Review by Tiffany Jow

Comprised of items from Sharon Kivland’s personal archive of French magazines, postcards, advertising leaflets and objects from a variety of time periods, the artist copied, re-worked and embellished each, tying them together with a narrative that strives for seamlessness but is constantly cut short or interrupted altogether. The resulting works, titled Je suis malade de mes pensées (2010), dissect memorabilia from periods of enlightenment through a contemporary lens. Kivland’s execution is more amateur than professional, yet is consistently genuine, imbuing the collection with a kind of childlike candidness on the realities of modernism.

Review by Alistair Quietsch

The latest show at the St Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life, Stardust – Some Thoughts on Death by Gillian Steel, is a curious, almost scientific rumination on death. It took Steel a year to document all her findings, 100 interviews and over 50 recordings of conversations on the topic, pragmatically giving each person 10 questions to answer in regards to death and possible events thereafter.

Review by Tiffany Jow, a candidate for the MA in Art History at Richmond the American International University in London.

These days, it’s trendy to pay respect to Japanese fashion within an exhibition context. Last autumn, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York’s Japanese Fashion Now highlighted the region’s radical contemporary tendencies, while the Barbican’s recently closed Future Beauty surveyed the country’s fashion history from the 1980s to present. The pantheon of designers is as expected: Hanae Mori, Issey Miyake, Takado Kenzo, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto are consistently embraced as group, effectively merging their individual talent into a single aesthetic intended to be representative of Asian avant-garde design.

Review by Jareh Das

London artist Ed Atkins films exist in what can only be described as an experiential filmic environment. Atkins often displays; film, text, sound and paintings, allowing the viewer to enter into a dream-like environment for an existential experience. As an installation, Death Mask allows a more theoretical experience of film, as the viewer is able to read, watch and listen simultaneously, a trademark that is perhaps becoming signatory of the artist’s recent presentations. For his recent solo presentation at London’s Cabinet gallery, Atkins presented Death Mask, a multi dimensional filmic environment consisting of Death Mask I+II, a spiral bound screenplay, A Very Short Introduction to Death Mask I, MDF boards painted in Chroma key Green, Omnichron photocopies and videos of Death Mask II: The Scent and Death Mask III.

Review by Nathan Breeze

The Royal Academy of Arts was founded in 1768 with the aim to promote the ‘Arts of Design’ element in Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.

Review by Paul Hardman

The fun of visiting Wet Sounds at York Hall Pool in Bethnal Green actually began long before arriving. Explaining to friends that the event was an ‘underwater disco’, or an ‘underwater concert’, was amusing (if deliberately misleading), but then, Wet Sounds does defy easy categorisation.

Interview by Bethany Rex

Wimbledon Art Studios is the largest, single site art studio complex in the UK; we caught up with their Artistic Coordinator, Emma Campbell.

Review by Regina Papachlimitzou

If Destroyed Still True is the culmination of two years work by performance company Sedated by a Brick. Performed in the intimate space of The Brewery Theatre in Bristol, the play presents its audience with a genuinely bizarre exploration of guilt, loss and denial.

Review by Laura E. Barone, a candidate for the MA in Art History at Richmond the American International University in London.

Aidan McNeill’s first solo show, Cast, is a stunning photographic and filmic induction into the world of the theatre. Her photographic works are powerful images not of thespians, but of the physicality of the most basic elements of the theatre – the lights and the stage. Add some smoke effects, high angles, color swatches, and a camera to McNeill’s hands and the theatre puts on an altogether different kind of production.

Review by Carla MacKinnon

New York based artist Dustin Yellin creates his unique work by layering 2D images between sheets of glass to create extraordinary 3D images, collages and illusions. In the first room of his current show at 20 Hoxton Square, visitors are greeted by a selection of small works mounted on plinths. Yellin’s technique makes each piece a satisfying physical object; smooth square transparent bricks capture an array of cut out images ranging from the political to the comical. The images in this first space are light-hearted, almost kitsch, referencing iconic images from popular culture and the media and weaving these into unlikely tableaux. The method is reminiscent of applique, pop-up books and Victorian theatre sets, giving the work a reference point in narrative and craft.

Review by Emily Sack, a candidate for the MA in Art History at Richmond the American International University in London.

“This is our romance,” state artist duo and new gallery owners/curators Samuel Levack and Jennifer Lewandowski in reference to the name of French Riviera 1988 that opened in February in East London. The inaugural show entitled Horizon Hypnotique features the work of Levack and Lewandowski as well as six other contemporary artists.