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Simon Coates

Simon Coates

Observer

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The National Gallery’s ‘NG Stories’ Exhibition Is Missing a Chapter

The bicentenary show is entirely digital and thoroughly engaging but woefully incomplete.

12.12.2024 3

Observer

Simon Coates

“MARY MARY” at The Artist’s Garden Adds Women’s Voices to the Public Art Dialogue

If public art is a cool way of starting conversations, Central London is becoming quite the chatterbox. From Ian Davenport’s Poured Lines (the...

04.12.2024 4

Observer

Simon Coates

A London Exhibition Delves Deeper into Francis Bacon’s ‘Human Presence’

The National Portrait Gallery show is also an appreciation of Bacon’s innate understanding of how to make a painting work.

25.11.2024 4

Observer

Simon Coates

Sobering, ‘Hard Graft’ Unpacks Issues of Exploitation and Well-Being in Work

Funded via a foundation established by nineteenth-century Big Pharma businessman Henry Wellcome, the Wellcome Collection’s exhibitions are all...

24.10.2024 4

Observer

Simon Coates

‘DOMINION’ at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery Is as Smart and Savvy as the Artist Himself

A selection of the artist’s collection curated by his son presents artworks democratically, with nothing over-staged.

13.08.2024 6

Observer

Simon Coates

Why London’s ‘Fourth Plinth’ Is Worth a Visit

Built in 1841 as the base for a life-size statue of King William IV that never materialized (due to lack of funds), the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar...

10.06.2024 4

Observer

Simon Coates

A Show of Frank Auerbach’s Charcoal Portraits Illustrates the Start of a Steadfast Career

Frank Auerbach has never been coy about his self-imposed mission to search for the new. New ways of drawing and new ways of creating a painting, all...

07.03.2024 8

Observer

Simon Coates

Barbara Kruger Is Still Flipping the Bird

Until the late 1970s, making a zine was a labor of love and money. Love as in time spent assembling the thing—the cutting out, the sticking...

08.02.2024 10

Observer

Simon Coates

Who Was Jan Toorop, the Artist Who Inspired Gustav Klimt?

It was Toorop who—above everyone—would provide Klimt with the fuel needed for his eventual golden fire.

16.01.2024 4

Observer

Simon Coates

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