Very excited to announce that Verdurin will publish THE STUD by Liam Blackford later this year. In a breakaway hyperliberal Republic of Western Australia confronting a catastrophic birthrate collapse, the state turns reproduction into policy. Martina, a high-powered Perth lawyer, /

notes and notices: Pavel Brăila: On the Thousand and Second Night, Moldova pavilion in Venice ★★★★☆ Who knew that total temporal collapse would manifest magic. Read on: petitpoi.net/pavel-braila...

This Wednesday at Verdurin: The battle for the soul in late-stage Babylon. Join the author of “Late-Stage Babylon” Angie Speaks in a conversation with Nina Power as they scrutinise the past decade’s “ontological shock” and the rise of the Jungian Antichrist. 📅 20 May, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/9kqHLrt

notes and notices: Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison, Jasmine Gregory: Genuine Fake Premium Economy at ICA ★★★☆☆ Reorienting contemporary art to questions of labour and class, as this exhibition purports to, would be outright reactionary... Read on: buff.ly/9E4Hrgz

notes and notices: Belarus Free Theatre: Official. Unofficial. in Venice ★★☆☆☆ It feels heartless to suggest that Belarus Free Theatre’s entry into the Biennale, whose object is explicitly propagandistic, curates with as heavy a hand as Alexander Lukashenko... Read on: petitpoi.net/official-uno...

notes and notices: Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski: Liquid Tongues at the Polish pavilion, Venice ★★☆☆☆ Liquid Tongues is a collaboration between two artists and a community choir of deaf and hearing people. Despite drawing on many ideas... Read on: petitpoi.net/liquid-tongu...

Coming up at Verdurin: History’s back, baby! With @bungacast.bsky.social and guests The “end of history” is over. Liberal democracy as the final form of human organisation? Pah! The arc of history tending towards justice? Pah!

notes and notices: Merike Estna: The House of Leaking Sky at the Estonian pavilion in Venice ★★☆☆☆ Is painting better than basketball? Estna’s Estonian pavilion is one of those ‘come back in three months’ dos... Read on: buff.ly/xhM5fG3

Next week at Verdurin: The Counterfeit Spirit with Angie Speaks We live in a culture gorged in spectacle but starved for meaning — a late-stage Babylon in which spirit and matter cannot find their place.

notes and notices: Oriol Vilanova: Los restos at the Spanish pavilion, Venice ★★★★☆ In what at first looks like a gimmick, Vilanova has filled the Spanish pavilion’s walls with many thousands of vintage postcards... Read on:

"In Minor Keys" at the Venice Biennale believes the art world’s battles have been won. It's comforting, if monotonous. But it also only an illusion. I reviewed the late Koyo Kough's central Biennale exhibition for The Critic.

The Counterfeit Spirit with Angie Speaks We live in a culture gorged in spectacle but starved for meaning — a late-stage Babylon in which spirit and matter cannot find their place. 📅 20 May, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/ZhzRU7A

We live in a culture gorged in spectacle but starved for meaning — a late-stage Babylon in which spirit and matter cannot find their place. 📅 20 May, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/ZhzRU7A

"Surveying Emin’s lives is like witnessing someone experience ego death, over and again." My review of "A Second Life", a not-quite-retrospective, for The Critic is now online.

One often wonders in Venice whether what’s behind the drywall isn’t better than what’s on it. (Michael Armitage does alright.)

The battle for the soul in Late-Stage Babylon Join Angie Speaks in conversation with Nina Power as they scrutinise the past decade’s “ontological shock”, the rise of the Jungian Antichrist, techno-eschatology, and ways to reintegrate the repressed shadow. 📅 20 May, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/ZhzRU7A

What use is art in a war? I reviewed Imperial War Museum's "Beauty and Destruction", an exhibition of some remarkable London paintings commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, for The Critic.

“Culture isn’t real”, suggests an attendee of last night’s event at Verdurin, but Pierre “remembers people and calls on them by name”. Wrong on both counts: culture exists at the very least because I talk about it incessantly, and I’m famously forgetful. (Thanks for coming!) buff.ly/NiAEkWT

Last night at Verdurin with John Gillam, David Goodhart, and Harrison Pitt.

On doormats today and news stands soon, the May issue of The Critic with my review of Imperial War Museum's excellent "Beauty and Destruction".

Coming up at Verdurin: The Counterfeit Spirit with Angie Speaks We live in a culture gorged in spectacle but starved for meaning — a late-stage Babylon in which spirit and matter cannot find their place. 📅 20 May, 7pm 📍 Verdurin, Hoxton 🎟️ buff.ly/ZhzRU7A

Verdurin is looking for help with organising our events, courses, as well as upcoming exhibitions and publications. Get in touch if you’d like to be involved.

notes and notices: The Music is Black: A British Story at V&A East ★★☆☆☆ Making visual displays about music is hard. This may be why V&A East’s inaugural exhibition, ostensibly celebrating the work of black British musicians, opens with extensive notes on... Read: buff.ly/jKApnau

Next week at Verdurin: The Call of England A special preview screening of John Gillam’s video travelogue and discussion with David Goodhart and Harrison Pitt. 📅 28 April, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/ALT5fYV

