Mailing List


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...

Please click on the links below to download, print and assemble (instructions in slideshow above) Vanessa Hodgkinson’s For the Motherboard: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, typeset by James Bridle    LXIX   But obsolete Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this Transparency-grid of Nights and Days; Hither and thither tweets, and posts, and slays, And one by one back in the Hard Drive lays   **   But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays  Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;    Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,  And one by one back in the Closet lays   Rubáiyát Layout 1 Rubáiyát Layout 2     A Note on the Text by Vanessa Hodgkinson   The Rubáiyát that I own is one given to me over a decade ago when I lived in Kuwait A modest copy bound in plasticised leather, it is cheap but speaks of the sumptuousness of its genealogy Of ‘travelling size’, it is like a bloated cheap postcard Every verse is surrounded by a repeated border of flowers that have long since been abstracted beyond recognition of anything natural The paper is sleek; a biro slides over it without leaving much more than an oily smudge   This Rubáiyát is special to me because it is a dual translation of the original Persian verse into French and English While I couldn’t appreciate the Persian, I was being given a double window of opportunity in both French and English, my maternal and paternal tongues It acted as a playful reminder of my inability to master Arabic, let alone Persian, despite moving to Kuwait to do so   I often compare my pidgin Arabic to my pidgin HTML These languages intrigue me but I am locked out of their possibility Despite my best intentions I am never going to master them I recognise forms, sequences, ways in which they coagulate to have meaning They both contain a fundamental logic that I admire and wish I could possess What kind of person might I be if I did read and write in Arabic and was proficient in computer programming! We can only shudder at the thought But the reality is that despite these languages being constantly

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...

READ NEXT

Art

August 2017

Becoming Alice Neel

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...

Art

Issue No. 2

From Back Home

J. H. Engstrom

Art

Issue No. 2

In his collection From Back Home the Swedish photographer JH Engström traced his childhood memories back to the province...

Interview

March 2011

Interview with DBC Pierre

Ben Eastham

Interview

March 2011

DBC Pierre first came to the attention of the world with the publication of Vernon God Little in 2003. This...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required