Gallery Children's Biennale
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Times
7 days ago
- Times
Our greatest football photographer's secret? Ignore the game
The world of football is not, you would have thought, a world that concerns itself overly with events in art. These two great spheres of human endeavour appear fiercely separated. And in most locations they are. But not in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, where, unbelievably, a gallery has inveigled its way into the hall of balls and is now luring unsuspecting football folk on to the aesthetic quicksand of art. The Oof Gallery is inside the huge Spurs merch shop, secluded in a small Georgian building that the planners, in their infinite English perversity, insisted must remain untouched while the club's new stadium was built around it. It now lurks there, almost invisible, surrounded by mountains of Spurs paraphernalia, a small pearl in a huge oyster. The shows they mount here are usually on a football theme of some sort. The latest offering pairs the football photographs of Peter Robinson with the creatively vandalised football shirts of Nicole Chui, who, on this evidence, ought never to have been allowed near a sports kit. More on that and on the adjacent issue of the awful 2025 Tottenham shirt in a moment. First, we need to plunge into the soccer sadness of Robinson, 81, hailed by The New York Times as the 'greatest living football photographer'. Amazingly he has recorded 13 World Cups and nine Olympic Games. For five decades he has been photographing the pigskin sport, and the show confirms he has visited and watched pretty much everywhere it has been played. In 2003 he was in Japan photographing the space-age Yokohama Stadium and noticing how a field of cabbages had grown plentiful right outside it. In 1993 he was in Beirut, shedding a tear for the Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium after an attack by the Israeli air force had turned it into a bombed-out crater filled with refugees. What's fascinating here is how much of Robinson's interest lies at the game's peripheries and how little actual football he has recorded. When Portugal played Spain in Porto in 1981, he watched a disembodied hand reach out to collect the tickets from a walled-up bunker masquerading as an entrance kiosk. In the groundsman's hut at Southend United in 2004, he noticed that the groundsman was watching another game on the telly while his own team were playing outside through the open door. • Read more art reviews, guides and interviews What really interests him is the humanity of football rather than its skills: the way it bleeds off the pitch into the surrounding life. He likes a joke too. In 1970, at Wolves v Man Utd, he caught a moment when Bobby Charlton was approached by a policeman while taking a corner. Robinson called the photo The Two Bobbies. His picture of Bill Nicholson entering the gates of White Hart Lane in 1970 with a cheeky smile and a shapeless Marks & Sparks suit has become iconic, because Nicholson looks more like a dusty geography teacher than the most revered of all Tottenham managers. Humanity done, the rest of the experience at the Oof Gallery and its surroundings feels as if it is emphasising how football has changed for the worse, and how delusion has crept into its world. Nicole Chui is the founder of Baes FC, 'a grassroots football community for women, trans and non-binary people of Asian heritage aiming to play football in a safe space'. It sounds like a healthy and jolly London arrangement. Good on her. Where things start to unravel is that she also imagines herself to be a football artist, and in that role she has been given a space at the Oof to display her wares and to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that she should stick to founding community soccer teams. Chui's creative ambition is 'to disrupt perfection and inspire others to embrace their raw emotions'. This involves taking a needle and thread to an assortment of football shirts and sewing spider patterns across them, ruining their shape and disfiguring the design ambitions of the shirts' makers. If she improved them, even slightly, this would be a noble task. She doesn't. Instead the gaudy patching feels like an act of aggression, death by a thousand stitches, a killing of the football shirt. Somewhere along the line she has persuaded herself that being messy (as opposed to Messi) is the same thing as being creative. It isn't. As it happens, football shirts have experienced something of a renaissance in recent years. My fellow Sunday Times writer Joey D'Urso has just written an entire tome on the subject. Called More Than a Shirt, its big point is that every football kit in every land 'tells a deeper story about the world we inhabit'. To gather his evidence, Joey travelled the world, but I guess he never made it to the Tottenham stadium and the merchandising souk that surrounds the Oof Gallery, where rack after rack of 2025 Spurs kit makes you cry with its lack of fizz or ambition. To see where football shirts really have advanced, you need to leave behind the moneyed casinos of the Premier League and head down to the lower divisions. Walthamstow FC, from the Isthmian League North Division, recently brought out a fabulous turquoise kit based on the famous wallpaper designs of the Walthamstow local William Morris. My own team, Reading FC, now having fun in League One, issued a kit featuring a purple turtle design inspired by a local nightclub. This year their shirt is based on a Victorian biscuit tin designed by the local cake makers Huntley & Palmers. This is the football shirt cementing important links with the local community and pushing out the boat in invention and excitement. Sad, robotic Tottenham Hotspur should definitely try it. Peter Robinson: Double Vision is at the Oof Gallery, London, to Aug 31; Nicole Chui: Ruined, to Aug 2; What exhibitions have you enjoyed recently? Let us know in the comments below
