art blog since 2009
Lightroom is a three-year-old venue near King’s Cross which was first built with the intention of housing a 600 seat theatre. Four storeys high, it is pretty big. And visitors descend narrow stairs, pass through an infernal, glowing red tunnel and emerge into a vast auditorium as the opening riff from Rebel Rebel booms right …
September 17, 2026
Thanks to binoculars, I could see Christ’s suffering all the more clearly. And I could spectate in comfort at all of the drama playing out at the foot of his cross. I could watch, as if I was an ornithologist, as Mary mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene both suffered agonies. Or maybe as if …
September 15, 2026
There are several difficulties in following taxi drivers. They know the roads backwards. They love a shortcut. They can be considerate, but equally the converse. And we defer to them at junctions, because they make a living on these roads. This is a short account in which I followed a taxi driver. It was just …
July 20, 2026
With so much wrong with the world, I come to the gallery hoping for anger, tears and shit (see previous post). At the Barbican last week I found optimism. It was hard to stomach. In Other Worlds is an immersive exhibition from filmmaker and architect Liam Young. It comprises of environmental design, spoken word, model …
July 17, 2026
A spare ticket became available for Paul McCarthy: Selected Video Works (1970-2025) at the Rio cinema in Dalston. But when I tried to interest my brother, he sent a text saying, “I’m not sure I’m really in the mood for 3 hours of challenging and potentially disturbing imagery.” That said, I’m not sure I was …
July 12, 2026
I’m not calling for a cessation of all music and dancing until WWIII ends, but I am calling for a ban on Britpop. It just seemed a bit much to be bouncing around to unofficial national anthems at a time when our nation is aiding and abetting war crimes and an emboldened far right are …
June 19, 2026
I didn’t exhaust the possibilities for seeing art in this year’s Brighton Festival. But I was glad to have caught both the exhibitons here. If you saw either, let me know in the comments! Tender Exchange Hold a wooden heart and privately speak into it. Speak what is in your own flesh and blood heart. …
June 2, 2026
“It’s a bubble”, Thomas Hirschhorn confirms. I find him immersed in the Pavillon Sicli in Geneva, where he is resident twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for some 75 days. It’s only half of a surprise that this is a work of what he calls Présence et Production. And I don’t miss the …
May 20, 2026
Don’t know where my brains are now but last week they were at Goldsmiths CCA where I caught an archival exhibition dedicated to the output of Paper Tiger Television. Beginning in 1981, this collective (aka PTTV) has broadcast some 400 episodes of a public access show that was to turn its gaze back on the …
April 13, 2026
The manufacture and sale of a fighter jet entails a complex and shady web; such planes have wide supply chains and reach the market in lots destined for different client states. But research bodies put an incriminating figure on the contribution of UK arms manufacturers towards Israel’s aerial war on Gaza; The Ploughshares Project and …
March 18, 2026