Work

Previously unpublished.

Nasreen Mohamedi photographs an Indian loom. If this was indeed a found composition, as appears to be the case, then the finding itself was an act of genius.

Originally commissioned by Phillips Auction, December 2017.

A short text on a monument: Peter Voulkos's 1958 masterwork of ceramic sculpture, Rondena.

Originally published with Hyperallergic, December 2017.

In 1996, at the age of 26, Anissa Mack entered every single category in the Durham Agriculture Fair. But there was a big difference between her and the other entrants, and it was not just the volume of her craftwork. Mack was making art.

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A previously unpublished essay, inspired by Pryde’s nomination for the Turner prize in 2016.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

Composed on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the American glass movement, which began in Toledo in 1962, a version of this text was presented as a lecture at the Glass Art Society Conference in 2012. A published version followed in the GAS Journal.

Art in the Making: Artists and Materials from the Studio to Crowdsourcing is a collaborative book project, written together with Julia-Bryan Wilson. Coming at the topic of art-making from two different directions – myself from craft studies, and Julia from postwar art history – we argue for the interpretive relevance of production. Moving from seemingly obvious topics like painting and woodworking to distributed authorship methods, like the hiring of fabricators and online outsourcing, we consider various ways of making art and the impact that productive decisions have on aesthetics and meaning.

In 1919, Marcel Duchamp presented his patron Walter Arensberg with a small quantity of air. It was contained inside a blown glass ampule, which he had purchased from a pharmacist, and was labeled: 50cc of Paris Air.