London Short Film Festival Announces 2015 Programme

For the 12th year, London Short Film Festival returns with an outstanding programme of short films. Running 9 – 18 January, the festival aims to prove that the UK is truly a hotbed of film creativity.

India Art Fair 2015

India’s premier contemporary art fair returns to New Delhi for its 7th edition. Supported by YES Bank, India Art Fair is one of the most important platforms for facilitating creative dialogue and promoting art trade in the region.

Top 10 Exhibitions in 2014

2014 has been a great year for contemporary art exhibitions. The huge range of practices on display demonstrates the variety of artistic approaches being developed across the world. From Martin Creed to Annette Messager, all of the artists listed here demonstrate both skill and thought.

Interview with Maggi Hambling, Wall of Water at the National Gallery

Known for her sculptures Scallop (2003) and In Conversation with Oscar Wilde (1998), Maggi Hambling has established herself as one of Britain’s most significant and controversial painters and sculptors. In her latest exhibition Wall of Water, Hambling returns to the National Gallery.

Interview with Photographer Joël Tettamanti, Issue 62

In the midst of a white snowscape, Joël Tettamanti finds moments of captivating colour. While travelling across Greenland, he discovered objects and buildings which had managed to escape the thick layers of snow engulfing the region.

Built from Life, Abraham Cruzvillegas

Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas’ sculptures appear haphazard, disjointed and improvisational – and they are. Inspired by his parental home in Ajusco, a district in the south of Mexico City, he calls the sculptures autoconstruccións.

Reality Departure: Angela Smith, Louis Savage & Katrine Roberts

The second instalment of Lacey Contemporary’s launch of its artists showcases the work of three British painters. Reality Departure explores painting’s ability to capture the world as it is mediated by the human mind.

Review of Allen Jones, Royal Academy of Arts, London

There is more to Allen Jones than those tables. As if to acknowledge this fact, the curators of this retrospective have placed two of them right at the beginning of the exhibition. Once the shock and awe is over, the show unfolds to reveal the unfailing ingenuity of a British Pop artist.

The Art Fund Launch Nationwide Search for Museum of the Year 2015

The Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year launches its competition for 2015. The search for the next top UK museum or gallery begins this week, after director of the Art Fund and chair of the judging panel, Stephen Deuchar, revealed the international jury line-up of professionals.

Review of Marie Lund: Dip, Laura Bartlett Gallery

Marie Lund’s new exhibition at Laura Bartlett, her second solo show at the gallery, feels like the most considered and erudite articulation of themes in the artist’s work that has been gaining momentum for a few years now. Lund is interested in the stories objects can tell.

Disinformation, The Analysis of Beauty, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh

The first instalment of gap in the air festival took place in November with a mesmerising in-situ sound and video piece by noise DJ, artist and researcher Joe Banks. Working under the guise of Disinformation since 1995, Banks has pioneered the use of ‘radio’ noise.

Playtime, Cornerhouse, Manchester

Moving sites in spring 2015, Manchester-based cross art form organisation, Cornerhouse, closes its current space with nine artists, filmmakers and musicians celebrating the iconic venue: Rosa Barba, Niklas Goldbach and more.

Self, Ordovas Gallery, London

In Self, the current exhibition on display at Ordovas Gallery, artistic mastery by four of revered artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, is championed. Rarely seen works deliver over a century of self-portrayal.

World Wide Women: Ritual, Cob Studios, The Cob Gallery

Established by fine-art photographer Anouska Beckwith in 2012, World Wide Women is an all-female international collective of photographers and artists which seeks to represent the free spirit of women in the contemporary art world.

Interview with Whitney Hintz, Curator, Hiscox Collection

The Hiscox Collection comprises approximately 600 works on display across the company’s offices in the UK, Europe and USA. One of the latest acquisitions was 541 días, a photographic series of five portraits by Chilean artist Inés Molina Navea, one of the finalists in the Aesthetica Art Prize.

Artist Filmmaker Ursula Mayer Wins the 2014 Film London Jarman Award

Film London has announced Ursula Mayer as winner of the 2014 Jarman Award. The Austrian-born filmmaker was selected from a shortlist of 10 visionary and boundary-crossing visual artists working in the UK. An annual celebration of experimentation, the award recognises artist filmmakers whose creative practice defies conventional classification.

Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology Presents the Winners and Finalists

The compelling collection of poetry and short fiction in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology unites established and emerging literary talent from around the world, and features the finalists from this year’s Aesthetica Creative Writing Award.

Review of The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier, NGV, Melbourne

In recent years, the National Gallery of Victoria has been criticised for shying away from traditional “art exhibitions” and instead playing fodder to the masses with its interest in so-called “blockbuster” fashion and photography shows.

What is David Bowie, David Bowie in Aesthetica Magazine

There are few musicians who can parallel the aesthetic and imaginative influence of David Bowie – master of storytelling, fantasy and re-invention – over the past five decades. The characters and constructions of Bowie’s imagination have transcended the boundaries of music.

Conflict, Time, Photography, Tate Modern, London

From a casual glance at the advertising for Conflict, Time, Photography you might assume it to be an exhibition of war photojournalism; in fact the concept is far more novel. The images on display show the aftermath (rather than the unfolding of) the conflicts they depict.