If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Museum signage and catalogues usually inform viewers of relevant heterosexual relationship between artists, or their subjects; for example, of relationships between Picasso and his female lovers who he often painted. Why are museums not similarly candid about same-sex relationships?
In recent times, Derry's international reputation has been defined by the sectarian conflict known as 'The Troubles'. It was here in this city that civil rights marches escalated into the street battles of the Bogside and the Bloody Sunday shootings.
We sat in the kitchen for our writerly discussion. He held a sheaf of A4 paper, covered in typescript while I was armed with my favourite pen and my kitchen reading glasses. I slid them onto my nose, squinting around the scratches and food smudges. Two mugs of tea and a plate of just baked flapjacks sat on the table between us.
I'm not entirely sure where the idea for my forthcoming children's book Dot to Dot came from. Sadly, there is no bolt of lightning moment that I can define as when inspiration arrived.
On one hand, poetry of trauma offers the process of healing a psychologically wounded mind for those who have been subjected to mentally constricting and damaging behaviour from trusted relationships or even repeated exposure to violence. On the other hand, it needs caution if such poetry is widely promoted to a large audience, because in some of such works, the distinction between real and unreal can be diminished.
A new exhibition by one of the leading Austrian photographers has just open at the ACF in Knightsbridge, London. It shows an excellent selection of in...
You can't have an orgasm every time you walk on stage. This line from the script is sitting with me. I think Piaf did give the audience everything every time she walked onto the stage. To play her and to be in the character I must do the same.
An interesting social and artistic experiment has begun outside the British Council on The Mall in London. The artist Mark Wallinger has created a beautiful white horse -- a symbol of Olde Englande before it was even England (probably when it was Britannicus or just 'those pretty green isles' in Norse or French).
The most immediately striking thing about an evening of spoken word is the almost tangible electricity in the air. No one is quite sure what to expect because every act differs in tone, delivery, style and content which turns the evening into a mad up and down trajectory of individuals pouring their hearts and minds into a microphone for an appreciative audience.
London's City Hall will play host over the next two weeks to a selection of surprising and unexpected views of Russian architectural landscapes. 'Abstraction/Constructivism: British and Russian Responses to the City' documents urban life from both British and Russian perspectives.
TEFAF (The European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht) beckons and is everywhere. Bond Street and all the streets around Mayfair are jammed with shippers. Paper, bubble wrap and enormous wooden crates clutter the pavements and galleries.
Shouldn't university teach us to criticise simplistic or politically convenient definitions of happiness?
Londoners, brace yourselves! Dale Stephens is coming to town! Dale who? If many people in UK are still blissfully unaware of Stephens, and the UnCollege movement he founded, all that is about to change. With his first book due for UK release this week, and a public talk in London next Monday, the 21-year old 'edupreneur' is determined to shake things up here as much as he has done in the US.
I send Simon Price a message to verify if he identifies as straight; he does, but adds that he is "culturally queer." That'll do. He says I'm "Wide of the mark" to call Hilary Mantel's remarks bitchy. Why? "Because it demeans the valid points she made and implies that her remarks were made with personal malice, when her beef wasn't personal."
It is only by looking at the highlights of a medium that one may judge whether it is art or not. Even a cursory glance at some of gaming's recent successes shows why MoMA is now putting Pac-Man alongside Picasso and Pollock.
Art trains our eyes to look beyond shapes and the names we have given them, blessing us with a shared universal language. Along with nature, it provides humanity with a timeless definition of beauty.
