Colour, Portraiture and Symbolism

Colour-blocking has been a huge source of inspiration for artists and designers since the early 20th century. Here are four contemporary examples.

Echoes in the Landscape

Paula Mahoney’s works are at once performative and surreal, drawing attention to the sense of loss and mourning that can be evoked by clothing.

Intimacy of Distance

An exhibition in Santa Monica highlights artists with diverse backgrounds – illustrating the central relationship between the humans and the land.

Image as Power

Since the late-1990s, Hannah Starkey has been dedicated to photographing women, exploring the ways they are, and have been depicted.

Contemporary Portraiture:
1-54 African Art Fair

Here are five trailblazing contemporary portraitists to know from London’s fair: lens-based artists who explore ideas of identity, belonging and place.

Neon Elements

On Earth, neon is rare, but across the universe, it is a commonly found cosmic element. Bruce Nauman has experimented with the medium for 50 years.

Mourning and Memory

Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña’s new ethereal Tate Turbine Hall installation is an elegy to disappearing traditions, environments and peoples.

Global Impact

“African fashion is the future.” London’s V&A surveys the “creativity, ingenuity and unstoppable global impact” of design from across the continent.

Cities Abstracted

Ash Camas’ vivid images – taken in Canada, France, Sweden and beyond – encourage us to look at cities anew: cropping, repositioning and flattening them.

Sharing, Connecting, Healing

Glenn Lutz’s landmark publication comes from the desire to “create a work in which Black men came together to open up and share their experiences.”

Documenting Youth Culture

During lockdown, London’s Museum of Youth Culture encouraged the public to delve through old shoeboxes, look in attics and flick through albums.

Lush Still Life

Margriet Smulders’ contemporary vanitas depict petals, berries and leaves floating on water – causing ripples and washes of colour to bleed and blend.

Where Do Ideas Come From?
The October/November Issue

Sometimes we have that eureka moment ; we think about something in a completely new way. This issue foregrounds artists who play with form and subject.

A Sense of Kinship

Human touch, and all its wonder, pervade D’Angelo Lovell Williams’ photographs, showing the inherent, complicated beauty of intimate relationships.

The Korean Wave

A design and technology exhibition at V&A positions South Korea as “a leading cultural powerhouse in the era of social media and digital culture today.”

Digital Legacies

Artists and technologists Harry Yeff and Trung Bao generate dazzling gemstone artworks from influential human and endangered animal voices.

Interventions in the Landscape

A new, richly illustrated monograph paints the picture of Ugo Rondinone: an artist unafraid to push the boundaries of public art influenced by the land.

Beyond the Visible

To look at infrared photography is to look at the invisible world. The human eye can see wavelengths from 400nm – 720nm. Infrared sits beyond 720nm.

Visual Composition

Trung Bao compares the image-making process to that of music, with the ultimate goal of evoking feelings that are often hard to put into words.

British Art Now

British Art Fair has acted as an annual launchpad for myriad household names over the past three decades – from post-war artists to the YBAs.