“Guernica is an award-winning magazine of art and ideas. In its short time online, it has grown from one of the web’s best-kept secrets to one of its most acclaimed new magazines.” 01 Guernica: Launched in 2004 by New York-based writers Joel Whitney and Michael Archer, Guernica is an online journal of original creative and […]
Superman: Earth One (DC Comics)
Reviewed by Kes Seymour Superman is an ideal. Superman is perfect – there’s nothing that he can’t do; he will always overcome any challenge (he even managed to come back from the dead in the 1990s) and this is why people love him. But it’s also why writers have struggled to create new ‘interesting’ stories […]
How I Work: Nuno Cera
Futureland is a photographic and video portrait of the effects of rapid urbanisation Futureland #17 – Shanghai, China, 2010. Ink jet print, 110 x 145 cm © Nuno Cera and Galeria Pedro Cera, Lisbon, reproduced with thanks Nuno Cera’s project Futureland catches the process of rapid urbanisation in the act. Between 2008 and 2010, the […]
Designs for Living: Jordi Parra
Although you may not know his name, it’s likely you’re familiar with Jordi Parra’s design work Chances are you saw this beautiful Spotify device that was all over the internet a few months ago. The player makes novel use of RFID tags to create exchangeable playlists linking back to the Spotify service. Although haling from […]
Mariko Mori’s Cyborg Surrealism
As genetic engineering creates hybrid forms, Thyrza Nichols Goodeve speculates on post-human art and what it means for the Freudian unconscious Mariko Mori: Miko no inori (Link of the Moon): 1996: digital film, 61 x 71 cm “I demand that he who still refuses… to see a horse galloping on a tomato should be looked […]
Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield
A major new gallery opens next month but could it be the last of its kind? The opening of Wakefield’s stunning new Hepworth gallery on 21st May could mark the end of an era. The 5000 sq m space, designed by David Chipperfield Architects at a cost of £35m, is the largest purpose-built gallery in […]
Ralph Steadman: Today’s Pig Is Tomorrow’s Bacon
Gonzo scribbler, internet entrepreneur and backing vocalist for Eliza Carthy, Ralph Steadman spills the beans on being ripped off and Hunter S. Thompson’s mother. Chris Wood listens. “I felt savaged a bit by the whole thing… Hunter was in the middle of institutionalising his mother at the time, for her drinking. Great lady, by the […]
The Artists’ Book: A Matter of Self-Reflection
This essay was originally written by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve for the exhibition catalogue One of a Kind: An Exhibition of Unique Artist’s Books, curated by Heide Hatry for Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Spring 2011. One of a Kind continues at the HP Garcia Gallery, Chelsea, NYC, from 19th April-14th May, 2011. Many thanks to […]
James Turrell: Roden Crater
James Turrell’s Roden Crater project has been in the offing for several decades, will 2011 finally see it open to the public? James Turrell, Dhātu, 2010 Mixed media, dimensions variable Courtesy Gagosian Gallery “I’m very American, very direct. I don’t want something to be about light, I just want to use light. I want light […]
Vija Celmins: Desert, Sea, and Stars
Museum Ludwig in Cologne presents a retrospective of the artist’s remarkable work Vija Celmins, Untitled (Web 4), 2002 Drypoint and photogravure on paper, 51.1x61cm © 2002 Vija Celmins and Gemini G.E.L. LLC Courtesy McKee Gallery Webs are an appropriate subject for Vija Celmins’ images. Reworked from photographs and built with painstaking precision, sometimes over years, […]
Leader: The Group Mind and Collaborative Communities
Jason Weaver goes in search of the creative city and loses himself in the collective mind Where does creative work originate? Anybody who has worked collaboratively can tell you about the mysterious processes at play. The excitement and flow of a creative project appears psychic at times. When things are going well, serendipity seems predestined. […]
Matthew Robertson: Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album (FAC 461)
Chris Hall Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album – Matthew Robertson See all books about Factory Records at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com In the late 70s, the mysterious, topographical radio waves of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures appeared like a burst of energy in an empty void, signifying the arrival not only of one of the best […]
Ralph Steadman: Gonzo: The Art
“Bloodsucking business men, venal politicians, dollar drugged gamblers, archetypal beholders of negation and power transmogrified into grinning reptilia… In the ferocious stroke of a few simple lines Steadman trans-atlantically expresses all the negative facets of the human condition to a terrifyingly hilarious degree.”
Richard Witts – Artist Unknown: An Alternative History Of The Arts Council
Robin Askew "The Arts Council has piddled about in the cultural life of Great Britain for half a century." From this opening sentence, former arts administrator Richard Witts mounts a sustained attack on the cranky Council’s waste, incompetence and stupidity, gleefully exposing fiasco after fiasco until the reader begins to marvel that any art actually […]
Julian Murphy : The Singular Art Of Julian Murphy : Hoover Groover
Robin Askew discovers why artist Julian Murphy turns household appliances into fetish objects of desire Bristolian born and bred, 40-year-old Julian Murphy studied Design for Print at Brunel College. His acclaimed fetish art, which he describes as “sciperepics”, transforms everyday household appliances into extraordinary objects of desire. Critics have compared Julian’s work to that of […]
Margaret Wertheim: The Pearly Gates Of Cyberspace
Chris Mitchell Cyberspace is perhaps the last place you’d look for some sort of spiritual revival at the end of the twentieth century. But Margaret Wertheim believes that cyberspace is indeed a contemporary secular version of the medieval conception of Heaven – that is, a space which exists somewhere beyond or outside our everyday world. […]
The Basquiat File
Robert Knafo In his short life (1960-1988), Jean-Michel Basquiat came to personify the art scene of the 80s, with its merging of youth culture, money, hype, excess, and self-destruction. And then there was the work, which the public image tended to overshadow: paintings and drawings that conjured up marginal urban black culture and black history, […]
Keith Haring : Keith Haring’s Journals : Artist Or Radiant Baby
Spike looks at the man behind the spray can with the publication of Keith Haring’s journals At the close of the twentieth century, trying to find a stable definition for the term “art” has become increasingly difficult. The traditional notion of art as the privilege of the educated and wealthy, preserved within galleries and private […]
Derek Jarman: Preserving A Harlequin
Spike reflects on the work of England’s quintessential Renaissance man, Derek Jarman By the time you read this, Derek Jarman: A Retrospective will have closed at the Barbican Centre. However, the Barbican Centre’s comprehensive catalogue of the exhibition, which has been published by Thames And Hudson, gives a chance to re-evaluate the impact and splendour […]