Hettie Judah

Hettie Judah on the Place of Motherhood in the Art World

The writer interrogates the meaning of care, as well as communicating beyond the mother echo-chamber, through the works of Caroline Walker

The politics of portraying parenthood | Apollo Magazine

From the September 2022 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. I was arrested by the breast. Full, slack, laced with veins the liverish grey of an ebbing bruise, it erupts through pristine white cotton, the head above cropped from view. Locked on to its nipple is a baby, not fully unfurled, drowsily satisfied.

'I thought it was over for me': Manuel Solano on painting after going blind

Manuel Solano is remembering trying to paint for the first time after going blind. "I thought it was a joke: I thought it was over for me, as a painter." Their work from that period is harsh and urgent, clawed on to the canvas in jangling colour.

Top of the pipistrelles: super-skilled bats join eco-philosophers for a riotous rave

anna Tuulikki is inviting you to a bat rave: a party in the setting September sun, propelled by pulsing beats and lights. All being well, above your head will flit superskilled flying mammals - common and soprano pipistrelles, Daubenton's bats - dining on insects attracted by your body heat.

Vagina scrolls and tongue-kissing with cats: Carolee Schneemann is one of art's great rebels

I find myself writing about a dirty movie. In Carolee Schneemann's Fuses (1964-67) the artist and her partner James Tenney have sex in various unhurried ways, coupling on the bed or off it, enjoying the touch of skin, tasting one another, pausing to rest. Schneemann films her partner's penis with affectionate curiosity, stiffening then slumping.

'I burned all my relationships in the kiln': Lindsey Mendick's courageous, confessional ceramics

ears before I first met Lindsey Mendick, I knew more intimate details of her life than I did those of my oldest friends. I knew about her past relationships: open and clandestine; coercive and crushing. I knew about sex with her exes, how she felt about her body, and theirs.

Manifesta 14 reinvigorates neglected spaces in Kosovo's capital

M aking his way to the roof of the 13-storey Grand Hotel Pristina, Petrit Halilaj points out abandoned bedrooms piled high with junk. The artist climbs a spindly metal ladder, then stands amid the signage of this once five-star establishment. Manifesta, Europe's nomadic art biennial, opened in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, on July 22nd.

Warning Labels at Museums Make Art More Accessible to All-But They Should Stop Short of Telling...

As a younger mother I visited SMAK - a museum in the Belgian city of Ghent - with my little sons. SMAK was hosting a survey by the South African artist Kendell Geers. I did not know his work, and asked whether it was OK to visit with children.

Manifesta Wants to Bring the Roving Art Biennial to Ukraine-and Have Former Host Cities 'Adopt'...

Though the latest edition of Manifesta just opened this month , plans are already underway for a forthcoming iteration of the roving European biennial to take place in Ukraine. Last week, at a press conference inaugurating Manifesta 14 in Pristina, Kosovo, the 18-year-old event's founder and director Hedwig Fijen said she is proposing a 2028 iteration of the show in Kyiv.

Artist Penny Goring: 'David Bowie showed me that there was another world'

he floor beneath Penny Goring's worktable is awash in filaments and fragments of scarlet cloth. Slivers and snippets carry across the carpet in crimson eddies, as though blood had spilled from her stabbing scissors and is seeping across the floor of her bedroom into the world beyond.

'These women are not victims' - Paula Rego's extraordinary Abortion series

n 1998, the year of a Portuguese referendum debate on abortion, Paula Rego poured her fierce, formidable passion into 10 large paintings set in backstreet abortion clinics. These were a direct gesture of protest at the cruelty of anti-abortion laws.

Two Young Women Took a Gamble and Opened an Art Gallery in Remote Kosovo. It Is Now One of the...

In late July, during the opening week of Manifesta 14 in Kosovo, the little alleyway that is home to LambdaLambdaLambda is abuzz with artists, curators, and press guzzling lentil fritters and drinking beer. The gallery is tucked into a back corner, next to the vegetarian café Babaghanoush: the de facto social hub for those visiting Prishtina for the biennial.

Vivian Maier: the post-war nanny whose extraordinary photos were only discovered after she died

In bringing an artist's work to light after their death, art is often at risk of being overshadowed by biography. A punchy narrative can be an effective way to draw attention to an unfamiliar name - for who can resist a good story?

Anthea Hamilton at M HKA

The creative freedom of play | Apollo Magazine

A memorable video at this year's Biennale - Venice Children's Game #29: La roue (2021) - shows a boy patiently pushing a tyre up a mountain of dark slag before curling his body inside and pitching himself downhill.

