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Rye Dag Holmboe
Rye Dag Holmboe is a writer and PhD candidate in History of Art at University College, London. He has recently co-authored and co-edited the book JocJonJosch: Hand in Foot, published by the Sion Art Museum, Switzerland (2013). He has recently edited Jolene, an artist's book which brings together the works of the poet Rachael Allen and the photographer Guy Gormley, which will be published later this year. His writings have appeared in The White Review, Art Licks and in academic journals.

Articles Available Online


Art and its Functions: Recent Work by Luke Hart

Art

June 2016

Rye Dag Holmboe

Art

June 2016

Luke Hart’s Wall, recently on display at London’s William Benington Gallery, is a single, large-scale sculpture composed of a series of steel tubes held...

Art

February 2015

Filthy Lucre

Rye Dag Holmboe

Art

February 2015

White silhouettes sway against softly gradated backgrounds: blues, purples, yellows and pinks. The painted palm trees are tacky and...

The woman in Graham Little’s Untitled (Mother and Baby) (2019) sits in a bathroom of stone curves and oblong cavities Behind her the view is impeccable: the sea a nacreous blend that accumulates in the sky, save frail crests of distant mountains Pull back, and the room is sterile and tepid A tall Emile Gallé vase hosts white lilies, a plump hobnail glass bottle rests beside a peacock blue decanter Think patchouli, invoke mimosa The bath is drawn; the water waits The shower pipe of chrome tips its heron-esque neck Smiling in her kingfisher blue gown she cradles her clothed babe, her nipple, untouched, only just bare enough for suckling   Little’s immaculate and labour intensive works, on show at Alison Jacques Gallery, take months to complete Each composition emanates a weird, soporific ache Little says of his paintings of women: ‘for a while I can be the woman in that world … I think that’s why they’re all so well honed; I completely immerse myself in that dream’ Undoubtedly, it is a specific kind of woman in a specific world: as perfected and marvelled at as a Fabergé egg This dream evolved during his upbringing in Dundee, when the ravishing chiffons, innocuous gazes and orchidaceous faces of fashion photography enraptured his mind Around 2000, he began rendering photographs from pages of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and mid-1970-80s issues of Burda Moden, first in pencil and later in a mix of pencil and gouache Since then, Little’s paintings have matured into their own independent realities, though they retain the nostalgic style of pre-Raphaelite daze and editorial torpor Distinct as lockets yet seductive as voids, all are masterly examples of perfumed paralysis   In Untitled (Wood) (2019), three young women lounge in grass near a fern-strewn wood Here, time is modulated Each figure belongs to their own era, shown in profile so their alternate perspectives never meet The girl on the right in a 1970s buttercup knit holds a recorder, in allusion to folk traditions popular during the period The middle girl clasps her basket of reaped possessions: conkers, blackberries, heaps of hazelnuts, navy and

Contributor

August 2014

Rye Dag Holmboe

Contributor

August 2014

Rye Dag Holmboe is a writer and PhD candidate in History of Art at University College, London. He has...

feature

October 2012

Pressed Up Against the Immediate

Rye Dag Holmboe

feature

October 2012

The author Philip Pullman recently criticised the overuse of the present tense in contemporary literature, a criticism he stretched...

Existere: Documenting Performance Art

feature

September 2012

David Gothard

Jo Melvin

John James

Rye Dag Holmboe

feature

September 2012

The following conversation was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in May 2012. The event took place almost a year after a...
Gabriel Orozco: Cosmic Matter and Other Leftovers

Art

March 2011

Rye Dag Holmboe

Art

March 2011

‘To live,’ writes Walter Benjamin, ‘means to leave traces’. As one might expect, Benjamin’s observation is not without a certain melancholy. Traces are lost...

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fiction

November 2016

The Miserablist

Anne Boyer

fiction

November 2016

This vision was strongly nebulous, an indeterminate but bold reaction only because it was so much like one of...

Prize Entry

April 2015

Les Archives du Coeur

Paul McQuade

Prize Entry

April 2015

The bike wheels skit and bounce on the loose dirt path. The smell of hot rubber and the smell...

Interview

Issue No. 11

Interview with Philippe Parreno

Ben Eastham

Interview

Issue No. 11

It is the standard procedure, when visiting someone in central Paris, to ask in advance for the door code...

 

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