Edwin Coomasaru | The Courtauld Institute of Art (original) (raw)

Books by Edwin Coomasaru

London: Courtauld Books Online, 2022

What are the politics of picturing the end times? This online, open-access essay collection explo... more What are the politics of picturing the end times? This online, open-access essay collection explores how art and visual culture has imagined Armageddon across the globe from the eighteenth century to the present. The book considers the ways in which apocalypticism has been contested by social conservatives and progressives, drawn on to perpetuate or challenge structures of power. Contributors discuss homophobia and queer utopias, climate change and nuclear anxieties, folk monsters and fears of revolt, imperial violence and anti-colonial imagination, the staging of conflict and disaster, popular culture and fascism, faith and denial in church congregations. Each reveal how a series of contradictions underpin the end times: beginnings and endings, annihilation and revelation.

Journal Articles by Edwin Coomasaru

Art History, 2023

Published posthumously in 1950, queer Sri Lankan photographer Lionel Wendt's photobook Ceylon cra... more Published posthumously in 1950, queer Sri Lankan photographer Lionel Wendt's photobook Ceylon crafted an aesthetic of queer environmental abundance. His photographs, ranging from documentary-style to surrealist-inspired images, were taken between 1933 and 1944, shaped by and contributing to rising waves of national consciousness and anti-colonial movements ahead of the island's independence in 1948. British rule since 1815 had destroyed common land and outlawed homosexuality for being ‘against the order of nature’. Wendt sought to confront and challenge colonial control over both ecology and sexuality, imagining alternative possibilities through both experimental and social realist photography. Other queer representations of the island (by Bevis Bawa, Ernst Haeckel and Edward Carpenter) are considered alongside the photographer's collaboration with queer, anti-imperialist filmmaker Basil Wright. Drawing on a queer ecological methodology and decolonial theory, this essay argues that Ceylon celebrated a queer environmental aesthetic of abundance by picturing Sri Lankan sexuality and landscapes as unbounded by colonial rule.

Third Text, 171, 2021

Since the EU referendum Leavers and Remainers have increasingly used occult metaphors to attack e... more Since the EU referendum Leavers and Remainers have increasingly used occult metaphors to attack each other, as they decry the UK’s drift into ‘uncharted waters’ or descent into ‘tribalism’. How might gender and race shape this current crisis of British identity? In 2017 Rita Duffy created Soften the Border, an installation of hand-knitted votive dolls on the Northern Irish-Irish border. In 2018 Project O exhibited Saved at London’s Somerset House, a video depicting women of colour performing magical rituals in a post-apocalyptic watery wasteland. What might these artworks tell us about the ways in which magic has long been weaponised by patriarchal white supremacy, as well as the ways in which the supernatural has also been used as a form of political resistance? Soften the Border and Saved offer an image of a UK no longer ruling the waves, unable to ‘take back control’ and haunted by ghosts of empire.

Book Chapters by Edwin Coomasaru

Rosie Hermon and Eileen Daly eds., Unchorus (London: Freelands Foundation), 2023

Imagining Apocalypse: Art and the End Times (London: Courtauld Books Online), 2022

Sophie Mesplède and Charlotte Gould eds., 'British Art and the Environment: Changes, Challenges and Responses post-1750' (London: Routledge), 2021

In 2019 artist Ursula Burke exhibited "A False Dawn" in Paris' Irish Cultural Centre, which moved... more In 2019 artist Ursula Burke exhibited "A False Dawn" in Paris' Irish Cultural Centre, which moved to Belfast's Ulster Museum in 2020. Artist Candida Powell-Williams' show "Command Lines" took place in 2019 at Void Derry alongside a site-specific performance, "Sonic Arrangements in the Infinite Fill" (2019), on the Walker Plinth in Derry/Londonderry. Both projects use magical metaphors to consider a feminist politics in the context of Brexit: reflecting on the historical relationship between Ireland and Britain, the legacy of the Northern Irish "Troubles" (1968-98), and the political turmoil unleashed by Brexit. Each was created at a time when the shift of power moved from Britain to Ireland in the midst of EU negotiations, with the former forced to concede to a border in the Irish Sea (creating an economic border within the UK). For centuries Protestants and Catholics living off the land in Ireland practiced supernatural rituals to protect their cattle and livelihoods. This chapter considers the ways in which the Irish and Northern Irish landscape has long been gendered by Irish, Northern Irish or British artists and commentators. Burke and Powell-Williams' otherworldly and surreal landscapes consider what ecological metaphors might mean for the current state of the peace process. [p.213] Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom not in Britain, yet Britain has profoundly shaped and been shaped by it. First colonised in the 12th century, Ireland was partitioned in 1921 by an act passed the previous year. Northern Ireland opted to remain in the UK, Westminster designing and implementing a new border in 1925 which ran through largely rural farmland: at times dividing towns, houses, loughs. Decades later, in 1968 a thirty-year

