Although he once penned an unambiguous paean to the demise of Margaret Thatcher, today Walthamstow-based singer- songwriter Darren Hayman thinks the art of political protest should be a more nuanced matter than simply wishing ill of those who hold opposing views. Having just released an album called Chants for Socialists, which sets to music rousing,…
When Syriza, Greece’s radical party of the left, newly installed in government, formed as a single party in 2013, its stated goal was “to end the modern Greek tragedy that the Greek people are living through.” Here, Kym Beeston examines that “tragedy” through the prism of the Ancient Hellenic stage and, aided by Dr. Mark…
Bewildered by former Minister of State for Schools Michael Gove’s inexorable undermining of art education, not to mention his success or, MP Nicky Morgan’s jaw- dropping pronouncement about “the arts holding kids back”, Patrick Brill, better known as artist Bob and Roberta Smith, has decided to stand for parliament as an independent in Gove’s Surrey…
Continuing his interrogation of the food/art crossover, Cedar Lewisohn speaks to London-based artist Joey Holder about the various ways food has, well, fed into her practice. Holder’s work mixes technology and nature, futurology and the uncanny. Her multi faceted practice incorporates video and web-based projects that utilise websites such as Tumblr to create ongoing image…
Each year, the tutors at Blackburn College nominate and vote for a student who has excelled in their practice. The worthy winner is awarded the accolade ‘Art and Design Student of the Year’. This year’s recipient is Lee Smillie, who moved to Blackburn from Easterhouse in Glasgow and joined the Photography Department. While on Foundation,…
—Last summer, inscrutable indie-rock three-piece The Wave Pictures set off for Kent’s Medway Delta to record an album with Chatham’s most famously moustachioed psych-punk, Stuckist leader, painter, poet, novelist and all round bohemian polymath, Billy Childish. Here, The Wave Pictures’ drummer and art-school veteran Jonny Helm gives us the inside scoop on the collaboration that…
Sarah Lucas is of course best known for her shock art – her ‘Penis Nailed to a Board’ (1991), her ‘Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab’ (1992), her ‘Au Naturel’ (1994) (mattress, water bucket, melons, oranges, cucumber), her wanking machines, her Bunnies (those sad stuffed tights flopping over chairs) or, more recently, her NUDS with…
Van Morrison’s inimitable 1968 longplayer Astral Weeks is the enduring enigma of the ornery Ulsterman’s oeuvre, and remains a unique landmark in the canon of popular music. Here, Dylan Jones sings the praises of ‘the greatest album ever made’. It opens with a guitar, a double bass and some light percussion, although the record could…
Mike Lindsay (Tunng) on Múm’s ‘Green Grass of Tunnel’ In 2000, I moved to London; I was 21 years old. Before that I lived in Hull, studying radio and sound production, and before that I’d grown up in Southampton, mainly playing in, and listening to, bad metal bands. It was when I moved to London…
Christopher Petit’s Radio On (1979) has been aired before in Art & Music, but, says Peter Wix, it’s worth revisiting, not least because it is still on the road to nowhere, the place where many of us have always lived. Over-simply categorised as a road movie, Radio On has also been facilely described as portraying…