I liked this play. I felt that at times it was slightly like a soap opera, but in a good way: lots of action, interesting characters and a bit of conflict. There were a few critics who didn’t seem to enjoy it, or at least didn’t think it was Tom Stoppard’s best work, but to […]
We are familiar with Greek art. In fact, as a rule, the audience will also be familiar with a number of the sculptures on display in this exhibition at the British Museum. Even the fact that Greek sculptures were originally decorated in what could be described as garish colours will not be new to many. […]
Antigone I wanted to like this production, I really did. I generally like the innovation of the theatre the Barbican put on, as well as the fact that they stage foreign language productions, challenging plays, and other bold choices. I’ve seen Juliette Binoche before, and she always seems reasonably good. This version of Antigone, […]
This is the first exhibition at Buckingham Palace that I’ve been to in five years in London. I think part of that reason may be that they don’t tend to get as much press as other exhibition spaces. This in turn is linked to the fact that the nature of the gallery lends itself to […]
Mid-century German artists. Do they get more exhibitions in London than you can shake a stick at, or is that just me? Between Richter, Kiefer, Polke, Baselitz and another couple of heavyweights, they could certainly keep the turnstiles of a willing museum pretty busy. Having said that, this was the first major Polke retrospective I’ve […]
Mad but brilliant. Beats you over the head with a theme but does it in style. Uses technology to satirise our addiction to technology. References German literature, Jewish folklore, Expressionist cinema of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari vein and The Daily Mail. 1927: my new favourite theatre company. I go to a lot of theatre, […]
Unlike the Late Turner exhibition which I reviewed recently, the National Gallery didn’t create this exhibition on late works by Rembrandt from a position of reeducation or reinterpretation. The works on display are firmly within the Dutch Golden Age and have always been respected as masterful works (and quite a high number of them as […]
The central relationship explored in this exhibition is that between architecture and photography: how photographers have responded to the built environment around them, its static yet ever-changing nature, its central place in our lives; and how architecture, often through architects, has made use of photography. In order to shed light on this symbiotic give and […]
If you were in charge of exhibition programming, and you had a passion for a subject which perhaps wasn’t quite right for your museum, what would you do? It’s an interesting question, which could be argued a couple of ways. Is it better to stick to your institution’s core values and strengths, or to push […]
What to say about Allen Jones? Well, if you’re pretty much any critic who reviewed this exhibition, most of the discussion should be about his representation of women. You’ve likely all seen his sculptures of women as furniture, produced in the 1960s for the most part. Most famously there is ‘Chair’, in which a woman […]
