Tag: Call of the Mall

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Call of the Mall

Agnieszka Gratza

This review appeared in frieze: Matthew Darbyshire IP, 2013, mixed media, dimensions variable You wouldn’t normally expect to find ambitious contemporary art, least of all the kind that critically engages with consumer culture, in a shopping centre. But then, Hoog Catharijne is no ordinary mall. Built around a train station, the Netherlands’ busiest shopping centre (in terms of footfall) includes its own residential complex and office buildings. A late Modernist urban development animated by Utopian ideals, it was once an opulent place fitted with marble floors, chandeliers, exotic plants, aviaries, a bronze fountain and, yes, art works. This shopper’s paradise … Continue reading Call of the Mall

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Matthew Darbyshire: IP

Agnieszka Gratza

This piece appeared in Dutch translation in Metropolis M magazine:   A meeting at his studio or at a shopping mall might have been more fitting. Instead, Matthew Darbyshire and I meet on the hallowed precincts of London’s Slade School where he studied under influential British sculptor Phyllida Barlow and where he now teaches sculpture himself. We poke our heads into some of the workshops and studio spaces of this well-worn and loved building; hardly anyone appears to be using them. (Admittedly, it’s only mid-morning.) Darbyshire tells me that, in his student days, he would sneak in through a pit … Continue reading Matthew Darbyshire: IP