Irony (mostly)
Once I went to a nightclub with some friends. I bought a ticket in advance because I still carry this…
Framing Son of Saul
All art since the Shoah has been ethically contested, and art taking the Holocaust as its object occupies uniquely unstable…
Black Bodies Matter
The privileging of ‘hard news’ – national and global politics, business and financial markets – has mired journalism in the…
Straight Talking: the Instapolitics of Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn
As Jeremy Corbyn looks earnestly into the camera, his words emanate out of a beige cloud. Face, hair, jacket, and…
Head Over Heels: the Playful Astronaut
At Lunchtime GMT, 15 January this year, I watched Tim Peake’s spacewalk. Like many live transmissions, the first venture into…
‘Touch My Soul’: Shia LaBeouf and the Art of Connecting
“Real artists rarely wear bags on their heads.” So wrote Jonathan Jones, the Guardian’s art critic, of Shia LaBeouf’s first performance…
To Have and to Hold – the Fetishisation of Books and Music in the Age of Access
Despite its forward-looking title, The Economist’s 2014 essay “The Future of the Book” begins in retrospective mode, treating the reader…
Country Shade and Lemonade: The Beach Boys and the Fête Galante
Country shade and lemonade Guess I’m slowing down It’s a turned back world With a local girl In a smaller…
‘The One with the Boobies’ – Sexism, Phonaesthetics and the Language of Anatomy
For a show that ended 12 years ago people really do talk about Friends constantly, don’t they? At the moment…
“Would you have married her?”: on ‘Divers’ and ’45 Years’
And it pains me to say, I was wrong. Love is not a symptom of time time is just a…
Size Matters
In July of this year Marvel Studios released the superhero-heist caper Antman. In the film, a penniless thief played by comedy-millionaire Paul…
“What is a lasagne?”: Nostalgia, Pastiche and Working Class Experience
When Shelagh Delaney’s play A Taste of Honey premiered in 1957, it was remarkable for its abrupt rejection of the…
Floating Signifiers: Thoughts on the Figure
Last year I was walking along a beach towards a Martello tower, when I saw a figure perched on its…
Accidents of History
‘Digging has never been a modernist gesture.’ Abigail Reynolds[i] The artist Abigail Reynolds’ work employs collage, historically using illustrated book…
All the Lonely People: On Urban Invisibility
‘Somehow, you just vanish.’ These are the words of Kristin Scott Thomas, who said in an interview with The Telegraph…
The Lie of Beauty: Hanya Yanagihara’s ‘A Little Life’
The artist David Wojnarowicz recalls, in a 1989 essay he wrote after his HIV diagnosis, a time he spent ‘standing…
