2024 Roundup Roundup
Let’s wrap up the year with some stats:
900 shows seen*
414 venues visited
224 mini reviews
44 full length reviews
4 venue reviews
5 interviews
51 newsletters
Those are probably way more fascinating for me than for you, but I find it helpful and humbling to take stock of everything I attempted over the last twelve months. When it’s all laid out on one long page like this, it’s evident that I accomplished a lot.
Was any of it any good? I’d like to think it is, and I certainly believe that the writing continues to get better. Ultimately that’s for all of my readers to decide, and I’m pleased that according to the web stats there are twice as many as there were last year. Hopefully both of them will get in touch and let me know?
Links to all the long-form reviews are below. How many of these shows did you see? The fire icon 🔥 indicates the dozen most read reviews, based on site stats.
Art Show Reviews
🔥 Affordable Art Fair - Critics’ Choice (Battersea Evolution)
Alexis Peskine - Forest Figures (October Gallery)
Andy Holden - Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape (The Perimeter)
Bloomberg New Contemporaries (Camden Art Centre)
Camilla Marie Dahl - The Way Home (Unit London)
City & Guilds Foundation Show 2024 (City & Guilds)
City & Guilds MA Show 2024 (City & Guilds)
CONDO (various locations)
🔥 Contemporary British Portrait Painters - Critics’ Picks (The Deprtment Store)
Danica Lundy - Boombox (White Cube)
🔥 Dominion (Newport Street Gallery)
Electric Dreams - Art and Technology Before the Internet (Tate Modern)
Embodied Forms - Painting Now (Thaddaeus Ropac)
Farley Aguilar - The Age of Effluence (Edel Assanti)
Goldsmiths Postgraduate Degree Show (Goldsmiths)
Jacqueline de Jong - La Petite Mort (Pippy Houldsworth)
🔥 Jason and the Adventure of 254 (Wellcome Collection)
Jess Allen - This Is Now (Unit London)
Joy Labinjo - We Are Briefly Gorgeous (Southwark Park Gallery)
Judy Chicago - Revelations (Serpentine Gallery)
Kati Heck - Tip-Toe-Echo (Sadie Coles)
Kenji Lim - Spend Time Not Thinking About Tomorrow (IMT Gallery)
LAPADA 2024 (Berkeley Square)
🔥 London Art Fair - Critics’ Picks (Business Design Centre)
Looks Delicious! (Japan House)
Marck - Marck’s Playground (Bluerider ART)
Majid Fathizadeh — Ideologues of the Game and Other Seekers of the End (Ab-Anbar)
Matthew Krishanu - The Bough Breaks (Camden Art Centre)
Miko Veldkamp - Buketan (Alice Amati)
The Nature of Things (Castor)
On Folding Ground (Night Cafe)
One Track Minds (Kings Place)
🔥 Outdoor Sculpture Trails - 2024 (various London)
Patrick Goddard - Home Invasion (Seventeen)
Poppy Jones - Solid Objects (Herald St)
🔥 RA Schools Show 2024 (Royal Academy Schools)
Rob Lyon - Temenos (Hales Gallery)
Sebastian Tanti Burlò - Antic Hay (Cicek Gallery)
🔥 Slade BA/BFA Degree Show 2024 (UCL Slade)
Viltė Fuller - Corporate Horrors (Brooke Benington)
Waddle of Worcester (Worcester)
Walter Price - Pearl Lines (Modern Art)
Warbling - at last it came into focus (19 Greek Street)
🔥 When Forms Come Alive (Hayward Gallery)
Interviews
Artist Interviews:
Gallery Interviews:
Haricot Gallery (Shoreditch)
The Smallest Gallery in Soho (Soho)
Venue Reviews
Dia Beacon (Beacon, NY)
Folkestone Outdoor Artworks (Folkestone)
Leighton House (Kensington)
Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum (Wimbledon)
Click here to scroll through all my venue reviews and get in touch if there are any missing venues you’d like me to review.
Weekly Roundups
Here are the covers from all 45 Roundups that were published in 2024 (issues 92- 136, inclusive). How many of these artworks / shows do you recognise?
You can click this to browse a filtered list of Roundups, but if you’re wondering whether a specific show, artist or gallery made one or more mentions, it might be easier to do a Search.
Why I Like It
I launched this series in August 2022 as an opportunity to be completely biased and shamelessly unfiltered in my love for specific works of art. The first column was about Piet Mondrian’s Composition C (No.III) with Red, Yellow and Blue (1935). Would you believe that it still gets read at least twice a day, every day, by someone somewhere in the world? In fact, many of the columns in this series get new reads each week, since a lot of the works I’ve written about are currently on display in public museums and galleries. How many have you seen?
Jan — Miami Mountain (2016), Ugo Rondinone
Feb — The Identi-Kit Man (1962), Derek Boshier
Mar — * Brass Snooker Chalk (2023), George Richardson
Apr — 🔥 V&A Rotunda Chandelier (2001), Dale Chihuly
May — Penguin Pool (1934), Berthold Lubetkin
Jun — 🔥 King Charles III (2024), Jonathan Yeo
Jul — * Anhelos (2016), Andrea Ringeling
Aug — 🔥 Soundsuit (2010), Nick Cave
Sep — Fourth Plinth (1841), Sir Charles Barry
Oct — * ultraviolence (2021), Kate Dunn
Nov — The Shadow (2024), Albano Hernández
Dec — Cow Parade (1998-present)
* Works with an asterisk are part of my personal collection.
Why I Like It will continue in 2025.
Thank you
… to all the artists for being brave and bold enough to share your ideas with the world.
… to everyone that works in a gallery or museum. Without you, so many wonderful works would go unseen.
… to anyone who’s read even one article or review that I’ve written. I hope you enjoyed reading my words as much as I enjoyed writing them.
PS — Here are links to the 2023 Roundup Roundup and 2022 Roundup Roundup, just in case you really wanna plough through the archives!
FOOTNOTES:
* Between 03 Jan and 21 Dec I attempted to see 929 shows. Unfortunately, 20 venues were unexpectedly closed when I arrived. I also subtracted the 9 shows that I returned to for a second viewing. Hence 900.
🔥 Technically, 8 of the top 10 most read reviews this year were written prior to 2024. I’m amazed, and more than a little bit proud, that some of my older writings are still read by someone, somewhere in the world, at least once every day.
Subscribe to the Weekly Newsletter. It’s FREE!