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Rose McLaren

Rose McLaren is an artist in London.



Articles Available Online


Talk Into My Bullet Hole

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July 2015

Rose McLaren

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July 2015

‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for those people?’ ‘Oh, I don’t...

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May 2014

Art Does Not Know a Beyond: On Karl Ove Knausgaard

Rose McLaren

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May 2014

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle has an oddly medieval form: a cycle, composed of six auto-biographical books about the...

We’re prone to speak as if dreaming were either too much or nothing at all One person’s ‘dreamer’ is a radical, someone who’d storm an old order; another’s is irresponsible, their head in the clouds The Greek artist Sofia Stevi studies both kinds of dreamer In ‘turning forty winks into a decade’ at Gateshead’s BALTIC, her first solo show in the UK, scenes painted in Japanese ink on white cotton appear like snapshots from a nocturnal imagination Bodies arrive as disassembled parts, emerging and receding again through washes of vibrant colour The human figure is fragmented, distorted – you catch the shapes of noses, fingers, and breasts, as if they were on the move   The world of Stevi’s paintings is full of cartoonish gusts and brilliant flashes Take the bursts of air that swirl around the giant hand in just like honey (2016), as it gently pinches a fleshy ball The painting pleads for comic release: there are hints of honking noses and farting clouds But the humour is tempered by a suggestion of violence The fingernail looks sharp, and the balls recoil, tender to the touch   Stevi’s canvases, like good therapists, await your version of events (After all, dreams have a multiple logic; there’s no perfect way to describe how they look) The amorphous shapes in are we ever really in control (2017) and history is not kind (2016) could be human innards or wishbones, and the artist’s use of colour does little to clarify the tone: in the former, the contours are swamped by darkness, and in the latter, they line up proudly in pink Elsewhere, the uncertain moods of Stevi’s figures keep you guessing With foliage whipping around them, the sisterly bodies of lizzie & laura (2017) are conjoined in a boxy dress It’s open to the viewer as to whether they are caged by their outfits, or bound together by love   In mary’s pink (2017) a cluster of organic shapes occupy the interstice between tulips and cervixes, gesturing to the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe Beside a bulb of garlic and a sharp knife in dinner in vienna I (2016),

Contributor

August 2014

Rose McLaren

Contributor

August 2014

Rose McLaren is an artist in London.

The Prosaic Sublime of Béla Tarr

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Issue No. 6

Rose McLaren

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Issue No. 6

I have to recognise it’s cosmical; the shit is cosmical. It’s not just social, it’s not just ontological, it’s really huge. And that’s why we...
Stalker, Writer or Professor? Geoff Dyer's Zona and Genre

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February 2012

Rose McLaren

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February 2012

‘So what kind of a writer am I, reduced to writing a summary of a film?’ wonders Geoff Dyer half way through Zona. Such...

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fiction

Issue No. 8

Estate

China Miéville

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Issue No. 8

Two nights running I woke up with my heart going crazy. The first time, as I lay there in...

Art

May 2016

Sharon Hayes

Edwina Attlee

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May 2016

Sharon Hayes’ In My Little Corner of the World, Anyone Would Love You at Studio Voltaire features a five-channel...

Art

September 2011

Interview with Cornelia Parker

Lowenna Waters

Art

September 2011

Cornelia Parker has over the past twenty years carved out a reputation as one of Britain’s most respected sculptors...

 

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