Archive

Berlin Gallery Weekend 2017

The biggest week of the year for Berlin’s contemporary art scene saw the opening of dozens of exhibitions. Here are some highlights and impressions
Peter Dreher: ‘In my pictures I underline the act of seeing’

German artist Peter Dreher recounts the trauma of childhood under the Nazi regime, his autonomy from the social ferment of the 60s, and confronting all the problems of art history through the sustained depiction of a single ordinary object
Oliver Griffin: ‘The very act of photography makes something interesting’

Oliver Griffin talks about drinking White Russians, his BMX bike, which he has named Susan, taking pictures of tyre marks, and why there is no such thing as a boring photograph
Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place

During her tragically short career, Joan Eardley concentrated on two contrasting areas of Scotland, which form the focus of this exhibition
James Bridle: ‘There is a huge demand to humanise the technological view of the world’

James Bridle talks about his current show at the Nome Gallery, Berlin, which centres around the self-driving car, technological agency and the relationship of humans to machines, and what we can learn from them
Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg: Who am I to Judge, or, It Must be Something Delicious

Lust, sexual desire, sin and guilt are explored in a series of short claymation films supported by a new sculptural installation from the Swedish artist duo Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg
Lascaux IV: International Centre for Cave Art

With Lascaux IV, which contains a state-of-the-art simulation that brings to life the famous Lascaux cave and its Palaeolithic paintings, Norwegian architects Snøhetta and UK design partner Casson Mann have created an uplifting and educational temple to a vanished civilization
Art Brussels 2017

This 35th annual incarnation of Art Brussels was taglined ‘From Discovery to Rediscovery’. Here is a roundup of some of the rising talent that you may have missed
Nicky Hirst: Real Size

Nicky Hirst’s sculptures and installations quietly and skillfully explore the consonances and dissonances between object, context and materials. Funny, poetic, profound and wistful, the nine pieces – comprising mostly found objects, arranged or crafted in unlikely compositions – in this…
Eddie Martinez: ‘I just want people to interpret the work how they want’

Eddie Martinez talks about his latest show, Cowboy Town, at Timothy Taylor Gallery in London, the influence of US politics on artists, and why he looks at his work on his phone all night
John Latham: A World View and Speak: Tania Bruguera, Douglas Gordon, Laure Prouvost and Cally Spooner

Two concurrent exhibitions present a selective view of the career of renowned conceptualist John Latham along with work by four contemporary artists that reveals his profound influence today
Linda Kitson: [Mine is] ‘a reactive sort of work – it’s a reaction to, rather than … a preconceived idea …’

Linda Kitson talks about the works in Drawings and Projects, her current exhibition at House of Illustration in London, curated by Quentin Blake, being a war artist during the Falklands crisis, her inspiration and influences, and her latest work using…
Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms

The exhibition gives an insight into the development of modernism in Brazil, a country to which it was an extraneous mode of aesthetic language, developed under the influence of a somewhat slowly spreading wave of international modernism
Ruth Maclennan: ‘I realised that global warming was happening, and asked, how do I as an artist respond to that’

Visual artist Ruth Maclennan talks about what art can do in the face of climate change, her films of Arctic Russia and her latest film, shot in Scotland, From Time to Time at Sea
Queer British Art 1861-1967

To mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of sex between men, Tate Britain’s contribution to the plethora of queer exhibitions across the UK is a well-curated, well-balanced, aesthetically compelling tribute to sexualities and genders across the spectrum
Secundino Hernández: ‘As a painter you have to have the courage to not be afraid of change’

Secundino Hernández talks about his academic origins, the delicate equilibrium he seeks between accident and control, the quintessentially Spanish spirit of his painting, and his current exhibition, Paso, at Victoria Miro, London
Enrique Martínez Celaya: ‘The sense of past as memory always has force’

Enrique Martínez Celaya talks about his latest show, The Gypsy Camp, and his interest in nomadism and displacement, including his own experience of moving as a child from Cuba to Spain and then to the US, and explains his process…
Heywood and Condie: Head Land

Tony Heywood and Alison Condie’s ode to Hastings attempts to combine psychedelic sculpture with plants, but the jarring mixture of the natural and the artificial fails to capture the essence of this crazy coastal town
David Hepher – Grain of Concrete

Unusually for a landscape artist, David Hepher has for 40 years focused almost exclusively on the tower blocks of south London. In this retrospective, his large-scale triptychs evoke an almost elegiac sense of time and place
Ipek Duben: ‘I’m suggesting, with this project, that we should stop to listen’

Turkish artist Ipek Duben discusses her work THEY/ONLAR, a multiscreen video installation previously seen at SALT, Istanbul, and now showing for the first time in the UK
The Computer and Music: Coordinate Expansion

Cybernetic Serendipity: the computer and the arts, Studio International Special Issue, 1968
Brook Andrew: ‘I was challenged to unwind the histories that were told to me because I didn’t believe them’

History, identity and race dominate the Australian artist Brook Andrew’s work, as he challenges stereotypical ideas, uncovering neglected and often conflicted histories, particularly relating to the Indigenous people of his own country
Alexey Titarenko: ‘I wanted to capture my inner perception of the world around me’

An exhibition at the Naiya Alexander Gallery in New York brings together Alexey Titarenko’s photographs from four cities taken over 30 years. Here, he talks about how life in the Soviet Union shaped his work, being jailed by the KGB,…
Constable and Brighton

A pivotal period of John Constable’s life was spent in Brighton, where he would repeat three favourite walks, making sequential sketches, often intended as visual notes for larger paintings, but many quite exquisite as works in their own right