Art

2. Gerhard Richter Portraits

Feb 26-May 31 2009, National Portrait Gallery

Just when the camera seemed to obliterate the need for painting, along came Gerhard Richter to reassert paint’s primacy over mechanised reproduction. The pap-shot, the news photo and the family snap were all grist to his dragged brush and this excellent exhibition peeled away some of Richter’s richly complex layers. Read more

3. John Baldessari

Oct 13-Jan 10 2010, Tate Modern

Despite being the hard sell when compared with the concurrent ‘Pop Life’, the conceptual one-liners by this voracious old-timer made his the wittier and warmer of the two shows. It also boasts the best catalogue of 2009 by miles. Read more

5. Phyllida Barlow: Brake

Apr3-May 23 2009, One in the Other

You might reckon the RA’s Anish Kapoor to be 2009’s sculptural highlight, but this earlier transformation of a tiny Vyner Street space by Phyllida Barlow was less spectacular and far less pompous. Despite the gallery closing soon after, the 65-year-old purveyor of punk-junk assemblage continues to put others in the shade. Read more

MISS: Antony Gormley: One & Other

Jul 6-Oct 14 2009, Fourth Plinth Trafalgar Square

Aside from raising money and awareness for various charities, the 2,500-strong wave of buskers, hawkers and extroverts was as depressing as it was pointless. They thought they were exerting their free will up on their lofty perch, for an hour at a time, but they merely ended up as Gormley sentinels. Poor souls. Read more

2. Lindsay Seers: 'It Has To Be this Way'

Jan 21-Mar 15 2009, Matt's Gallery

Lindsay Seers's compelling installation of film, photography and written narrative also combined personal and historical fact and fiction, to tell the tale of seventeenth-century Queen Christina of Sweden. A smart exploration of the nature of memory, truth and illusion. Read more

3. Anna Barriball

Jan 16-Mar 6 2009, Frith Street Gallery

Stretching the boundaries between interior and exterior as well as between drawing and sculpture, Anna Barriball’s understated installation of leaves cut from old curtain fabric appeared to physically transform the weight, texture and solidity of her materials. Read more

4. Tate Triennial: Altermodern

Feb 3-Apr 26 2009, Tate Britain

Following three incoherent and unengaging Tate Triennials, this year’s actually came together, under Nicholas Bourriaud’s manifesto for the ‘Altermodern’ (which almost made sense). The ambitious installations included a strong showing by women including Olivia Plender, Spartacus Chetwynd, Tacita Dean and Ruth Ewan. Read more

5. Anish Kapoor

Sep 26-Dec 11, Royal Academy of Arts

Kapoor’s big cannon shooting its mucky load may have been a macho posture too far, but he makes the list for his daring use of the entire gallery space and the inclusion of less showy new works, especially his coiling concrete worm turds. Read more

MISS: Antony Gormley One & Other

Jul 6-Oct 14 2009, Fourth Plinth Trafalgar Square

Gormley’s patronising, banal and costly idea to turn the public into public art merely created an event that imitated the most vacuous extremes of reality/fly-on-the-wall TV, and communicated absolutely nothing about the nature of art or the human condition. Read more

2. Rebecca Warren

Mar 10-Apr 19, Serpentine Gallery

The best British sculptor of the noughties, Warren gave the Serpentine a spring bounce with an enlivening installation of works old and new, her cast of rough-hewn figures joined by angular younger siblings and a room of bewitchingly lo-fi vitrines. Read more

3. Tal R

May 21-Jul 25 2009, Victoria Miro

‘Armes de Chine’ proved Tal R to be far more than a kooky neo-expressionist painter. Off the wall in every sense, the show was a three-dimensional feast that fired the synapses as it delighted the eyes. Read more

4. Liz Arnold

Feb 20-Apr 19 2009, Camden Arts Centre

What would Liz Arnold have made of today’s discredited fat cats and dubious policy makers? The late painter would surely find ever more wry ways for her cast of cartoon characters to address the mess we make of the world. Camden is to be applauded for making room in its programme for this sadly missed artist. Read more

5. My Yard

Oct 2-Dec 23 2009, Whitechapel Gallery

Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane were given the keys to the British Council Collection and came up with a judicious selection of Brit art and design, old and new – including works by Eric Ravilious, LS Lowrie, David Shrigley, even a teapot. It added up to a quietly profound meditation on the national psyche. Read more

MISS: Sophie Calle

Last Chance!

Until Sun Jan 3, Whitechapel Gallery

Nothing profound about this most indulged of biennale stars. Her various conceptual-lite projects gain little in execution, as evidenced by the stultifying ‘Take Care of Yourself’, in which Calle turns a classic 'Dear John' (or rather 'Janet') letter into a hollow symphony of bourgeois self-absorption. What a turn off. Read more

2. Richard Grayson

May 13-Jun 28 2009, Matt's Gallery

Cultish religiosity meets sci-fi eschatology meets really rather pretty choral singing. Grayson’s film of his libretto, compiled from online millennialist prophesy, was by turns majestic and melancholic, amusing and terrifying – not least when the singers seemed to foretell the current situation of global economic crisis. Read more

3. Anja Kirschner & David Panos

May 8-Jun 21 2009, Chisenhale Gallery

This feature-length, Hogarthian parable of eighteenth-century Britain was a stew of historical characters and events: celebrity prison escapees, the writings of Daniel Defoe, harlequinism and masquerade; the birth of capitalist society… The camerawork and dialogue were exquisitely poised, the whole thing suffused with a sense of mordant theatricality. Read more

4. Collage London/NewYork

Aug 6-Sep 27 2009, Fred

Increasingly, summer group shows in commercial galleries are less about exhibiting unsold stock and more to do with curating a specific theme. ‘Collage’ at Fred was simply a wonderful example of this. Featuring more than a hundred artists, it offered an enticingly expansive definition of the medium, throwing up all sorts of idiosyncratic byways and fascinating discoveries. Read more

5. The Museum of Everything

Until Sun Feb 14, The Museum of Everything

It’s not often that a new venue manages to live up to its promotional hype, but when The Museum of Everything claimed to house some of the best works by the world’s greatest outsider artists, it wasn’t exaggerating. The dilapidated, derelict condition of the space only added to the general atmosphere of discovery and mystery. Read more

MISS: The Age of the Marvellous

Oct 14-22 2009, Holy Trinity Church

This show was like a Hollywood blockbuster: high concept (the exhibition as contemporary cabinet of curiosities); high production values (lifelike waxwork figures and complex machines); and utterly, brain-rottingly vacuous. Featuring Christ in an electric chair, a crucified gorilla, and skulls and skeletons everywhere, it was meant to be spooky, but the only frightening thing was how it mistook such sophomoric schlock for serious cultural critique. Read more