auty: The Vital Value of Dissent
From the raised kitchen window of my house I can see most of the birds which regularly visit the garden. In summer these are mostly magpies, currawongs and cockatoos while in winter quite large flocks of pale green female satin bowerbirds arrive which are often accompanied by an all-black male. The latter is, in fact,… Continue reading Giles Auty: The Vital Value of Dissent