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Bedlam

Bedlam

Bedlam: The Asylum And Beyond, The Wellcome Collection, Euston Road, London NW1 2BE Mr X makes cars. Not out of metal, plastic and rubber as you might expect, but cardboard, tin foil and tape. Nevertheless they are fully-functioning and he drives them round the pavements and countryside of Beckenham where he lives at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, once more famously known as Bedlam. The video of Mr X negotiating the pavements and fields of Beckenham in his vehicles, while pedest

Pedro Paricio - Dreams

Pedro Paricio - Dreams

I was delighted and honoured when my friend Pedro Paricio invited me to write the catalogue essay for Dreams, his fourth exhibition with Bond Street's Halcyon Gallery. The essay is reproduced here along with some of his stunning, though-provoking art. Dreams runs until September 25, 2016 Art is not about being famous. Art is about freedom, human freedom... but to find freedom for others you must first free yourself. An artist must follow his dreams and feelings and not wh

Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award

Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award

Photograph © Francesco Guidicini Kindness is dead. She was knifed, no axed, no shot by her boyfriend, a lover, a man in a red car that was not a silver Pajero and the five ladies who were her colleagues in the hair saloon (sic) where she was the best (and cheapest) braid plaiter in Harare can’t get enough of her death. They weave it in and out of their day, around their customers, a blind beggar and his seeing-eye boy – both barefoot, the tennis-playing lady they reckon is no

Tattoo you

Tattoo you

An Unreliable History of Tattoos By Paul Thomas (Nobrow Press, £14.99) Now spring is coming, warm sun and longer days coax many things into the open: the blossom will bloom on the bough, the baby birds will take their first flights, and men and women across the country will shed their winter plumage and reveal the summer colours inked permanently into their skin. Once upon a time tattoos were the preserve of sailors – you weren’t in the gang if you didn’t have an anchor tatto

Getting It Write

Getting It Write

I almost didn’t do this course, which would have been a shame as I’ve learned so much. Back in October I had the first draft of a novel I knew wasn’t working, but didn’t know how to fix. I was starting to avoid it when a Curtis Brown newsletter pinged in advertising a three-month course tutored by Erin Kelly (below), a writer of psychological thrillers with tightly-controlled, slowly unfurling plots. Perfect timing, then. I applied, thinking I’d worry about the cost if I got

End of the pier show comes to town

End of the pier show comes to town

If you know Tim Hunkin from his C4 show The Secret Life Of Machines or his books, Almost Everything There Is To Know and Hunkin's Experiements, then you probably won't be surprised to learn about his passion for automata. If you've spent any time at all in Southwold then you definitely won't. Hunkin's Under The Pier Show arcade has been issuing tokens to holidaymakers for over fifteen years. Hunkin, an engineer and cartoonist with a passion for the eighteenth century satirist

Small miracles

Small miracles

I saw an angel yesterday. He was perched atop a pailing outside Waterstone's St Albans, in a blue and green hand-knitted gown, with a pink knitted face and golden hand-knitted wings. Tied around his little knitted neck with silver and white wool was a laminated message which read on one side, "YOU CAN DO IT!" and on the other, "Please take me, I'm free" along with #xmasangels and @homewoodurc. What could I do? It's not every Christmas an angel descends with a motivational mes

Baltic Exchange

Baltic Exchange

I’ve just come back from a whistlestop tour of the Baltic region. Eight days of exploring and eating in Copenhagen, Tallinn, Riga and Stockholm. Despite a diet of mainly blood sausage and chips I’ve lost three pounds. My feet ache from walking miles in the wrong shoes and my joints are stiff, but the weather was more glorious than we could have hoped for. Copenhagen was first. All elegant pastel blues and pinks and white edged with gold. Magnificent parks and pretty palaces.

Write & Shine

Write & Shine

Here's something to get out of bed for: Gemma Selzer's early morning writing Write & Shine workshops. A gentle start to your writerly day or a couple of hours of creativity before the working world sweeps you away. It's the kind of thing New York does all the time, but London's been a bit shuffley and slow up about it. Until now. Gemma's a writer and performance artist who loves mornings, which is more than I can say for myself. Her projects include the digital literature pro

Arsenaaaal

Arsenaaaal

Football and I aren't really friends. I don't hate it, I've just never really got it: I'd rather be doing other things. So until a week ago, I'd never been inside a football stadium. Then I got to go on a tour of Arsenal's Emirates Stadium and I very nearly became a fan. Emirates Stadium at dusk. Credit: Ed g2s The place is a massive monument to loyalty and sport. The pride is palpable, everywhere you turn is a nugget of information, a fact, statistic that reinforces Arsenal'

Featured posts

Prawn vol-au-vent, anyone?

Prawn vol-au-vent, anyone?

The Naked Muse

The Naked Muse

Pedro Paricio - Dreams

Pedro Paricio - Dreams

Present perfect

Present perfect

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