Regular readers of my blog know that I’m a big fan of the late Dame Paula Rego as I’ve featured her work here several times. The exhibition, Letting Loose, at Victoria Miro in London, is of paintings from the early 1980s before she became so very celebrated. These paintings are an orgy of activity and […]
One-minute blog of interesting things
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As a working contemporary artist I visit many exhibitions and shows, but sometimes it is the things I see that are part of daily life that capture my interest. My one-minute blog of interesting things reflects the fact that although we are increasingly time-poor, there is creativity all around us. Email me at info@carolinebanks.co.uk with your name and email to receive a weekly post that only takes 1 minute to read.
Behind the Red Moon – the Turbine Hall commission by El Anatsui at Tate Modern
Behind the Red Moon is the title of El Anatsui’s installation for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Made of possibly millions of bottle tops and discarded materials all painstakingly attached together with wire and thread, these huge pieces fill the space, dwarfing us humans. The Red Moon, seen as you enter the hall, resembles a billowing […]
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. Post 2 of 2.
As stated in my last post, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize goes on tour around the UK now that it has ended in London. Here are some of the venues listed: Drawing Projects UK (details TBC); The Gallery, Arts University Bournemouth, 16 February to 12 April 2024; The Arts Institute, Plymouth University, 4 May […]
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. Post 1 of 2
There’s a magic about drawing that I will never tire of experiencing. Both the making and the looking give me such pleasure so the annual Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, organised by Parker Harris, is a feast. It’s the foremost drawing exhibition in the UK with an extremely high standard of work. This blog post […]
Christian Marclay: Doors at White Cube, London
Christian Marclay’s video montage Doors, from 2022, made its London debut at White Cube in September and I was determined to catch it. The video played in the downstairs gallery while a collection of sculptures were on display upstairs. I liked their playfulness aligned with mathematics. The inside-outsidedness of beautifully sliced and stacked doors. All […]
People at Modern Art
This exhibition, People at Modern Art Helmet Row, gave me the chance to see some fabulous paintings and drawings normally unavailable to the public as so many are in private collections. Here are a few of my favourites. The deeply unsettling Painting Him Out by Paula Rego The intensity of gaze in Alice Neel‘s portrait […]
Sarah Sze at the Waiting Room, Peckham Rye
Given the photos I’d seen (as above) I thought there was only one way to view the recent ArtAngel project by Sarah Sze at the Waiting Rooms, Peckham Rye. Still images can only give a hint of a constantly changing visual experience so please click the link to see the Artangel official video. The hemisphere […]
Bandaloop: Resurgum at St Paul’s Cathedral. GDIF.
Part of the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival (GDIF) this year, aerial dance company Bandaloop performed Resurgam (latin for I shall rise) on the South side of St Paul’s Cathedral. Look at the bird carved in stone. I think the phoenix rising from the fire refers to the rebuilding of the cathedral after the Great […]
Visiting Strawberry Hill. Post 2 of 2
As I said in my previous post on Strawberry Hill, things began to get more interesting for me upstairs. This stained glass alcove in the Round Room beyond the Gallery is called the Henrys window and continues the stylistic evolution of the building. The same room contains the most expensive single item commissioned for the […]
Strawberry Hill. Post 1 of 2
Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, Surrey, the first Neo-Gothic building, is the product of Horace Walpole‘s imagination. Built from a pair of small cottages then developed over 40 years, it is a fantasy drawn on his deep knowledge and love of history and art. I had visited the exhibition “Horace Walpole & Strawberry Hill” at the […]