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Philippa Snow
Philippa Snow is a critic and essayist. Her work has appeared in publications including ArtforumThe Los Angeles Review of BooksArtReviewFriezeVogueThe NationThe New Statesman, and The New Republic. Her first book, Which As You Know Means Violence, is out now with Repeater, and she is currently working on an essay collection about famous women.  

Articles Available Online


You Don’t Think God Is Sexy?

Film Review

January 2023

Philippa Snow

Film Review

January 2023

On the most literal level, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s elliptical, spiritual-cum-sensual movie Teorema (1968) is about an entire family being driven to distraction by their...

Essay

Issue No. 31

It's Terrible The Things I Have To Do To Be Me

Philippa Snow

Essay

Issue No. 31

Here was a woman who had modelled her life so closely on Marilyn Monroe’s that doing so eventually helped...

Leo had stopped the car and sat talking at the dash He talked like he didn’t want to say any of it, but at the same time he seemed in a hurry to get it out, to reach the end of what he was telling her He was wired with excitement and shame, perched at the brink of a new life now, Jolanta understood as much   She sat in the back seat with her handbag Leo wouldn’t look at her, he kept his eyes straight on the street, the skip outside the neighbours’ house Jolanta looked at him in the rearview, looked hard at the black of his sunglasses   ‘I’ll help you,’ he said, finally   Where the mirror cut off his jaw hung the prayer beads that he had kept after his father died, smooth and dry like his voice, like cockroaches in the sun   Help her? she thought; a sock for the dismembered, and his help for her   She keeps her job at the campsite, beats dawn without an alarm clock now When the motion detector spots her, fluorescent lights suck the dark from the room The white tiles are glossed like wet teeth The floor is littered with paper towels and dragged in leaves The stalls smell of urine She opens the cupboard marked Private, plastic bottles rattling as she hoicks the cleaning cart over the threshold   There are different kinds of shit stains The darker the stain, the longer and harder she must rub with the toilet brush to get the porcelain shining like crockery again A drop flies up in her face, a cold mouche on her lip She wipes it off on the shoulder of her t-shirt and works her way down the stalls Sweat tickles her spine   She continues going into reception to sign off her shifts At the check-in desk, Eva is sitting with her head in her hand She is wearing a blouse with First Camp stitched on the back and a name tag pinned on the front A round office lamp hangs like an unlit gloria above her head   Behind Eva’s swivel chair is the shelf with the

Contributor

November 2018

Philippa Snow

Contributor

November 2018

Philippa Snow is a critic and essayist. Her work has appeared in publications including Artforum, The Los Angeles Review of Books, ArtReview, Frieze, Vogue, The...

Essay

January 2021

An Uneasy Girl

Philippa Snow

Essay

January 2021

Even before Lucie arrives holding a shotgun, we know that the perfect family in this huge suburban house are...

Brilliant Muscles

Essay

December 2019

Philippa Snow

Essay

December 2019

‘Lindsay Lohan’s new film,’ I told almost everyone I spoke to for about two months earlier this year, ‘is about werewolf detectives.’ Nobody seemed...
Evita Vasiljeva, POSTCRETE

Art Review

February 2019

Philippa Snow

Art Review

February 2019

Lower.Green is situated in the unlikely surroundings of a near-dead mall in Norwich. It is not just any mall, but Anglia Square Shopping Centre:...
Gabriele Beveridge, Live Dead World

Art Review

November 2018

Philippa Snow

Art Review

November 2018

Several months ago, I went to a salon so small and so identikit that I do not recall the name, and against every sane...

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poetry

November 2011

One Night Without Incident

Eoghan Walls

poetry

November 2011

Freak July mists blurred all from Portsmouth to Reading in a late summer sky turned wholly unfit for bombing,...

feature

January 2011

Futures Past: Monumental Memorials of Modern Berlin

Leila Peacock

feature

January 2011

Cities display a worship of history in the monuments and memorials that they choose to erect, through which the...

Art

November 2012

Film: Difficulties in Impression Management

Patrick Goddard

Art

November 2012

Difficulties in Impression Management, 2012 Running time 13’09”

 

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