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Rachel Whiteread at Tate Britain
You could almost miss it – a small house-like structure, whitish-grey under a pale January sun, like a shy guest in Tate Britain’s front yard. Rachel Whiteread’s Chicken Shed (2017) is one of the many outdoor structures which the British sculptor has chosen to cast from the inside out – recording its absence rather than its…
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The Japanese House at Barbican Centre
A chaotic queue of people leaving their luggage at the cloakroom and half blocking the doors to the exhibition entrance created a strange contrast with the calm and minimalistic atmosphere I found there when I made it past the doors. As a display text unfurled on the right, a white staircase awaited ahead, underneath which…
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Georgia O’ Keeffe at Tate Modern
Georgia O’ Keeffe must be spinning in her grave: even though she actively protested against the interpretation of her close-up flower paintings as sexual organs, the easiest way to make someone’s face light up with recognition at the mention of her work is usually by adding “you know – the vagina-flower painter”. Tacky, perhaps, but…
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Goya: The Portraits, at The National Gallery
What we make of an artist’s career after he is long gone often, inevitably, is at odds with the artist’s own intentions. Goya wanted to be known for his portraiture, and in his particular his ambitious role as a court portrait painter. He could hardly predict that the vision we have of him mainly conjure the…
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History is Now: 7 Artists Take on Britain at the Southbank Centre
The Southbank Centre‘s Changing Britain festival is just about to end. It focused on the ways in which social, political and cultural events have changed Britain as a nation since 1945. On paper this may sound like quite a textbook essay question, and lead to quite a dull diorama of an exhibition oscillating between Tories…
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Conflict Time Photography at Tate Modern
Images of war and conflict invade us more than ever before. The constant presence of them in photographs and videos, on television, in press, on the internet, is both an eye-opener to the horrors of wars far away from us yet strangely desensitizing when we become “accustomed” to them. 2014 has been rife with these…
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Wedding Dresses 1775-2014 at the V&A
Many girls my age, in their early twenties, were quite dubious when I told them about the Wedding Dresses exhibition at the V&A. Cautious about how interesting it might be at the most, it certainly did not provoke a burst of excitement and enthusiasm about fashion centred around holy matrimony. This can be explained for…
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TalkAbout Guides
Visiting a museum or gallery can be a silent and solitary moment, despite the people surrounding us. More than once I feel that I am missing out on a great deal of discussion in front of a work of art with fellow visitors but no opportunity is given to me in order to change that.…
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Making Colour at the National Gallery
Colour is so omnipresent today that we need not worry about having to create it or search for it extensively…in fact, a main concern is rather knowing how not to use too much of it at a time. As a digital artist I can simply open Photoshop and slide a colour wheel around to obtain…
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Claire Mead 