Book Reviews by Edwin Coomasaru

Oxford Art Journal, 2021

Boydell and Brewer, 2020), 102 colour illns., 370 pp., ISBN 9781783275106, hardback £75.00 [p.483... more Boydell and Brewer, 2020), 102 colour illns., 370 pp., ISBN 9781783275106, hardback £75.00 [p.483] 'It is only by means of art that a permanent revolution can be achieved', claimed socialist and anti-imperialist art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy during a lecture to Newcastle art students in 1913. 1 Born to a Tamil father and English mother in Ceylon, then a British colony, Coomaraswamy moved to the UK as a child-later graduating with a degree in geology and botany from University College London in 1900. After spending years documenting Sri Lankan and Indian material culture through a number of highly influential books, he became the first Keeper of Indian art at Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1917. During his Newcastle address, he advised his audience: …any deep and lasting revolution can only be founded upon a re-education of the sense-sensitiveness of the whole race…It is your task as craftsmen to undertake this long neglected education of the senses, nowadays so much despised, and everywhere sacrificed to the purposes of trade, empire. 2

The Cambridge Humanities Review, 2021

Irish Studies Review, 2016

Exhibition Essays by Edwin Coomasaru

Amrita Jhaveri and Priya Jhaveri eds., Bridge to Lanka: Lionel Wendt, Cassie Machado, Vasantha Yogananthan (Mumbai: Jhaveri Contemporary), 2024

Kandyan musician Amunugama Suramba is mid-movement. He beats a wooden double-headed gata beraya d... more Kandyan musician Amunugama Suramba is mid-movement. He beats a wooden double-headed gata beraya drum, worn around his waist, playing a song with sacred Buddhist associations. 1 He stands on a grassy ridge, the low-angle perspective framing his figure against a dramatic sky. Modernist photographer Lionel Wendt's (1900-44) black-and-white gelatin silver print, Suramba drumming (c.1933-44), is part of a new group show of modern and contemporary Sri Lankan photography at Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai. Exhibited alongside Wendt are Cassie Machado (b.1982) and Vasantha Yogananthan (b.1985), all three of whom have both Sri Lankan and European ancestry, transnationalism having shaped the lives and practices of each. Photography itself can be traced back to 1840s Sri Lanka, its first century almost exclusively in service of colonial rule, depicting essentialised ethnographic types or picturesque landscapes ripe for exploitation. 2 Wendt, Machado, and Yogananthan's experimental aesthetics, by contrast, have sought to challenge the medium's imperial history. Yogananthan's series A Myth of Two Souls (2013-2021) is a contemporary retelling of the Ramayana, an ancient Indian epic text written in stages between the seventh and third centuries BCE. Machado's body of photograms, When Colours Return Home to Light (2024), is an imaginative collaboration with Wendt: employing some of the novel techniques he pioneered, to explore present-day South and Southeast Asian diasporic identities in Europe. 3 Wendt encountered modernist art while living in London between 1919-24, taking up photography from c.1933 after returning to Sri Lanka, engaging with European avant-garde aesthetics while also celebrating the island's heritage. Suramba accompanied Wendt to the UK's capital in 1934 to record the soundtrack for filmmaker Basil Wright's documentary Song of Ceylon (1934), a poetic critique of British colonialism (1796-1948), which was by then nearing its end. 4 Wendt championed Kandyan dance as part of a larger early-twentiethcentury cultural renaissance in Sri Lanka, following art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy's book Medieval Sinhalese Art (1908), which condemned Western imperialism and celebrated Kandyan craft. Kandy was a Sinhalese kingdom ruled in its final decades by Tamil monarchs, who practiced Hinduism and patronised Buddhism. 5 The region, with its own subsistence-based communal land practices and ring of 1

Phillip McCrilly ed., wet HEAT sweats without scent (Limerick and Belfast: EVA International and ... more Phillip McCrilly ed., wet HEAT sweats without scent (Limerick and Belfast: EVA International and Outburst), 2023

