To rescue Kahlo from the clutches of the corporate art market, we need to acknowledge the overt and covert political dimensions of the work, demands GAVIN O’TOOLE
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Fatberg
by Julian Bishop
If you can see past the relentless commodification you will be rewarded by enormously powerful work, suggests JENNY MITCHELL
CHRIS SEARLE revels in the one-off collaboration between an American polymath and a British Muslim, and detects the presence of their revolutionary forebear
GORDON PARSONS revels in an ebullient production of Shakespeare’s magical comedy
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a thoughtful analysis of the Erdogan regime, viewed through the evolving history of a neighbourhood in Istanbul
GORDON PARSONS regrets the price, but is dazzled by an outstandingly ambitious study of the way art restoration in particular, and culture in general was weaponised by the Nazis
It might have escaped from a laboratory:
a biological curiosity
with the body of an octopus
but no limbs, a pudgy
limpid belly, jellified cheeks
and bulging condom eyes
with a Double Decker wrapper
for a tongue. The flushers
discovered its mother
snoozing in Whitechapel’s bowels
swaddled in a blanket of fat
a recumbent stalagmite
of discarded wet wipes
bringing London’s movements to a halt.
Now a gang of riveted children
gasp at a quivering sliver
caged behind strengthened glass
as it spawns an army of small flies
and wonder at the perversity
of a monstrous sculpture
carved out of our own bodies,
a disgusting portrayal in oils
of a terrible time of waste.
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