Artists

Michael Armitage gained his postgraduate diploma from the Royal Academy Schools ten years ago and returns to the Royal Academy with Paradise Edict, a powerful exhibition of paintings. Some were inspired by the 2017 Kenyan elections, others explore East African society, landscapes and figures referencing classical narratives. The lushness of colour and assured mark-making belies […]

“I aim for an art that is directly plugged into our current life” – Jean Dubuffet An artist I have been aware of for most of my life, Brutal Beauty, an exhibition of Jean Dubuffet at the Barbican, was an unexpected joy to visit. There was a strong current of energy running from the work […]

As exhibitions everywhere have been disrupted over the past 15 months I was determined to get to Zanele Muholi at Tate Britain before it closed. I had seen an exhibition walk-through online but, as ever, you just can’t beat seeing art in reality. The photos and videos are a key element of Muholi’s activism, coming […]

A national treasure in Poland, this is the first time the massive painting of Copernicus by Jan Matejko (1838-1893) has been exhibited here at the National Gallery in London. Copernicus (1473-1543), another Pole, was the astronomer who realised that the earth revolved around the sun, thereby establishing that science evolved through ideas, not religious authority. […]

This exhibition marks a shift for Rachel Whiteread – the clue is in the title Internal Objects, recently held at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill. The casts we have been used to seeing are still there including this rather wonderful corrugated piece made from scrap paper, one of a pair near the entrance. The big change however […]

Despite being influenced by Surrealism (haven’t we all?) I have viewed it with a certain amount of suspicion due to its overt misogyny – fortunately the last few years have more fully revealed the creative impact of women in the movement. One of these was Eileen Agar, whose exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery gives an […]