Rosie Dahlstrom: 'Belleisle', Still from 'Traces of a Future Portland' by Portland Collective, 2020. Image credit: Belleisle Conservatory, Ayr The isle has been the site of quarries for centuries, but the growth of cities like London, with the capital status as the world’s most important urban centre, built on the wealth gained plundering people and… Continue reading ‘Traces of a Future Portland’
On Everyday Filmmaking
The Mundane and the Magical: Filmmaking of Every Day Nalini Malani: ‘Can You Hear Me’, film projections, Whitechapel Gallery (2020 – 2021) I would like to write an article about the intimacy of everyday artmaking. This is not that article; the following text is adapted from a proposal I've recently submitted to a writing prize… Continue reading On Everyday Filmmaking
On Andrea Rocha
Andrea Rocha: Cutting Skin, Cutting Paper Fig. 1: ‘Wash Your Hands’, photographed collage, 2020 Two energies, or two competing forces, are at work in the photographic montages of Andrea Rocha (b. 1964, Rio de Janeiro). These warring visual phenomena, which we could refer to as what Sartre called the real and the ‘irreal’, can… Continue reading On Andrea Rocha
On ‘Deadwind’
This is an overdue love letter to one of my favourite things in the world: Nordic Noir TV. Deadwind (Karppi in Finland), Netflix, 2018 - 2020 So I moved back to London last week which has been very surreal. Starting work again doing what I was doing before lockdown did indeed, as I thought it… Continue reading On ‘Deadwind’
On ‘The Imaginary’
I started reading The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination by Jean Paul Sartre (1940) on Monday 23rd March, on the train back home to Glasgow where I would be staying until this whole pandemic thing blew over. I just finished it as lockdown is slowly lifting. It's a book deconstructing the imagination: such as… Continue reading On ‘The Imaginary’
On Saint Sebastian
Detail of 'St. Sebastian' by Sandro Botticelli, 1474 Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constantly under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph; and the figure of Sebastian is the most beautiful symbol, if not of art as a whole, yet certainly of the art we speak of… Continue reading On Saint Sebastian
On Esmeralda
During quarantine, we've been drinking a lot of vodka and watching Disney films, which has been cathartic as I cry every time (a good way of releasing pent-up emotions). Even though I regularly watch my favourite Disney flick The Hunchback of Notre Dame, (mostly when very hungover) I have more clearly realised how fabulous the… Continue reading On Esmeralda
On London
It's been six weeks of UK lockdown and I've been back home in Glasgow for the same amount of time. Although I love being back, it's underpinned by an unease, anxiety which comes from the surreal and abrupt change in my life, and concerns over what I will be going back to and when. I… Continue reading On London
On the Jar of Moles
This weekend my sister was visiting me, and we went around some free museums in London on Saturday afternoon. I like to do these kind of tourist activities when I have a visitor from home, it's when I most enjoy exploring odd, curious corners of the city. Everywhere we went in central London was about… Continue reading On the Jar of Moles
‘A Composite of Loss’
The following short piece of prose is a text-collage of historical, cultural and imaginative responses to accounts that I came across during my Delphyne research into women, religion, and transgressive sexuality. It was published in Portland Magazine’s January 2020 issue, which can be viewed here. A Composite of Loss I kneel before the Way of… Continue reading ‘A Composite of Loss’
Sertraline Dreams 