Seduced at the Barbican – review

The viewer of Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Today is led chronologically through the most infamous periods of sexual depiction across various times and cultures, staying largely with the preoccupations of Western Europe but also delving into Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Persian and ancient Roman collections of works. The ground floor takes up the ‘historical’ perspective and the upstairs galleries hold contemporary and early modern works. The exhibition is accompanied by a curated season of events ranging from film screenings, burlesque nights, to flirting classes, serving to link the exhibition’s historical trajectory to our present day sexual consumption and habits. I visited on the night when the London club night Torture Garden was the guest event, and any pretence of an atmosphere of sober, historical reflection were whisked away entirely by gaggles of fetish clubbers and innumerable couples on dates.

Take Care of Yourself – review

‘Take care of yourself, yeah?’ is probably the last, and least sincere instruction made by those on the point of concluding a successful romantic disentanglement. Intended to instate a more platonically-based relation, in fact this throwaway line more realistically functions as the final signifier that your rapidly-becoming-ex lover has had the audacity to absolve himself of any responsibility for your welfare. Most of us, in our impotent fury, reach for whatever crutch it takes (gin, large bags of crisps, promiscuity) to get over it. For Sophie Calle, however, the resultant confusion is the basis for a project.