Home on The White Pube

It’s my fourth day straight in the park. Marshmallow ice cream, then Solero, I couldn’t finish the new marshmallow-flavoured Twister, and today, one scoop banoffee, second of marshmallow but the banoffee is way too sweet. Peeling off the grass stuck to the back of my legs. It’s like hay. Spiders make new freckles across the backs of my hands and then the freckles move. I’m not trying to make this text any good. It’s just a sign of life. I live in the shade now. Sometimes lie on my side, the…

I am half-snoozing against the glass of the train window as it cuts through the flat expanse of the lowlands. Fields all green and yellow in the heat of summer, the sky is white and bruisy with clouds. It is so early in the morning. My heavy eyelids, I can see all the way out as the fields disappear into the grey horizon. Just saying I’m an art critic feels like I am being too vague. Sometimes I am a crazed stalker, a fan. Sometimes I am a pilgrim. I like to write about things I enjoy, but I…

no, because the thing is, we’ve all got apps that block the other apps on our phones haven’t we? and we all live in houses not made for 33 degree weather? so I turned my computer off for an entire week. I didn’t even go in the room. this room is the hottest in the house. no, I was downstairs, body on standstill, spraying myself with water like a plant. so your latest good youtube installment is late but you understand why now. and i got to complain a little bit. all good this is such a…

about a month ago, i went to Ljubljana to talk about friendship in the art industry. It was the most beautiful capital city I’ve ever been to. And also everyone was cool while I was there, I hung out with Lucija Klauž and recorded an Art Date with her. if you missed the news about that, i’ve started a new podcast where i visit exhibitions with people and hang out a bit. I record the chat, reflect on it a bit later. I take a film camera along with me and post all the photos on the Art Dates…

Tarantula (2024) by Eduardo Halfon, translated by Daniel Hahn 🕷️ I pulled this off the shelves at Burley Fisher last week on a whim (or not a total whim – I’ve been picking books based on their size, and then when I saw it had won the Spanish-language Critic’s Prize, and best foreign novel in a French prize, and it had something to do with Guatemala, a place I know nothing about, knew I was going to buy it). It was so slight and powerful like a pin disappearing into skin. I can’t really get…

It’s a few weeks ago and I am being shown around Palazzo Te, a summer palace in the north of Italy. It is 34 degrees and sweat is tickling the backs of my legs, and there’s a headache like a solar flare threatening to whip my skull if I don’t inhale water like air. My friend knows every single thing about this place, and the way he speaks, it’s like a tour guide is showing me around inside a dream. He tells me about the ruling Gonzaga family of Mantua and how, at the beginning of the 16th…

I am looking into the basement gallery of the Sunday Painter. The ceiling goes up two storeys. I can see the glass of the shopfront windows, way up there. I can’t really step into the space of the gallery itself — almost all of it is taken up by a huge wooden boat. It’s swollen, wall to wall to wall and floor to ceiling (probably). My Mum is standing next to me and we look together, bottom to the top. It is so big, it makes us so small. ‘Big boat’ // ‘Fucking massive’ // ‘Don’t swear.’ It’s…

It’s Saturday night and I’m sat in a bright sports hall in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, watching two people fence. They’re going at it down an aisle of chairs set out like a catwalk. I don’t know anything about fencing. I didn’t know they were allowed to jump, but at one point, the white suit on my left flies up and brings the sword down, and the moment seems to last forever, like there are wires I can’t see. I like it. I like that I have walked into a medieval fight. When everyone has…

I was on my way to the Southbank Centre to see a play. It was last-last weekend, precisely, the Saturday. Tommy Robinson’s fanboys were clogging up the zone 1 pubs, St George’s flags tied around their necks like capes. All the way from Embankment, across the river, union jack st George union jack st George — tourist or fascist or y2k britpop revival? Spin the wheel. I was there to see a play called Farm Fatale. A group of scarecrows in a field after the climate collapse, after all the birds…

pureflow i don’t really think these openers make sense unless you’re standing live in a stadium boompala the best part is when sakura sings the macarena. her voice makes sense for it. every other part of the song feels off base. when kazuha says pyjama it’s like, yeah, this song is pointless. you had the macarena!! you had gold! and you made THIS? what a fucking waste. lyrics like AI poetry bullshit; music video sodden with tacky AI imagery. i am worried eunchae can’t actually sing? thats so…

i am pushing things thru the website vending machine IGNORE THIS hehehehhehehe or here is a good youtube video, this single korean girly who makes soothing cooking videos for her monthly lunch meal prep

