Two months after ‘an Exhibit’ closed at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, in June 1957 it travelled to London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, then situated in Mayfair, where it was reconfigured in response to the space. Contrasting with the ICA’s ornamented Georgian interior, the vertical and horizontal, parallel and perpendicular, groupings of Perspex sheets (Richard Hamilton,read more
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Lyon Biennale 2017 ‘Floating Worlds’
Few images conjure techno-modern utopia’s discontents like Buckminster Fuller’s Montreal ‘Expo 67’ biosphere in flames. Lit by a welder’s spark during structural renovation in 1976, the acrylic carapace of the icosahedron dome burnt fiercely for 30 minutes before extinguishing. Probably the lean efficiency of Fuller’s structures – he converted, as the critic Martin Pawley nicelyread more
Mindfuckers – 0. Introduction by David Felton
Recently I found a copy of David Felton’s hard-to-find book Mindfuckers: A Source Book on the Rise of Acid Fascism in America in Donlon Books (the full title is Mindfuckers: A Source Book on the Rise of Acid Fascism in America Including material on Charles Manson, Mel Lyman, Victor Baranco and their followers by Davidread more
Filipa César & Louis Henderson: Gasworks
‘We need a lighthouse philosopher,’ suggests Roque Pina, the protagonist of Filipa César & Louis Henderson’s captivating essay-film Sunstone, 2017. Though you would be forgiven for thinking that Pina already fulfils this role as he flatly, matter-of-factly addresses the origins of the lighthouse, its development and future, and reveals its inextricable relations with Enlightenment epistemologies,read more
Who’s Laughing?
Ian Brady, with his girlfriend Myra Hindley branded by the British press as the ‘Moors Murderers’ after the bodies of four child victims were dumped on West Yorkshire moorland, died at 6pm on Monday 15 May 2017, minutes before the thirtieth-anniversary screening of Alan Clarke’s Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987) at the British Filmread more
Over Hang: W139, Amsterdam
After fifteen hours on the Newcastle-Amsterdam ferry I was hungover for ‘Over hang’ at W139. I arrived, then, in the dual traditions of ‘creatives’ who’ve found that a bastard behind the eyes enables a more corpuscular encounter with art and tourists ruining Amsterdam for the locals. Or maybe, as this show, curated by exhibiting artistread more
William Raban: Bow Scansions, 2014
Bow Scansions (2014) is a conversation, in car and by foot, with the filmmaker William Raban. Proceeding from Bow, where he has lived for over forty years, Raban shares his Tower Hamlets: Gentrified docks, BNP Wards, Balfron Tower, and Kray Twins nostalgia — among many motifs in his films. It was commissioned as part ofread more
Camille Henrot: Chisenhale
When Heinrich Wölfflin makes concluding observations on the nature of history in Principles of Art History (1932), in spite of himself, he cannot help reaching for images of complexity. How do we account for cessation and recommencement of art historical periods? ‘Only a spiral would meet the facts,’ he writes. How do we speak ofread more
Contemporary Photography Theory: The Photographers’ Gallery
Contemporary Photography Theory: The Photographers’ Gallery Monday evenings, 30 January – 20 March 2017 ABOUT Recent voices of dissent within higher education have argued that photography theory has not developed its scope of subject matter or its theoretical horizons sufficiently to account for the many processes, often digital and networked, it finds itself ingrained within.read more
Christodoulos Panayiotou: RODEO
Almost exactly a decade before Christodoulos Panayiotou opened his recent show “False Form,” the Cypriot artist convened a roundtable at the University of Oxford among an astrophysicist, a historian of antiquity, a philosopher, and an artist, Jem Finer, on the theme of absence. The antiquarian introduced negative theology as a way to think beyond reason;read more