Nico Kos Earle 

There is a wall inside the entrance to Paul Smith in Mayfair, currently painted a soft blush, that has come to represent the creative vitality and resilient joy of London’s contemporary art scene. My first encounter with this space revealed a painting resonant with the spiritual awakenings of Hilma af Klint and the transcendent hues of Mark Rothko – a moving work by Kazakh-born artist Aigana Gali.

In a quiet corner of the leafy London borough of Kensington is a small exhibition of devastating beauty by the legendary but elusive artistic duo Doug and Mike Starn. Showing works from two distinct but interrelated series, Under the Sky (2023–) and Everything is Liquid (2025–), alongside key historic pieces, this museum-level show bears witness to HackelBury’s long-standing relationship with the twin makers...

https://impulsemagazine.com/symposium/editors-selects-november-2025

The Long Now, Saatchi Gallery: In quantum physics, the “now” or “present moment” is described as the locus of indefinite possibilities that have collapsed into concrete reality through interaction or observation. Because I am here, writing this, and you are here, reading it, this article exists. Unlike the classical view of time...

Nico Kos Earle spoke to three art professionals about what they saw, what they loved and what they wanted to buy in Paris, during Art Basel Week.

My frieze week started with ‘Cupid and Psyche’ (1789) at the Courtauld, illuminated by the single flame of a candle – that unforgettable image by Joshua Reynolds of love laid utterly bare. Seen on my way into Wayne Thiebaud’s exhibition ‘American Still Life’, its stark contrast to the saccharine brightness of his shadowless cravings seemed...

As the UK art world reels from the closures of major commercial galleries like Pace, Almine Rech, and Marlborough, an imaginative grassroots revival is quietly taking hold: family-run and artist-led spaces are transforming converted living rooms, barns, cottages, and studios into lively cultural lifelines. These ventures provide not just places for exhibition, but nurturing environments for contemporary artists and local communities, demonstrating heartwarming resiliency in the face of broader market uncertainty. This story begins with the opening of a box...

The first time I heard someone say San Luis Potosí was on a Zoom call with the AMMA Foundation, based in Mexico City. They had invited me to curate an exhibition with the French/Moroccan artist Rebecca Brodskis, after seeing her solo show at the Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in Palm Beach. As Brodskis lived in Marseille, this was a job that required both French and Spanish, a challenge in and of itself – but nothing compared to what the artist would undertake in committing to this show, travelling to Mexico with her young children, and painting a mural while there...

When Marina Tabassum’s architects were invited to design the Serpentine Pavilion in Kensington Gardens, its 25th iteration since Zaha Hadid, they drew inspiration from the trees. Inspired by the arched canopies of the Sweet Chestnut, Elfin Oak, and Horse Chestnut that softly filter light through verdant leaves, she created a modular wooden structure in four parts, featuring variegated windowpanes in diffuse, arboreal tones, dappling the light as it enters. Wishing to emphasise..

For 72 hours, London’s art scene became one vast, twitching organism. From Mayfair’s white spaces to Peckham’s railway arches dripping with condensation, every gallery door swung open in ragged synchrony. This wasn’t just an open house – it was the city taking its pulse...

The plane to New York was half empty. Appreciative of the extra legroom, it also triggered a sense of unease. Where was everybody? This peculiar blankness accompanied me on the LIRR to Penn Station and my arrival at the hotel, which, like the airline, has opted for automated check-ins. Without any local conversations to ground me...

Nico Kos Earle visited the Oskar Reinhart Collection “Am Römerholz” in Winterthur, Switzerland, before the exhibition Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection went on display at London’s The Courtauld Gallery.

The conversation begins over salmon steaks, or rather in front of Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, ‘Still Life with Three Salmon Steaks’ (1808–1812), a mouthwatering, provocative work that captures the melting truth of uncooked flesh... 

The London Art Fair 2025 reveals every aspect of the art world’s precarious global economy whilst remaining relevant to its local market. Paul Carter Robinson and the artist Andy Holden are comparing scarves, both stripey, one from Paul Smith and the other Missoni. “I got this one in a charity shop,” Holden says, “so I am never quite sure if it is real.” “Oh, it’s real,” says Robinson, holding the fine fabric between his fingertips, “you can feel the quality.”...

One of the highlights of Frieze week is the exceptional – institutional-level – exhibition Frank Auerbach: Portraits of London at the newly opened Offer Waterman and Francis Outred Gallery in Mayfair. The ideal counterpoint to the stunning gem of an exhibition at the Courtauld, Somerset House, ‘Monet and London, Views of the Thames’ painted from a room in...