Rita Duffy and Joe Keenan eds., Border Biennale (Cavan: Townhall Cavan), 2023

Art Against Borders [p.20] 'County Cavan is nowhere land', reflected writer Shane Connaughton in ... more Art Against Borders [p.20] 'County Cavan is nowhere land', reflected writer Shane Connaughton in 1994, the year of ceasefires between paramilitaries in the North. 1 For all its beauty, the area had a surreal feel: a site that seemed to seep between material landscapes and imaginaSve terrain. Ireland's borderlands have their own sense of idenSty and place: haunted by history, someSmes seen as otherworldly, where unstable geopoliScal regimes can cascade against each other. 2 Border Biennale at Townhall Cavan (10 August-16 September 2023) brings together artwork by six contemporary arSsts to explore the way borders violently shape and structure territory or idenSty. Made during the 'Troubles' (1968-98), Seàn Hillen's collages considered the conflict's implicaSon in wider colonial histories. Not long a]er the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, John Byrne's performance-installaSon on the border staged a saSrical tourist site, a playful and probing invesSgaSon into its contested status. During the longest unbroken run of Northern Ireland's devolved power sharing government (2007-17), Rita Duffy painted BriSsh Army watchtowers and Dermot Seymour flags flying amidst agricultural landscapes. Seymour returned to the theme a]er the 2016 Brexit referendum, with Duffy creaSng a photomontage of an isolated ra] at sea. Following the legalising of same-sex marriage and decriminalisaSon of aborSon in the North in 2019, Jennifer Trouton's installaSon explored aborSon experiences, while Patrick Hickey painted queer landscapes. The birth of the border in Ireland was shaped by or spilled into sectarian violence and civil war. 3 Following UK Government legislaSon in 1920 and parSSon a year later, by 1923 the Irish Free State imposed customs tariffs. 4 A Boundary Commission, which sat between 1924-25, failed when its leaked recommendaSons were met by public outcry. 5 The process created a precedent for later territorial carve-ups around the globe, from India to PalesSne. 6 AcSvist and writer Harsha Walia argues that borders are central to colonial capitalism: an architecture of uneven resource accumulaSon, dividing populaSons through hierarchical social categories in order to exploit their labour. 7 'But a border was never erected in the Irish imaginaSon', Rita Duffy tells me when we discuss the exhibiSon at Townhall Cavan. 8 Border Biennale [p.21] traces connecSons between geopoliScal boundaries and idenSty concepts shaped by sectarianism, racism, patriarchy, or homophobia. The artworks challenge such power structures, speculaSng on art's capacity to imagine an aboliSonist world. Seàn Hillen's

Saskia Fernando ed., Chandraguptha Thenuwara: Covert (Colombo: Saskia Fernando Gallery), 2023

A monumental column, Chandraguptha Thenuwara's Covert (2021-23) is composed of intricate and inte... more A monumental column, Chandraguptha Thenuwara's Covert (2021-23) is composed of intricate and interlocking iron filigree symbols painted black: lotus buds, bodies, barbed wire, thorns, stupas, lion tails, weapons, vehicles. Exhibited at the Venice Biennale last year, it travelled to Colombo's Lionel Wendt Art Gallery in 2023, where a new floor sculpture sprouts out from its base like tree roots. The installation marks Thenuwara's annual memorial show dedicated to Black July, the anti-Tamil pogrom at the start of Sri Lanka's civil war (1983-2009), exactly forty years ago. The cylinder towers over its viewers at 222.5 cm in height and 91.4 cm in diameter, while interweaving lines on the ground cover a 550x550 cm area. On the walls are large-scale black and white drawings, showing similar patterns in ink: expansive landscapes in which icons associated with the conflict recur in two-dimensions. [p.5] As part of Thenuwara's longstanding anti-war activism and artistic practice, Covert considers the way collective violence puts pressure on the aesthetic field as visual culture is co-opted into militaristic iconography. But while the series works to reveal such strategies, it also strives to undermine them: to appropriate and reinvent such symbolism in protest against its weaponization and the profound violence that accompanies it. Begun just before the 2022 Aragalaya protests, Covert is also deeply committed to the imaginative potential of contemporary art to picture political possibilities in alliance with wider social movements. [p.7] Sri Lanka's multi-ethnic social uprising in 2022 deposed the then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a military-officer-turned-politician accused of war crimes, who oversaw one of the island's worst financial crises since independence from British rule in 1948. The 2019 Easter bombings, covid pandemic, money creation, tax cuts, and farming policy all combined to create severe shortages of medical supplies, unprecedented inflation, increased prices for basic commodities, and depletion of foreign exchange reserves. Last summer Thenuwara spoke about seeing society change rapidly, having spent decades challenging the civil war and its legacies in his artistic practice and activism. 'The movement is unprecedented, even organic'-he explained-'shedding old school thinking. The whole country understands we need to free ourselves from the entrapment of militarization'. 1 Psychology studies scholar Shamala Kumar insisted Aragalaya shall 'ignite our imagina[ons, and produce an awesome force, once again-but bigger-that leads to a radically different system of democracy'. 2 Thenuwara's art has long pre-dated but is ultimately also part of that imaginative force. Sociologist Sasanka Perera has praised his ability to communicate: a practice that appeals to a wide public, able to decode its meaning, blurring boundaries between art and activism. 3

