This retrospective at Whitechapel Gallery covers five decades of Veronica Ryan‘s career, from the 1980s to 2026 including new works specially commissioned for the show. I’ve focussed here on her use of seed pods and fruit as the theme runs throughout her career (see the drawing above from 1983). They represent growth and possibility, decay […]
Places
Icheon ceramics at the Korean Cultural centre
This was my first visit to the Korean Cultural Centre and long overdue, given my appreciation of Korean ceramics (and films). I was passing close by (it’s on Northumberland Avenue, just off Trafalgar Square) so popped in to see what was on. This is what I found: Icheon and Beyond: The Space Within Form. Laozi’s […]
Samuel Laurence Cunnane: Blue Road at the HENI Project Space, Hayward Gallery, London.
The HENI project space is just to the right when you enter the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank. I’d only ever seen a security guard standing there and had no idea that it was a third (and free) space till I stepped inside. I found The Blue Road, an exhibition of photographs by Samuel […]
Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life at Hayward Gallery
Threads of Life by Chiharu Shiota is another exhibition at the Hayward Gallery using textiles, this time thread and is a definite crowd pleaser – very Instagrammable. The first installation, Threads of Life, is an amorphous red web with 20,000 suspended keys and a pair of open wooden doors in the centre, beckoning you to […]
Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart at the Hayward Gallery
Heart to Heart by Yin Xiuzhen is currently on at the Hayward Gallery, part of London’s South Bank Centre. I was interested to see it as I have myself experienced the rapid urban development in the artist’s homeland, China. This installation of an airport luggage carousel greets you on entry with models of different cities […]
Matt Collishaw: Aftermaths at The Long Now, Saatchi Gallery
Another work that impressed me in The Long Now at Saatchi Gallery was Aftermaths by Matt Collishaw. The imagining of a dystopian underwater world, the result of unintended consequences of our actions: environmental pollution, overconsumption, AI, genetic engineering… Strange creatures have evolved, mutants of existing forms escaped from labs or developed in response to pollutants […]