“Sensitivity of approach is all very well,” one argument runs, “but what matters is WHAT you’re saying.” “Three Perspectives on Photography: Recent British Photography” was the untidy title of an untidily conceived exhibition. Three selectors were invited to express their views on photography in general, then find work to prove their points. Paul Hill’s essay was called “Photographic Truth, Metaphor and Individual Expression”; Angela Kelly’s “Feminism and Photography”; and John Tagg’s “A Socialist Perspective on Photographic Practice.” Critics, photographers, artists, women and socialists were

Perhaps it was inevitable that a major British performance group should eventually decide to reenact the lives of the Brontë sisters. Featuring only four performers, as Charlotte, Emily, Ann and Branwell, Scars by Hesitate and Demonstrate was staged at the I.C.A. in a crammed portmanteau area which, by dint of clever lighting, became by turns a railway waiting room, a dining room, a bedroom, a seaside restaurant, a church, a box at the theatre, a tropical hut, a graveyard and a railway line. Cluttered, ludicrous, fascinating, the entire design resembled a Victorian interior. Like the soundtrack,

Paul Neagu’s recent exhibition at the I.C.A. marked ten years of living in Britain in self-imposed exile from his native Rumania. In a decade he has developed into a didactic sculptor employing geometric signs as devices in an emerging philosophic system. Here problems bristle. How visual can such “philosophy” be? How personal can it become? Most of the pieces on show were “hyphens,” large wooden cradles with pointed legs, roughly made with old wood and metal tips, and “fusions,” edgy semicircles like curved thunderbolts. In his personal vocabulary the hyphens act as bridges between stages of

Half in and half out of the Hayward Annual was a section with the noncommittal title “Ancillary,” masterminded, like the Performance section, by the indefatigable Helen Chadwick. “Ancillary” was Edge City, with people marching in patterns (Charlie Hooker), a couple in kitsch costumes reciting elliptical texts (Sylvia Ziranek) and women icing themselves like cakes (Bobby Baker). Reviewers intent on sculpture and painting ignored this opportunity to see the work of young artists—often under 25—working outside traditional media. Two I found particularly impressive.

Roberta Graham’s tape/slide

The fireworks on the first night, and the free chauffeur-driven limousine shuttle for prospective visitors from the Royal Academy during the first two weeks of opening, were no recompense for the disillusionment and betrayal felt by artists on seeing the Tate Gallery’s new extension and the newly rehung collection.

Since the late 1960s the Tate has signally failed to support and account for the life-currents of contemporary work in Britain or abroad; it has consequently been ineffectual as a service either to artists or their public. Hamstrung by its dependence on government for its funding at