I’ve started a new podcast called Art Dates I’m going to be visiting exhibitions with interesting people! that’s it. I recorded the pilot episode with Zarina (of course) and I have a long list of people I’ll be chatting to in the episodes to come. But there’s no set schedule here. I’m doing it for fun, for free will, for community, and for making the most of the health I’ve got at the moment. I am going to so many interesting places this year and I’ll tell ya what, POTS has really affected my…

I loooove analogue photography. we know this. I have loved Lomography specifically since Zarina got me a three pack of their coloured purple/blue/grey film for my birthday a few years ago. i keep buying the purple film. and i think what happened is I posted about this purple film enough times that they got in touch to interview us, haha. Lomography sent me their Lomomatic 110 camera to try out, I took two rolls of film on it and so the results, and the interview, are here: enjoy looking at some…

I met a man in a pub last week and introduced myself as a critic. He was so excited to talk about all the artists he loved but I had to break it to him that I wasn’t excited about this stuff anymore. I actually said that I’d been feeling heartbroken lately — that this thing I’ve been writing about for ten years is feeling further away than it used to. The wild fires artists make are getting harder to find with less money for experiments, less space to do things with no expectations. The only…

It is rainy January and I am looking through the UAL staff portal for a well-hidden form. If I fill in this form, I can get a free place on any UAL short course. I book myself into a week of oil painting. It is rainy April and I am in a studio round the side of Chelsea unpacking a half price Cass art multipack from my tote bag. See, I used to paint. I applied to art school with a portfolio full of paintings, but by the time I actually got there, painting had started to feel embarassing (and…

here you go i wonder if I’ll ever be someone who wants to watch TV or films but so long as youtube exists i doubt it. the only tv show i am prepared to watch is the pitt. do not ask me how many times ive seen it heres good youtube recommendations this youtube series where Michelle Khare joins a group of runners who book out a private jet so they can run 7 marathons in 7 continents in 7 days made me cry. unfortunately it also made me want to run. three episodes. i could have watched hours of…

versión española acá 🏡 🏡 🏡 🏡 🏡 🏡 🏡 🏡 A few weeks ago, I read a blog post about Swiss psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz’s idea of ‘the provisional life.’ It’s this belief that the current life you’re living obviously isn’t the real one. I mean, how could it be? It’s so messed up. No, you believe you are owed a better life where all the problems have been solved, all the kinks ironed out. The present tense is only provisional. A stand-in for a perfect future that’s still very much on the way. I…

since the beginning of the year i’ve been keeping a running list at the back of my diary, A READING LIST, where i keep track of my own little personal theory curriculum (because i feel like i am At A Stage In My Life where i need more words/concepts to think about the world with, more words/concepts than i am personally capable of producing, so now i must outsource that to theory). The first thing i wrote down was Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World. in this text (that i’ve not actually…

I went to see Bishwadhan Rai’s exhibition, Being There, at Zerui. There is a blue ball on the floor. It half looks like a bath bomb, half looks like something I’d chuck in the washing machine on an empty rinse cycle. A fizzy thing to make other things softer, cleaner. The blue ball is hollow with a hole at the top. I look at the press release: it is made of pear soap. I look back at the blue ball: it is surrounded by gold dust. I look up: THERE IS A HUGE GOLD LEAFED CIRCLE ON THE CEILING. It is…

i’m going to Škuc gallery on Saturday 23 May to give a lecture on FRIENDSHIP. you’ll be able to buy copies of Poor Artists there too! ‘We’re a lot easier to control, exploit and abuse when we stand alone. This talk explores how friendship can help people survive the art industry together.’ you can find details of the event here the lecture is taking place during Ljubljana Art Weekend, and it’s part of the Friends with Benefits programme put on by the School for Curatorial Practices and Critical…

i got a bit burnt out and dysautonomic last week so i watched a SHIT tonne of youtube on the couch to settle my nerves. I watched so much that i actually wrote about Tip to Tip, where two americans cross china on motorbikes without translation apps in a full on review, but i’m here to link you to everything else - - first off, after I watched Tip to Tip, i started getting loads of China-based content so that’s where we’ll start. like, i watched this when it had maybe 2k views and now it’s…

