Category: Arts

How Chicago! review – peanut-brained police patrol a curdled view of America

By News Team

Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London
Wildly graphic and often eye-poppingly nasty, the nightmarish creations of the Chicago Imagists echo the tumult of their era

The art of the Chicago Imagists of the 1960s and 70s provokes spluttering questions, and answers in a similar spirit. Incarnated as the Hairy Who, the Nonplussed Some, and various other names reminiscent of niche 60s rock groups before they made it big, the artists who came to be known as the Chicago Imagists (not a bad band name itself, come to think of it, if a bit too arty) were cartoonish and clever and possessed of a wayward graphic elan. Now at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in a Hayward travelling exhibition, this is the first UK show of their work in almost 40 years.

All alumni of, or teachers at, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fervent era of student protest, political assassinations and the Vietnam war, the Chicago Imagists were very much of their time and place. But little of t..

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How Chicago! review – peanut-brained police patrol a curdled view of America

By News Team

Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London
Wildly graphic and often eye-poppingly nasty, the nightmarish creations of the Chicago Imagists echo the tumult of their era

The art of the Chicago Imagists of the 1960s and 70s provokes spluttering questions, and answers in a similar spirit. Incarnated as the Hairy Who, the Nonplussed Some, and various other names reminiscent of niche 60s rock groups before they made it big, the artists who came to be known as the Chicago Imagists (not a bad band name itself, come to think of it, if a bit too arty) were cartoonish and clever and possessed of a wayward graphic elan. Now at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in a Hayward travelling exhibition, this is the first UK show of their work in almost 40 years.

All alumni of, or teachers at, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fervent era of student protest, political assassinations and the Vietnam war, the Chicago Imagists were very much of their time and place. But little of t..

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Rodent leather and designer kidneys: art in the age of bio-revolution

By News Team

Bespoke breasts, cloned frog meat and a gold gimp suit all feature in a remarkable new exhibition exploring the cutting edge of science

John A Douglas has a lot to thank medical science for – not least the new kidney he received in 2014 from an anonymous donor. “Since the operation, I’ve become a gym bunny, and lost 35 kilograms,” says the Australian artist over Skype. “But the main thing is I’d be dead otherwise.”

Still, the procedure left him with complicated feelings to process. “I was absolutely devastated after the surgery. At the beginning, you lose your sense of self. I’ve been surgically altered with the DNA and tissue of another person. So in a sense I’m a post-human whose death has been deferred at the cost of lifelong compliance programmes of medication, diet and fitness. My body will be monitored and observed for the rest of my life. In a sense it’s not my body any more – it’s been successfully invaded.”

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The Guardian

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The Scream: Munch London show ‘not intentionally timed with Brexit’

By News Team

Curator at British Museum says date of exhibition featuring artwork is ‘pure serendipity’

There are days, as the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch well knew, when it is impossible to express one’s feelings in words, and only an image will do.

For those who may find themselves, for one reason or another, experiencing such a moment, the British Museum would like to help. Opening next month, it will host the largest exhibition of Munch’s prints in the UK in almost half a century, the centrepiece of which is a lithograph of the artist’s iconic work The Scream.

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The Guardian

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