Brian Clarke - A Great Light, Newport Street Gallery review - a British master proves his worth

★★★★★ BRIAN CLARKE: A GREAT LIGHT, NEWPORT STREET GALLERY A British master proves his worth

Stunning stained glass and immensely inspiring collages

The artist Brian Clarke, surely one of the leading British artists of our time, has been all too readily dismissed as a mere craftsman. So much for being an outstanding and highly original painter who’s also done more for contemporary stained glass than any other artist in the world.

His ability to transcend boundaries and follow his own path rather than court marketable fashion and fame, has led to him being side-lined and ignored when he should be celebrated as vigorously as David Hockney and other art world giants of his generation.

Moon Is the Oldest TV review - a fitting tribute to a visionary modern artist

★★★★★ MOON IS THE OLDEST TV A fitting tribute to a visionary modern artist

Authoritative documentary that defines the genius of Nam June Paik

Who created the term “electronic superhighway”? First described a system of linked communication that would become the internet? Envisioned a multichannel TV system where viewers chose for themselves what to tune into? Watch Amanda Kim’s excellent documentary Moon Is the Oldest TV and you find that the correct answer to all those questions is Nam June Paik.

Susan Finlay: The Lives of the Artists review - the knotted threads of memoir and art

★★★★ SUSAN FINLAY: THE LIVES OF THE ARTISTS The knotted threads of memoir and art

Writing that turns with the unexpected sharpness that living demands

Benvenuto Cellini’s My Life (1728) is not the artist-biography to which Susan Finlay’s The Lives of the Artists pays its most obvious homage, but it appears to have followed its advice. All men of achievement and honesty, Cellini argues, "should […] write in their own hands the story of their lives, but they should not begin such a fine undertaking until they have passed the age of forty."

Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons, Hayward Gallery review - spooky installations by a master of detail

★★★★ MIKE NELSON: EXTINCTION BECKONS, HAYWARD GALLERY Spooky installations by a master of detail

Nelson's worlds within worlds invite you to disappear down the rabbit hole

Entry to Mike Nelson’s Hayward Gallery exhibition is through what feels like the store room of a reclamation yard. Row upon row of Dexion shelving is piled high with salvaged building materials including old doors, ancient floorboards and wrought iron gates, while even more gates and doors are leant against the walls.

Remote review - an irredeemably silly first feature

★ REMOTE This ill-conceived 'art' movie about overcoming loneliness is irredeemably silly

An ill-conceived 'art' movie about overcoming loneliness

Remote is Mika Rottenberg’s first feature film. The New York-based artist was commissioned by Artangel, an organisation renowned for its promotion of interesting projects. Support also comes from art institutions across the world – Beijing, Denmark, Korea, Louisiana, Montreal and Stockholm. And to cap it all, the film is being premiered at Tate Modern during the week of Frieze, London’s major international art fair.

Gustav Metzger: Earth Minus Environment, Kestle Barton review - an illuminating glimpse of a visionary activist-artist

★★★★ GUSTAV METZGER: EARTH MINUS ENVIRONMENT, KESTLE BARTON Ecological dirty-realism plus mass-media overload in an idyllic Cornish setting

Ecological dirty-realism plus mass-media overload in an idyllic Cornish setting

In later life Gustav Metzger appeared a marginal, eccentric figure. The diminutive, white-bearded artist, was often to be seen round London’s galleries in the early to mid-2010s, dropping off piles of hand-produced fliers urging his fellow artists to “remember nature”.

Venice Biennale 2022 review - The Milk of Dreams Part 1: The Giardini

★★★★ VENICE BIENNALE 2022 - THE MILK OF DREAMS PART 1: THE GIARDINI The biggest and most challenging exhibition you’ll be seeing in some time

The biggest and most challenging exhibition you’ll be seeing in some time

Cecelia Alemani's vision for The Milk of Dreams, the International Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2022 had me excited – and perplexed – from the moment I heard about it.

Anselm Kiefer Pour Paul Celan, Grand Palais Éphémère, Paris review - an installation of rare profundity

★★★★★ ANSELM KIEFER POUR PAUL CELAN, GRAND PALAIS EPHEMERE, PARIS An installation of rare profundity

Anselm Kiefer's spectacular homage to the poet Paul Celan

The exhibitions of the German artist Anselm Kiefer have always been spectacular: large works with a numinous presence, often breath-taking and always mysterious. His new installation in Paris’s Grand Palais Ephémère, the temporary structure at the end of the Champ de Mars which stretches south from the Eiffel Tower, is perhaps the most ambitious work he has ever presented in a museum space.

Sarah Hall: Burntcoat review - love after the end of the world

★★★★★ SARAH HALL: BURNTCOAT Beautiful lives of loss, a pandemic close to our own

Beautiful lives of loss, in a pandemic close to our own

Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat is one of those new books with the unsettling quality of describing or approximating a great moment in history and its aftermath, as the reader is still living through it. This could be trite, but Hall manages to make it compelling, tragic, and still sensitive in its handling of a love story during a time of terrible social upheaval.