Sketchbook page

This nude combines my interest in drawing the figure with the fact I like to grid things up and break them down. That it's divided into different units also makes the act of reading the drawing more like a graphic novel or a storyboard, more sequential. I like the idea that deconstructing or destroying an image, especially that of a person, can actually force the viewer to spend more time looking at it, one step back to get two steps forward...

Little White Lies Review: The Arbor

Before I post my review on here, I just want to urge you to go to see The Arbor, it's an incredible piece of filmmaking. The director, artist Clio Barnard, really utilises the properties of film to create something with real visual flair and emotional resonance as well as social pertinence. I don't think a piece like this could be produced in any other medium.

It's also really gratifying to see an artist getting their work released in cinemas whilst still retaining the creative freedom of producing work for a gallery setting. It feels like the extension of an art practice rather than a leap into being a commercial filmmaker, which is kind of how I felt about Steve McQueen and Sam Taylor-Wood making feature films. Sure, as artists they're probably given more scope (and expectation) to be 'original', but there's still rules of narrative commercial filmmaking that have to be adhered to, gotta have an arc after all.

Maybe because The Arbor is a mash up of fiction, faction and documentary it can get away with more. Gillian Wearing's feature film Self Made looks like a similar crossbreed of documentary and fiction - looking forward to that one very much. Anyway, this comment is longer than my actual review, short and sweet, here you go...

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Clio Barnard’s dissection of the life and legacy of playwright Andrea Dunbar is a fascinating look at working-class Britain and the effects of growing up on a gritty Bradford estate. But more than that, it’s a stunning meditation on the subjectivity of memory.

Dunbar’s children – now in their twenties – recall their past in voiceover as actors lip sync their lines, with her two daughters taking centre stage with mutually sympathetic yet drastically different accounts of their upbringing... (read more)

ArtSlant Review: Flat Time House

John Latham (1921 to 2006) occupied a distinct position in contemporary British art placing his practice at the intersection between artistic, philosophical and scientific theories. Flat Time House in Peckham is his former residence and studio, open to the public since 2008 as a permanent gallery of his work, a changing exhibition space, and a centre for research into Latham’s theories about life and the universe.

Walking down Bellenden Road, the space is not hard to spot: there’s a giant book embedded in the front window. Beyond this, the first room hosts permanent exhibits that demonstrate Latham’s central Time Base theory – Flat Time – a theory that prioritizes time and event over space and object as the building blocks for the universe. (read more)

ArtSlant Review: Floor Ten Gallery

East London is a hub of up and coming art spaces, more densely populated with creatives than anywhere else. But since arty coolness attracts gentrification, so the artists themselves go in search of cheaper rents, making Bow the 00s equivalent of Hoxton in the 90s.

Slightly less accessible than Hoxton, it’s a bit out of the way even for those of us used to seeking out art in Bethnal Green’s Vyner Street, but worth a visit to see art coming straight from the next generation, unmediated.

Bow’s Floor Ten Gallery is an artist run space in a tower block that also serves as artists’ live/work space for your garden variety East Londoner. It's about as close to the Bow scene as one is going to get, and currently hosts Goldsmiths student Tom Crawford... (read more)