It Ain't Fair, Miami

Art Basel Miami Beach

Laura Lima

Alona Harpaz

Zheng Guogu

New London Talent: Future Map 08

Suki Chan, Tomorrow is our Permanent Address

Jera May, The Delirium of Joy

I was really excited about The David Roberts Art Foundation's Future Map 08 show - a handpicked selection of new talents from the University of the Arts London postgraduate courses. However it all felt a little... safe. Great work, good quality and all very slick, but nothing got my heart racing (as Saatchi's Four New Sensations did).

A few works stood out for me though: Suki Chan's Tomorrow is our Permanent Address featured a huge video screen with broken glasses laid out on the floor in front of it, creating a cityscape-like silhouette on the screen, which also showed giant images of broken glasses - resulting in a disconcerting 3-D effect. Jera May's huge pile of furniture featured a hidden projector which made silhouette images of seagulls flying across a kitsch oil painting hanging on the wall behind.

The Double Club, Carsten Höller

It's art.. but not as we know it. Carston Holler (of the Tate slides fame) brings a bit of Congolese vibrancy and colour to a North London warehouse with The Double Club. This "art installation" fuses African and Western influences, as a club, bar, restaurant in one - where a traditional Congolese copper bar stands next to a swish restaurant (serving up Congolese dishes and pricier European fayre) ... and decorative tiles contrast with cobbled stone floors. The revolving dance floor is tiny, but there's a huge window into the bar area... I'm sure most of the punters wont even realise its supposed to be art - but that's the point, isn't it?

Its only here for six months before being dismantled and sent to the Prada Foundation in Milan. Enjoy it while it lasts..

Stolenspace

Chloe Early

Brick Lane's StolenSpace gallery can always be relied upon for great contemporary urban art, but tonight's show surprised in for its lack of graffiti and focus on purely beautiful painting in bold, bright brushstrokes.

In Chloe Early's large canvases at her solo show, it looked like the animals had escaped from the circus and joined a fashion shoot - complete with trippy lighting, plunging swimsuits and urban backdrops.

Chloe Early

Vilma Gold

Charles Atlas' large-scale video projections are hypnotic - it's worth spending some time to absorb the endless stream of black-and-white grid lines and swirling op-art patterns, fused with found images from old films and the internet, dancing silhouettes and everyday objects that appear to fly around the room.

Gallery goers at Vilma Gold

Frieze goers

London art fairs

Without doubt the highlight of my week at the London art fairs was certainly not the supermarket-like Frieze, but the smaller, fresher exhibition of young London artists - The Future Can Wait on Brick Lane.

The beautifully cavernous and stark space in the Old Truman Brewery beat the Regent's Park cubicles for one thing. And there was no braying... and no pushing or shoving. Just space and time to absorb and enjoy some really exhilarating art work.

Some of it was irreverent and more than a little bit crude - a video of a lady snogging a dog (yes really), some of it was moving (Helen Dowling's Breaker), and some was just plain beautiful - the giant coral-like polystyrene sculpture by Aisling Hedgecock, or the compelling portrait of a Girl with the Lipstick by Sarah McGinity. There is most definitely a New London Scene to watch.

Aisling Hedgecock, Barockarama

Girl with the Lipstick by Sarah McGinity

Having said that, Frieze did offer up some flashes of inspiration - I loved the "happenings" - an undercover team of gigolos chatting up dealers' wives, a crazy Buenos Aires gallery that practically trashed its own stand, a reconstruction of Reykjavik bar Sirkus, and smoking booths where people tried to look relaxed having a fag and becoming "art" in a see-through pod.

Appetite Gallery, Buenos Aires

Smoking Booths, Norma Jeane

Apparently people were buying (some of the best stuff was snapped up before the fair even started)... but both the mood and the art at Frieze felt muted.

Kounter Kulture private viewers

Statuephilia: The British Museum

I loved this morning's preview of the Statuephilia sculpture installation at the British Museum (i'd forgotten how fantastic this building is) - where visitors can discover five contemporary sculptures among the relics and artifacts in its galleries.

Damien Hirst's 200 spin-painted sculls are exhibited like a cabinet of curiosities in the Enlightenment Gallery.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s lumps of mummified animals are actually painstakingly morphed to form silhouettes of the artists' faces on the wall behind.

But the show-stealer is, of course, a pure gold Kate Moss by Marc Quinn, looking resplendent next to the Nereid Monument.
Dark Stuff, Tim Noble and Sue Webster


Mark and Kate! Siren, Marc Quinn

Vyner Street: gallery goers

Hot looks at the Wilkinson Gallery

Vyner Street: first Thursdays

This month's First Thursday (late night gallery openings) on Vyner Street didn't offer much in terms of new shows, but i loved Robert Currie's beautiful Vine Space installation: strips of video tape creating a tunnel affect.

8 days, 17 hours, 46 minutes and 21 seconds, Robert Currie

The Turner Prize invite

The Turner Prize

The Stuckists demonstrating outside this year's exhibition of Turner Prize nominees had a point - will we really look back in 200 years time with awe at a mannequin sitting on a toilet, next to some crusty cereal bowls?

Unlike the Stuckists, I can really enjoy conceptual art - when its fresh, shocking, inspiring or just funny. But my main gripe with this year's Turner Prize was that it was quite simply, mediocre.
The cereal bowls were part of Cathy Wilkes installation - a grouping of sculpture and found objects in a pseudo-domestic scene. It just felt done - hasn't this kind of work become a bit of a joke?

Goshka Macuga's chrome and glass sculptures were sleek and inoffensive - but i could somehow imagine them being created by some sort of Mayor of London-backed consortium at City Hall...

Mark Leckey's film of Felix the Cat among other mixed-media installations felt the most extensive of the lot - it looks like he is the favourite this year.

I found Runa Islam's films of delicately smashing crockery and tut-tut drivers in a sun-baked park the most compelling...

When there is so much exciting art out there, does this shortlist truly represent the best of British talent? Have a look at the Guardian's imagery and see for yourself..

The Stuckists' anti-Turner Prize flyer

Liverpool Biennial: the invite

Liverpool Biennial

Visible Virals, A-Ape
Liverpool Skyladders, Yoko Ono

Liverpool took art outside - buy a ladder from the DIY shop and place it with Yoko's in a bombed out church, find some video art at the back of a pub, and keep your eyes peeled for stencilled messages on walls...

I loved this "discovering" aspect of the event, but some of the art - particularly the video pieces - left me cold - and judging by reactions of fellow previewers, i wasn't the only one.

GalleryGirl is born

GalleryGirl is born from the guts of the European Capital of Culture.


Liverpool Skyladder, Yoko Ono