BY CEDAR LEWISOHN / London-based sculptor Gary Webb graduated from Goldsmiths in 1997, instantly achieving the rare combination of sell out success and critical recognitions. He is an equal blend of confidence and playfulness, nonsense and genius, flirtation and curiosity- personally traits that seamlessly manifest in his work- revealed through its slick presentation and backed …
Girls
BY GREGG LOPEZ / A look back at the groundbreaking HBO programme. Girls tells the story of four friends in their early twenties as they move into the adult world of dinner parties, careers and, [in season two], breakdowns. The show was created by Lena Dunham, a liberal arts graduate who writes, executive produces directs …
Scotch The Rumours
BY CEDAR LEWISOHN / In the latest of his regular food columns, Cedar Lewisohn tastes some proper working class London grub, in the process discovering that Scotch eggs might just be “the new smashed avocado”.. Some friends were visiting from out of town and doing a kind of ‘old London’ food tour. I thought it …
Talking with Ernesto Neto: Um dia todos fomos peixes
BY DIANE DINUZZO / Understanding and connecting with a piece of art that is not necessarily a figurative object might be difficult sometimes for those who are not part of the art world. The cold structure of an installation quite often can leave the common viewer with distant, skeptical feelings about a work. Fortunately, that is …
A Manifesto for the Millennia
BY EMILY CATRICE / If there’s one person I think deserves a proper apotheosis, it’s Mary Beard. Though, fortunately, it’s much too early to be talking deification. She’ll be writing, researching and thinking critically among us for a long time to come. In this digital era when power divides are becoming clearer and long-unheard voices …
Lyle Perkins – Ease of Use
BY GREGG LOPEZ / French Riviera Until 13 December 2015 When I first met London-based artist Lyle Perkins, in Los Angeles in 2011, he was a visiting artist-in-residence at the Raid Gallery Downtown. LA’s Arts District is full of legally zoned industrial spaces, where artists live on the fringes between Tinseltown and Skid Row. This …
Zorn to Secrecy
BY DAVID SHEPPARD / David Sheppard celebrates the film music of American composer John Zorn, a musician who, he suggests, is something of a victim of his own creative eclecticism and unremitting artistic curiosity, his true genius “obscured by the cloud of his own scorching but unclassifiable prodigiousness”. I’m writing this on September 2, 2018, the …
Black Axe Mangal
BY GREGG LOPEZ / Stepping out of Islington & Highbury station into a wall of construction dividers, squinting helplessly at a blue google map dot suspended somewhere near the roundabout, a temporary sign pointing me to The Famous Cock pub, which, like other businesses, was partially obscured by the facade of tarpaulin greeted me as …
Ciao, Chianciano!
BY GREGG LOPEZ / London based gallerists Marie and Roberto Gagliardi really did escape to the country when they bought an empty hotel in Chianciano Terme and transformed it into a museum to house their art collection. The Museum of Art of Chianciano is open from June to September and also hosts a biennial which is …
Cambodian Space Project
BY GREGG LOPEZ / Whiskey Cambodia (Metal Postcard) Despite Pol Pot’s mass murder of Cambodia’s Western-influenced population, the rock and pop scene of late ’60s Cambodia lives on amongst the stacks of tapes and CDs hawked on Phnom Phen street corners. Snapped up by American tourists like album compilers Paul Wheeler, and sampled on his …