“I’m irrelevant!” James Smith repeats at the climax of The Incident, midway through his band Yard Act’s debut album. In fact the Leeds frontman finds himself in the thick of a new wave of words-first post-punk bands that extends from the impassioned sloganeering of IDLES and brooding poetry of FontainesContinue Reading
It will be a case of Sing when you’re Bidding at Sotheby’s as the auction house prepares to sell a trio of works by Banksy from Robbie Williams’ art collection. The three works – Girl with Balloon, Vandalised Oils (Choppers) and Kissing Coppers – by the reclusive street artist areContinue Reading
KAWS needs no introduction, I’m sure. But here goes: Brian Donnelly is a New Jersey-born artist who started his artistic life making graffiti and has gone on, through the invention of a cast of characters who he presents in various forms, from toys through paintings, sculpture, collaborations with numerous consumerContinue Reading
London’s art world is back from its winter break and immediately it’s at full throttle. The spotlight will be brightest on museum shows – Francis Bacon at the Royal Academy, Louise Bourgeois at the Hayward – and the commercial mega-galleries (Gagosian, White Cube, Hauser & Wirth and the like) withContinue Reading
The pause of 2020 seems to have led many to reflect on their lives – subsequently, 2022 is the year of the memoir. There will be big name autobiogs from the likes of Matthew Perry, Edward Enninful, Minnie Driver and Jarvis Cocker, alongside stories of survival, creativity, grief and motherhood.Continue Reading
For the first time since the National Trust began looking after Coleton Fishacre, near Kingswear in Devon, the Art Deco property once home to the D’Oyly Carte family, will be open for winter weekends. Voted the second-best garden in the UK by Which? Travel readers, the garden is accredited byContinue Reading
After one night shift on the beat in Liverpool with Martin Freeman’s burned out response officer Chris, Adelayo Adedayo’s rookie cop Rachel has had enough. When she finally snaps, shouting the words “you’re a car crash of a human being” in Chris’s direction, it’s hard not to agree – it’sContinue Reading
I can’t remember a time when contemporary art in London was as shapeshifting and multifarious as it is today. There have been times when certain media or approaches seemed off the menu or beyond the pale, when certain groups held sway. But in 2022, increasingly, anything goes, and often withinContinue Reading
I suspect acclaimed British director Andrea Arnold would rather be viewed as a stroppy cow than a poor one. Perhaps coincidentally, Luma – the bovine heroine of Arnold’s first documentary – excites many emotions, but never anything as simple as pity. Luma, who has the eyes and jawline of aContinue Reading
So, Simon, how did you become interested in Ann Jefferies? I’ve often written about Cornish folklore as a folklore historian and particularly Cornish fairy and pixylore. Ann Jefferies is special because she offers us, not our earliest evidence for Cornish fairies, but our earliest good evidence. She is also ourContinue Reading