The global art community descended on London last week for Frieze, which opened on Wednesday in leafy Regent’s Park. There was a cacophony of openings across all commercial, institutional, non-profit, and pop-up spaces, as this is the week to discover and be discovered. Frieze Week is a circus; it was a buyer’s market this year...

The four artists shortlisted for the 40th edition of the Turner Prize 2024, Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur and Delaine le Bas, are a motley crew. Looking back to the genesis of this prize, in 1984, the Tate Gallery showed a fraction of the contemporary art it exhibits today...

Lake Como, a beauty so sublime, our first encounter is simultaneously tinged with the fear of its vanishing – and our own. Enshrined by sentinels of mountains that guard this gentle pool of water with their lives, it offers itself in totality to the heavens, coruscating with skylight. Along its enchanted coast, there is almost no flat land. Steep banks, cascading with...

Perhaps the most exuberant, celebratory, and uplifting of the Giardini pavilions at this year’s Venice Biennial was by Jeffrey Gibson – a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and Cherokee descent, at the American Pavilion.

Born in 1972, Gibson grew up in major urban centres in the United States, Germany, and Korea. Being from everywhere and nowhere, Gibson would deploy these myriad influences as a form of resistance in his art – hence his show’s title ‘The Space in Which to Place Me’.His practice unravels how stereotypes of Indigenous...

In March 1849, Théophile Thoré-Bürger founded Le Journal de la vraie République, which Cavaignac (head of the French Second Republic) banned. Forced into exile, this once-political journalist turned his attention to the forgotten Dutch masters of the Golden Age under the pseudonym W. Burger. In addition to his ‘re-discovery’ of Johannes Vermeer...

En route to the Serpentine in Kensington Gardens, a black and white taxi blurs past me, drawing my gaze along Exhibition Road. I glimpse the words YOU, ME, YOU in bold capitals – two of them are crossed out with a green X. These words trigger a random set of emotions: love, regret, yearning and something I cannot name. I recognise that bold, imperative Futura type...

Since 2020, Nicholas Cullinan has overseen an acclaimed £41.3m renovation, which reopened on time and on budget, no mean feat. A sensational new entrance and thrilling rehang of new commissions and historical acquisitions sets the scene for a dynamic and timely exhibitions programme that re-examines what it means to be British...

The first time Mark Rothko’s paintings were exhibited in Paris, their reception was frosty. Organized by MoMA in 1962, 44 works made between 1945 – 1961 travelled to the Musee d’Art Modern de la Ville de Paris and were presented in a poorly maintained basement. Three important curatorial elements had been overlooked..

Let’s be honest, Paris – the city of lights – is just so pretty the last thing you want to do is spend all day inside an exhibition hall. Luckily, the fair directors of Art Basel Paris have understood the draw of a well-curated public program to animate its many emblematic locations. Presenting works in the Jardin des Tuileries

As London opened its doors to the international art world for Frieze Week, a host of exhibitions and collateral events across the capital were set to showcase this city’s capacity for inclusion and dialogue – yet once again, real-world events took over the conversation, leaving many of us asking: what difference does any of this make?

To get into Happy Gas, Sarah Lucas’ new solo show at Tate Britain, you have to walk through a gift shop; floating on the sugary peach wallpaper is the repeating photographic image of cigarette orbs (tits) crafted from unsmoked Marlborough lights. Her original Tits in Space wallpaper (on a black background) was first used as the backdrop...

In 1973, Marina Abramović performed Rhythm 10 at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival. Sitting at a table with twenty knives and two tape recorders, left hand splayed, right hand holding a knife, the artist played an old Slavic drinking game. The knife is jabbed between the fingers with increasing speed, in a rhythm that traditionally expresses the player’s bravado. “Every time you miss

The first time I saw the sculptor, Bridget McCrum, she was holding a blow torch in her left hand, which followed her right, as she painted chloride mixture onto the crescent-shaped breast of a large bronze. The space was vast, the light flat, and the sound deafening. By contrast, her movement around the work, Crescent Birds, was fluid and light-footed. Her figure was obscured behind goggles with tempered lenses, gloves and a protective apron. I had no idea she was 85 years old...

There is always something to learn at the Tate, but this was a lesson I never expected. When Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life was announced, I was both excited and perplexed at what seemed a strange pairing. Hopefully, through this dialogue, the curators would share new entry points for...

When Garry Fabian Miller was 19 years old, he stepped out onto the balcony of his flat in Clevedon and looked across the Severn Estuary towards the coastline of Wales. Exposed to the elements, his line of sight free from any human constructs, he was alone with the limits of his perception. On the distant horizon, sunbeams pierced the clouds and bounced off the water like a giant processor...