Mark Sealy and Bindi Vora eds., Ajamu: The Patron Saint of Darkrooms (London: Autograph), 2023

Black Trans Masculinities in Ajamu's Ecce Homo [p.9] Ten figures, each at eye level, gaze directl... more Black Trans Masculinities in Ajamu's Ecce Homo [p.9] Ten figures, each at eye level, gaze directly at the camera. Some sitters display a quiet solitude; others brim with laughter. Each image is tightly cropped, with a shallow depth of field, creating a close and intimate space. Brightly lit in dark clothing and against a similarly coloured background, captured in black and white, the portraits hold a monumental dignity. Together they form a body of work called Ecce Homo [Behold the Man]-Portraits of Black Trans Men (2023) by queer British photographer Ajamu. Each photograph portrays a Black trans man, most of whom work in careers connected to intellectual or cultural production, including curators, artists, academics and actors. The series title refers to a Latin translation of the biblical words spoken by the Roman governor of Judaea when Christ, wearing a crown of thorns, was presented to a hostile crowd before his crucifixion: 'behold the man'. The religious scene has inspired art for centuries. Baroque Italian painter Caravaggio's c. 1605 version, for example, uses similar aesthetic techniques to those of Ajamu: a strong light source against a dark background or clothing, with close cropping and a shallow depth of field. Caravaggio's Ecce Homo presents Christ as corporally vulnerable in the moments before his martyrdom: eyes downcast, wrists tied, bare torso exposed. Ajamu's reinterpretation of the motif stages visuality itself as a complex concept in trans thinking, particularly for those who have resisted or navigated the politics of legibility. The editors of the recent book Trap Door (2019) describe a 'trap of the visual' underpinning trans politics during a time of increasing cultural prominence but also immense violence. 1 An interview with one of Ajamu's sitters, actor Chaune King, also captured this tension: 'people in high places [are] working their hardest to eradicate and erase our very existence [but] … there has been some progress. We are seeing more representation of trans people in the media'. 2 Writing about trans cinema, gender studies scholar Eliza Steinbock cautions against the wider societal assumption that 'all real identities are visibly marked', which 'expunges the power of the unmarked, unspoken, and unseen' in a culture of surveillance and voyeurism. 3 Aware that trans people are sometimes 'caught up in the trap of visibility', Steinbock argues for an aesthetic practice shaped by 'shimmers [that] are difficult to grasp as knowable entities'. 4 Ecce Homo is self-reflexive about visibility being linked to particular modes of representational politics as well as punitive systems of violence: 'behold the man' simultaneously introduces the sitters while also using the biblical allusion to acknowledge

Sophie Tappeiner ed., Jala Wahid: Metaphysical Reunification (Vienna: Sophie Tappeiner Gallery), ... more Sophie Tappeiner ed., Jala Wahid: Metaphysical Reunification (Vienna: Sophie Tappeiner Gallery), 2023

Amrita Jhaveri and Priya Jhaveri eds., 'Indra's Net: Muhanned Cader' (Mumbai: Jhaveri Contemporary), 2022

Muhanned Cader's series South Ceylon (2022) responds to the political crises that have gripped Sr... more Muhanned Cader's series South Ceylon (2022) responds to the political crises that have gripped Sri Lanka since 2019. In 2019 a former military officer from the island's Southern Province, accused of war crimes in the 1983-2009 civil conflict, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected President on a manifesto promising environmental protections and sustainable use of natural resources. 1 Instead a combination of tax cuts, money creation, a ban on fertiliser imports, the 2019 Easter bombings, and the COVID19 pandemic sparked shortages of fuel and medical supplies, food scarcity, increased prices for basic commodities, near-depletion of foreign exchange reserves, and unprecedented levels of inflation. In March 2022, a protest movement united Sri Lanka across ethnic lines: five months later the Presidential Palace was stormed and occupied, forcing Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.

