Arts news

• Sculpture in its natural habitat: US edition

  02-07-2017 23:00
  As you prepare for your summer travels, here are two sculpture parks and works to look out for in the US:Beverly Pepper
  Galileos Wedge (2009)Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MichiganThis monolithic steel work is a singular, bold gesture, says Joseph Becherer, the parks chief curator and vice president for collections and exhibitions. Pepper herself selected the sculptures site in the garden, next to a large pond, where the commissioned work can be appreciated from a dist
  
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• Sculpture in its natural habitat: UK edition

  02-07-2017 23:00
  As you prepare for your summer travels, here are two sculpture parks and works to look out for in the UK:
  Eduardo Paolozzi
  London to Paris (2000)Cass Sculpture Foundation, SussexThis sculpture is one of the last outdoor works that Eduardo Paolozzi created and a rare example of the artist working in wood, says Helen Turner, the curator at Cass Sculpture Foundation in Sussex. Paolozzi was nervous about creating an outdoor work in wood as it requires a lot more conservation, she says. But organiser
  
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• How departing director Perdita Hunt saved the Watts Gallery from near death

  02-07-2017 23:00
  Some adored the Watts Gallerys Sleeping Beauty look, but it was cold and dark, the roof leaked, the canvases sagged, and the tea room was poisoning its clients. What is more, few remembered its namesake, George Frederic Watts. When he died in 1904, leaving in trust his art, gallery, studio, chapel and house in the Surrey woods, 40 miles from London, he was so famous that the Metropolitan Museum of Art had given him its first-ever exhibition of a living artist. But during the 20th century,
  
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• Forged in war, revolution and turmoil, works head for Les Rencontres d’Arles

  02-07-2017 23:00
  Political strife is the focus of this years Les Rencontres dArles, the annual photography festival in the southern French town of Arles (3 July-24 September). For its 48th show, the programme includes 250 artists and over 30 curators working in more than 25 sites.
  The event includes exhibitions on photography from Iran and Colombia, which have each faced bouts of political turmoil. Sixty-two photographers will exhibit pictures of Iran from the 1979 Islamic Revolution until the present day.
  
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• China launches crackdown on social media

  02-07-2017 23:00
  
  A new cybersecurity law in China, which came into effect in June, is likely to push artists into deeper levels of self-censorship. In the first week of its implementation, authorities used the law to target celebrity gossip on social media platforms WeChat and Weibo. Sixty accounts were closed down, including that of the popular film blog Dushe Dianying. Younger users of social media platforms are feeling nervous for the first time, says Xu Wenkai, a Shanghai- and Berlin-based media artist and
  
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• New Order + Liam Gillick: So It Goes review – a suitably theatrical Manchester return

  02-07-2017 13:38
  
  Old Granada Studios, ManchesterThere are intensely emotional scenes as New Order revisit their back catalogue on a grand scale with synth orchestra, airing songs not heard for 30 years plus rapturously received tributes to the band’s fated predecessor, Joy Division
  The old Granada studios building has enormous significance in the story of Joy Division and New Order. In 1978, the former made their television debut here on Tony Wilson’s So It Goes programme after singer Ian Curtis bera
  
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• John Minton: A Centenary review – a wildly restless talent

  02-07-2017 09:00
  
  Pallant House, Chichester
  Best known for his doleful self-portrait and early death, Minton was an artist with a fierce lust for life, as this fine show reveals“Mystery of the gifted artist” was the Mirror’s headline when the painter John Minton was found dying in his London studio at the age of 39. Detectives discovered a bottle of sleeping tablets close to the body. The mystery, it turns out, was not the means but the motive. For Minton was “gay, generous, successful, po
  
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• Chris Ofili agrees to let Union Black fly again after giving flag to the Tate

  02-07-2017 01:05
  
  Turner prizewinning artist’s work returns to London for Black History MonthThe black, green and red version of the British flag that flew above Tate Britain on the bank of the Thames seven years ago is to return. The artist Chris Ofili’s dramatic reimagining of the flag in the pan-African colours will be flown on the gallery’s roof in October to mark Black History Month.Ofili, the Turner prize’s youngest winner, has given his Union Black to Tate Britain to celebrate the b
  
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• ‘Three Brexiteers’ chase buccaneering spirit of empire in choice of art

  02-07-2017 01:04
  
  David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson find inspiration in the pastCecil Rhodes gazes down on Liam Fox at the Department for International Trade. A map of 18th-century Europe graces the wall at the headquarters of the Brexit secretary, David Davis. At the Foreign Office, Boris Johnson toils before the watchful eye of a Winston Churchill bust. For the government ministers dubbed the “Three Brexiteers”, it seems that inspiration is to be found in Britain’s imperial glories.The t
  
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