Arts news

• Elaine Wilson obituary

  04-07-2021 18:22
  
  There is a wonderful photograph of my friend, the artist Elaine Wilson, who has died aged 61 of cancer, in which she lies flat on her back in long grass, her piercing blue eyes staring into the lens. How women look at themselves, and are looked at, was a theme she returned to again and again in her work.Gun Women, a series of clay sculptures she began in 2008, were fired to look like fragile, decorative figurines. Angelic assassins, they peer down the barrel of their handguns, daring us to look
  
  Read more

• John Spencer obituary

  04-07-2021 12:10
  
  My father, John Spencer, who has died aged 95 of a pulmonary embolism, was an art teacher, a prolific painter, a lifelong learner and a quietly devout Christian. His career was spent as a teacher and teacher-trainer, inspiring a generation of students, but his passion was his painting.Born in Windsor, to Ernest Spencer, a gas fitter, and Helen (nee Brain), as a baby John suffered from intussusception and had an intestinal operation no baby had previously survived. His mother was told to “o
  
  Read more

• Paula Rego: ‘Making a painting can reveal things you keep secret from yourself’

  04-07-2021 09:00
  
  On the eve of her biggest ever UK show, the figurative artist recalls a 70-year ‘non-career’ tackling fascism, abortion, tragedy and the solidarity of womenWhen a Paula Rego retrospective at Tate Britain was first suggested three years ago, it was welcomed as an irresistible – an inevitable – proposal. For, as the show’s curator Elena Crippa observes, there is only a handful of contemporary female artists who have achieved comparable status. And there are not many a
  
  Read more

• How the Twitter tide of plastic lost at sea has come to define our age | Tim Adams

  04-07-2021 08:00
  
  An artist’s images of tiny toys and figurines dumped in the ocean highlight the wasteful ways we have to changeSocial media was made for projects like Tracey Williams’s #LegoLostatSea, which anecdotally charts the plastic that has been dumped in the ocean in the past 70 years. Williams began her mission after becoming obsessed with the container of 4.8m Lego pieces that spilled from a cargo ship 20 miles off Land’s End in 1997, and which continue to be washed up on Cornwall&rsq
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Diana, Wollstonecraft, Wilde … why do we keep getting it so wrong with our statues?

  04-07-2021 08:00
  
  The Princess of Wales sculpture is the latest example of our strained relationship with this controversial art formAnother statue, another dance of media and culture. Last week, on what would have been her 60th birthday, Princes William and Harry unveiled a bronze likeness of their mother Princess Diana by the sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley. Located in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace, it includes three unnamed children standing about her.The occasion combined respectful expressions of sympath
  
  Read more

• Hooking up with the Billingsgate fishmongers – in pictures

  04-07-2021 06:30
  
  BillingsgateCommuting at 5am to Canary Wharf is not the typical artist’s routine, but it’s been Pat Wingshan Wong’s since she started a project at Billingsgate fish market in 2019 to capture life there ahead of its planned move to Dagenham by 2025. “I miss it on days I don’t visit,” she says. “I’m friends with the fishmongers, which is my biggest achievement in the project.” On her dawn visits she sketched the fishmongers, then bartered her p
  
  Read more

• Hartford Stage – Director of Marketing & Communications

  04-07-2021 05:22 via feedproxy.google.com
  Hartford Stage seeks a Director of Marketing and Communications who will direct the currently reduced staff and intentionally grow the team to support future operations. This role leads a team of marketing, sales, and communications professionals.About Hartford StageUnder the leadership of Artistic Director Melia Bensussen and Managing Director Cynthia Rider, Hartford Stage is entering its 58th season, continuing the theatre’s legacy of artistic excellence by creating theatrical works that
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUK1 on Twitter!