The Venice Biennale’s excess baggage problem

Plus: Portmeirion at 100 ͏‌        Get more great writing every day – from just £1 a week     Hettie Judah gives her verdict on the Venice Biennale’s main exhibition This was to be a show of whispered poetry rather than shouty theatrics; of alternative pedagogies rather than grand academies; the archipelago rather than the domineering landmass; lives of quiet creative determination rather than flash-in-the-pan success. The Venice Biennale has long been marred by excess – an overload of clamorous works – so this call for thoughtful attention is welcome. Alas the concept is not borne out by its execution: never have the vast spaces of the Giardini and Arsenale felt so crammed.   Read the full article       Gillian Darley celebrates the wit and whimsy of Portmeirion in Wales Finalised as an assembly of fragments, follies and reconstituted wholes, the village is enmeshed by its landscape, the shifting levels and snaking paths. It basks in the unexpected moments, those serendipitous effects that the architect Clough Williams-Ellis termed ‘eye-traps’ – tower or campanile, a dome, a sculpture, a reflection. Colour plays its part throughout, particularly a penetrating turquoise used sparingly throughout the village and the estate beyond.   Read the full article       Claire Barliant admires the theatrical paintings of Martin Wong If all the world’s a stage, then Martin Wong, who died from AIDS at the age of 53 in 1999, was never a mere player: he was also set designer, director and costumer. His paintings resemble theatre sets, with textured brick buildings as backdrops, and are often filled with mythical creatures. The exhibition at Wrightwood 659 foregrounds his Chinatown canvases while also featuring the brick-filled New York cityscapes for which Wong is better known. The result is an intriguing dichotomy between the bustling Chinatown compositions, many completed in the early 1990s, and the more sombre urban nocturnes painted in the ’80s.   Read the full article       Jane Morris wonders where all the online auctions went It wasn’t supposed to be like this by now. A few years ago, tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists were predicting that the internet would revolutionise the art market as it had other creative industries. In 2021, when the world was in the grip of Covid and auction houses, galleries and fairs were forced to reinvent themselves online, these prophecies seemed to be coming true. But five years on, online sales totals are dropping, even as the market as a whole stabilises.   Read the full article       In the studio with… Angel Otero ‘The studio accumulates strange things over time […] one that comes to mind is a piece of wood from some construction happening in my neighbourhood. The leftover 2x4s were cut at an angle and ended up looking like little nativity houses. I used to paint them and sell them for $5. I kept one for myself as a keepsake. It still sits in the studio.’   Read the full article     In the current issue…     Samuel Reilly celebrates one of Glasgow’s most unusual attractions The room is silent until the half-foot-high carved wooden effigy of Karl Marx snaps into action: leaning forwards as he starts to wind a metal handle, then bending judderingly backwards as the handle comes back around its fulcrum towards his long beard. As Marx continues to turn the handle, slowly the great flying contraption above him whirrs into gear, a steampunk assemblage of scrap metal: cogs, bicycle wheels, the end of an old music stand. Footlights flicker from blue to green to red, casting shadows of spinning spokes on the wall behind, while through the speaker an accordion strikes up a thin melodic strain, which is soon joined by a youth choir in full voice. ‘Oh, our locomotive, fly ahead! Next stage is communism,’ they sing fervently in Russian.   Read the full article     In the next issue…   More from Apollo Current issue | Advertise | Podcasts   View this email in your browser   Follow us Apollo Magazine, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP. All Articles and Content Copyright © 2026 by Apollo Magazine. All Rights Reserved. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe at any time. To ensure our emails are delivered to your inbox, please add Apollo to your email address book and safe-sender list.