Amigazos, esta semana traduje la crítica para practicar, para aprender más vocabulario, y para liberarme de la vergüenza jajaja. Este año, voy a pasar un mes en chile y ya estoy haciendo tareas español pero hasta ahora nunca he escrito critica en español. Si hay errores……no tengas miedo. Solo paciencia por favor 😂 pero si sigues teniendo tanto miedo, la versión inglesa está acá — El Museo de la Casa Hace unas semanas, leí un blog trata de la psicóloga suiza Marie-Louise von Franz quien había…

Yesterday, I was on the phone for an hour with an artist in Santiago. She told me she didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to visit the Atacama desert when I come to Chile because the altitude could cause problems for my health. I thought deserts could only be low, like hot, dry basins. Frying pans over hell. But I was reading about it afterwards and the Atacama’s sloping down the left-hand side of the Andes. It’s so high, tour guides bring oxygen tanks. And I’m closing the tabs on the…

The gallery at MEZZANINE is slap bang in the middle of an industrial estate. I am on the edge looking in, past the rolling metal shutter, at the scene spread out before me. The glossy pink dust cover of a book called La Vie Parisienne is stapled to the wall. The title is in dainty curly cursive and there’s an illustration of a girl caught in a gust of wind — the wind whirls around her blowing blossom petals and leaves, tousling her hair, she holds down her skirt but, oh! The wind has sexily u...

I am sitting in a café in the oldest art space in the UK feeling spent. The Bluecoat’s current exhibition ‘Just Browsing’ has been on for five months and I’ve caught it in its final week, though I don’t think I should have bothered. I am not sure the gallery was that bothered when they put it together; I don’t know if half the artists were arsed either — and now two teenagers have sat down behind me on their Easter holidays and I hear one of them say to the other, ‘I’m sure there is a point ...

we’ve been invited by the Museum of Croydon and Croydon Libraries to talk about our book Poor Artists on April 23rd for World Book Night free tickets here < ‘At a moment in which working as a professional artist is an increasingly unattainable luxury, Poor Artists investigates why so many artists try anyway. Poor Artists follows aspiring artist Quest Talukdar as she embarks on a surreal journey into the creative industry, where she must decide whether she cares more about success or staying...

Qing Fibre sent me some yarn from their new Lucid Dreams collection so i could once again play my game of matching yarn to art. you can get a discount using code TWP5 ! let’s all buy string ! Sue Arrowsmith’s painting Forge / Qing Fibre NOCTILUCENT CLOUD Djamel Tatah’s Untitled / Qing Fibre ECHO Jadé Fadojutimi’s The Luna(tic) Effect / Qing Fibre REM Kaye Donachie’s Clouds are pushing in grey reluctance / Q...

THE MOMENT is Charli xcx’s brat summer mockumentary, directed by Aidan Zamiri. I was sat in the denim reupholstered seats at Rich Mix with a large glass of red wine in my hand. I watched girls with city bags and slickback buns traipse in around me. I thought about how this was all very meme account starter pack. Then the film started and I was blasted with acid green, cyan blue titles. Charli xcx in black and white, sliding round on a transparent floor. ‘It feels like my eyes are getting jet...

feeling incredibly frustrated today. tried to edit audio and it sounded great in Audition, but when I exported the files, TERRIBLE. like two planes taking off inside your ears. and then I learn audio sounds different inside the programme than it does outside of it, because it can’t process the effects live?? it only applies them in the export?? WHAT AM I PAYING YOU FOR. really, i think the background stress of waiting for the result of an arts council grant is making me crazy. the back-backgr...

i am very aware this is in 2 days, i am also well aware this is a sold out event, but i am contributing to the new news section !!!!! on Thursday (26th March, which is also Bangaldesh’s idependence day!) i’ll be in convo with Laisul Hoque about his show The Ground Beneath Me at Nunnery Gallery/Bow Arts. a link to the event here i am v much looking forward to it bc it is a artist in convo with a generous twist: it is also a sit down dinner supper club, thank u to When They Meet, and catered fo...