A pea green fishing boat drifts mysteriously on a moonlit sea. Along its length stand ghostly figures looking out to port, many carrying instruments highlighted in warm, golden tones. Beneath the hull, the water is constellated with phosphorescence; a bloom of pale lemon illuminates the distant horizon under a lavender sky...

For this rolling feature Nico Kos-Earle has chosen 15 international artists working in various mediums to look out for in 2023.

At the entrance to Every Tangle of Thread and Rope is a vast black-and-white photographic transfer of Magdalena Abakanowicz (20 June 1930 – 20 April 2017) emerging from sinewy curtains of wool, sisal and rope. Holding a frayed loop, she is staring at us. On the adjacent wall, bronzed, shirtless men are marching across white sand in pairs, carrying giant, monochrome pelts draped over poles...

‘I first came to notice this painting [Kerze, 1983] in 1988 when it was used on the album cover of Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. It seemed to extend the mood of the music and got lodged in my subconscious; now, more than 30 years later, this feeling of pathos has started to reappear in my work.’...

‘A Moveable Feast’  is a presentation of small sculpture and digital prints by the artist Emma Witter. The exhibition takes place on the first floor of a handsome listed Georgian townhouse on The Portman Estate in Marylebone, London, open by appointment until the 3rd of January. Elegant cornices frame the walls, painted a soft egg shell teal; giant shafts of light spill across the room...

(Photo Credit: Gaetan Bernede)

They say that in Paris, the story finds you. With the first edition of Paris + Art Basel opening after Frieze London, the city of lights has re-emerged as the leading capital of culture. Whilst the fair was sensationally vast but perceptually challenging, rammed with ‘wealth’ tourists posing as art aficionados, the arrondissements Le Marais, St Germain. Matingnon and Belleville (thank you, @parisgallerymap) were positively buzzing with openings...

Sometimes I wonder if the art fair is a symptom of the internet and our contemporaneous assumption that everything is instantly available at the click of a button. However, instead of individual surfing, at a fair, you are browsing at the same time as everyone you have ever met in the art world, jammed into an endless..

At Bruce Nauman’s first MoMA retrospective in 1995, the art critic Robert Hughes said “no show was ever noisier…” but concluded that Nauman was “beyond much dispute, the most influential artist of his generation.” Numerous retrospectives followed...

Just as the places we inhabit influence the way we think, the structures we imagine can transform our relationship with the world. Arriving in darkness, my first glimpse of Santander was by morning light. Built on an incline, my walk through the city centre, from the Coliseum Hotel to the Cantabrian Sea, was defined by an irresistible feeling of movement towards an opening – a vista, a story, a mouth – like a river flowing out to sea.

In the low, tawny grass at the bottom of a hill is the figure of a woman leaning, her whole body twisted towards a small summer house on the crest. Her bare, frail arms seem tense with the effort of pulling herself along, but her dusty pink summer dress is elegantly cinched at the waist and softly follows the contours of her hips. Frozen in this position, we don’t know if she will ever reach the little home in the distance or remain where she is, just looking..

The Venice Biennale sparks surreal conversations between past and present in ‘Milk of Dreams’, curated by Cecilia Alemani and Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity, curated by Grazine Subelyte, Associate Curator of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection...

Upstairs, on the third floor of the Ashmolean, is a show that will quietly break your heart. Entitled Pissarro: Father of Impressionism (12 June 2022), this major exhibition of works drawn from the Ashmolean’s collections as well as international loans, spans Pissarro’s entire career. Incorporating works from all the major figures of his generation – Corot, Monet, van Gogh, Degas, Cassat, Seurat, Signac – it casts...

Ai-Da Robot Ashmolean Museum Oxford: Dante Alighieri was 56 when he gave up the ghost in 1321, just one year after completing his epic, soul searching poem The Divine Comedy; yet in these words, his presence remains “as a mighty flame follows a tiny spark“. A landmark of Italian literature, drawn from his experience in exile from Florence, the poet journeys from darkness and error towards the revelation of divine light. Through Inferno and Purgatorio, Dante is guided by the Roman poet Virgil

On that Friday afternoon, the sun was a giant spotlight shining down North Parade; up-lighting the silhouette of pedestrians queuing for fresh sourdough, bags of figs and purple sprouting broccoli outside 2 North Parade Produce. Through the window of Meakin + Parsons Gallery opposite, sunbeams illuminated a quad of brightly coloured works on paper...

