David Shrigley at Anton Kern Gallery (Installation View)

An ‘Open’ sign outside David Shrigley’s new exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery greets visitors, announcing that the gallery is ready for business. In his sixth solo show with the gallery, the Glasgow-based artist brings together seventy-eight drawings, along with two sculptural pieces and a video.  Coming in two different sizes, these ink and acrylic drawings on paper deliver the artist’s signature, whimsical technique, putting him in a distinct place in today’s art world.

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The Guardian has an article this week looking at composer Arvo Pärt and Gerhard Richter’s early careers under communism, and the pair’s respective pieces dedicated to the work of the other, to premiere at this year’s Manchester International Festival this month. (more…)

The Guardian takes another look at Grayson Perry’s recently completed home design in Essex, the fittingly-titled A House for Essex, which he calls a monument to “thwarted female intelligence,” and executed as a sacred communion with an imagined Essex woman named Julie May Cope. (more…)

The Shortlist for the 2015 Turner Prize has been announced, featuring a diverse body of artists and practices that diverges wildly from last year’s heavily video and film-centric affair.  The 2015 Prize exhibition will be staged this year at the Tramway arts venue in Glasgow.  The Turner Prize, a £25,000 award, is Britain’s most prominent recognition in the arts, and this year will go to either London artist Bonnie Camplin, German-born artist Nicole Wermers, London-based arts collective Assemble (which adopted an abandoned housing estate and converted it into a new community space), or artist Janice Kerbel.  Working in a wide variety of media, social practice and community milieu factor heavily into the pieces on view this year.

The Turner Prize exhibition will open this October in Glasgow. (more…)

The annual BP Portrait Award has announced this year’s shortlist, featuring artists from the UK, Israel and Spain.  “It was good to see even more international artists entering and my fellow judges and I were impressed by the different styles of portraiture, some quite new to the exhibition, and intrigued by the stories behind the portraits,” says Pim Baxter, the deputy director at London’s National Portrait Gallery. (more…)

The strikes over the National Gallery in London’s plans to privatize its workforce are continuing this week, with artist Ryan Gander joining the protestors outside the museum.  The current protests have requested a delay in any decision to privatize until after the national elections on May 7th. (more…)

The Battersea Arts Center has received a £1 million grant from the United Kingdom following a massive fire at the South London institution that destroyed its Grand Hall.  “The arts center is having to divert all its available resources into dealing with the aftermath and so I am pleased to be able to confirm that the government will provide £1 million towards the ongoing redevelopment work to help get this south London venue back on track,” says Culture secretary Sajid Javid. (more…)

Gabriele Finaldi, the deputy director of the Prado museum in Madrid, will take over for Nicholas Penny as the head of the UK’s National Gallery this August.  “I feel deeply honored to take on the directorship of the National Gallery after Nicholas Penny,” Finaldi, who formerly worked as a curator at the museum from 1992 to 2002, says.  “This is a world-class collection in a world-class city and I eagerly look forward to working with trustees and the staff to strengthen the gallery’s bond with the public and its international standing.” (more…)

Two separate directors for major UK museums have spoken out this week in the run-up to the country’s general elections, condemning current cultural funding cuts, and its effects, describing them as “severe.”  “Austerity is killing many local museums,” says David Anderson, director general of National Museum Wales.  “There is an urgent need for additional funding. The cultural funding model we have is failing.” (more…)

New information released by the Tate this month has revealed that the museum accepted between £150,000 and £330,000 in annual sponsorship funds from British Petroleum over the course of 17 years, totaling over £3.8 million in funds.  The relatively minor amount of funding each year underscores claims by the activist group Platform, which accuses BP of using the donations to help “greenwash” its reputation.  “The BP sponsorship figures are even lower than we had estimated,” says Anna Galkina of Platform. For nearly a decade, Tate provided a veneer of respectability to one of the world’s most controversial companies for just £150,000 a year.” (more…)

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Birds of the Alps (2012), via Pace London

Hiroshi Sugimoto returns to Pace London this month, presenting a new body of work from his long-running Dioramas series, and exploring notions of the fossil as both an artifact and a contemporary object through his cunningly arranged photographs. (more…)

Over £45 million in art was donated to the British nation in the past year, a new report by the Arts Council England reports, among them a landmark collection of works from the collection of late artist Lucian Freud.   “There is something of special significance in the perception that one great artist has of another,” says Arts Council England chairman Sir Peter Bazalgette of the Freud collection. “It was this group of paintings and drawings, rather than his own works, that Freud chose to surround himself with in his home.” (more…)

Artist David Hockney is interviewed in the Wall Street Journal this week, reviewing his recent work, and offering his take on the meaning of being an artist. “Lots of people don’t really look,” he says. “They scan the ground in front of them, but they don’t really look that hard.” (more…)

