From Bloomsbury to Lagos, three ways of seeing art
This week’s podcast moves between Tate Britain, the Lagos Biennial and the Petit Palais in Paris. Across these projects, artists and curators ask what an artwork can reveal, and what it withholds.
At Tate Britain, Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury offers a fresh reading of two key figures in British Modernism. Ben Luke visited the show with co-curator Thomas Kennedy as the museum presents Bloomsbury in a new light, on view until 11 April 2027.
In Lagos, the fifth edition of the biennial opens this weekend. Titled The Museum of Things Unseen, it is curated by Furen Dai, Chinyere Obieze and Sam Hopkins; Ben Luke spoke with Chinyere Obieze and Sam Hopkins about the biennial’s idea of a museum for what usually escapes notice.
The episode also turns to Brussels 1900 at the Petit Palais in Paris, where Constantin Meunier takes centre stage through his Monument to Labour. The plaster sculptures and reliefs made around 1900 show how modelling, scale and repetition can make the presence of labour felt in the gallery.
For artists and for anyone who loves painting and drawing, the point is not simply subject matter. These projects are about looking: interiors, cities, bodies at work and forms held in suspension, all asking us to follow the artist’s hand and notice what it chooses to bring into view.
Source : The Art Newspaper