Time Out
16-07-2025
- Time Out
An immersive floral fantasy has taken over ARTECHOUSE in Chelsea
This summer in New York City, experience the unbelievable beauty of nature—without actually having to go outside. Head over to ARTECHOUSE in Chelsea Market now until Labor Day and immerse yourself in a new botanically inspired multi-sensory exhibition, " Blooming Wonders." This pixelated ever-moving landscape featuring psychedelic pink daises, fluttering butterflies and some abstract surpises is accompanied by calming, dreamlike ambient music. The new 40-minute experience lets you hang out inside the 270-degree, floor-to-ceiling 18K-resolution digital canvas inside of the historic market's 100-year-old boiler room, while experiencing the fleeting beauty of spring and summer blooms come to life with immersive, interactive technology. While you're there, don't forget to grab a "Blooming"-inspired drink from the bar upstairs, like their take on an Aperol Spritz (think less Aperol and more "peachy" flavors). After drinks, head downstairs into the main room, find a floor cushion or open bench, enjoy some air-conditioning and get lost in the rich florals. Once you've finished the experience in the main gallery, you can head back upstairs past the bar to the small gallery on display, where you can find two different video games set up for you to mess around with. You can also get a bird's-eye view of the main room over the balcony while you're up there. Plus, it's a great excuse to partake in some shameless people-watching. "Blooming Wonders" builds upon ARTECHOUSE's established history of collaboration between artists (like Refik Anadol, Yuko Shimizu, and Vince Fraser) and outside collaborators (Pantone, the United Nations Foundation, the Society for Neuroscience, and the Nobel Prize Museum) with ARTECHOUSE's own team of designers, architects, producers and storytellers. Together, they are able to bring new concepts to life—making ARTECHOUSE an innovative leader in digital and experiential art. So if you need a break from the heat of the city and are looking for an indoor activity for the day, "Blooming Wonders" is a must-see. You can grab some lunch in Chelsea Market after, or go back for round two at ARTECHOUSE and see their other summer experience: " Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience." General admission tickets start at $24.50. For children, ages 15 and under, tickets are $18 for time-slots before 6pm. Discounted rates are also available for students, seniors, military, first responders, and small groups of 4-9 people. and on site at the venue.
The Herald Scotland
16-07-2025
- The Herald Scotland
‘This is Scotland' exhibition opens at Roger Billcliffe Gallery
All four points of the compass are covered, from Neil Macdonald's Abandoned Cottage, Hoy, to Ruth Nicol's explorations of the Selkirk farmlands. Unsurprisingly, the Western Isles figure largely – Ann Oram on Iona, Mathew Draper on Raasay, Sarah Carrington on Rhum and more. Ronnie Smith and James Fullarton head east visiting Dunnottar Castle and the harbour at Crail, while the west features Paddy Dorrian and Andrew Sinclair in Ardnamurchan and Amy Dennis at Dumbarton Rock. (Image: James Fullarton) Bowling on the Clyde is particularly popular with George Devlin and Lesley Banks. As are Arran, the Bass Rock, Angus fields from James McIntosh Patrick, the Lanarkshire Hills by Duncan Shanks and Michael Corsar's twilight memories of Loch Linnhe. Too many to mention but, unsurprisingly this year, little sign of rain and no midges. To see the entire show and more visit The Billcliffe Gallery opened in 1992, and specialises in exhibiting the best of Scottish contemporary and 20th century painting with changing monthly exhibitions, primarily solo shows although group exhibitions are usually presented during the summer months. The Gallery represents many of Scotland's leading painters including Duncan Shanks, Peter Howson Gordon Mitchell, Christine McArthur, James D. Robertson, Mary Armour, David Donaldson, John Bellany, Glen Scouller, John Boyd, George Devlin, James McNaught, Ronald F. Smith and James Fullarton as well as supporting younger artists such as Sam Cartman, Martin Hill, Mhairi McGregor, Saul Robertson, Sheila McInnes, Ruth Brownlee, Sarah Carrington, Matthew Draper, David Rae, Paul Kennedy and our own Michael Corsar. (Image: Lee Craigmile) The Roger Billcliffe Gallery is a participant in the 'Own Art' interest free loan scheme for loans up to £2,500. In addition, Roger Billcliffe's own interests in the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Glasgow Boys and the Scottish Colourists, on whom he has published widely, are reflected in the many private and public sales and consultancies which the Gallery undertakes. Location : Billcliffe Gallery,185b Bath Street, [close to Blythswood Square] Glasgow, G2 4HU t. 0141 221 4053 Join the gallery newsletter info@
