Latest posts
Dispatch from the BFI London Film Festival 2025
The standout films from the BFI London Film Festival 2025 were all from seasoned directors whose oeuvre could not be more distinguished from each other. From the rippling realism of Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident to Joachim Trier’s beautifully perceptive Sentimental Value, and Park Chan-wook’s darkly comic No Other Choice, I was whisked…
How to Make Rodrigo Cervantes’ Sweet, Historic Garibaldi Pastries
I am back on the pan dulce train, keep craving it, and pushing my wife to help me. But this time it’s personal. El Globo Panadería was established in Mexico City in 1884 by an Italian family of bakers. Without diving too much into history, Italy sucked at that time and the Mexican dictator Porfirio…
“A Sense of Familiar Disorientation”: In Conversation with Candice Lin
On the top-floor of Whitechapel Gallery, an elaborate cardboard labyrinth rises from the ground. The maker of this immersive installation, American artist Candice Lin’s practice has long been rooted in storytelling, exploring how colonial legacies, social histories, and personal grief coexist in the present tense. Lin has exhibited widely with major exhibitions at the Jameel…
TERRA 2025: Contemporary Art Takes Root in Burgundy
Arriving in Beaune in late October feels like stepping into a painting. En route to the cobblestoned town, widely considered to be the wine capital of Burgundy, vineyards stretch along the roadside. By now, the leaves are turning to shades of gold and rust. I reach this idyll just in time for sunset. The low…
Interviews
Val Lee: The Presence of Solitude
“Each time I start a work, I think about it as choreographing a unique universe shaped by the possibilities of that moment,” Taiwanese artist and filmmaker Val Lee says. Hovering between worlds, Lee’s practice straddles cinema and performance, the visible and the imagined, the intimate and the collective. At the Hayward Gallery’s HENI Project Space,…
Portals, Paradox, and Performance: In Conversation with Chri...
Known as much for her unpredictable DJ sets as for her conceptual installations, Paris-based artist, DJ and producer Christelle Oyiri moves fluently between sound, performance and image. Last month, Oyiri arrived in Berlin with Dead God Flow, her first installation in the city, presented by LAS Art Foundation and opened during Berlin Art Week. The…
“Art Fairs Will Increasingly Need to Think Beyond Being Just...
When Touria El Glaoui founded 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in 2013, she admits she had “big hopes” for the venture, but even she could not have imagined the scale of what it has become. Now in its 13th London edition, the fair returns to Somerset House this October with more than 50 international exhibitors,…
Five Books to Read Right Now
Alas, nothing particularly spooky. But here are five recommendations to read as we move into this next month. BIG KISS, BYE BYE, Claire-Louise Bennett Fitzcarraldo Editions, pp. 168 Claire-Louise Bennett is the author of critically acclaimed works of auto-fiction Pond (2015) and Checkout 19 (2021), which respectively detail the daily workings of a writer’s life;…
At Home in London With NTS Founder Femi Adeyemi
Femi Adeyemi is one of the most important figures working in the U.K. music industry today. The London-based collector and DJ-turned-blogger founded the digital radio platform NTS in 2011, an evolution of the mixtapes he was collating and creating for the internet’s nascent music communities. Aimed at those whose interests he felt were underrepresented by…
Five Unique Artist Residencies with Application Deadlines in November
From ocean labs in Portugal to a riad in Marrakech, the below residencies – all with November 2025 deadlines – invite artists to explore the intersections of art, science, community, and place. Constellations ° Residency – UK UP Projects and the Royal Parks offer a six-month residency at Greenwich Park for an artist to develop…
From AlUla to Sadler’s Wells: Inside Akram Khan and Manal AlDowayan’s ‘Thikra’
“It is in this shared space of remembering that healing grows and we reconnect to something larger than ourselves,” Akram Khan tells me, discussing his latest work, Thikra, made in collaboration with Saudi artist Manal AlDowayan – who represented her country at the Venice Biennale last year. Born out of the vast expanse of AlUla’s…
Guides
What to See At Frieze London 2025
Open now and running until Sunday 19 October, Frieze’s flagship fair returns to London bringing together 168 leading galleries from 43 countries, underscoring the fair’s position as one of the most international in the world. Reflecting London’s character as a city shaped by global perspectives, the fair foregrounds new and diverse voices, capturing the breadth…
Eating and Exploring in the Beautiful Alpine Town of Annecy
Almost 20 years ago, I spent a dreamy summer living with a host family in the Alpine town of Annecy, situated on one of Europe’s most magnificent lakes. The town is, in many ways, unchanged since then –crisscrossed by flowerbox-lined canals an almost luminescent shade of blue, and ever popular with package tourists in safari gear….
Available Works Returns to WSA for a Weekend of Print, Desig...
Available Works is back, and it’s once again turning WSA’s industrial aerie at 180 Maiden Lane into a buzzy celebration of print, design, and creative culture. From 10-12 October 2025, the fair returns for its fifth edition — a weekend-long convergence of art, rare books, independent publishing, and design, presented by Something Special Studios, WSA,…
Jean Besnard: Tactility as Modernism
Founded by Mason Vincent and Jack Redpath, Darling is a furniture studio dedicated to curating an ever-changing selection of rare objects and collectible design pieces. From bases in Sydney and New York, the pair have developed a studio that sources, restores, and recontextualises collectible furniture and objects from across Europe, while championing a new generation of designers…
Nick Cave and Laura Mott in Conversation: Inside the Duo’s Love Letter to Detroit
Nearly a decade ago, artist Nick Cave and curator Laura Mott transformed Detroit with Here Hear, a citywide collaboration that brought together and celebrated performance, music, and community. A landmark cultural moment, the project didn’t just fill spaces; it reimagined how an entire city thought about art as a collective act. Now, the pair reunite…
Lost Memories of the CDMX Cantina: Rodrigo Cervantes’ Meatballs al Chipotle
I have never actually worked an office job – the one with a suit and tie or 9-to-5 kind of thing. The closest I’ve ever been to that world is when I worked in a production company, back in Mexico, as a visual researcher. Now, I don’t even know if that company or role exists…
From the Archive: Revisiting the Rise of Grace Wales Bonner
Announced today, Hermès’ appointment of Grace Wales Bonner as Creative Director of Menswear marks the recognition of a designer who has long deserved the chance to lead a maison. As the first Black female creative director of a major fashion house, her role is both a significant milestone and a welcome breath of fresh air…
From The Archive
Meet Harris Dickinson, the Compelling Lead Actor of ‘B...
British actor Harris Dickinson plays the lead role in Eliza Hittman’s critically acclaimed Beach Rats, which chronicles a young man’s struggle with his sexuality over the course of a summer, amid the stultifying machismo of outer Brooklyn. Opening in select theatres on 24 November, the film follows Frankie, portrayed by Dickinson, as he roams the…
Interview: Ernesto Neto On Gravity, Togetherness & The ...
Since the 1990s, Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto has produced an inimitable body of work that is in equal parts informed by sensuality and spirituality. Inspired by the Brazilian Conceptualists Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, as well as biomorphism, Minimalism and Arte Povera, Neto’s works engage all of our senses while asserting the human body as…
SC Exclusive: Notes on a Siren — a Film Essay by Justice Jam...
Director Justice Jamal Jones joins myth with modern themes of Black queerness and trans identity in their latest film, Notes on a Siren. Presented by Something Curated, and exclusively premiering on the site, the film was shot on location at Palm Heights in Grand Cayman. Jones expands on the thinking behind their mesmerising work below….