Chloë Ashby

Euan Uglow review – No wonder Cherie Blair didn’t model for long, these pictures are exhausting just to look at His work was so painstaking and slow to produce that the models – including a certain trainee barrister – often didn’t make it to the end of a portrait. It makes for paintings that seem drained of lif...

I’m sorry to say this one just didn’t do it for me… review in today’s @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Gwen John: Strange Beauties compiles subtly intense studies of ordinary life – review Opening 150 years after her birth, this exhibition honours a diligent and rigorous artist who found beauty in ‘drabness’

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for Gwen John: Strange Beauties at National Museum Cardiff. Opening 150 years after the artist’s birth, this glorious retrospective explores how she returned repeatedly to the same subjects and each time saw them through fresh eyes. @the-independent.com www.independent.co.uk/arts-enterta...

Here she is photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe with a mischievous grin and Fillette (1968), her garish latex sculpture resembling a gigantic phallus (or a female torso, depending on the angle), tucked under her arm like a baguette.

Louise Bourgeois — the long, mischievous life of the spider woman The great French artist,who lived to 98, is celebrated in Knife-Woman, Marie-Laure Bernadac’s deeply personal biography

Back at it ✍️ I really enjoyed this biography of Louise Bourgeois, written in French by Marie-Laure Bernadac and translated by Lauren Elkin. The best bit is how present, and deliciously unfiltered, Bourgeois is on the page. Review in today’s @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas: ‘It’s much better to be a bad girl’ The two artists talk about their 25-year friendship, a severed finger and why they’re the opposite of ‘two little Bo Peeps’

On Monday I met with Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas to discuss their new joint show OOO LA LA. We talked about their 25-year friendship, doubt and despair, growing older, and what they make of being the so-called bad girls of British art. In today’s @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/culture/art/...

A Story of South Asian Art review — the Indian artist who defined a movement The Royal Academy’s exhibition devoted to Mrinalini Mukherjee and her contemporaries is beautiful but unfocused

A mixed bag at the RA… my review of A Story of South Asian Art for @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/culture/art/...

‘All roads lead to Grace Jones’: visual artists on the music that fires them up in the studio Chris Ofili loves steel pans. Lindsey Mendick adores Self Esteem. And Ragnar Kjartansson enjoys everything from Bach to the Cure. Artists reveal the bangers that get their creative juices fizzing

Chris Ofili loves steel pans. Lindsey Mendick adores Self Esteem. And Ragnar Kjartansson has to have the Cure. For the @theguardian.com I asked a dozen artists to reveal the music that brings out the best in them. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Anna Ancher — Denmark’s brilliant painter of light She learnt from the artists who flocked to her parents’ hotel in Skagen, was denied the training her male peers received and forged her own path as a painter of radiant interiors

I went to Skagen, a remote fishing port at the northernmost tip of Denmark, in search of Anna Ancher for @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/culture/art/...

Betty Parsons review – scintillating seaside adventures from the woman behind giants like Rothko As a gallerist, she represented painters like Jackson Pollock – but her own work, which she did at weekends, is deliciously bold and breezy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ in @theguardian.com for Betty Parsons at De La Warr Pavilion. Playful paintings and driftwood sculptures (I love the archive photo of the latter crouched on the beach like crabs!) from the legendary gallerist who represented Rothko, Pollock et al www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Cameras, creativity and kids: Sally Mann’s ‘kind of how-to book’ mixes memoir with advice for artists The US photographer, whose images of her naked children sparked controversy, reflects on her life and practice

✨ SALLY MANN ✨ I spoke to the US photographer about the controversy sparked by the images she made of her children in the 1990s, the “main characters” you need to make art, and the stuff that surrounds and hinders it. @theartnewspaper.bsky.social www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/09/01/c...

The great art master who vanished … He taught Leonora Carrington and founded an art movement with Le Corbusier, so why is Amédée Ozenfant forgotten? In this history, Charles Darwent sets out to rescue him from obscurity

The case of the disappearing Amédée Ozenfant! Or, my latest for @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Confessions of obsessive collectors — the history of a mania Marie Antoinette, Darwin, Freud … and Norman ‘Psycho’ Bates all did it. In A Noble Madness, James Delbourgo charts the changing image of the collector from antiquity to the present

I wrote about James Delbourgo's history of collecting (and my childhood Beanie Baby stash) for @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Winning online comment:

Very happy to have the lead book review in today’s @thetimes.com ✨

On Judith Mackrell’s lively joint biography of Gwen and Augustus John.

www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Double rum and hundreds of affairs: life with Gwen and Augustus John The sibling portrait artists have been re-evaluated since their deaths, says Judith Mackrell in her double biography Artists, Siblings, Visionaries. So who was the greater talent?

