Visual Art

Interview with leading British sculptor Alison Wilding, RA, recorded at Tannery Street Studio, Bermondsey, in 1995. She describes the making of Harbour, in alabaster and pvc moulding, and Echo, a stainless steel sculpture exhibited at Karsten Schubert. Sourcing materials, the levels of the work; assistant Adam Kershaw; and its relation to other contemporary works.

Morag Ballard describers her studio in Penzance, Cornwall, and the strategies of her work; paintings which create perspectives and settings referring to certain interiors.

Edward Lucie-Smith reviews Frieze Art Fair London 2013, in a critical take on the contemporary scene. It's pretty easy to get the point of the Frieze Masters art fair, now in its second edition, after a very successful start last year. Its purpose is to present the best of the best - or, at the very least, a good slice of the top quality art that is currently on the market. One of the great pleasures of Frieze Masters, this year more than ever, is the accidental confrontations the event manages to set up.

Interviewed during the installation of "Ghost" at Chisenhale Gallery East London in 1990, sculptor Rachel Whiteread describes her initial experience as an assistant to Alison Wilding and employment as a theatrical props maker. She reveals the development of "Ghost", cast from a room at 286 Archway, and gives details discovered in her first major project of replication.

Sharon Kivland describes strands of influence in her work, which draws on French and Russian literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, in particular concerning the changing roles of women in domestic, social, and political life.

Very seldom in London can a major show of modern and contemporary art at a highly respected national institution have received such universally negative reviews. As I write this, not all the verdicts on the Royal Academy’s exhibition of Modern British Sculpture have been delivered. However, it is already clear that the majority will be hostile. Paradoxically, it is this, more than any other factor, which makes it seem like an important event - a turning point if you like.

Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close (born July 5, 1940) is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photo-realist. He developed his own highly resolved heads (his preferred term to portraits), which were worked on a massive scale. Despite suffering a disabling spinal aneurysm in 1988, the artist has continued to forge a monumental body of work in a variety of media: paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs, of potent and original effect.

Cv/VAR 80 presents an interview by sculptor Tom Grimsey in 1991 with Spanish artist Glòria Ortega. She describes her work in various mediums from straw to steel. She credits the effect on her work of artists Miro, Chillida, and Ortéiza, and discusses her place in the community of Catalan artists.

Dr. Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, gives an interview to Cv/VAR, first published in Curators and Collections Volume Three 2010. He describes the history of the Art Fund, its foundation, aims and initiatives, and work as a major benefactor, enabling museums and galleries to preserve and develop their collections, including recently discovered treasure troves, and individual works saved for the future.

A presentation by exhibition curator Catherine David in 1997 describes her plans for Documenta X Kassel; title 'Retroperspective', including works by Joseph Beuys and Walter de Maria. She proposes the ambitions of the projects, in linking strands of modern and progressive art, with aspirations of different nationalities and cultures.

Explores the structure and development of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the mid-19th century and works that figure among the most enduring and generally popular in British art. Renowned writer and art critic Edward Lucie-Smith contributes a study of the brotherhood of seven artists and their interconnection and intricate links with the social establishment of the time. James Cahill has a special interest in the movement, having studied Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Holman Hunt. He reviews a major exhibition of 150 works at Tate Britain launched in September 2012.

An essay by Edward Lucie-Smith considers the Andy Warhol exhibition re-opening at Tate Modern on July 27. He puts forward a provocative view of the relevance of the art in an time of turbulent disruption. When the Warhol show returns to Tate Modern on July 27, almost the first thing you’ll meet if you go to see it will be a large painting, on two paired canvases, entitled Marilyn Diptych. It features repeated images the film star Marilyn Monroe.

One of the commonest and most loosely used terms in any discussion of contemporary art is the word avant-garde. Indeed it often seems to be taken for granted that valid contemporary art and avant-garde art are synonymous.

An anthology of essays and reviews by the eminent art historian and writer, Edward Lucie-Smith. The articles cover a broad span, from the Italian Renaissance of Giotto and Antonello da Messina, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, progressing to Rubens, Velázquez, and Ingres, with essays on William Hogarth, John Constable, and John Everett Millais for British art. With the experience of his landmark publications on modern art, which remain in print, the author sweeps the listener on a fabulous journey of perception.

This is a personal view of Picasso and Paper, a major exhibition held at the Royal Academy, and explores over 300 works covering drawing, collages, and prints.

In a set of essays entitled "Doubles" author, critic, curator, and traveller, Marina Vaizey explores pairings of artists drawn from the canonical cycle of Western art. She considers themes of engagement such as the portrait or figure, treated as stories of wider implication for society, that draw on the artist’s perception of the seen, combined with personal visions of dreams and imagination.

This audiobook is a review of David Hocking's Drawing from Life exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. It explores early self-portraits from the 1950s and portraits of friends and associates, including Celia Birtwell, Gregory Evans, and Maurice Payne.

A review of Anselm Kiefer exhibition at White Cube Bermonday tours room by room, with analytic descriptions of the large scale works on view.

A review of the retrospective exhibition of sculptor Sir Antony Gormley OBE held at the Royal Academy London. Encounters varied works from studies and notebooks to gigantic installations.

A review of Nam June Paik at Tate Modern, explores the exhibition room by room. "When asked about his practice Paik replied "I am aware of Zen, but I am an artist: I react to Zen in the same way I react to the music of Johan Sebastian Bach."