Haiti & contemporary art

I wrote a piece for The White Review comparing the recent work of Atis Rezistans at Nottingham Contemporary to Don Dellilo's Falling Man, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland and Bill Viola's The Passions.

Reading: Sentimental Education, Angels (Denis Johnson), Gogol's edited stories. Denis Johnson's work is incredible.

I'm about to do three lectures/workshops for Kingston University's arts journalism department. You can find the class-notes for the arts news/features lecture here (access using QuickTime; pause on each slide).

Post-war & contemporary

I wrote a piece off the back of the Hirst/Gagosian split, pegged to ArtTactic's latest figures on the post-war & contemporary art market, for The Evening Standard.

Reading: Werewolves in their Youth; Reading Like a Writer (Francine Prose); Leviathan (Philip Hoare); Dubliners.

Elmgreen & Dragset @ Victoria Miro

Review of Elmgreen & Dragset for January Modern Painters; again click on the image to read.

Thomas Houseago @ Hauser & Wirth

Reviewed Thomas Houseago for December's Modern Painters; click on the image to read. 

Reviewed Gormley at White Cube for Modern Painters. Filed a piece to Museums Journal on exhibition sound design, published here. The Art Newspaper piece was published at the beginning of December; essentially looking into corporation tax paid by commercial art galleries. It's online here.

Reading: What a Carve Up; Robinson Crusoe; Gulliver's Travels; Every Love Story is a Ghost Story; Anna Karenina; William Trevor (picking from The Collected Stories).

So, reviewed the Houseago show at Hauser and Wirth, then Elmgreen & Dragset, at Victoria Miro, for Modern Painters. Have an ongoing piece I'm writing for The White Review. The doc work continued with two hearings at the High Court: that concluded OK and is being broadcast in November. Ongoing investigation for The Art Newspaper and hopefully more specialist work.

I sold this story on an "earlier Mona Lisa" to The Sunday Times. It was a down-page in the middle of the book but was followed fairly widely, though many, I'm sure, wrote it up as it was announced.

Reading (again, the many and varied books I've missed): Scoop, Lot 49, Handmaid's Tale, Consider the Lobster, Joy, Atonement, On the Road, Falling Man, Netherland, Bleak House (finally), Arcadia (finally), Mrs Dalloway, Good Soldier, On a Winter's Night; Rabbit, Run; Pastoralia.

Also read the UEA Creative Writing Anthology 2012; I'd pick out Tom Raphael Eaves and Eliza Robertson as names to look out for.

Started the Amber Room after doing a month of leg-work for Cathy Scott Clark in the UK for a broadcast project. Other reading: Moby Dick, Swag, The Quiet American (with, I guess, one central motivation being the moral mirror image of those seen in Crime and Punishment), Heart of Darkness, Underworld, Crash, C, Lucky Jim, Gatsby, Unbearable Lightness.

Doing something for specialist publication on permanent museum collections, research for various people, continuing website, drafted 30-40,000 words of a novel, trying to gather together pitches.