[for Frieze, 10/5/21]
This show is about our desire to feel love and feel nothing at once; our belief that a person can be all artificial and all natural; our wish to find new objects of devotion; and our knowledge that they will disappoint us, as we would disappoint them, too.
[for the Telegraph, 13/2/21]
Lauren Oyler is suspicious of sincerity.
[for the TLS, 10/2/21]
To the extent that Beckett’s work is “about” anything, it’s about knowing what not to say. It deserves a critical style that’s self-critical, because certainties are of zero interest; what person lives in certainty about the way they feel?
[for The Drift, 3/2/21]
It’s gossip as pathology.
[for the Telegraph, 2/12/20]
Margaret Thatcher was an egotist. So said Charles Moore, her biographer, who had long suspected she was keen to be written about. Where sculpture was concerned, she proved him right.
[for the Telegraph, 24/10/20]
These people are broken automata, broadcasting only fear. But DeLillo wants to have it both ways – uncanny conversation in a novel set at home.
[for the Telegraph, 19/9/20]
This is a genealogy of paranoia. We made other people lonely before we did it to ourselves.
[for the Telegraph, 1/8/20]
Calling alcoholism “tragic” doesn’t mean that it’s especially grand – it can seem repetitive and banal – just that alcoholics hurt those around them by making them witnesses.
[for the Telegraph, 1/8/20]
Everything is lost, or a losing game. Some losses are personal: parents, lovers or friends. Others are national: a diminished and soured UK.
[for Burlington Contemporary, 30/7/20]
Age of the Image is a classy series, as classy as its leading man – and if it cannot be charming, it would rather say nothing at all.
[for the Telegraph, 10/7/20]
Monoliths can act like divas – as though you owe them your scrutiny.
[for the Telegraph, 30/6/20]
In front of a camera, kids have a special naturalness that they feign if you tell them: “Be yourselves”.
[for the Telegraph, 14/6/20]
Humans are storytellers: we’re always making each other up.
[for the Telegraph, 12/4/20]
Edith is too good for this novel: she has depth of feeling, and knows that Gucci is “tourist bait”.
[for Frieze, 6/4/20]
What makes these artworks beautiful is your worry – or secret thrill – at how that beauty might be lost.
[for the Telegraph, 23/2/20]
The characters in Enright’s novels are absorbing because they seem recognisable in an unassuming way: they’re as lovely, boring and complex as the people outside the books.
[for the Telegraph, 30/1/20]
“Unfortunately, I think we have to wade through a lot of mediocrity. It depends who gets their hands on those tools: are they engineers, are they artists, are they hybrids?”
[for the Telegraph, 25/1/20]
The bad pun, the wryly fastidious questions, the slowness of the inquiry: listen to Beckett, there like a ghost.
[for Frieze, 16/12/19]
What do pictures want? Nothing, goes one answer; attention, goes another; and in between, from being ignored to being loved, is a reflection of every human hope.
[for the Telegraph, 5/12/19]
Walker’s paintings are enjoyably curious. Having established their chilly mood, they let each configuration of form and colour succeed, or lose its way.
