Contemporary Art Exhibitions

"Inside, you are plunged into near-total darkness, feeling your way along softly curving corridors lined with compact, hair-like roots. And unlike the dank, musty odour one might expect from a mound of soil, Morelos' beast smells unexpectedly good: infused with clove and cinnamon and softened by the cool scent of earth after rain."

"The focus on religion is heavy-handed at times – perhaps loving the Spice Girls or Elvis is just not that deep? – and it feels remiss for the exhibition not to question what happens when these obsessions go too far, if they are always healthy, or if idolising celebrities should be seen as a blanket positive thing. Still, Holy Pop! is a joyous celebration of pop culture fandoms, and all their quirky, messy extremes."

"In Anderson's work, the natural world is almost ominously abundant. Greenery seems to suffocate man-made structures, which often appear dilapidated – like ruined temples in a jungle. The sense of melancholy this generates is offset by the pleasure that Anderson evidently derives from manipulating paint. His compositions – some of which flirt, ingeniously, with abstraction – are awash with attractive blotches and drips."

"For the past 50 years, Hockney has flitted between these two modes, returning occasionally from noodling to remind us of his gift for direct communication (see his portrait of the performer Divine, the affecting drawings of his ageing mother, or his paintings of the Yorkshire landscape in the 2000s). But, sad to report, it is to the late stages of the jazz tendency that most of this exhibition belongs."

"Elsewhere, slender ceramic figures are gathered like pawns on a chessboard, though here they are more crowded, more claustrophobic, not helped by the cages covering their heads. What are we to make of these structures? Devices for trapping fruit-eating pests, or part of a wider system of confinement, of lives hemmed into structures larger than themselves."

"This love has a toxic edge. It's as damaging as it is nurturing, as painful as it is essential. Not because their love is unique, but because Mendick has realised that's just what love is."

"Walking into Tate Modern's huge Tracey Emin retrospective is like walking in on her crying, naked, sobbing and snotty, as if you have stumbled into something painfully private. Don't come here looking for a good time – you won't find it. But come looking for pure, unapologetic, undiluted, full-frontal love, grief, heartache and sadness, and you will end up feeling more feelings than you've probably felt for years."

"And she is magnificent — not merely critically, but commercially. Brown is among the most expensive living female painters in the world, her canvases commanding prices that would make lesser talents weep. The market, for once, is not wrong."

"Banerjee's surreal juxtapositions do not banalise high culture, in the sense of bringing it down to the level of daytime television. Instead, they serve to re-enchant everyday life, bringing the Indian gods into a quintessentially British world of anthropomorphic vacuum cleaners and ghastly carpets."

"Yet art rock is not art. In a live gig or on vinyl (White's preferred medium), sounds and words, gestures and rhythms, create atmospheres that can be elusive and fragile in their romantic power, even when the lyrics are banal or nonsensical. But as a visual artist, White is a complete nonstarter."

"This is such an unsettling, threatening exhibition, helped no end by the weird ambient soundtrack, which makes you feel like you're about to be pounced on by some mythical beast in a deep dark forest. There's a sense here of ancient rites seen through the lens of 1960s hippy love, and churned through the mill of millennial malaise. It's as if the Wicker Man wasn't set on an island off the coast of north-west Scotland, but in early 2000s semi-rural Kent."

"In an era when art often seems content with small, dry efforts, Kapoor soaks the Hayward in the blood and guts of his unfettered imagination."

"These were revolutionary photographs at the time – and they still feel new in their search to express the inexpressible. The dimly lit, subterranean gallery keeps you cocooned in this elegiac, brooding atmosphere. Kawada is drawn to images that trace the extremities of the Earth, the visible outer edges of our existence – the sky, the horizon, water, burning suns and scorching fires."

"It's outer space, distant stars, planet Earth, the birds and bees and trees all right here, in this exact moment. It's a portrait of you in the universe, a picture of its vastness and your own little place in it."

"Tate's blockbuster show about this rightly beloved artist asks how and why she became an "icon". But I've never seen an exhibition about how Picasso got famous or the cultural invention of Rembrandt. We know they are great artists and how they were historically recognised is for scholars."

"It is a worthwhile endeavour, searching for a contemporary conversation for Murtha's work, but Close to Home feels quite far off the mark. That Murtha and Ryniewicz are outstanding photographers is indisputable; that they cohere effectively in this exhibition is less convincing."