Leilah Babirye, showing some of her work currently in The Chapel at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is creating an art of resistance from her experience of growing up queer in Uganda. She uses ‘items found on the streets, such as tyres, cans, and scrap metals’ in the words of Melis Dumlu. Dumlu goes on to … More This blog on the queer sculptures of Leilah Babirye is from a series of blogs on a day visit to see art in Yorkshire exhibitions: here at ‘The Yorkshire Sculpture Park’. This is number 2 of 6.

Whilst working on the subject of trauma and pain at art school, Igshaan Adams (born 1982) asked his teacher what his work said about him. ‘She said: “it says that you like to make your trauma beautiful. You like to beautify your trauma”’. [1] This is from a series of blogs on a day visit … More “You like to beautify your trauma”’. This is number 1, from a series of 6 blogs, on a day visit to see the art in exhibitions at the Hepworth in Wakefield.

This is a blog on the National Theatre Live revision of Noël Coward’s ‘Present Laughter’. If follows a blog preparatory to seeing the play from July 21, 2024 in stevendouglasblog (use this link to read it in full) Enzo Cilenti playing Joe, Joanna in Coward’s script, the morning after the night before Last night I saw the re-streaming … More This is a blog on the National Theatre Live revision of Noël Coward’s ‘Present Laughter’.

Should queer readers be interested in the queer coding of the recent past: The case of anticipating watching Noël Coward’s Present Laughter. The blog written after seeing this production is available now here: Next Tuesday, I will be going to see the re-streaming of a once live performance of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter with the … More Should queer readers be interested in the queer coding of the recent past: The case of anticipating watching Noël Coward’s ‘Present Laughter’.

Early in Anita Desai’s Rosarita, a daughter remembers a family jointly (or so it seems) pondering, during a specific dinner where her mother broke the codes that hold together middle-class families with servants, and other revelatory incidents, that mother’s ‘unsuitability for a wife’. In a generalised point of view within Desai’s elegant prose, told largely … More This blog looks for what is truly revolutionary in Anita Desai’s (2024) ‘Rosarita’.

Seeing in person Tate Modern’s retrospective Modern’s Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider on July 21st at  15.30, with our dear friend Catherine. Geoff, Me and Catherine in the sun outside the BFI Café, photograph by Catherine. I have already written a preparatory blog (on June 19th, 2024) relating to my expectations of this … More Seeing in person Tate Modern’s retrospective ‘Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider’ on July 21st at 15.30.