Nov 13, 2015
Eccentricity has long been a quality appropriated by the English. (Similar behaviour by the Scots, Welsh or Irish is usually dismissed as simply ‘mad’ – at least, by the English). Few however, have so assiduously pursued the epithet as The Kindred... read more
Oct 19, 2015
One of the more interesting aspects of the excellent (if limited) Barbara Hepworth show at Tate Britain was the inclusion of some rare images from the original Covent Garden production of Michael Tippett’s 1955 opera, The Midsummer Marriage. Although I’ve... read more
Oct 13, 2015
One of the more fortunate consequences of the Ravilious/Bawden boom, has been the renewed interest in British landscape painting by, let’s say, lesser-known British artists who came up through the craft-based art school tradition. Less fortunately, the reason... read more
Oct 1, 2015
The recent publicity surrounding Ridley Scott’s blockbuster, The Martian (in which Jason Bourne gets marooned on Mars and has to survive on potatoes grown on his own poo) got me thinking of what happened to all the poo generated by the crews of the Apollo moon... read more
Sep 24, 2015
Cosmonauts; Birth of the Space Age – a new exhibition at the Science museum, addresses the imbalance in public knowledge about the US and Russian space programmes with a collection of soviet space junk including Valentina Tereshkova’s space capsule, Yuri... read more
Sep 2, 2015
Time was when Eric Ravilious was a closely guarded secret in an art world dominated by post-pop, structuralism, radical feminism and minimalism. His paintings of a prelapsarian, inter-war eden of cream teas, brisk downland strolls and trains more comfy than your... read more
