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Robert Assaye
Robert Assaye is a writer and critic living in London.

Articles Available Online


Issy Wood, When You I Feel

Art Review

December 2017

Robert Assaye

Art Review

December 2017

At the centre of Issy Wood’s solo exhibition at Carlos/Ishikawa is a room-within-a room. The division of the gallery into two viewing spaces –...

Art

April 2017

'Learning from Athens'

Robert Assaye

Art

April 2017

The history of Documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition founded in the German city of Kassel in 1955, is...

The following text is the condensed result of over ninety hours of dialogue with Ricardo Melogno, recorded between November 2014 and December 2015 The conversations were much longer and more disparate, and the topics were covered with less continuity and greater chaos than in the current text My edits respect the words of the interviewee while compressing, grouping and organising them chronologically and thematically, with the goal of providing structure to his story I believe I have respected the concepts expounded by Ricardo, but I take full responsibility for any differences or mistakes arising from the editing process C B   TURNING TOWARDS THE DARKNESS   ‘I was told that someone saw you levitate’   [Melogno furrows his brow, smiles with amusement]   ‘Who?’   ‘Someone who knew you from Unit 20 and was convicted again They brought him here and when he saw you, he asked to be kept as far away from you as possible He said that you were evil, and that he had seen you levitate’   ‘Oh, I know who that is, ha ha Well, you see, that kid’s real impressionable Among other major issues he has   Here’s the thing with me Inside the prison, things pass from mouth to mouth and they start adding up Over the years it’s sort of snowballed Even now, when they send in the search parties (they’re not guards from here, but from the ‘regular’ prison, and they come every two or three months) they find the shrine in my cell with all the offerings and the candles, they say: ‘Old man, what are you into here? What’s all this strange stuff?’ But these guys are more modern these days, they ask more out of curiosity, not out of fear   [On his left arm he has a tattoo with three symbols on top of each other: at the top is a 666, in the middle an inverted crucifix and on the bottom a reversed swastika The line of symbols is flanked by two snakes writhing rampantly from left to right]   ‘Why the reversed swastika?’   ‘The regular swastika, the one used by the Nazis, represents turning towards the sun, towards the light So I got mine

Contributor

August 2014

Robert Assaye

Contributor

August 2014

Robert Assaye is a writer and critic living in London.

New Communities

Art

January 2017

Robert Assaye

Art

January 2017

DeviantArt is the world’s ‘largest online community of artists and art-lovers’ and its thirteenth largest social network. Its forty million members contribute to a...
The Land Art of Julie Brook

Art

Issue No. 4

Robert Assaye

Art

Issue No. 4

Julie Brook works with the land. Over the past twenty years she has lived and worked in a succession of inhospitable locations, creating sculptures...

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fiction

January 2014

The Black Lake

Hella S. Haasse

TR. Ina Rilke

fiction

January 2014

Oeroeg was my friend. When I think back on my childhood and adolescence, an image of Oeroeg invariably rises...

feature

July 2015

Talk Into My Bullet Hole

Rose McLaren

feature

July 2015

‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for...

Interview

October 2013

Interview with Chris Petit

Hannah Gregory

Interview

October 2013

Chris Petit likes driving. Most of his films, from his first Radio On (1979), to London Orbital (with Iain...

 

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