David Hockney @ Nottingham Contemporary

At Nottingham Contemporary they are currently showing a David Hockney retrospective until the end of January. For such a small exhibition which is held in only two of the rooms at the new gallery they really managed to create a narrative of how his personal art has developed over his career. I especially loved the piece entitled "Life Art for a Diploma" in which he mocks his lack of interest in his colleges life drawing classes which needed to be completed for his course. This showed a ironic and satirical nature of his work that later developed into his famous depictions of californian life.

A short but sweet little exhibition.

Radical Nature @ The Barbican

I trekked across London last week to catch this exhibition before it closed. Radical Nature: Art and Architecture for a changing planet was to me a bit of a disappointment. I don't want to be too harsh as individually there where some exciting pieces; instead my dissolution rests with the organizers of the exhibition, who put together something that was shoddily presented and with no real narrative to drive the spectator through the space. Dealing with such a relevant issue of the relationship between nature and architecture it failed to make any clear statement- most of the pieces being highly conceptual and unable to relate to contemporary life. The curators chose pieces that were not subtle about their chosen subject, In fact many seemed to shout "Im an artist dealing with nature!", an example of this poster art being the section of rainforest tipped on its side in Henrik Hakansson's Fallen Forest (2006). Having been to so many wonderfully exhibitions of late that employ a meaningful narrative that enhance the spectators experience, it was hard to feel that they had got the most out of this topic at the Barbican.