Essays

19th December 2019

Back to the Individual Experience: Rethinking Chinese Art, Overturning EuroCentrism by Carol Yinghua Lu

A pivotal figure in the intellectual and critical examination of Chinese Art, Carol Yinghua Lu writes about her research which reveals the complex sources, influences traditions and narratives which look […]
13th December 2019

Tales of two cities: Coventry Biennial 2019 By Jamie Limond

The Coventry Biennial describes itself as the UK’s ‘social biennial’. More than any other biennale, the Coventry questions how the festival engages with the local community, and what relationship there […]
13th December 2019

Federalism – A Drouth Enquiry by Owen Dudley Edwards

It seems appropriate to publish a long meditation on the nature and history of federalism on the day of a British election where Brexit is the pressing issue and the […]
4th December 2019

Take the High Road: Scott Hames’ Literary Politics of Scottish Devolution by Colin Kidd

Colin Kidd muses on relations (if any) between the near unanimity of the literary world and the actually existing historical world in his review of Scott Hames’s new book The Literary Politics […]
4th December 2019

Alan Dimmick: From the Archive by Catherine Owen

Pascal Gielen once defined art ‘scenes’ as ‘the new factories in the economy of ideas’. The Glasgow art scene however, does sometimes seem more like an old stable for conjuring […]
27th November 2019

Merely conventional signs. ‘Dreams&Dramas. Law as Literature’ by Katarzyna Maniak

Dreams and Dramas :Law as Literature is the book to accompany the 2017 exhibition published by NGBK edited by Agnieszka Kilian in collaboration with Joerg Franzbecker and Jaro Varga. It examines […]
27th November 2019

The Pro-test Lab – by Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas

When Marc Augé wrote in The Future that ‘Every protest is a form of research’ he could have been describing the artwork(s) / protest / civil disobedience / celebration / sit-in that was […]
21st November 2019

Humanitarian Crisis, Dignity and Hope on the Río Atrato – Allan Gillies

On the impact of illegal gold mining in Colombia and how communities in Chocó are preserving hope and dignity in the face of a humanitarian crisis.
11th November 2019

‘Dangerously open’ – Los Angeles and the (Grass)roots of segregation – Andrea Gibbons

The principle of self-government of provinces is at the heart of the concept of 'Federation', and ‘The grassroots’ is for many, an inherently leftist, liberal construct. Yet as Andrea Gibbons shows, the white supremacists who shaped the growth of Los Angeles force us to reassess out assumptions over the innate virtues of ‘participation’ .