The Easel

29th August 2017

Raqib Shaw

When Manchester was the textile capital of the world it was deeply influenced by designs from the sub-continent. It’s unsurprising then that Manchester’s Whitworth museum is showing Kashmir raised, London based Raqib Shaw. Criticism that Shaw’s elaborate paintings are merely ‘decorative’ doesn’t bother this writer. The show “contradicts the “less is more” modernist credo; when the choices are good ones, more can be more.”

22nd August 2017

Mamma Mia! Emma Hart’s Cute Yet Sinister Max Mara Art Prize For Women Work

Part review, part artist bio. Hart trained as a photographer but used the proceeds of a major art prize to study ceramics. The result, her first solo exhibition, is a family of hanging ceramic “heads”. “I had an epiphany that in Deruta I saw the maiolica patterns … Could patterns harness or capture the problems of repetitive human behaviour?”