The Engine

  ELECTRIC DREAMS at the TATE MODERN on the 30 th of May 2025 Eduardo Kac, Horny, 1985. Tate. Lent by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the Latin American Acquisitions Committee 2018 © Eduardo Kac This is an exhibition bound to connect generations.   Adults and children were present, all enjoying the interactive mysteries on display. François Morellet, Random distribution of squares using the π number decimals, 50% odd digit blue, 50% even digit red , 1963 installation view, Atkinson Museum, Porto, 2023. © François Morellet. Photo courtesy Atkinson Museum Electric Dreams connects the analogue era to our own digital time, it also references the song Together in Electric Dreams , co-written by Phillip Oakey and Giorgio Moroder in 1984.   Briefly, in the not-too-distant past, meaning the 1980s, there were four TV channels, broadsheet newspapers, telephone booths that worked, there were no mobile phones, and people still wrote and posted letters.   The exh...

  VICTOR HUGO, ASTONISHING THINGS at the ROYAL ACADEMY on the 3 rd of June 2025 Victor Hugo, The Town of Vianden Seen Through a Spider’s Web , 1871. Brown ink and wash, and blue watercolour over graphite on paper, 25.5 x 30.3 cm. Maisons de Victor Hugo, Paris / Guernsey. Photo: CCØ Paris Musées / Maisons de Victor Hugo Victor Hugo’s fame rests on his novels Les Miserables and Notre-Dame de Paris (in France his poetry is also famous).   This exhibition proves the eclecticism and artistic talent of this versatile author. Victor Hugo, Mushroom , 1850. Pen, brown ink and wash, charcoal, crayon, green, red and white gouache on paper, 47.4 x 60.8 cm. Maisons de Victor Hugo, Paris / Guernsey. Photo: CCØ Paris Musées / Maisons de Victor Hugo In total Hugo created 4,000 drawings of which 3,000 are still in existence.   The Royal Academy presents about 70 of these drawings, a mere snapshot of his entire output.   They are organised thematically to underline the claim ma...

  EDVARD MUNCH, PORTRAITS at the NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY on Wednesday 4 th of June 2025   Self-portrait, Edvard Munch, 1882-83, oil on unprimed canvas Munch’s early portraits depict his family and close friends.   Munch’s mother died of tuberculosis when he was just 5 and his sister Sophie also died in 1877 when Munch was 14.   These experiences emerge in Munch’s early formative work The Sick Child (1885-86) which formed the basis of his expressionist style.   The proximity of death and the insubstantiality of existence are themes that dominate Munch’s work.   His father, a military doctor in Kristiania (as Oslo was then known) became an emotional recluse after his wife’s death.   Munch creates portraits of his family members, especially distinctive are portraits of his sisters Laura and Inge (oil on paper, 1883) which seem impressionistic and summery and optimistic.   Hans Jaeger, Edvard Munch, 1889, oil on canvas Later, Munch began to ...

  ED ATKINS at the TATE BRITAIN on Monday the 2 nd of June 2025 Ed Atkins, Unititled, 2018   The Tate’s new exhibition showcases the work of video artist Ed Atkins (1982 -).   His work Hisser  depicts a real-world incident in the US, when a man was swallowed up by a sinkhole, disappearing inexplicably and entirely.   Hisser  seeks to enact the last day or days of this anonymous man’s life, as he sleeps, sings, ruminates, observes Rorschach blots to a cracked recording of Elton John and Kiki Dee singing “Don’t go breaking my heart”.   Ultimately, the protagonist masturbates vigorously into a sink before the cataclysmic swallowing occurs.   Perhaps Hisser  is a warning against isolation or onanism, or a meditation on the arbitrariness of existence itself.   The works coherence and poignant beat makes it notable. Ed Atkins, refuse.exe, 2019 In Atkin’s video installation Good Food characters clad in medieval or fantasy garb weep uncon...

  WE LOSE SIGHT OF THE NIGHT, Aisling O’Beirn at The MAC, Belfast on the 18 th of April 2025   What is concept art and what are its origins? Aisling O’Beirn’s new exhibition at The Mac, Belfast, is an attempt to talk about global environmental changes connected to urbanisation, electrification and climate change. The electrification of cities began in the 19 th century with Paris being the first electrified city in the world.   This is why Paris is often called ‘the city of light’.   But encroaching urbanisation led to increasing electrification of cities.   Its often hard to see the night sky in a city because of the glare from artificial lighting.   We all like to look up and make out the contours and shape of the Milky Way but it’s becoming increasingly hard to do this.   This is the subject of O’Beirn’s amusing and insightful exhibition. Kim Howells, one time Labour Minister of Culture, once described concept art as “cold, mechanical co...

  Once Was a Boy by Theo Dorgan, Dedalus Press (2023) and The Solace of Artemis by Paula Meehan, Dedalus Press (2023)   Theo Dorgan is a writer from Cork who has written a narrative poem organised in three sections which moves from home to church (or convent) to school.   The material suggests the world of Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s novel The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man .   However, the handling is quite different here because Joyce went to Clongowes, a Jesuit boarding school though structured on the lines of an English public school.   The school described in the book seems to be a traditional, Catholic state school.   The narrative drive of the material is presented in lines that depend on situations from childhood.   The writer has dispensed with rhyme and (almost entirely) with rhythm.   Instead, lines have the directness of spoken language, and their prose origins imply a sentient yet naïve consciousness struggling to comp...