British artists Gilbert & George are celebrating 50 years acting as one. They provocative pair look back on a controversial career, and an encounter with protesters in Belfast

Irish hotels are looking good again after the dowdy years of recession

Fintan O’Toole: Have shock tactics had their day?

The design for the Luas network's signage is flat and corporate - it doesn't have to be this way

Shining a light on recent history and exploding reductionism from a backroom

The British-Nigerian artist’s work is laden with complex identity conundrums

Guest list includes Bob Geldof, Michael Caine, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Bill Wyman

Developer and hotelier Paddy McKillen has turned an estate on 600 acres in the picturesque south of France into a biodynamic vineyard, and a unique art and architecture project in which well-known artists and sculptors are given creative rein

‘The best art affects you as an individual,’ says art theorist Hugh Moss

Against the odds, the RHA is still around, with this year’s exhibition one of its best. And despite our changing tastes, portrait painting has survived the advent of the selfie

Madonna falls flat and Kanye is kept quiet at the O2 Arena in London

19th century artist is still ‘box-office’ more than 160 years after his death

Bob Geldof and Midge Ure gather 30 musicians to create new version of track

Some remote places have been transformed by the input of artists, the latest being a town in Devon planned by Damien Hirst. Could Ireland have creative hubs of its own?

The spending power of super-rich collectors who are blinded by celebrity is making Old Masters unsaleable while brash works fetch stratospheric prices – and it’s killing a key component in art’s ecosystem

Lynn Barber was the UK’s first celebrity interviewer, and is renowned and feared for her scathing honesty. But how will she fare when her own interviewing tips are used against her and she is asked about sex, drugs, fame and death threats?

A gambling career allowed David Walsh to fund Mona, a rollicking, irreverent, sometimes puerile art museum in Tasmania worth more than €200 million

Stuart Semple says creative therapy saved his life, and since then he has championed its cause, created a cracking body of work and taken on Charles Saatchi

Has anything changed since the 1989 poster that asked ‘do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?’

Show features animatronic male mannequin urinating in bucket

An exhibition of portraits puts artists in the frame, and highlights where their public and private selves diverge