In my continuing quest to write with some regularity today I bring you a couple of things that I really like. Many of these items and articles are the things that have kept me going during lockdown.
In my continuing quest to write with some regularity today I bring you a couple of things that I really like. Many of these items and articles are the things that have kept me going during lockdown.
So.
I’ve not posted for a while.
I visited the Tate Liverpool’s Keith Haring exhibition this week, and took the attached photographs.
This is the first staging of Haring’s work on this scale in the UK. Given that his work is EVERYWHERE, from socks and film posters, to Lacoste polo shirts, I half expected to be underwhelmed, due to the nature of desensitisation that often comes with over saturation. Alas, I needn’t have worried, with the show a genuine triumph, and as great an advert for Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction as ever I’ve seen. It’s a powerful, moving experience, and one that I would wholeheartedly recommend one takes in prior to the show closing in November.
I don’t know what this blog is. I’ve written about art and film for over ten years and have always needed a platform. Recently though, I have begun to look away from screens in general, spending less time on social media, and less time interacting with content online. Where once the smartphone distracted, books are back, and I’m spending more time sat in front of films rather than discussing them on twitter.
Professionally I’ve shifted quite dramatically in the last 18 months too, and, as is no doubt eminently relatable, work dominates much of my time. So drastic was the shift in professions that I’ve found myself engrossed in learning again, and am immersing myself in design-related theory when not in the office. I’ve shifted politically too (well, slid), and am now a bona-member of the Green Party.

This is all to say that I *think* this blog should be about all of the things that interest and excite me. It should be about design, culture, art and cinema, and of literature, fashion, interesting music and the world at large. It *should* be about progressive politics on an intimate level, as per my personal mantra in the otherwise overwhelming age of Donald Trump and Brexit. I’m quite the optimist, but the world feels in a really bad place at the minute, between the state of the environment and our blusterous political leaders: I’m trying to focus on the world from my doorstep, and affect change that way. I want this outlet to be an extension of all of those things.

It is with a note of sadness that I acknowledge the passing in to out-of-print status of Eureka Entertainment’s home video release of Richard Fleischer’s Violent Saturday, which was the first such release of any real note that I worked on.
I think it’s really important that films like this remain accessible to all, so it’s a shame to see it’s run finally sell out. I don’t think there are any plans to reissue it.
Conversely, my latest home video release, a lavish new edition of Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three, was released this past Monday. The initial run comes equipped with a special slipcover. It can be found here.

I had to change the time on my wristwatch this morning. The clocks went forward, you see.