Folkestone Triennial 2025 - landscape, seascape, art lovers' escape

★★★★ FOLKESTONE TRIENNIAL 2025 Landscape, seascape, art lovers' escape

Locally rooted festival brings home many but not all global concerns

A rare cloud form envelopes the headland and to the east and the west Folkestone is cut off from the known world. This mist shortens the visual range, drawing attention to the chalky soil, the sea gorse and the looping swifts. It also softly frames 18 site specific works of contemporary art that work in sympathy with this historic settlement. Folkestone is, as the Triennial shows, rich in local inspiration. 

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).

Hylozoic/Desires: Salt Cosmologies, Somerset House and The Hedge of Halomancy, Tate Britain review - the power of white powder

 ★★★ HYLOZOIC/DESIRES: SALT COSMOLOGIES, SOMERSET HOUSE AND THE HEDGE OF HALOMANCY, TATE BRITAIN A strong message diluted by space and time

A strong message diluted by space and time

The railways that we built in India may be well known, but I bet you’ve never heard of the Customs Line, a hedge that stretched 2,500 miles across the subcontinent all the way from the River Indus to the border between Madras and Bengal – the distance between London and Istanbul. Comparable in scale to the great Wall of China, this 40-foot high barrier was created to prevent the smuggling of salt.

Mickalene Thomas, All About Love, Hayward Gallery review - all that glitters

★★★★ MICKALENE THOMAS, ALL ABOUT LOVE, HAYWARD GALLERY The shock of the glue: rhinestones to the ready

The shock of the glue: rhinestones to the ready

On walking into Mikalene Thomas’s exhibition at the Hayward Gallery my first reaction was “get me out of here”. To someone brought up on the paired down, less-is-more aesthetic of minimalism her giant, rhinestone-encrusted portraits are like a kick in the solar plexus – much too big and bright to stomach. Could I be expected to even consider accepting these gaudy monstrosities as art?

Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker, Whitechapel Gallery review - absence made powerfully present

★★★ DONALD RODNEY, WHITECHAPEL GALLERY Absence made powerfully present

Illness as a drive to creativity

Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the palm of his hand is a fragile dwelling whose flimsy walls are held together by pins. This tiny model is made from pieces of the artist’s skin removed during one of the many operations he underwent during his short life; sadly he died the following year, aged only 37.

Best of 2024: Visual Arts

BEST OF 2024: VISUAL ARTS  A great year for women artists

A great year for women artists

I thought I might never be able to say it’s been a great year for women artists, so forgive me for focusing solely on them.

The Sound Voice Project, Linbury Theatre review - an art installation that has strayed into an opera house

A worthy project fails to ignite as art

What does it mean to have a voice? And what does it mean to lose it? Those are the questions the award-winning Sound Voice Project has explored – through research, collaboration and live performance – since its beginnings in 2016. The latest incarnation of composer Hannah Conway’s project is as “immersive digital opera performance installation”.

Yinka Shonibare: Suspended States, Serpentine Gallery review - pure delight

★★★★ YINKA SHONIBARE: SUSPENDED STATES, SERPENTINE GALLERY Pure delight

Weighty subject matter treated with the lightest of touch

Yinka Shonibare’s Serpentine Gallery exhibition opens with a piece of cloth twirling in the breeze; except that it’s a bronze sculpture probably weighing a ton or more – such is the power of art (pictured below right: detail of Wind Sculpture IV, 2024 with African Bird Magic, 2023).

Zineb Sedira: Dreams Have No Titles, Whitechapel Gallery review - a disorientating mix of fact and fiction

★★★★ ZINEB SEDIRA: DREAMS HAVE NO TITLES, WHITECHAPEL GALLERY A disorientating mix of fact and fiction

An exhibition that begs the question 'What and where is home?'

The downstairs of the Whitechapel Gallery has been converted into a ballroom or, rather, a film set of a ballroom. From time to time, a couple glides briefly across the floor, dancing a perfunctory tango. And they are really hamming it up, not for the people watching them – of whom they are apparently oblivious – but for an imaginary camera.