London Connect

/ART

/CRITICS' VIDEOS

'Futurism' at Tate Modern - The Tate Modern is staging a major exhibition of the fiery, shortlived Futurist movement - Ossian Ward shows us round.

Baker Overstreet, 'The Continental Bathosphere', acrylic on canvas, 2008 'Abstract America' at the Saatchi Gallery - Ossian Ward visits the Saatchi Gallery for their showcase of bold, brash bright young things from America.

'Garden and Cosmos' at the British Museum - Ossian Ward visits the rare, majestic exhibition of 'The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur', part of the Museum's Indian Summer.

'Richard Long' at Tate Britain - Ossian Ward visits the major retrospective of the land artist's career.

/ART BACKCHAT

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/art BLOG POSTS

The Fourth Plinth is empty. Why One & Other was a banal failure

Posted 10.16 am Wed Oct 14 by Ossian Ward

So it’s over. Just under 2,500 individuals stood up to be counted for Antony Gormley’s epic public-art-by-the-public project, ‘One & Other’. Yet, after the initial flurry of media interest, the fate of at least two months’ worth of subsequent plinthers has gone by almost unnoticed. I’d nearly forgotten there were all these poor souls still lining up to be Gormley sentinels, pretending to exert their free will on their lofty, open-prison pillar by nervously preaching, posing, stripping, reading, chatting or dancing an hour away. The whimpering finale – with numerous drop-outs in recent weeks, lots of people sat talking into their phones and no one much looking back up – is a sad end to what started as an interesting, albeit lofty proposal: to find out who we are as a nation.

The empty plinth this morning The empty plinth this morning
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Art fair fever!

Posted 3.22 pm Tue Oct 13 by Ossian Ward

London's busiest week in the art calendar gets underway in earnest with blockbuster openings galore and shiny art fairs for the visiting collectors to slather over. Chief among them is the seventh Frieze Art Fair (Oct 15-18) - the park-bound marquee around which all other autumn exhibitions and events now huddle. Despite losing 28 high-profile galleries from last year's roster, there's a new, more youthful section called Frame (stepping painfully on the toes of Zoo) to show single-artist projects, while also attracting the cream of international bright young things from as far afield as Athens, Bucharest and San Francisco.

Work by Clunie Reid at Zoo 2009 Work by Clunie Reid at Zoo 2009
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'Hey TfL, your Thames-less Tube map is great, and I'mma let you finish, but the Great Bear was the best tube map of all time!'

Posted 1.06 pm Mon Sep 21 by Sophie Hammer

This week has been a whirlwind of PR-friendly antics. While Kanye West was brashly setting off viral bombs online with his behavior at the VMAs, an altogether more dignified hubbub was simmering away over in Blighty’s blogosphere. The saga of the disappearing Thames from our Tube map was the most English of scandals, complete with a batty Marple figure in the form of Boris Johnson to resolve the unpleasantness (though see Pete Watts’s fine blog for the fishy twist in that tale). Not that our trusty Tube map has never needed the publicity. Eccentric, quirky with a devil-may-care regard for spatial reality, its dignified arteries are the lifeblood of the city – as vital as the Thames itself. Anyway, to draw a line under the whole sorry saga, I thought it'd be a good opportunity to remember some of the more off-piste re-imaginings over the years.

Detail from 'The Great Bear' by Simon Patterson Detail from 'The Great Bear' by Simon Patterson
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Olympian artists in final dash for our cash

Posted 5.05 pm Fri Sep 18 by Ossian Ward

The whole arts community is quivering in the shadow of the lumbering beast that is London's forthcoming Olympic games. It will surely suck all the money out of the grants system, decimate an area once home to fledgling artists and usurp all other cultural happenings in 2012 (with the possible exception of an unforeseen celebrity supernova wiping out half of Hollywood). And what of the Cultural Olympiad - a much-vaunted four-year bevy of projects leading up to the climactic sports-splurge?

Alfie Dennen and Paula Ledieu Alfie Dennen and Paula Ledieu
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/PROFILES

OSSIAN WARD
/ART EDITOR

Ossian is Time Out London’s Art Editor. As well as contributing to various books on art and photography, he has written critiques, news and interviews for all the world’s major art publications, including Art in America, Modern Painters and Monopol. Formerly editor of ArtReview and the V&A magazine, he has worked at The Art Newspaper and now edits The Artists’ Yearbook, a biennial publication by Thames & Hudson. Ossian is well travelled, often covering art fairs in Basel or Miami or major exhibitions in Berlin, Venice and New York.

HELEN SUMPTER
/ART CRITIC

Helen has written about contemporary visual art and artists for publications including Time Out, Art Review, The V&A Magazine, i-D, The Times, Art & Music, The Big Issue, The Observer Magazine, Artworld and The Evening Standard. She can often be found with a glass of wine in hand at East End art openings, West End gallery launches and south London art happenings.