I reviewed Judith Mackrell’s long and lively joint biography of Gwen and Augustus John for @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

another day, another press release

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely review – joyous show from art’s golden kinetic couple The married sculptors made very different art – hers curvy and colourful, his rickety and angular – but it all hums with life when brought together

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely reunite! My review for @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Breast pumps, babygrows and unfinished drinks: the stunning parenting paintings every mother should see From intimate panels to breathtakingly cinematic canvases, Caroline Walker explains how she set out to capture the many sides of motherhood, right down to the first nappy change

If you ask me, there’s nobody painting modern motherhood quite like Caroline Walker. We chatted ahead of her new show, which focuses on the constellation of mostly female workers providing support during childbirth and early-years care. In today’s @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

The mother of a mystery: Audition, by Katie Kitamura, reviewed It is remarkable the web Katie Kitamura can spin around a scene as simple as a woman joining a man for lunch. His name is Xavier. We don’t know her name, but we do know she’s a successful actress. He’...

It’s remarkable, really, the web Katie Kitamura can spin around a scene as simple as a woman meeting a man for lunch. My review of the author’s confounding and quietly intense fifth novel is in this week’s @thespectator1828.bsky.social www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...

Yes, much too tempting for tiny fingers!

Those light switches, plug sockets, door handles in action:

Do Ho Suh review — an exquisite meditation on the perfect home The Korean artist brings model houses, domestic fixtures and fittings and brightly coloured passageways to Tate Modern in a playful and haunting show

Never has a light switch been so enticing! A plug socket pleasing! A door handle deserving of a turn! I reviewed Do Ho Suh’s exquisite show at Tate Modern, which is as bright and cheery as it is profound, for @thetimes.com

www.thetimes.com/culture/art/...

The road trip from hell: Elegy, Southwest, by Madeleine Watts, reviewed Throughout her quietly compelling second novel, Elegy, Southwest, Madeleine Watts conjures a sense of trundling steadily towards disaster. The narrator, a young Australian woman called Eloise, is reco...

I reviewed (and loved) Madeleine Watts’ second novel, Elegy, Southwest, which is thoughtful and quietly compelling, and conjures the familiar sense of steadily trundling towards disaster…. In this week’s @thespectator1828.bsky.social www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...

‘I did it for the experience’: Amoako Boafo, the artist who painted Jeff Bezos’s rocket ship The Ghanaian’s dazzling work has been blasted into space and inspired a Dior collection. But, ahead of a new show, the ‘future of portraiture’ reveals how he originally wanted to be a tennis player

Not every artist who skyrockets to fame makes it all the way into space….

I interviewed Amoako Boafo for @theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Deep mysteries: Twist, by Colum McCann, reviewed On the first page of Colum McCann’s compelling novel Twist we meet the two leads: John A. Conway, who has disappeared, and Anthony Fennell, who’s trying to tell his story. They first met when Fennell,...

My family were very confused about my sudden interest in the cables that carry info around the world on the ocean floor – until I told them about TWIST, Colum McCann’s latest, out now from @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social. My review for @thespectator1828.bsky.social www.spectator.co.uk/article/deep...

The Feminist Book Society presents SINÉAD GLEESON + CHLOË ASHBY Tuesday 25th March, doors 630pm for 7pm start For their first event at Bàrd Books, Feminist Book Society brings together two exemplary writers whose exceptional novels examine the pursuit of an art…

To celebrate the paperback publication of Hagstone next week, @chloeashby.bsky.social and I will be in conversation with Rosie Beaumont-Thomas of the Feminist Book Society at Bàrd Books on Tuesday 25th, followed by a book signing.
🎟️: wearebardbooks.co.uk/the-feminist... @cormackinsella.bsky.social

Tomorrow!

The dangers of dating Pablo Picasso Sue Roe’s Hidden Portraits tells the remarkable stories of the six leading women in the artist’s life — and his poor treatment of them

The dangers of dating Picasso ❤️💔

For @thetimes.com I reviewed Sue Roe’s Hidden Portraits, a group biography of the six women who loved Picasso: Fernande Olivier, Olga Khokhlova, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar, Françoise Gilot and Jacqueline Roque.

www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

SECOND SELF but make it French 🇫🇷 My author copies of REPENTIRS have arrived, a week ahead of publication day (13th March) and on World Book Day! Translated by Anouk Neuhoff and published by Alice Déon and the dream team at La Table Ronde ❤️