Columns on fashion, culture and ideas

All posts in Exhibit A

In her column, Skye Sherwin singles out artistic works, museum artefacts and curiosities from around the world for closer inspection

  • Preparatory drawing for Arzach, 1995

    Exhibit A | Moebius’ Arzach

    This lone traveller with the pointed hat and billowing cape is Arzach, the enigmatic titular hero of Moebius’ comic strip series of the 1970s. The stone bird with the pterodactyl wingspan and beak is his usual steed. Together they journey...

  • The Black Bay Sequence

    Exhibit A | Elina Brotherus

    For her latest film, The Black Bay Sequence, Finnish artist Elina Brotherus walks nude into what must be the bracingly icy waters of an Arctic lake. Her movements are calm and purposeful as she makes her way into the vast landscape of sky...

  • Changing Things by Jim Hodges, 1997

    Exhibit A | Jim Hodges’ A Diary of Flowers

    The pages of Jim Hodges’ A Diary of Flowers are but flimsy tissue, smudged with inky images of petals in ballpoint black and Biro blue. Comprising a total of 565 finely wrought doodles on cheap restaurant napkin...

  • Aulosphaera elegantissima, radiolarian

    Exhibit A | The Blaschka’s Sea Creatures

    Apparently, we know more about the surface of the moon than we do the bottom of the ocean. The pickled menagerie currently on show at London’s Natural History Museum, certainly confirms that there’s far more going on beneath the waves than...

  • Morph by Matt Johnson

    Exhibit A | Matt Johnson’s Odalisque

    Matt Johnson’s Odalisque looks like it’s just been pinched into life from a bit of modelling clay. The head of this reclining figure is a blob that might have been rolled between finger and thumb while the feet and hands look like putty...

  • Installation view: Pablo Bronstein, Walker, 2010, Video

    Exhibit A | Pablo Bronstein’s Walker

    In a ruched ivory mini dress, white stilettos and a statement necklace of big glossy pearls, the woman in Pablo Bronstein’s latest video, Walker, is the embodiment of 1980s chic-turned-cheap. Everything about this elegant blonde says new...

  • Big Lobster Supper by Jess Flood-Paddock, 2010

    Exhibit A | Big Lobster Supper by Artist Jess Flood-Paddock

    The truck-size lobster is breaking through the end of the world. His claws, with pincers already trussed for the cooking pot, are ripping through a banner of summery cloud-flecked sky. He wants out...

  • Swamp Bones by Sally Mann, 1996, from the series Deep South

    Exhibit A | Sally Mann's Swamp Bones, 1996

    The black roots in Sally Mann’s Swamp Bones certainly seem more carcass than tree. But a cadaver, with its mass of rotting flesh flopped belly down like the ones Mann’s photographed elsewhere, seems a far too physical comparison....

  • Bed Head by Jim Lambie, 2002

    Exhibit A | Sculpture by Jim Lambie at the Hayward Gallery

    Jim Lambie’s sculpture Bed Head looks all dolled-up and ready to rock. Featuring thousands of plastic buttons hand-stitched on a mattress, at first sight its cheap and cheerful materials appear to be a glittering jewel-like encrustation.

  • Yudangami video installation, 2009 by Tabaimo

    Exhibit A | Japanese art: Yudangami by Tabaimo

    Tabaimo’s animations are spooky and spectacular. For the Japanese art star’s latest installation, Yudangami (or Careless Hair), a circular room hung with black drapes plunges you into near total darkness. It’s like being in a cave, or...

  • A Wedgwood Dress Sword (1820) in the Weapon’s Room of Blythe House, London

    Exhibit A | A Wedgwood Dress Sword

    There are two tiny Wedgwood cameos embedded in the hilt of this sword. In ivory against a washed-out blue, they depict a weapon-wielding duo. The first is the Archangel Michael holding his spear aloft, with his vast wings outstretched; the...

  • Klassentreffen (Class Reunion) by Nairy Baghramian, 2008

    Exhibit A | Class Reunion by Nairy Baghramian

    Class Reunion is a gathering of sleek, slinky sculptures by the Berlin-based artist Nairy Baghramian. Playing around with old modernist ideas about abstraction and artistic purity, she’s given these gangly bits of painted metal and...