The academic
Exhibition reviews, lectures, and writing on art and education, from London and Shanghai to Singapore, Bangkok and Tokyo.
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The Myth of the Calling
Each label arrives pre-loaded with its own mythology, and none of them, I've come to realise, were waiting inside me at birth like a vocation to be discovered. They were built.
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Distributed Echoes: Roppongi Crossing at the Mori Art Museum
Moving through it feels less like following an argument than tuning a radio: signals overlap, interfere, and refuse to settle into a single channel.
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Chromatic Choreographies: Alongkorn Lauwatthana in Bangkok
Alongkorn Lauwatthana's exhibition does not so much invite the viewer in as assume you will step into its world and keep up.
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Vectors of Memory: Bui Hai Son at the HCMC Fine Arts Museum
Bui Hai Son's sculptural installation occupies the gallery with the kind of quiet authority usually reserved for objects that predate the building itself.
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Is Art a Need? Rethinking Article 27 and the Quiet Radicalism of Culture
Is art a human need, or simply a desirable accessory to one’s actual needs? Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the quiet radicalism of culture.
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Academic Enrichment: the impact of an exceptional programme
Enrichment is often perceived as something that happens outside the classroom. That perception can do real damage to school life.
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Stumbling Over Gormley in Singapore
There is something uniquely humbling about entering the National Gallery Singapore on a bright, humid morning and immediately tripping over an Antony Gormley.
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Assuming Excellence
What happens when we apply 'assumed excellence', rather than 'assumed incompetence', to professional development as well as to the classroom?
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Stillness That Speaks: Encountering Rothko Beyond Analysis
There are moments in galleries when all the theoretical apparatus one has accumulated quietly packs its bags and leaves. On the Seagram Murals.
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When Art Bleeds: Biomatter, Ethics, and the Trouble With Being Human
Tears, hair, blood, ashes and entire corpses: how, exactly, are artists getting away with this?
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Material Intelligence and Mild Existential Panic: Encountering Lee Jaehyo in Gyeonggi-do
Lee Jaehyo’s exhibition operates with the calm assurance of an artist who knows exactly how matter behaves, and is not above using that knowledge to unsettle the viewer.
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Pigment, Power, and Preventative Measures: Yves Klein at Blenheim Palace
What happens when a historic British estate hosts an artist whose signature medium is the colour equivalent of a controlled detonation.
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Infinity, Immersion, and the Logistics of Joy: Yayoi Kusama in Singapore
The endurance of repetition, the intimacy of obsession, the architectural demands of infinity, and the choreography of hundreds of ecstatic visitors.
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The Art of Cultivating Creativity
Why a quality art education matters in an increasingly visual world, and how to motivate children who would rather be doing something else.
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Gunpowder, Ghosts, and The Ninth Wave: Cai Guo-Qiang at the Power Station of Art
Less like attending a show than walking into the reverberations of a controlled apocalypse.
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Clinical Sublime and Chaotic Precision: Damien Hirst at Tate Modern
A little like stepping into the world’s most aesthetically sophisticated morgue. Or pharmacy. Or aquarium. Or possibly all three.
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The Architecture of Exposure: Tracey Emin at the Hayward Gallery
Not so much an exhibition as an encounter with a life laid out in meticulously curated fragments.