The Telegraph profiles Christie’s upcoming London sale of works from the Essl Collection, Austria’s largest private collection of contemporary works.  The sale, featuring pieces by Gerhard Richter, Paul McCarthy, Louise Bourgeois, and Alighiero Boetti, is estimated to bring in up to £60 million next month, making it the most valuable sale of a single collection in auction history.   (more…)

Ai Weiwei is currently under house arrest in Beijing, but that hasn’t stopped the artist from planning and overseeing the installation of his largest UK exhibition to date at Blenheim Palace.  Ai has had a 3-D digital model of the space created, and has used it to plot out the placement of works meticulously without leaving his home.  “In the beginning, we sent him photographs and detailed plans, but he’s an absolute perfectionist and every inch of where works are placed matters to him. So in the end we lasered all the rooms to make the model for him,” says Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill said. (more…)

Urs Fischer, TBD (2014), via Sadie Coles HQ, All images © the artist; courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London

A collection of new paintings by Swiss artist Urs Fischer are currently on view at Sadie Coles HQ in London. Marking a departure from the artist’s more flashy exhibitions of subversive installations and sculptures, this is the first time Fischer has devoted himself strictly to large-scale paintings. (more…)

Several artists have redesigned classic British battleships in London and Liverpool commemoration of the 100 year anniversary of the start of WWI.  The designs pay homage to the practice of “dazzle” paint jobs on battleships, designed to confuse attacking German U-Boats.  (more…)

Claude Monet, Nymphéas (1906) via Sotheby’s

Following hot on the heels of the events of Art Basel just last week, the London outposts for Christie’s and Sotheby’s will open their doors for a pair of highly touted Impressionst and Modern Art Evening sales, beginning two final weeks of major art auctions before the art world moves into the summer lull.

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue and Grey (1927) via Sotheby’s

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David Shrigley is interviewed in The Guardian this week, discussing his early years as an artist, his approach to his recent Sketch Restaurant commission, and his response to not winning the Turner Prize last year.  “It’s like, the day after they announced the winner of the Turner prize,” he says. “I’d had a bad back and the day afterwards my back got better like that.” (more…)

Zhang Huan, Spring Poppy Field No. 34 (2014), via Pace Gallery London

One of the most influential and prolific contemporary artists from China, Zhang Huan has worked across a wide spectrum of practices including performance, installation, photography and sculpture, reflecting his personal history as well as the collective consciousness of the present society.  As a body artist, Huan has delivered performances in which he pushed the limits of physical and psychological endurance, echoing the issues such as war, social injustice and alienation while simultaneously commenting on concepts of spirituality and transcendence. Using his own body as his main tool along with different materials such as blood, meat, brushwood and live animals, he has given impressive and challenging performances in different art institutions around the world, provoking the viewers to contemplate on issues that are often ignored and avoided.

Zhang Huan, Spring Poppy Field No.14 (detail) (2014), via Pace Gallery London (more…)

Miroslaw Balka, We Still Need (2014), all images courtesy The Freud Museum

On view at The Freud Museum in London is a special exhibition from contemporary Polish sculptor and video artist Miroslaw Balka, featuring a series of installations referring to the period from 1938, when Sigmund Freud moved to London from Vienna to avoid Nazi persecution, until 1942, when four of his five sisters died in concentration camps. Densely layering Freud, Wagner and the Holocaust in equal measure, the measured and immersive installation will remain on view through May 25.

Miroslaw Balka, Above your head (2014), via White Cube

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Martino Gamper, L’Arco della Pace, all images Courtesy of Serpentine Galleries

Following 2009’s Design Real, curated by Konstantin Gricic, Serpentine Galleries is hosting its second major design exhibition. Titled design is a state of mind, the exhibition emphasizes London-based, Italian-born designer Martino Gamper’s curatorial vision with a selection of major design works brought together by the renowned designer. Gamper, reminding viewers of the emotional charge of design works are capable of beyond their mere functionality and surface presentation, aims to underline the multiplicity of perspectives when appreciating design. (more…)

In lieu of paying an inheritance tax, the estate of Lucian Freud has donated a selection of 40 works by Frank Auerbach has been donated to the United Kingdom, covering an approximate £16,250,000 tax bill.  The works will be divided into 11 groups and distributed by Arts Council England to various public collections. (more…)

The 2014 Turner Prize shortlist has been announced, including the artists Duncan Campbell, Ciara Phillips, James Richards and Tris Vonna-Michell, all of whom are noted as working in “non-traditional media.”  “The four shortlisted artists share a strong international presence and an ability to adapt, restage and reinterpret their own and others’ works, very often working in a collaborative social contexts,” says Tate Britain director Penelope Curtis. (more…)