Museum Hours

Rachel Whiteread's recent  exhibition  at Tate Britain included this quite astonishing piece. The most bizarre scale model or cast that one can imagine; it is positively spectral both clearly inhabiting this world but also seemingly shifting in and out of our consciousness as our perception of the exterior and internal spaces are constantly confused and confounded. Made in polyurethane and light purple in colour it has the amazing quality of being both translucent and opaque. The effect is extraordinary because perception of the interior is never consistent. Visibility depends on the angle of sight and the specific point being viewed. It is possible to glimpse some of the interior - a staircase; a room; a corridor - but never to perceive it fully. There are also shafts of real space intruding into the material that offer sight lines through which one has to squint to try to see more clearly what is happening inside the structure. This is generally a forlorn hope. On

Two multi million pound businesses reach agreement for a prominent employee of one to start working for the other in exchange for a very substantial payment as compensation for early termination of a contract of employment.  This must happen reasonably frequently throughout commercial environments and mostly passes without comment.  When the businesses concerned are football clubs it can amount to something close the end of the world with a torrent of comment and contumely, metaphorical rending of garments akin to a funeral during the Trojan Wars, triumphant celebrations in one capital, fearful reading of the auspices (to mix metaphors) in another and a general sense of the world turned on its axis even on a day when we have the ghastly VSG being more geniuser than anyone has ever been. The reason for this is not hidden. Football clubs inhabit a space that extends well beyond the commercial into communal bonds and culture, shared history, local and national rivalries an

Some reflections on last year at the cinema including five absolute turkeys to be avoided at all costs. First the best .... 1.  Zama  : A simply wondrous existential fever dream of disappointment and dashed hopes with a stunning walk on llama adding further bathos. 2.  Personal Shopper  : Grief and loneliness have rarely been as fascinating. The contemporary world expands the opportunities for communication whilst enhancing the resonance of the insight that you can be most lonely in a crowd. Coming to terms with loss involves psychologically either believing that what has been lost is in fact still there or the fact that it truly has gone. The account of that process in this film is a tour de force. 3.  Toni Erdmann  :' He's less a dentist; more an architect'. Side splitting, disquieting and moving and brilliantly performed and directed. 4.  Columbus  : The quiet comforts of modernist architecture and dumb phones. Wonderful to behold. 5.  The K