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Thursday, 23rd July 2009

Long Walks

2:25pm

‘Hell is other people’. Tate Britain’s retrospective of Richard Long’s land art, ‘Heaven and Earth’, gave me cause to agree with Jean-Paul Satre’s sentiment. The artist shows a heavenly earth found through solitary walks. The exhibition includes photographs, maps and texts from Long’s travels in seemingly uninhabited and timeless landscapes; rock sculptures reminiscent of dry stone walls and entropic yet geometric mud paintings inspired by his epic walks. It feels blissful escapism.

The Turner Prize-winning land artist from Bristol has a refreshing and enviably humble outlook on existence. He enjoys ‘the simple pleasures of well-being, independence, opportunism, eating, dreaming, happenstance...

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Monday, 20th July 2009

Created Confusion

4:51pm

To rationalise the irrational and materialise the immaterial nature of the creative brain would be a task only attempted by the brave or the batty. But that is just what the exhibition ‘Walking in My Mind’ at London’s Hayward Gallery attempts to do. Walking around the installations that depict the artists’ creative mindscapes one is enticed, in an attempt to relate to the works, to either pamper or panic oneself with self-analysis or indulge the artist’s invitation to be psychologically dissected. The exhibition is made up of 10 self-portraits that immerse the viewer in a symbolic medley of sound, video...

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Friday, 17th July 2009

Weekly News Round-Up

4:44pm

1) The British Museum has announced that two-thirds of the funds required for its proposed new wing have been raised. The UK government has pledged £22.5 million of the £220 million needed, and a private donor has pledged £37.5 million.
Bloomberg article

2) The Chicago Children’s Museum is tussling with severe financial difficulties, just one year after it was granted permission to move to the city’s Grant Park. It is claimed that there is a 50-50 chance of the project being completed as the economy continues to struggle. The news is likely to be welcomed by local...

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Thursday, 2nd July 2009

Seeing the world in colour

12:50pm

‘Workshop Missoni: Daring to be Different’ opens today at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London (until 20 September). The show is curated by Luca Missoni – son of Rosita and Ottavio ‘Tai’ Missoni (above), the founders of the family-run Italian fashion label.

On the press tour Luca Missoni points to an example of vintage costume on display telling us, ‘We have a, er, big archive’. This is met with a polite ripple of laughter as clearly it is something of an understatement when describing the fruits of his parents’ 55-year marriage and business partnership.

As well...

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Tuesday, 30th June 2009

Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair Axed

1:37pm

It has been announced this morning that the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair has been axed. The shock news comes just weeks after the fair celebrated its 75th anniversary at this year's event which ran from 11-17 June. The fair is the oldest and most revered of all the London fairs, receiving royal patronage from HRH Princess Alexandra.

The fair is owned by the Grosvenor House Hotel which hosts the event in its Great Room. According to Apollo sources, the motivation behind the decision to end the fair is due to the economics of staging the event. While the...

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Spaced out

A recent exhibition in Nottingham showcases contemporary artists' exploration of the Communist-era space race.

Architecture - The return of classicism

Cast aside by Modernists for much of the 20th century, Classicism
has a comeback of sorts, with an excellent new book reappraising
architecture partnerships and a recent exhibition at one of the very
institutions that so derided the style.