Searched for 'rowland bagnall' - Found 12 results

  1. Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke St, Oxford OX1 1BP

    Ruth Asawa | Citizen of the Universe

    “During the last week I’ve been drawing,” writes John Berger in Confabulations, “asking myself whether natural forms – a tree, a cloud, a river, a stone, a flower – can be looked at and perceived as messages. Messages – it goes without saying – which can never be verbalized, and are not particularly addressed to us.” Ascending the stairs into Modern Art Oxford, one enters a strange forest. Lit from many angles, casting duplicate shadows, the distinctive hanging sculptures of American artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) float as if suspended in deep water. Written by Rowland Bagnall

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  2. Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PH

    Jeff Koons

    There’s a frustrating quote from Jeff Koons in the catalogue accompaniment to a new exhibition of his artwork at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. “I’ve tried to make work,” it says, “that any viewer, no matter where they came from […] would have to say that on some level “Yes, I like it.” If they couldn’t do that, it would only be because they had been told they were not supposed to.” Review by Rowland Bagnall

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  3. Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke St, Oxford OX1 1BP

    Hannah Ryggen: Woven Histories

    Six years before her death in 1970, Ryggen became the first female artist to represent Norway at the Venice Biennale, and, in more recent years, has been the subject of several important retrospectives. As the relationship between politics and the public continues to find its twenty-first century feet, the uncompromising boldness of Ryggen’s tapestries, seen in her current exhibition, Woven Histories, at Modern Art Oxford, and their gentle interrogation of questions concerning nationality, identity, inequality and storytelling seem all too strangely close to home. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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  4. IKON Gallery 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace Birmingham, B1 2HS

    Edward Lear | Moment to Moment

    “I think that Lear would be as shocked as anyone to find himself on the walls at IKON,” suggests curator Matthew Bevis during this exhibition’s opening. Best known for his nonsense verse, Edward Lear worked as an artist his entire adult life, producing a vast quantity of sketches – “around 9,000 compositions,” notes the catalogue, “roughly one every couple of days over a fifty-year period” – many produced during his restless travels across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Following the success of their recent Carlo Crivelli show, IKON now presents Moment to Moment, the first exhibition dedicated solely to Lear’s landscape drawings, a stunning introduction to an essential body of work. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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  5. Fruitmarket 45 Market Street, Edinburgh EH! 1DF

    Daniel Silver: Looking

    Daniel Silver: Looking showcases a new collection of the artist’s work in clay. A material departure from his previous sculpture – typically concrete, marble, stone, or bronze – Looking continues Silver’s exploration of ideas concerning bodily encounters, inviting new questions about the politics of witnessing and being seen. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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  7. The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross, London WC2N 5DN

    Backlit: On Visiting The National Gallery, London from Home

    Since the lockdown announcement on the 23rd March, galleries and museums across the UK have been emphasising the scope and availability of their digital collections, encouraging the public to engage with high-resolution reproductions of their artefacts online. Considering the work of art in the age of digital reproduction may not be a new phenomenon. And yet, the enthusiasm with which many institutions have been vocalising the accessibility of their archives on the Internet raises the volume on several important questions regarding the significance, if any, of the artwork as a physical, encounterable object, and the responsibility of museums to ensure that their collections are available online. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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  8. Online

    Plicnik Space Initiative

    The Plicnik Space Initiative, a new artistic venture founded by Amelie Mckee and Melle Nieling, hosts its inaugural exhibition aboard the D02.2, a fictional spacecraft of massive proportions, with a mission to explore the boundary between physical and virtual space. As museums and galleries across the globe face uncertain futures in the wake of the pandemic, the show interrogates the parameters of digital curation, inviting imaginative responses to a range of pressing questions concerning art and the environment, technology, and commerce. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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  9. Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Rd, London SE21 7AD

    Helen Frankenthaler: Radical Beauty

    For many decades after its initial rise, the Abstract Expressionist movement remained synonymous with a distinctive iconography: cue the paint-splattered male, a tragic hero sprawled across the canvas. Although its cast is variously misleading...

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  10. Ashmolean Museum, Beaumont Street, Oxford, England

    America’s Cool Modernism

    Above all, in America’s Cool Modernism at the Ashmolean Museum, the absence of human presence in the artworks betrays an anxiety towards the place of people in an increasingly mechanised world. I found myself thinking about the photographs of Detroit that surfaced several years ago, showing the derelict buildings and factories that remain in the wake of the city’s bankruptcy. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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