art blog since 2009
In the remaining days between now and Christmas you can get onto Vimeo and stream a 65-minute film which covers capitalism, social media, Drum & Bass, rave cutlure, hauntology, hyperstition, Felixstowe, M.R. James, and depression. The film is titled: We Are Making A Film About Mark Fisher (2025). Few academic lives could draw together such …
December 9, 2025
After Lockdown is a slim analysis of life under covid, against the ongoing backdrop of the climate emergency. Latour offers us the possibility that this experience of remote working and super spreading could all offer a lasting change in our mentalities. It could be so radical we swap our human outlook for that of a …
October 1, 2021
I remember reading Derrida take issue with Foucault. It was about madness, funnily, and the founder of deconstruction asked how it was possible to bear witness to insanity, The essay was ‘Cogito and the history of madness’, and while much flew over my head, I was struck by the humility with which Derrida showed to …
September 28, 2020
What to make of a flicker between a bandaged head and a face carved in a brieze block. Or an unshaven mouth which hi-jacks a news report. Or self-immolation illustrated as if for a kids’ book. Quite a bit happens in the Plastique Fantastique show at Grey Area. Not all is easy to describe and …
May 27, 2011
Antonin Artaud only wrote one play, said to be impossible to restage. So we might now find the best example of the writer’s so-called Theatre of Cruelty at a Nancy Spero show Certainly, the only performance of Spurt of Blood which this blogger ever witnessed would be difficult to review. Shouts, cries and physical convulsions …
March 21, 2011
You won’t find a more accommodating piece of art than The Marx Lounge. The sofas are as comfortable as they look. The walls are a warm shade of red. The light is perfect for reading. Then there are books. Some 1,500 paperbacks are stacked on a central table, which means the room is designed to …
September 19, 2010
Exhibition: Tom Pope – The Escapades of the Higher Man, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, until April 18 2010 Having foreseen the coming of the Higher Man, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had, surely, grand deeds in mind. He could not have predicted a photographer from Bristol would come along and try to catch a bucket of …
February 25, 2010
Exhibition: João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva – On the Movement of the Fried Egg and Other Astronomical Bodies, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, until March 21 2010 After representing Portugal in Venice at the 2009 Biennale, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva have pitched up in Birmingham for their first UK solo show. In near total …
February 11, 2010