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CHANGE OF ADDRESS
Thursday, October 17th, 2024 Blog,This website is now an archive of writing from 2010 – October 2024. All new writing & subscriptions may be found at: Everything the artworld doesn’t want you to know
Yayoi Kusama: She always knew she’d be famous
Wednesday, October 16th, 2024 Blog,One morning last year in New York City, a queue formed at the entrance to the David Zwirner Gallery. As the day progressed, the line grew longer and longer, until it extended around the block. The occasion was the opening of a commercial exhibition by Yayoi Kusama, and the chance to spend 30 seconds in […]
So Long, Guy
Friday, July 26th, 2024 Blog,When I spoke to Guy Warren three years ago, on the occasion of his hundredth birthday, I walked away feeling like I’d never felt following an interview. I felt energised. Talking to Guy, 100 not out, and so full of life he could have kept going all day, I realised that if I managed to […]
How the ancient Egyptians found an afterlife in the British Museum
Thursday, July 18th, 2024 Blog,In terms of sheer longevity, writes Egyptologist, Toby Wilkinson, the 3,000-year reign of the Pharaohs represents “the greatest political and religious system the world has ever known.” It was, however, a fiercely hierarchical affair that bestowed wealth and luxury on the king and the elites, while condemning the poor to a life of drudgery. Ramses […]
Laura Jones is the Winner
Saturday, June 8th, 2024 Blog,This year’s Archibald Prize announcement will remain etched in my memory for the peculiar way one of the speakers pronounced the name of the venue. Forget about “Naala Badu”, from now on I shall always think of the place as the Art Gallery of Nudist Whales. The other striking memory will be director, Michael Brand, […]
I Know Where I’m Going
Monday, May 6th, 2024 Blog,I Know Where I’m Going, made during the last year of World War Two, was a film between films. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger had been working together since 1939, when the Hungarian emigré was asked to help with rewrites for Powell’s The Spy in Black. Four years and three films later, Pressburger would be […]
Climate Artists: Franziska Furter & Julian Charriere
Tuesday, April 16th, 2024 Blog,“My interest in the weather started twenty years ago in Edinburgh,” says Swiss artist, Franziska Furter. “It was my first overseas residency, and I was so surprised. You wake up and it’s raining. You have a shower, the sun is shining. You have breakfast, it’s snowing. Then you go out and it’s raining again. I […]
Jacobus Capone
Thursday, February 22nd, 2024 Blog,In 2007, at the age of 21, Jacobus Capone took a scoop of water from the Indian Ocean, walked across Australia, and emptied it in the Pacific. The journey took five-and-a-half months and killed off any relationship he ever had with his native country. “That was my last university project,” he recalls. “I was very […]
Makoto Azuma
Friday, February 16th, 2024 Blog,Makoto Azuma is the Indiana Jones of florists. He has fired flowers into the stratosphere and plunged them to the bottom of the ocean. One of his favourite tactics is to preserve specimens at their moment of maximum beauty, in blocks of clear resin, which is how visitors to this year’s NGV Triennial at the […]
Elmgreen & Dragset
Friday, December 22nd, 2023 Blog,Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset met in a Copenhagen nightclub in 1994. Elmgreen, a Dane, was writing and performing poetry, while Dragset, a Norwegian, was involved in the theatre. Somehow, they decided to combine forces and make art. (“It’s can be good not to learn how to do things in a ‘correct’ way,” says Dragset.) […]