Features
Where the wild things are: Two British artists head to Alaska's frozen north on the trail of the polar bear
Nestled in the vast tundra of Alaska's North Slope, the island of Kaktovik is hard to spot on a map. A remote region, surrounded by sea ice, it is part of a 19.6 million-acre area of Arctic wildlife reserve, and boasts a fierce natural environment. In winter, temperatures regularly drop to minus 20 degrees, and strong winds hurtle across the sprawling, snow-white plains – making this the ideal natural habitat for some of the 25,000 polar bears still living in the wild today, as well as caribou, Arctic fox and more than 125 species of bird.
Inside Features
Observations: Sew and sews needle the west London art cognoscenti
Friday, 18 December 2009
If your idea of embroidery is a fuddy-duddy, old-fashioned sewing skill, then a visit to the forthcoming exhibition, Beware of Embroidery, at west London's PM Gallery from 15 January, will change your mind. Five international artists – Kate Keara Pelen, Louise Riley, Tilleke Schwarz, Laura Splan and Tamar Stone – all employ their embroidery skills in very different ways but each brings the medium bang up date.
Best of '09: Ed Ruscha, 50 Years of Painting, Hayward Gallery, London
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Larry Ryan on the Ed Ruscha retrospective at the Hayward Gallery. Plus: nominate your favourite cultural moments of the year.
Miroslaw Balka's Art of Darkness
Monday, 14 December 2009
Like his giant container at Tate Modern, Miroslaw Balka's latest exhibition recalls the horrors of the Holocaust. But what exactly is the artist trying to say?
Beyond the fringe: What happened when an art collective invited children to take over a Newcastle hair salon?
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Did the kids make the cut? And what exactly is the serious message behind those Day-Glo do's?
The Diary: Roy Mayall; Pied Piper of Hamelin; art fakes; Kamran Pasha; Norberto Fuentes
Friday, 11 December 2009
Observations: The boozed-up Lithuanian peasants who appeal to Martin Parr
Friday, 11 December 2009
A skinny, middle-aged, man, stripped to the waist, is dropping his trousers. His right hand rests on the lid of a bin, inches from a strutting chicken. Next to him, his grinning wife is holding a piglet upside-down. This exceedingly strange image, along with a surreal, flinch-inducing shot of a man blow-torching the belly of a dead pig in the snow while a chicken perches patiently on his bent back, helped the Lithuanian photographer Rimaldas Viksraitis win the 2009 Arles Discovery Award for new photography.
Rothko: Art on stage
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
As a new play about Mark Rothko opens tonight in the West End, Paul Taylor looks at how great artists and their work can be vividly brought to life on stage
Michael Glover: You could call Wright's art minimalist, but it is also luxurious
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
The least demonstrative and the most unassuming of this year's nominees wins the Turner Prize for a painting-cum-drawing that covers an entire wall at Tate Britain – yes, that's (almost) all there is, my friends – and which is likely to disappear when the show is over.
|
|
Most popular in Arts & Entertainment
Read
1 Rage Against the Machine take Christmas No.1 slot
2 Best albums of 2009 – chosen by the stars
3 Avatar, James Cameron, 163 mins, (PG)
4 US actress Brittany Murphy dies at 32: TMZ
5 NME names top 50 albums of the decade
6 Just what the Doctor ordered: How David Tennant's Time Lord saved Auntie
9 Album: Neil Diamond, A Cherry Cherry Christmas (Sony)
10 The Gillrays that were too rude for the Victorians
11 Indy Choice: Best of the new films
12 The ten best: Bollywood movies
13 Eminem reveals 'Relapse: Refill' track list
15 Not quite Top of the Pops: Stuck at Number Two for Christmas
Emailed
1 Rage Against the Machine take Christmas No.1 slot
2 Avatar, James Cameron, 163 mins, (PG)
3 Just what the Doctor ordered: How David Tennant's Time Lord saved Auntie
4 The Glass Room, By Simon Mawer
5 Exclusive: Louis de Bernières' seasonal tale of a princess's quest for true love
6 US actress Brittany Murphy dies at 32: TMZ
7 Going back to his roots: Bill Bailey injects some humour into music
8 The Making of TAPE: setting up a label, Part 3
10 SCOPE Fundraising Party, Halo Bar, Friday 20th November
11 Music & Me: Alison Mosshart of The Kills
12 Simon Armitage: 'I'm quite boyish in my outlook'
13 The Secret Garden Party, Cambridgeshire, 23rd-26th July 2009
Commented
1Joss Garman: Copenhagen - Historic failure that will live in infamy
2Rage Against the Machine take Christmas No.1 slot
3Avatar, James Cameron, 163 mins, (PG)
4Minister's Sri Lanka holiday outrages rights campaigners
5UK fails to halt female genital mutilation
6China stands accused of wrecking global deal
7Brown and Obama lead last-minute climate talks
8Goldman Sachs threatens Spanish move
|
|
FIVE BEST EXHIBITIONS
Ana Maria Pacheco
(Mascalls Gallery, Tonbridge)
Tableaux of her polychrome wooden effigies: sinister, sadistic, gleeful and alarmingly alive.
(01892 839039) to 19 Dec
Joyous Machines
(Tate Liverpool)
Curated by Michael Landy, the works of Jean Tinguely, master of the meaningless machine: juddering, convulsive, hysterical engines.
(0151 702 7400) to 10 Jan
Tim Head: Raw Material
(Huddersfield Art Gallery)
We’re living in a scanned and pixelated world: these new projection works explore digital technology and the experience it creates.
(01484 221964) to 9 Jan
The Sacred Made Real
(National Gallery, London)
Hyper-realism, devotion and rivers of blood: religious paintings and sculptures from 17th-century Spain, including Zurbaran’s amazing ‘St Serapion’.
(020 7747 2885) to 24 Jan
Ana Maria Pacheco
(Mascalls Gallery, Tonbridge)
Tableaux of her polychrome wooden effigies: sinister, sadistic, gleeful and alarmingly alive.
(01892 839039) to 19 Dec
