Drawn into your Presence. Review by Graham Buchan. This is a very interesting and, in some ways, unique exhibition curated by Jim Grover and Ruth Grover. It links three distinct periods of Christian religious imagery.
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British Landscapes. Review by Barbara Lewis. In the depths of World War Two, the British government funded a project called “Recording Britain” that commissioned artists to capture landscapes and buildings at risk of disappearing.
Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam. Review by Graham Buchan. The work of a largely forgotten and unusual Victorian artist is on show at the Royal Academy. Richard Dadd (1817-1886), a product of the Academy, was held in very high regard at the start of his career and then suffered a major psychotic episode (in which he killed his father) and spent the remaining forty-three years of his life in mental institutions.
Leon Spilliaert. Review by Barbara Lewis. Insomniac and largely self-taught artist Leon Spilliaert is the master of absence, silence and solitude. His best-known evocations of emptiness are coastal scenes in his native Ostend informed by nocturnal wandering through the deserted port.
The Nova Exhibition. Review by Graham Buchan. On entering this exhibition visitors are invited to sit on a wooden bench and watch a 5-minute video of revellers at the Nova Music Festival. On the screen are dancers, quite possibly off their heads, arms in the air and smiling from ear to ear.
Refik Anadol. Review by Barbara Lewis. Bruges has no need of more tourists and its art hall BRUSK, which opened in May, does not share the ambition of Bilbao’s Guggenheim to put a city on the map.
Connected Worlds of Bruges. Review by Barbara Lewis. As part of the constant flow of luminaries in and out of the cultural and commercial hub of 16th-century Bruges, Henry VIII sent Thomas More there in 1515 as part of a diplomatic mission to settle trade and financial disputes. His visit to Flanders was also when More began his classic work “Utopia”.
Poetry review – FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT: Thomas Ovans admires Alwyn Marriage’s sequence of ekphrastic poems based on Christian artworks
A Red that Sings. Review by Barbara Lewis. “The red that sings” is a phrase rooted in the intellectual atmosphere of the 19th-century when scientists first grappled with the concept of synaesthesia, and poets and painters seized on it as a heightened response to the anxiety and excitement of breathless social change.
Van Dyck, The European. Review by Barbara Lewis. A lack of evidence means art historians can only speculate about the relationship between Peter Paul Rubens and his most gifted pupil Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641).
Poetry review — CONVERSATIONS WITH MAGIC STONES: Sue Wallace-Shaddad admires how the techniques of writing and sculpture are related in Vivienne Tregenza’s collection inspired by the life & work of Barbara Hepworth
Ai Weiwei. Review by Barbara Lewis. This book accompanies the exhibitions Ai Weiwei: The Art of Defiance at Patrick Derom Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (September 19 – November 14) and Ai Weiwei: Life – Revolt – Poetry at the Emile Verhaeren Museum, Sint-Amands, Belgium (September 21– December 13)
By Barbara Lewis • art, art archive, books, drawing, painting • Tags: art, art archive, Barbara Lewis, books, painting