February 2017

Few exhibitions have been as anticipated as the current Francis Picabia retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

During dark times, we are drawn to dark books. Threats of chaos and futility skyrocket sales of nihilistic fictions like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

As Smith sang the words, she appeared a disused vessel, ruined by the trauma of modernity. Her eyes were in a squint, her collar, a prairie preacher’s, was plain.

Blind Spot smashes multiple genres into a single space, blending and fusing romance, thriller and existentialist novel into a hybrid entity. Its form tests the notion that ​there is a singular aspect to the world.

Now more than ever, it is crucial that we stand up to and reject this normalization of racism and populist, far-right ideology. That we reject the narratives of the far and extreme right.

While on the Wapping picket line opposing Murdoch, I was inspired by the best piece of street poetry that I’ve ever heard, when an old cockney printer shouted at a scab ‘you’re so low you could walk under a snake, wearing a top ‘at’.