AH Studio presents Light Works, a meditation on light, the theatre of colour and the sacred geometries found in wild places, by artists Andrea Hamilton and Aigana Gali with Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery and supported by Dina Kemal Marchant, founder of Stories of Art. Curated by Nico Kos.

Inspired by the poetry of form and the sounds in colour, this account is a love letter to the artists who have shaped my mind, words © @nicokos

Limited edition artist book by Emma Witter and Nico Kos Earle. A document of musings on safe spaces, memory, small rituals and the healing power of nature...

In 1988, Jacques Benveniste published a controversial study in the journal Nature, suggesting that water has memory...

This series of works is inspired by Roni Horn’s literary work Saying Water (1999), a sublime, poetic response to the River Thames, infused with epistemological queries...

Working with Andrea Hamilton to create a biography that encompases new projects...

When I first saw Wole Lagunju’s work, I immediately understood why he was being celebrated internationally as 'one to watch.' Smashing auction records, his paintings...

Early one morning, the artist Andrea Hamilton walked along a familiar shoreline, and stopped by the water’s edge just before sunrise. There was a peculiar stillness in the air; the wind silent...

35 international artists focus on the wonder of the high seas to raise money for the Blue Marine Foundation

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'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.'  - Margaret Mead

Andrea Hamilton & Nico Kos, An appreciation of history, art, design and exceptional talent by journeying through colour..

This gorgeous human @theclubwithlucas gives us a platform to share our stories, talk about Andrea Hamilton Studio, Nancy Cadogan, the projects we work on, Blue Marine Foundation, and most of all dance to Prince...

The island of Murano is synonymous with the history of glass. First perfected in the Middle East – Syria, Egypt and Palestine – the art of glassmaking came to Venice...

This is the best fair I have ever been to. Staged across three floors of the Almanac Hotel, LOOP Barcelona Fair (20-22 November) sits within the context of LOOP Festival which takes place...

Last night, the London based artist Martin Maloney feted for his large scale “social observation paintings” exhibited his landmark series ‘Field Workers,’ at JGM Gallery, London...

Katharine Beaugié is a light artist, in the sense that she captures or manipulates light sources to create her images. Working mostly in monochrome...

Two very different shows in London, CASCADE by Dominic Beattie and ASHES by Guy Haddon-Grant, explore form through the binary restriction of palette... 

There it is, Alexander Calder’s spiral. Radiant as the sun, alternating primary colours, mostly red, some pops of yellow, and a bold stripe of blue, burn a shape onto your retina. Unforgettable. It replaces...

Almost Essential: ‘Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.’ Pablo Picasso. The artist Deborah Tarr, lives and works in quiet anonymity in the village of Primrose Hill, London...

On any journey through the city, signs dominate our peripheral vision. Advertising imperatives, disguised as maxims, loom out from billboards or the back end of busses; traffic signs line...

Almost Essential: The 57th Biennale di Venezia – was curated by the recently appointed director of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Christine Macel. Optimistically titled VIVA ARTE VIVA...

She-files: LONDON–The number of women CEOs on Britain’s FTSE 100 stock exchange was a total of eight when Kate Bryan, the British art historian and global head of collections at Soho House, first conceived of Vault 100 in April 2016...

On the far wall of Ibid Gallery hangs Smettere in Moto by Alighiero Boetti. Three wooden panels are filled with vertical lines drawn with pen in horizontal sequence, marking the passage of time. It took the artist two years to...

What are we looking at here? Is it a portrait or a relic from some other time? Does it excite you or does it remind you of something you have seen before? Is it beautiful and mysterious or foreign and inexplicable? The Lute Player is...

IPA Group Show at the Griffin Gallery co-curated by Jason Colchin Carter and Becca Pell-Fry

‘In the end we are all alone,’ is a quote by Orson Wells from his era defining biopic Citizen Kane. It’s a deliciously enigmatic title for...

Jen Wink Hays paints with the canvas flat on her studio table, peering down into its emergent world like a bird in the sky. Playful and beguiling, her paintings and works on paper induce...

Almost Essential: Legendary British light artist Chris Levine opens his solo exhibition Who are we at the Fine Art Society, London, on the 25th of April. Following his sell out iy_project at Eden Project,...

The Glass Magazine: Articles from Nico Kos Earle - Glass online arts writer

Before you enter, if you pause, you might read an introduction to Anne Hardy’s exhibition FIELD at MAO in her own words: “Within the spaces, we encounter built structures, objects...

One Art Nation: Arts writer, curator and art consultant, Nico Kos Earle will discuss the artists curated for the Art Bastion booth at Art Southampton in relation to the current status of British Contemporary Art...