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Rosanna Mclaughlin
Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


The Pious and the Pommery

Essay

Issue No. 18

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

Issue No. 18

I.   Where is the champagne? On second thoughts this is not entirely the right question. The champagne is in the ice trough, on...

Essay

April 2019

Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

April 2019

‘Avoid me not!’ ‘Avoid me not!’                                   Narcissus   Let me describe a GIF I’ve been watching. A lot....

Walking into Surrender, Jenkin van Zyl’s installation in which a film loops on the wall of a mock-up of a motel room, I found the space was full of other viewers Some were lying on beds – just big enough for two, sheets tucked in, pristine white The atmosphere was strange, informed by the transience and intimacy of the motel room, itself a mirror to one of the locations that appears in van Zyl’s film There was intimacy here, but uncertainty as well The uncanny world of Surrender gets under the skin, hinting at the horror that’s to come   One of the curious things about watching artist films and installations is the ability a viewer has to enter part way through, to engage with imperfect knowledge Surrender, however, doesn’t stop: there are no endings or opening credits At the centre of the film is Grace, a human-rat hybrid, who exists as one half of a pair, a fraught union that van Zyl uses as a springboard for several themes They are referred to as One-Half-of-Grace throughout the film (in each dancing duo, both partners are referred to by a shared name) – the first step Surrender takes in deconstructing ideas of individual identity Snippets of Grace’s thoughts appear on screen in lines of slanted text, akin to intertitles, propelling the narrative forward  Grace first arrives at The Marathon, the competition around which the film revolves, via limousine, in which they fall asleep, as fireworks play on a TV screen The text reveals that entering the competition offers them ‘the chance to redo, to disappear If only briefly’ The spaces in which The Marathon takes place are perfect for disappearing into: motel rooms; deserted corridors Even The Ballroom itself, where the actual dancing takes place, has an anonymous quality to it: a stage with a familiar red curtain (the

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Ten Years at Garage Moscow

Art Review

November 2018

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art Review

November 2018

When I arrive in Moscow, I am picked up from the airport by Roman, a patriotic taxi driver sent to collect me courtesy of...
Becoming Alice Neel

Art

August 2017

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel was the Matisse of the...

READ NEXT

feature

August 2017

What Makes A Gallery Programme?

Pac Pobric

feature

August 2017

Of his art dealer, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Pablo Picasso once wondered, ‘What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn’t...

fiction

January 2015

The Vegetarian

Han Kang

TR. Deborah Smith

fiction

January 2015

Originally published as three separate novellas, the second of which secured the prestigious Yi Sang prize, The Vegetarian has...

Prize Entry

April 2016

DATE NIGHT

Chris Newlove Horton

Prize Entry

April 2016

He said, ‘Tell me about yourself.’ He said, ‘Tell me about you.’ He said, ‘Tell me everything. I’m interested.’...

 

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