The British-Guyanese artist Donald Locke's 1970s practice dwells in black, the colour synonymous both with the absence of any other and the deepest depth of colour saturation. I reviewed Resistant Forms, Locke's retrospective at Camden Art Centre, for The Critic. buff.ly/Kps4gS2

Some recent arrivals at the store. buff.ly/Kuax8Hw

Sign of the times. Social Practice CUNY, a quasi-academic institution promoting artistic activism, has run out of steam. buff.ly/GLLFDpi

"For me, an art critic who was once an art dealer and a faithful adherent of the cult of contemporary art, hindsight is a blessing. But it is also a curse, because it lands me with some responsibility for not halting art’s catastrophic decline." In confess in The Critic. buff.ly/F6E4skx

Gay culture "depends for its vigour, and perhaps for its very existence, on a particular kind of social order. The social order that hosted homosexuality in its earlier stages, as a matter of historical fact, was a mostly Protestant Christian society".

notes and notices: Ain Bailey: The Jamaica Project at Camden Art Centre ★☆☆☆☆ For a composer who believes, according to the gallery’s note, that music constitutes identity, Bailey hardly cares about sound. The bassy backing of 5C Jacques Road, an overlong video record... Read all: buff.ly/onT8afW

The 'I' in LGBTQIA+ is for 'Ivan Illich' David Moulton went on The Book Club from Hell to discuss the gay art of suffering , the topic of his essay in 'Inversion'. buff.ly/3OifTn3

The purveyor of liberal truisms flirts with cancellation.

London is getting a museum of espionage. The Trent Park "House of Secrets" will tell the story "from glittering 1930s social hub to WWII surveillance centre." Can we please have a museum of 2026 surveillance instead? buff.ly/NKdDCTD

Ran Heilbrunn called for the abolition of queer theory, the topic of his chapter in Inversion, in a conversation with Lee Jones and Alex Hochuli at @bungacast.bsky.social HQ. Listen: buff.ly/Nnu72pX

Coming up at Verdurin: The Call of England with John Gillam, Harrison Pitt, and David Goodhart. What would a journey in search of England reveal today? Following H. V. Morton’s travelogue of a hundred years ago, John Gillam captured a country that is unrecognisable.

With disarming regularity, someone emails me with long-form thoughts on a book they bought at Verdurin or something that came up at our events. The pleasure of this always brings tears to my eyes.

If the project of nation-building will take decades, so might the cultural turn. For now, Britain's culture is in suspended animation. I wrote about the anxieties and frustrations of our cultural future for The Critic.

notes and notices: Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations at Whitechapel ★★☆☆☆ Ryan’s bibelot installations do have a charm to them. Through the ground floor gallery’s window, the retrospective looks like a playground... Read on: buff.ly/zUptWG0

On doormats today and on newsstands soon, the April issue of The Critic, with me on my shameful art past. And on Tracey Emin’s.

"It is too early to debunk conspiracy as an organising principle and too late to distinguish conspiracy theory from truth." I reviewed two conspiracist exhibitions — at The Warburg Institute and Pharmakon Bucharest — for The Critic. -- buff.ly/TPD9ENT -- link-in-bio

Reading Paul Kearns's essays on legal understandings of artistic freedom, I am struck by the how poorly applied legal constructs — such as exemptions for artistic expression which courts have repeatedly overlooked in cases where a work of art is considered offensive — have become the societal norm.

Library haul in preparation for a very special event with John Gillam on 28 April.

notes and notices: Julia Phillips: Inside, Before They Speak at Barbican ★★★★☆ No object exists without its double, no form without an opposite. Phillips’s dainty assemblies of ceramic, steel, and PVC tube exist only as much as something else... Read on: buff.ly/0gGHUX5

Here's a selection of the texts in Nina Power's 'Discernment', a course on Taste, Attention, and Literacy. Wow do we make sense of making sense, how we decide, differentiate, and judge? verdur.in/store/tag/di...

Suzanne Treister's long career has attempted both to critique of and embrace technological and scientific paradigms. The only thing these approaches have in common is her idiosyncratic speculative aesthetics. I reviewed her retrospective @modernartoxford.bsky.social for The Critic.

notes and notices: Beatriz González at Barbican ★★★☆☆ The Colombian González spent the 1960s studiously rephrasing European old masters into South America’s collage and print culture. She then applied the same exercise to the early Modernists and Western magazine imagery. Read all buff.ly/NAQTu7B

notes and notices: Isaac Julien: All That Changes You. Metamorphosis at Victoria Miro ★★☆☆☆ There comes a point in a successful artist’s career when questions of legacy overshadow the past... Read all: buff.ly/6H5BQJF

Last night at Verdurin with Neema Parvini and Oliver Bennett, discussing Shakespeare, elites, and power. Preorder 'Foundations of Shakespeare' buff.ly/nZdxFn7

Last night at Verdurin with @sohrabahmari.bsky.social and Alfie Bown. buff.ly/QbmpYpS

Next at Verdurin: The Genital Stage with @sohrabahmari.bsky.social. 📅 10 March, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/UFhQR9P Progress has dismantled many of the prohibitions that ring-fenced sexual desires. But were ‘heteronormative’ Freudian ideas like ‘genitality’ useful after all? With @everydayanalysis.bsky.social.