Can We Do It? Consuming Less, Producing More… Why Complexity Is Really Interesting…

Image: Paul Motion’s The Story of Maryam, a Soul Note album issued in 1984 and a Safe Passage, Lesvos Solidarity purse made out of a refugee lifejacket gifted by Greek economist Yannis Varoufakis at the Sheffield Festival of Ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyEm3WJyyVw Maryam is a name that combines east and west, south and north, religious, social and […]

The General Data Protection Act: An Opportunity For Democracy, News…And Beauty?

Above: data, manufacture and art project Aether Architectural Intelligence: Exploring Space as an Interactive Medium”, where researchers Refik Anadol, Raman Mustafa, Julietta Gil and Farzad Mirshafiei created an immersive interactive environment that combines robotic actuation, formal transformation and real time projection mapping controlled by a sensory input device. Refik Anadol has produced extraordinary imaginings of how it’s […]

The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives…. Our Powers Of Self Expression

I like art galleries: they’re performance spaces for everyone in society. Micro theatres leading on to wider human stages, perhaps. I like the way the people who work in them feel obliged to perform access to the work and I like the way we as visitors feel as if we’ve been invited into a different […]

Taking the News Into Our Own Lives And Back Again: This Is What I Think News Is

Above the work of Molly Crabapple who is an artist working in reportage Above Reportage from Kenyan artist, Mercy Kagia How do we begin to understand and reach for a better future, for more people, more of the time? When democracy feels postponed, pushed out, uncomfortably absent, when 10 million people who are eligible to vote […]

Beyond A Stuck Society: New Laws: GDPR, The Data Protection Bill, Automation, Freedom Of Speech: We Need To Talk With Everyone (And Do Something)

Featured Image: Property: Lionel Shriver’s new book Property We’re all really trying hard at the moment to create a dynamic, transformative economy throughout the whole of the UK that re-places us in the world and moves away from an over dependence on the ability to purchase a property as a source of identity, status, stability, safety […]

Art Is In Our Hearts: Excel Beyond Spreadsheets …Bonington Art Shop

Above: £50 voucher from Bonington Art Shop…. Boningtons Art Shop is twenty one years old, nearly twenty two: the same age as many undergraduates and post graduates. I’ve ‘known’ about the shop, ie through friends who’ve studied and worked at Trent and have studied art. The grapevine around the shop is that it’s a great […]

All Too Human Exhibition: Get Touched By Art: ‘I Want The Paint To Work As Flesh Does’ (So That’s The Secret….Lucien Freud): Let’s Talk About Art In More Places, More Of The Time….

Above Celia Paul’s 1985 painting Family Group, below Paula Rego’s The Dance 1988, Frank Auerbach’s Head of E.O.W(2), E.O.W (1), (1959-1960) Lucien Freud’s Head of Leigh Bowery (1991), all works that take you inside something that the All Too Human Exhibition at Tate Britain, open now until 27th August 2018. it’s a fantastic contrast to […]