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Thursday, 24th June 2010

Graduate Season

5:47pm

As the term draws to an end, aspiring art students from far and wide poor into the ‘real world’ with a false sense of security provided by the free white walls, in-house ‘crits’ and ready-made network of the institution. The idea that they might have to apply for exhibitions, beg people to look at their work and market their own shows in future seemed a distant if even conscious concern of those I met last Tuesday night at the Royal College of Art Painting 2010 degree show. This cocky attitude, however, generated a sense of liberation and bravery that meant...

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Friday, 18th June 2010

Queen And Country

11:46am

Steve McQueen has led a seven-year campaign commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to commemorate the British servicemen and women killed during the war in Iraq with official postage stamps bearing their portraits. Having been on tour at Manchester International Festival, the Imperial War Museum and the Barbican, Queen And Country is currently on view in room 37 of the National Portrait Gallery, where it remains until 18 July. The UK Royal Mail has yet to give the go-ahead to the project.   McQueen’s frustration with his inability to gain proper film footage during his 6 days spent with British...

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Around the galleries

Now in its 30th year, the London Park Lane Arms Fair returns with its annual array of fine arms and armoury. Elsewhere in the capital, impressive surveys of Freud, Hirst and mid-century British art can be found.

Architecture

George Gilbert Scott described the dome as ‘the noblest of all forms’, and it appears as a powerful symbol in secular and religious architecture throughout history. On the island of Malta, however, the craze for dome-building reached astonishing heights.