Review by Nathan Breeze

If you’re a regular visitor to the V&A you would have noticed a gradual and ambitious series of renovations and expansions over the last few years. It is all part of the museum’s FuturePlan; bringing the V&A into the 21st century and restoring modern design and innovation to its heart. For each of these transformations the V&A has launched a series of open competitions; inviting proposals from architectural firms from all over the world. A recent example was the competition to design the V&A’s new outpost on Dundee’s waterfront, won at the end of last year by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.

Review by Paul Hardman

This exhibition, the first dedicated to Pino Pascali in the UK, focuses on works from 1967 and 1968, the last few completed by Pascali in the final two years before his tragic early death in a motorcycle accident at the age of 32. It is his first solo show in the UK, a fact which is surprising given his international significance as a key member of the Arte Povera movement, the radical trend in Italian art where everyday materials were used in resonant combinations and in which events in art and life appeared to converge.

Review by Regina Papachlimitzou

Yellow Wallpaper, inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story of the same name, examines and unravels themes of spatial confinement, escape and the dissolution of identity that can occur in the struggle between the two.

Review by Carla MacKinnon

Wellcome Collection, a free visitor destination for the incurably curious has established an excellent name for itself as one of London’s most unusual and absorbing cultural centres. Their high quality curation is both diverse and controlled, pulling artworks, artefacts and information from all corners of the world to tell one story. In this exhibition, running until the end of August, that story is dirt. Considering how ubiquitous dirt is, it is perhaps surprising how rarely it is examined in any but the most dismissive terms. This exhibition seeks to explore it deeper and examine mankind’s relationship to it – materially, historically, culturally and psychologically.

Interview by Bethany Rex

Clare Price’s new work represents a departure from the strictures of her previous work. Whilst adhering to the familiar formalist rules of earlier paintings, starting with the hand rendered pixellated lines that form a grid for the work there is a new energy and freedom that is seen both in the leaving behind of her traditonal landscape format and also the breaking down of the relationship with the original drawing. We caught up with one of the directors, Charlie Dutton to find out what it takes to open your own gallery.

Interview by Bethany Rex

Featuring works by Agata Agatowska, Geraldine Cox, Chris Dunseath, Sam Knowles, David Rickard and Chooc Ly Tan, Beyond Ourselves opens tomorrow at the Royal Society, London. The exhibition brings together six innovative contemporary artists who have all placed the potential of enquiry and thought at the core of their work. We caught up with the curator, Ingrid Hinton, to find out more.

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

The Victoria and Albert’s major spring exhibition, The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900 is decadent, comprehensive, and seamlessly integrated into the setting and approach of the V&A. A deliberate reaction against the codes and visual gloom of the Victorian era, the Aesthetic movement approached art and beauty as valid ideals in their own right, and aimed to express this ethos through an entire lifestyle.