The Easel

17th November 2020

Rashid Johnson: Waves

Veronica Simpson | Studio International | 5th November 2020

The complexity of Johnson’s collages and mosaics has led some to accuse him of being “opaque”. His new show has a pandemic vibe with its “smeary, staring faces”, painted in “anxious red”. Are these the faces of people looking for an escape? Or are they our screen-obsessed selves “as we binge-watch our way through a global pandemic? … if there is any greater, deeper meaning in the work, I find myself too distracted by all the superficial, extraneous detail to see it.”

How a Mary Wollstonecraft statue became a feminist battleground

Ellen Pierson-Haggar | New Statesman | 12th November 2020

“Epic” levels of derision are being heaped on a new London statue of the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. “The visual charisma of a doorknob” is a polite example. One critic questions why, if the idea was to create an “everywoman” image, the figure has “shredded abs”. At least part of the problem is that there is no agreement about what we want public art to do. Says a beleaguered organiser “The shit we’ve had is off the scale.”

10th November 2020

Haegue Yang: Strange Attractors, Tate St Ives, review: magical and thrillingly bold

Hettie Judah | iNews | 3rd November 2020

Yang makes genre-defying installations – sculptures on wheels, soundscapes, arrays of hanging venetian blinds. Some combine technology and craft elements. What’s the big unifying idea? Yang seems unlikely to provide one, thinking art is ““something to experience, not necessarily to understand”. Pondering Yang’s admiration for “loyal, supportive” domestic appliances, one writer speculates her art “represents a point of passage between human and non-human.”

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