Marlene Dumas at Palazzo Grassi

Men framed by women's desire | Apollo Magazine

I n the opening room of 'Fashioning Masculinities' at the V&A, the god Apollo is joined by Hercules, Hermes and archetypes of loveliness, ancient and modern. Strolling past velvety male nudes, shot with the perfecting haziness of a lover's eye by the likes of George Platt Lynes or Isaac Julien, I experienced a revelation.

Glyn Philpot review - a master portraitist's secret gay passion

ashion elevated Glyn Philpot, but it also cast him aside. Before and after the first world war, Philpot painted the spirited lovelies - suited or skirted - of London's high society. He died unexpectedly shortly before the next war. By the time the dust of that conflict settled, his silken party people looked outmoded, remnants of times past.

Sonia Boyce: 'If you're female, you have to be nice'

This weekend, Sonia Boyce was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation: the Venice Biennale's top honour. She is not only the first black woman to represent Britain in the national pavilion, but the first British artist to win the award in 29 years.

Raphael at the National Gallery reveals the beauty and drama of a Renaissance master

Raphael did not hang around. The first two paintings here - a peachy -skinned, boyish St Sebastian, and an altarpiece showing the crucifixion - were both painted when the artist was about 19 years old.

The Venice Biennale's Forgotten Female Surrealists

Socks, squats and sex workers: The Woman in the Window review

ho is the woman in the window? A housebound mother leaning out to gossip? A lover waiting for a letter? A sex worker summoning clients? An artist installing work in a gallery? As this tightly structured show reveals, the convention of showing women positioned at a window dates back millennia.

Ingrid Pollard: the Turner nominee uncovering Britain's secret shame - review

ith detailed studies of flaking, iron-blooded rock, printed at monumental scale Ingrid Pollard directs our thoughts to the bigger picture. The title of her show, Carbon Slowly Turning, might describe the motion of the spinning Earth, with you, me, the trees and other carbon-based life upon it.

The minaret that flew to the moon - Kutluğ Ataman returns with a thrilling show

uttering often accompanies Kutluğ Ataman's work, though usually it comes from the art itself. My first encounter with the Turkish artist and film-maker came with the 1999 video work Women Who Wear Wigs.

The problem with art writing | Apollo Magazine

The visual art world is getting textier and textier. Few institutional exhibitions now come without captioning lengthier than a parliamentary report. The more self-important commercial galleries publish weighty catalogues, show by show, to communicate museum-like gravitas and spin saleable tales around their artists.

Cornelia Parker at the Tate reveals a career-long fascination with violence

Cornelia Parker's major installations have immediate arresting drama. You "get" them instinctively. Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) is a Semtexed garden shed, arrested nanoseconds after detonation. Perpetual Canon (2004) is a ghostly brass band, silenced by the flattening impact of a roller.

God is a woman: the thrilling Feminine Power at the British Museum is proof

British Museum curator Belinda Crerar is standing beneath a naked woman with skin the colour of a peat bog. Positioned about three metres up the wall, the woman is crouching as though ready to pounce. Crerar looks up at her admiringly: this is Lilith, "a demon from Jewish mysticism - though she has a much longer history," she tells me.

Sheila Hicks: 'My works need to be touched!'

On a blustery, drizzly Yorkshire day, I am tempted to throw myself into a mountain of billowy-soft bales of coloured fibre and hibernate until the sun comes back. Sheila Hicks has provided the cushiony, downy, pillowy mountain of my dreams - part of the finale to her show at Hepworth Wakefield.

Lubaina Himid at Tate Modern is rich and involving, with a political kick

One of my favourite works by Lubaina Himid is comparatively modest. Man in a Shirt Drawer (2017-18) juts from the wall like a fragment of junk shop furniture - you have to approach sideways to see a painting there at all. It is art that literally forces you to adopt a certain position to step into its space.

Noguchi at the Barbican is a treat - despite resembling a posh furniture display room

Of all the facets of Isamu Noguchi's career - sculptor, landscape architect, designer - it is the Japanese-American artist's humanism that sticks in the mind after this show. From early on, Noguchi's interest in exploring modern forms and technique in sculpture was balanced by an obligation to work for the public good.

'Sleep with everyone! Be embarrassing!' - the dada baroness who shocked society

owering over crowds at the Venice Biennale, a fortysomething woman poses in a wild homemade costume, that includes beribboned matador pants and a hat like an upturned saucepan. In another photo, smaller and taken around 1920, she crouches on one leg like a stork, sprouting feathers and dripping jewellery.

Jesse Darling: Enclosures review - part public toilet, part CCTV-infested hellscape

rtist-poet Jesse Darling's recent survey show at Modern Art Oxford took a swipe at the tidy authority of museum displays. Glass-topped cabinets teetered and slumped into corners, metal stands refused to do just that, and an exuberant - if terrifying - rollercoaster sculpture looped the upper reaches before unravelling into splayed track.