Ocula Report Havana Biennial 2019: Constructing the Possible 17 Apr 2019 : Federica Bueti for Ocula I first visited Havana in November 2016, a few days after Fidel Castro died, and just under a year before Hurricane Irma hit Cuba in September 2017. Since then, much has changed, including the hand-painted signs that punctuate the journey from the airport to the city centre, which today do not celebrate the revolution so much as the 'Unidad y...
Ocula Conversation Andrew Stahl and Guo Xiaohui The exhibition Beyond Boundaries at Somerset House in London (12 March–2 April 2019) marked the historic contributions of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (CAFA) and the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, on the occasion of their 100th and 150th anniversaries, respectively. Spread across several rooms of Somerset House's...
Ocula Report The National 2019: New Australian Art 13 Apr 2019 : Elyse Goldfinch for Ocula The National 2019: New Australian Art features work by 70 contemporary Australia-based artists split across three venues: the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), Carriageworks, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) (29 March–21 July 2019), as curated by Isobel Parker Philip, curator of photographs at AGNSW; Daniel Mudie Cunningham,...
Lewis' figurative, mural-scale works are explicitly influenced by the symbolic conventions and compositional drama of Medieval and Renaissance painting, wherein the plane is dominated by the dynamic intertwining of bodies and punctuated by emblematic tokens of sin, virtue and status.
This is combined with the artist's personal encounters and acute eye for the everyday human dramas that play out in the urban environments he frequents, and filtered through a distinct authorial subject position as a white, gay male of working-class upbringing possessing the satirical, good-natured-but-brutal sense of humour that characterizes much British creative output.
The result is a visual language equal parts Martin Parr meets Chris Morris, Rembrandt-cum-Basquiat; plausibly grotesque, amplified to absurdity, narrative-laden and energetically complex.