Alona Pardo ed., Masculinities: Liberation through Photography (London: Barbican Centre), 2020

For centuries in Europe and North America masculinity has been understood as a spectrum: too litt... more For centuries in Europe and North America masculinity has been understood as a spectrum: too little was effeminate; too much, brutish or thuggish. The figure in between, possessing normative or military masculinity, was claimed to be the only subject able to exert selfcontrol -and therefore must act as a benign custodian over all others who were imagined to be in need of paternal order: effeminate men, women, LGBTQ+ people, people of colour, nonhumans. Those who challenged the status quo were cast as an unruly threat, while upholding it was described as an act of selflessness serving the greater good. This conceptual narrative is what hinges together racism, militarism, patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia: the social norm for white, cis, heterosexual, normative masculinity has long been imagined as a soldier -or at least, the fantasy of a soldier without the devastating realities of war. However, if this fantasy is built on a desire for absolute (male) mastery over oneself and others, it has always been haunted by the fear of its own failure -a fear sparked time and again by feminist or LGBTQ+ activism, challenges to (neo-)imperialism, financial crisis or technological change.

Anthony Luvera ed., Let Us Eat Cake (Belfast: Belfast Exposed), 2017

What makes a life liveable? What are the frames under which a life is recognised as a life-a life... more What makes a life liveable? What are the frames under which a life is recognised as a life-a life that can be grieved when lost? When that life is queer, what norms might enable or obstruct survivability? What kind of support networks, or forms of kinship, might sustain a queer life? In asking these questions, I will examine Anthony Luvera's Let Us Eat Cake (2017), a collaborative, photography-based exploration of LGBTQ+ experiences in current-day Northern Ireland. I will explore how certain lives were designated 'killable' or not fully lives, and how forms of community organisation struggled against such conditions. At the heart of this issue is the politics of representation: what makes certain lives appear as lives in the rst place. With the highest levels of homophobic violence in the United Kindgom, attacks in Northern Ireland have led to many deaths. 1 Under such conditions LGBTQ+ activism, help lines, publications and nightlife o ered networks of support. In 1974 Cara-Friend was founded, providing counselling, information, and social space organisation for the LGBTQ+ community. Throughout the decade a subcultural gay scene had begun to grow in visibility, with a number of hotels and bars situated within Belfast's security-walled city centre being relatively safe spaces to meet. 2 In the 1970s the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association (NIGRA) was also established, which lobbied Westminster to decriminalise homosexuality-although its members faced routine arrests and harassment from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). 3 NIGRA began recording RUC violence and o ering advice to men detained for questioning. In 1982 homosexuality was decriminalised in Northern Ireland, as a result of a case activist Je Dudgeon brought to the European Court of Human Rights. In the following decade, an annual Gay Pride march was established in Belfast in 1991, the

Interviews & Conversations by Edwin Coomasaru

Frieze, 2023

The artist discusses their new work And these deceitful waters and its themes of colonialization ... more The artist discusses their new work And these deceitful waters and its themes of colonialization and transformation with art historian Edwin Coomasaru

London: Courtauld Books Online, 2022

Art History, 2023

Third Text, 171, 2021

Rosie Hermon and Eileen Daly eds., Unchorus (London: Freelands Foundation), 2023

Imagining Apocalypse: Art and the End Times (London: Courtauld Books Online), 2022

Sophie Mesplède and Charlotte Gould eds., 'British Art and the Environment: Changes, Challenges and Responses post-1750' (London: Routledge), 2021

Oxford Art Journal, 2021

The Cambridge Humanities Review, 2021

Irish Studies Review, 2016

Amrita Jhaveri and Priya Jhaveri eds., Bridge to Lanka: Lionel Wendt, Cassie Machado, Vasantha Yogananthan (Mumbai: Jhaveri Contemporary), 2024

