Super stars: Award-winning landscape photographer Murray Fredericks exhibits recent works December 3, 2014 William Wordsworth wrote of a “sense sublime, something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky.” A “sense sublime” is a good way of describing the feelings induced by the work of Australian photographer Murray Fredericks, whose stunning landscapes [...]
Photography review: Conflict, the Photography November 28, 2014 Tate Modern | ★★★★★ In Tate Modern’s sprawling new exhibition marking a hundred years since the beginning of the First World War, conflict, time and photography add up to a moving meditation on the nature of remembrance. Curator Simon Barker smartly decides to arrange exhibits according to proximity to the conflict, rather than chronologically. [...]
Art review: Post-Pop: East Meets West November 28, 2014 Saatchi Gallery | ★★★★☆ “Have you sold your soul, have you sold your soul, have you sold your soul?” It’s hard to imagine the current crop of Turner Prize nominees making a statement as baldly political as this. While the art of the moment seeks refuge in the obscure, the artists in the Saatchi [...]
Film review: Paddington is sweet as marmalade November 27, 2014 Cert PG | ★★★★☆ Paddington Bear is back and he’s looking… scary. With mangey, greying fur and little sharp teeth, it’s easier to imagine him ripping the throats out of livestock in Alaska than nibbling marmalade sandwiches in west London. Appearances, though, can be deceiving. In spirit, Paddington Bear is cuddlier than [...]
Tony Bevan at Ben Brown Fine Arts: The tree of life, death and the mind November 23, 2014 Painter Tony Bevan speaks ahead of his show at Ben Brown Fine Arts. Tony Bevan established a name for himself with blood-coloured self-portraits that snarled and gurned and twisted into the white of the canvas. Meeting him today, you’d be forgiven for asking, where are the devilish flared nostrils, the vast egg cranium [...]
Photography review: World Press Photo 2014 November 21, 2014 Royal Festival Hall | ★★★★☆ The World Press Photograph of the Year has been running since 1955, with the numbers of entries increasing steadily. For this year’s competition a record-breaking 5,754 photographers from 132 countries submitted 98,671 pictures, with subjects ranging from the Boston Marathon bombing to the collapse of the Rana Plaza in [...]
Theatre review: Behind the Beautiful Forevers November 21, 2014 Olivier Theatre | ★★★☆☆ The dirtiest thing in the Annawadi slum is the language. Above the din of arriving and departing planes (Annawadi is located right next to Mumbai airport) millions of slum-dwellers bicker, joke and philosophise in words as colourful as the advertising hoardings above their heads. American author Katherine Boo depicted [...]
Film review: The Homesman November 21, 2014 Cert 15 | ★★★☆☆ Many an American fictional character has dreamed a dream of loading up the wagon and heading way out west to roll the dice on the frontier. It says much of The Homesman’s contrarian spirit that it does the reverse. In his second directorial outing, Tommy Lee Jones trudges backwards [...]
Photography review: Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize November 14, 2014 National Portrait Gallery | ★★★★☆ The National Portrait Gallery’s immensely popular Taylor Wessing portrait prize exhibition is back. This week it was announced that the winning image was fashion photographer David Titlow’s atmospheric portrait of his baby son interacting with a dog. The judges selected the image from over 4,000 submissions from 1,793 photographers. [...]
Theatre review: Not About Heroes at Trafalgar Studios November 14, 2014 Trafalgar Studios 2 | ★★★★☆ In a life otherwise blighted by misfortune, Wilfred Owen had one show-stopping moment of luck. When forced to take leave from the front line because of shell-shock in 1917, he happened to be referred to Craiglockhart War Hospital at the same time that established celebrity poet Siegfried Sassoon was interned there. [...]
