Student group show is not all what it seems
Truth be told, I’d fallen for the Beckmans student’s uncompromising body of work the moment I saw it at Stockholmsmässan last year – and, although I’m not there in person this year, Is This It? looks to be even more convention-dodgingly brilliant.
Chinese chameleon’s latest exhibition celebrates best work to date
Good news then that Liu Bolin’s showed his face long enough to tell us about his second solo show at Galerie Paris-Beijing, featuring his trademark camouflage performances in pictures taken in both those cities and more.
North London restaurant gets a new look for the new year
The new year has brought with it a new lease of life for trendy local bar and restaurant John Salt, and what better way to kickstart a relaunch than to pinch an acclaimed chef to head up your kitchen – enter Pitt Cue Co’s Neil Rankin. He’s bringing with him some fresh flavours for the menu, but the overhaul of the Islington Upper Road venue goes beyond the culinary.
Familiar material takes transformation from rusty old crate to shiny workplace
These days there aren’t many shipping containers left in existence that are actually still being used for shipping. And the finger of blame is pointing firmly at the architecture and design industries. In this case the wonderfully guilty party is Belgian firm Five AM and its superb office project for two conjoined businesses, a printer and a mailing company, in Kortrijk.
New Zealand sculpture event broadens our horizons
The Headland Sculpture on the Gulf exhibition is held every two years and is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2013. It might have passed us by so far, but The New York Times (who have a slightly bigger budget than us, to be fair) puts it in their top 50 places to visit, and tens of thousands of folks from New Zealand and beyond have been taking in the outdoor spectacle since it started.
Rude neon installations are anything but inert
It’s good to see an artist go balls-out with a project – call it Mindfuck and if you’ll forgive the continued vulgarity, it’s shit or bust. Happily for Nauman, it’s shit, or rather it’s the shit. The North Gallery of London’s Hauser and Wirth has opened up its doors and an x-rated army of bold, rude and imaginatively perverse neon installations from throughout Nauman’s career have marched in and set up camp.
Retrospective shows the iconic face of feminine fearsomeness
Debbie Harry, New York Apartment
with Warhol Portrait, 1988.
© Brian Aris
Debbie Harry: Queen of Punk. Photographs by Brian Aris is a retrospective of Aris’s shots from 1977 to 1988, revealing a slight vulnerability in the early days through to the fully-evolved feminists’ arse-kicking wet dream. Aris’s vision of Harry will be stalking through the Proud Chelsea gallery until 17th February.
New Lebanese restaurant has the authentic look, without trying too hard
Don’t get me wrong, I like Greek food as much as the next person, but that aphorism about variety being the spice of life caught on for a reason. The owners of Souk are adding their own seasoning to Athens’ diverse culinary pot with the opening of their Lebanese restaurant and food market in the Glyfada coastal region of the city.
Vancouver tea shop has a rare blend of old and new
Just when we thought the recent explosion of high-end coffee shops had venerable tea wobbling on the ropes, back comes the old favourite with a hefty wallop of its own in the form of the O5 Rare Tea Bar in Vancouver. Both beverages have now been elevated to the status of sciences, with blending, brewing and even cooking established branches of knowledge; it follows that coffee shops and tea rooms are advancing in sophistication to match their customers and ingredients.
A visit to Ford’s awe-inspiring hometown museum
The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Detroit, is an utterly fascinating museum, the place literally bulges at the seams with American history: the limousine in which J.F.K met his untimely end, the chair Lincoln was sitting in when he too was assassinated – and less morbid curiosities, like the only remaining prototype of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House and the bus Rosa Parks made her historic stand against racial segregation.
