Do Ho Suh: Walk the House, Tate Modern review - memories are made of this

★★★★ DO HO SUH: WALK THE HOUSE, TATE MODERN Memories are made of this

Home sweet home preserved as exquisite replicas

A traditional Korean house has appeared at Tate Modern. And with its neat brickwork, beautifully carved roof beams and lattice work screens, this charming dwelling looks decidedly out of place, and somewhat ghostly. Go closer and you realise that, improbably, the full-sized building is made of paper. It’s the work of South Korean artist Do Ho Suh (main picture).

Ed Atkins, Tate Britain review - hiding behind computer generated doppelgängers

Emotions too raw to explore

The best way to experience Ed Atkins’ exhibition at Tate Britain is to start at the end by watching Nurses Come and Go, But None For Me, a film he has just completed. It lasts nearly two hours but is worth the investment since it reveals what the rest of the work tries hard to avoid openly confronting – grief.

The Truth About Harry Beck, London Transport Museum Cubic Theatre review - mapping the life of the London Underground map's creator

 THE TRUTH ABOUT HARRY BECK Nostalgic comedy about the man who originated an everyday design classic

An English eccentric quietly re-invents our view of the capital

Iconic is a word the meaning of which is moving from the religious world into popular culture – win a reality TV show dressed as a teapot, and you can be sure that your 15 minutes of fame will be labelled iconic across social media. Not quite what Andrei Rublev had in mind 600 years ago.

Best of 2022: Books

BEST OF 2022: BOOKS Our top titles before we turn the page on another year

Our top titles before we turn the page on another year

From Kafka’s spry sketches to Derek Owusu’s novel-poem, and Jaan Kross’s Estonian Wolf Hall to Katherine Rundell’s spirited biography of John Donne, our reviewers take the time to share their favourite books of 2022. 

Donna Fleming: Apocalypse, The Pie Factory, Margate review - personal passions and intense feelings

Six years of work expressed through mercurial changes of medium

Donna Fleming’s exhibition at the Pie Factory Gallery in Margate is called Apocalypse, which is confusing because it has nothing to do with the end of the world. Fleming does not even watch the news because she “does not want to think about miserable things”. Instead the title refers back to the Greek word that apocalypse is derived from, apokalypsis, which means uncovering.

Vincent van Gogh: the reader and the writer

Two new books explore the unseen literary life of the famous painter

A life in art, a life in looking; a life in writing, a life in reading; a life fuelled by passionate emotions, personal attachments and religious turmoil. There are a few artists whose lives are so intertwined with their work that their biography as well as their art achieves a kind of mythic status, but outstanding among them is the Dutchman Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). Despite the fact he only lived for forty years and was a fully practising artist for only seven of those, looking at Van Gogh is a ceaseless endeavour.

A. Kendra Greene: The Museum of Whales You Will Never See review - a thoughtful museum piece

 ★★★★ A. KENDRA GREENE: THE MUSEUM OF WHALES YOU WILL NEVER SEE The idiosyncratic character of a nation, captured by collectors

The idiosyncratic character of a nation, captured by collectors

The Museum of Whales is an unfolding: a slow process of describing a country, its people, and its past through its esoteric and bizarre museums. The book is structured into galleries and cabinets, like the museums it describes, and the text is accompanied by often mysterious line drawings with their own key at the end. There are just a few museums that are the main focus, beginning with the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which is just as delightfully and childishly funny as it sounds.