Work

Originally published in Art in America magazine in December 2017.

Paola Antonelli has described the MoMA exhibition “Items: Is Fashion Modern?” as a show of the “super normal.” Nearly every visitor will be wearing variations on the very objects that are on display. It is a risky project—and what it risks is being boring.

Originally published in Disegno in December 2017.

It’s early days yet, but it looks as though the sheer awfulness of recent events is ushering in another vital age of protest design.

Originally published in frieze online, December 2017.

The website Scary Mommy remarks that the Everyday Objects collection “is here to confuse you and make you feel poor.” Well, yes – but no more so than a lot of contemporary art is.

A previously unpublished essay, inspired by Pryde’s nomination for the Turner prize in 2016.

Commissioned for the website Various Small Fires in 2013. 

A photographer’s wagon stands stock-still, arrested in the midst of a long drag across the wide-open reaches of America. Four mules – famous for their bloody-mindedness – have swerved from their trajectory, doubling back along their plodding tracks. The wagon’s U-turn is marked in a great double sweep along the ground, a double swathe of sand displaced by the wooden wheels.

As published in Disegno, 23 June 2017

For about four decades now, on occasion, members of the design community have been receiving a slim black volume tucked into their morning post... The latest is a masterpiece.

Written for a publication associated with an exhibition at Raven Row, London, entitled “Unto This Last”– a title borrowed from John Ruskin.  

Originally published in Afterall magazine in 2013.

Commissioned by Artforum, this review never saw the light because of publishing reschedules. It is presented here for the first time.

In the annals of overlooked artists, Grebenak is an extreme case. Working in an era when art world acceptance was hard to come by for women even in the best of circumstances, she doubled her marginality by choosing a medium that was relegated firmly to the “minor” arts. In the end, her work would be almost entirely erased from art history

There is an astonishing scene in the new documentary Do Not Resist, in which an enormous military vehicle drives slowly down a side street in a Wisconsin suburb. It is thickly armored, the color of desert sand, and the size of a tank—or for that matter, nearly the size of the houses it rolls past

Published in Crafts Magazine in 2016, in response to the exhibition Radical Craft at Pallant House.

London designers Patrik Fredrikson and Ian Stallard are deeply invested in material experimentation as a way of generating form. My monographic book on their work, surveying their career from the couple’s first meeting at Central St. Martin’s through to the their most recent work, is published in 2017 by Skira.  Following is an excerpt to the volume’s introduction.

Commissioned by curator Brendan Cormier of the Victoria and Albert Museum for 'Values of Design,' published on the opening of the V&A Gallery in Shekou, China.