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...

Looking back at Harmondsworth as he left, after 52 days inside, Amir was struck by how isolated the detention centre seemed Set back from the A4, it runs along the northern boundary wall of Heathrow, separated from the road by a car park and shielded from view by a line of houses and trees ‘The location is such that nobody can see you,’ he told me, a year after his release ‘This is how they make you feel cut off’   A year and a half ago I was scrolling aimlessly on the internet when I came across a simple website called ‘Detained Voices’, consisting of a series of short quotations from people who were being detained in ‘immigration removal centres’ in the UK Reading these disturbing fragments of testimony started me on a path that eventually put me opposite Amir in a Costa coffee shop in Stratford, as he told me about life in Harmondsworth   As I’ve learnt more about immigration detention I have become increasingly mystified by the place it occupies in our national discourse A set of nine prison-like buildings dotted around the country, these immigration removal centres are a recent phenomenon, yet already feel like part of the national furniture Harmondsworth, the first purpose-built immigration detention centre in the UK, was constructed in 1970 on the fringes of Heathrow, the country’s largest airport It had a capacity of 44 Over the eighties and nineties more and more facilities popped up around the country, until a burst of building under New Labour after the millennium brought the total number of places in these centres to just over 4,000 today   I became obsessed with the history of detention and with the building of Harmondsworth itself Rebuilt and expanded in 2001, it is now the largest detention centre in Europe I know which architectural practice designed the building (HLM Architects), who manufactured the heavy iron security doors (Lloyd Worrel Ironmongery), how much the retrofitted sprinkler system cost (£17 million) and who provided the toilets lacking in ligature points (The Plumb Centre) I learnt what ligature points are I learnt about the seven

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

fiction

April 2013

Towards White, 1975

Scott Morris

fiction

April 2013

In the morning, the square was white. Voula’s hair was white. A pigeon on a bronze horse shifted, sent...

Art

July 2011

Interview with Steven Shearer

Vanessa Nicholas

Art

July 2011

Canada’s representative at the 54th Venice Beinnale is Steven Shearer, a soft-spoken and mild-mannered Vancouver-based artist whose work delves...

poetry

Issue No. 2

The Brothel

Kit Buchan

poetry

Issue No. 2

I unearthed a little brothel in the spring of forty-three, It was captained by a midwife who was ninety...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required