Rita Duffy and Joe Keenan eds., Border Biennale (Cavan: Townhall Cavan), 2023

Saskia Fernando ed., Chandraguptha Thenuwara: Covert (Colombo: Saskia Fernando Gallery), 2023

Mark Sealy and Bindi Vora eds., Ajamu: The Patron Saint of Darkrooms (London: Autograph), 2023

Amrita Jhaveri and Priya Jhaveri eds., 'Indra's Net: Muhanned Cader' (Mumbai: Jhaveri Contemporary), 2022

Alona Pardo ed., Masculinities: Liberation through Photography (London: Barbican Centre), 2020

Anthony Luvera ed., Let Us Eat Cake (Belfast: Belfast Exposed), 2017

Frieze, 2023

British Art Studies, 2023

Issue 24

British Art Studies, 2023

Issue 24

British Art Studies, 2021

Issue 20

British Journal of Photography, 2024

The artist uses a BlackBerry phone to delve back in time to the 2011 London riots, unravelling an... more The artist uses a BlackBerry phone to delve back in time to the 2011 London riots, unravelling an intersection of class, race, and violence in his new Somerset House Studios show A BlackBerry Bold 9650 mobile phone, first released back in 2010, is entombed in a transparent glass vitrine atop a museum plinth. On its rectangular landscape screen, like a pocket-sized cinema, a 2011 video plays grainy footage shot from a similar handheld device. Burning red flames furiously engulf buildings, black smoke billowing into the night sky. The shaky film clip depicts the House of Reeves, a furniture store in Croydon, on fire during the 2011 England riots. The moving image loops, as though caught in time, haunting the present. The object is part of Imran Perretta's exhibition A Riot in Three Acts at Somerset House.

Burlington Contemporary, 2023

Source Magazine, 2020

Issue 103

immediations, 2020

Installation view, Steve McQueen Year 3 at Tate Britain © Tate. [p.162] Tate Britain is filled by... more Installation view, Steve McQueen Year 3 at Tate Britain © Tate. [p.162] Tate Britain is filled by a vast grid: photographs of 76,000 seven-and eight-year old London schoolchildren with their teachers. Some smile, others look uncomfortable. Steve McQueen: Year 3 (12 November 2019-31 January 2021) performs an enormous cataloguing exercise, amidst the neoclassical splendour of honey-coloured stone columns and high ceilings. In collaboration with Artangel, some images were also exhibited on advertising billboards around the city-but I want to consider the specificity of showing the installation at Tate Britain. Each individual group photo is small: a sea of faces from a distance, but up close their classroom displays are visible. Some were doing school projects on British values when caught on camera. On the walls are spider-diagrams explaining Britishness: mutual respect, the rule of law, democracy, tolerance, individual liberty. The idea that Britain might have some kind of defining characteristics has been deeply contested since the 1707 Acts of Union, when Scotland and England joined together after the former's financial disaster following a failed attempt at establishing a colony during the late 1690s.

Burlington Contemporary, 2020

The Architecture Review, 2020

In both the palaces of Belgravia, and a community centre in Shadwell, bodies and buildings lay ba... more In both the palaces of Belgravia, and a community centre in Shadwell, bodies and buildings lay bare issues of masculinity, racism and class

Burlington Contemporary, 2019

The Irish Times, 2019

s VR experience about Brexit feels less like a metaphor than a warning Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 05:41 E... more s VR experience about Brexit feels less like a metaphor than a warning Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 05:41 Edwin Coomasaru Rachel Maclean exhibited a virtual reality artwork in London. Visitors put on a chunky set of headwear and a handheld clicker to experience I'm Terribly Sorry Could Brexit spark an English civil war? I ask this question as a pacifist who has spent years studying Northern Ireland, not to try and stoke tensions -but the very opposite.

The Irish Times, 2018

The 130-tonne mass of congealed waste that blocked sewers in Whitechapel last year has been defea... more The 130-tonne mass of congealed waste that blocked sewers in Whitechapel last year has been defeated. But the mass of congealed ideas that is Brexit still threatens to engulf us Katie Balcombe looks at the last remaining piece of a monster fatberg that was discovered in Whitechapel sewers last September, on display at the Museum of London. Photograph: David Parry/PA Wire

The Irish Times, 2016

The emaciated, gaunt, sometimes twisted bodies of hunger strikers challenged the fantasy of the m... more The emaciated, gaunt, sometimes twisted bodies of hunger strikers challenged the fantasy of the macho warrior by depicting the consequences of war on the male body.