Arts & Culture

Colony: An artist-led takeover in London’s Fitzrovia

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* Nicholas Johnson *

Last December Anarch gallery of London commissioned the artist Andrew T Cross to build a sculpture designed to function as a platform for a series of artists to ‘colonise’ the space. For two weeks Warren St. in London’s Fitzrovia district was host to a frenetic schedule of day long residencies, exhibitions, performances, meals and parties. In the spirit of artist Gordon Matta Clark this temporary community assembled in a vacant lighting show room to propose new ideas about making art.

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Entrustment

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* Gina Balibrera *

For my part, I remember regularly, systemically, intruding upon my little sister’s dreamstate. The idea occurred to me one night as she snored in the pull-out trundle beneath my twin bed. A perfect motor inside of her. Four years younger than me, I could pick her up whenever I felt like it, and I would. That night I lifted her into the closet, placed her gently amongst the sneakers, and shut the door, hopped back onto my bed. She awoke with a start, a snort, a gasp.

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Effort and Effortlessness in Motherwell’s Reconciliation Elegy

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* Mary Camille Beckman *

I had already loved Robert Motherwell’s painting Reconciliation Elegy (1978)—had already claimed it as my favorite painting—for years before I tried to account for that love, to support that claim. On a recent trip to Washington D.C., I brought my partner to the modern wing of the National Gallery, where the painting hangs, and as he looked at the vast canvas high on a far marble wall, he asked me, as if—of course, no problem—I’d know the answer to his question, “What do you like about it?”

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A Poem for the New Year: Noelle Kocot’s “This Is The Day”

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* Claire Skinner *

When I find myself in a confused mood such as this, which I would describe as classically ambivalent — that is, literally of two minds — I know I need a poem that will buoy and bolster my spirits, a poem that will remind me that my miniature psychodramas are simply part and parcel of this wonderful/terrible project we’re all engaged in. It’s called Daily Life.

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Setting Off The New Year

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* A.L. Major *

Early November last year Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old African American woman, was shot outside the home of a 54-year-old white man in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Several hours earlier, she had crashed her car into a parked vehicle. She couldn’t find her cellphone. She was drunk, high and possibly concussed. She was a young black woman looking for help in a society that routinely asserts black bodies are volatile, more likely to perpetuate violence than seek assistance. The Internet barely yawned at the news. The case was similar to Jonathan Ferrell’s yet its dissimilar treatment in the media seemed one more disappointing example of how America values the lives of African-American women in the year 2013.

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