Robert Barry is a freelance writer and composer based in London. He is the author of ‘The Music of the Future’ (Repeater Books)

The radical experiments of Yoko Ono

The artist’s vast body of work is full of daring conceits and tantalising contradictions

23 Apr 2024

By Lake Lugano, two painters who really saw the light

Giacomo Balla and Piero Dorazio worked nearly 50 years apart, but a dazzling show reveals their shared interest in capturing sensations

2 Nov 2023

The Brazilian artists who believed in leisure – and wanted to change the world

The film-maker Neville d’Almeida recalls his friendship with Hélio Oiticica and how they broke down the barriers between work and play and between film and art

13 Oct 2023

This year’s Turner Prize nominees display a weariness with institutions

The shortlisted artists highlight the fragility of the existing order, with the best of them upending what we expect from a show in a gallery

3 Oct 2023
Yayoi Kusama exhibition in Manchester

Blown up: Yayoi Kusama goes big in Manchester

The city’s newest and largest arts space provides ample room for the artist’s large-scale inflatables, but it’s not all about size

6 Jul 2023

Sonia Boyce gets musical in Margate

The artist takes her Golden Lion-winning work celebrating the extraordinary achievements of Black women in music from Venice to the English seaside

10 Feb 2023
Video still from No Tomorrow (2022)

Can contemporary art really make us laugh?

Funny peculiar or funny haha? Perhaps some of the artists who seem a bit obscure are actually trying to make us laugh

28 Nov 2022
Heather Phillipson Turner Prize

The Turner Prize plays it safe this year

The four nominees for this year’s prize are presenting their biggest, brightest work but not all of it is saying very much

20 Oct 2022

For Lawrence Abu Hamdan, music makes a mockery of borders

The sound artist and ‘private ear’ talks to Apollo about his new film commission in Bristol, set in a library that straddles the US-Canadian border

14 Oct 2022
British filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien (b.1960), photographed in 2021. Photo: Anne-Katrin Purkiss; © Royal Academy of Arts, London

‘You look for your own art history’ – an interview with Isaac Julien

The artist tells Apollo how his new film for the Barnes Foundation weaves together restitution debates with the history of the Harlem Renaissance

30 May 2022
Red Road by Dorothy Cross at Studio Carlo Nicoli, Carrara.

Pressing the flesh – an interview with Dorothy Cross

The sculptor used to make work made out of meat, but although she now uses marble she is still fascinated by processes of decay

11 Mar 2022
Tacita Dean, photographed in Frith Street Gallery’s Golden Square space in London, in October 2021. Behind her is one of the works in the Purgatory (2021) series.

‘I have to fight for the corner of film’ – an interview with Tacita Dean

The British artist has consistently used film as a means of making a statement about painting. But now her chosen medium is urgently in need of saving

12 Nov 2021
Installation view, Array Collective at the Turner Prize 2021, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry.

This year’s Turner Prize nominees are all doing valuable work – but why compare them?

The shortlisted collectives are more interested in what takes place outside the museum – so considering them for an art prize seems besides the point

30 Sep 2021

The Apollo 40 Under 40 Art & Tech in focus: Joey Holder

The artist talks to Robert Barry about her ongoing exploration of the deep sea – and explains why her work is more utopian than it seems

20 Sep 2021
Casque strength: Daft Punk performing in 2006.

Bye, Robot: a farewell to Daft Punk

Daft Punk weren’t always robots – but it’s how they’ll be remembered

26 Feb 2021
Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square (still detail; 1967–68), Bruce Nauman. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York; © ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020

From the ridiculous to the sublime – Bruce Nauman at Tate Modern, reviewed

This career-spanning survey presents an artist whose work consistently teeters between the absurd and the poetic

2 Dec 2020
Installation view, Oliver Beer, 'Oma', Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London (12 September–24 October 2020).

Sounds of silence – an interview with Oliver Beer

Oliver Beer’s sound installations reveal a music that was already quietly present

20 Oct 2020
Alfredo Jaar photographed next to his installation ‘The Sound of Silence’ (2006) at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in October 2017. Photo by Jonty Wilde

Photo realism – an interview with Alfredo Jaar

The Chilean-born artist talks about his ambivalent attitude towards photography and his utopian feelings about art

26 Jul 2020
Mirror Improvisation (2005), Joan Jonas.

Dragging out the HDMI cable – how to watch video art at home

Moving-image work seems particularly suited to our increasingly online existences

1 Apr 2020
Stills from The Bad Feel Loop (2019), Benedict Drew.

Benedict Drew’s new film gives form to the anxiety of modern life

Currently on view at the Science Gallery London, The Bad Feel Loops is a nervous, nerve-wracking piece of work

3 Oct 2019
Precarity (2017) (still), John Akomfrah, Courtesy Lisson Gallery; © Smoking Dogs Films

A haunting resurrection of the man who invented jazz

New Orleans bandleader Charles ‘Buddy’ Bolden cuts an enigmatic figure in John Akomfrah’s elegiac film

16 Jul 2019
Installation view of ‘Yuko Mohri: Voluta’, at Camden Arts Centre, 2018, Photo: Damian Griffiths. Courtesy Camden Arts Centre

Yuko Mohri unwinds at Camden Arts Centre

The artist’s new sound installation involving solenoids, sensors and tropical fish is surprisingly decorative

7 Aug 2018
Measure for Measure 7 (2016), Bridget Riley

‘A visceral assault on the senses’

Bridget Riley’s monumental abstract paintings are as mysterious as they are mesmerising

26 Jan 2018
Illustration: The Lindström Effect

Is sound art getting a fair hearing in museums?

Sound art often seems like video art’s poor relation in museums, but is its struggle for status starting to pay off?

25 Sep 2017