Ivan Kyncl: In the Minute marks 15 years since the death of the acclaimed, Czech-born theatre photographer Ivan Kyncl (1953-2004). His archive, acquired by the V&A in 2018, comprises over 100,000 negatives and is considered to be one of the richest chronicles of the British stage in the late 20th century. Focusing on the possibilities of theatre photography, the exhibition brilliantly…
| 04/07/2019
The distinctive deep blue and white of indigo print fabric, modrotisk in Czech, is the result of a material dying technique carried out in the Czech lands and Slovakia since at least the early seventeenth century. Its origins in Asia are thought to be a thousand years older. A white reserve is used to make patterns,…
| 02/07/2019Using popular mobile apps like Prisma and DeepArt anyone can produce a piece of stylised art from an input photo, but Daniel Sykora and his research group at the Czech Technical University argue that this wouldn’t pass an artistic version of the Turing test – where even the artist would’ve difficulty judging whether a painting…
| 11/06/2019
The Markéta Luskačová exhibition at Tate Britain, part of the Spotlights programme, invites the visitor into moments between waiting and watching, action and pause. The black and white photographs are arranged frieze-like in an ongoing passage around the room. From pilgrims to street musicians and holiday makers, the people that populate Luskačová’s work are often…
| 26/03/2019
Galerie Kuzebauch’s exhibition for Collect 19 challenges the perception that Czech glass is a male domain, normally associated with figures like René Roubíček, Václav Cigler and Bořek Šípek. International fairs from the 1950s to 1970s also cast a long shadow. The collaborative work of Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová often dominates in the British and…
| 05/03/2019
With a career spanning over fifty years, photographer Roman Vishniac (1897-1990) has left an impressive legacy, housed at the International Center of Photography in New York (ICP). While relatively few of his photographs were known until recently, the ICP has digitalised much of his estate in 2013, creating a whole website dedicated to his work.…
| 11/02/2019
‘There’s an ever-increasing interest in the Hitler émigrés, but the role of the Hungarians has yet to be discovered,’ said Matthias Sarkozi, former BBC newscaster in the Hungarian section, who introduced the fully booked launch event of Their Safe Haven: British-Hungarian Artists 1930 – 1980. In April 1943 and in the midst of war time…
| 27/09/2018
‘I only paint what I see’, says Vladimír Kokolia, one of the Czech Republic’s most established contemporary artists. For most, seeing the ordinary and the everyday’s an act of involuntary dismissal. For Kokolia, seeing the everyday’s wonderment. His first UK exhibition, Epiphany, hosted by the Ikon gallery in Birmingham, is a precious lesson in looking and seeing.…
| 18/07/2018
I entered the small exhibition space of the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in London and was immediately drawn in by a close-up portrait of a young Jewish boy. His eyes were alive and rejoicing, bringing a sense of peace and harmony. The brief description of the photograph, in both Bulgarian and English, reads: Purim at the…
| 27/06/2018
In her welcome to the event, Eszter Pataki, Director of the Hungarian Culture Centre and a former journalist, pronounced that ‘the Roma community is part of the shared culture in Hungary’, yet ‘many stereotypical images exist in the media even in the UK.’ The phrase ‘of Eastern European appearance’ always appears in a negative context.…
| 21/06/2018