Laura Gascoigne January/February 2019 It had to happen: The Apprentice has been let loose on the art market. For episode 8 of the latest series, contestants were corralled in the Centre Hall of Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery to be informed by Alan Sugar from a Big Brother screen: “The global art market is worth a… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: The Blag Trade – January 2019

Laura Gascoigne November/December 2018 It’s official: you can no longer walk into a room and say: “Hi guys!” In July Woman’s Hour host Jane Garvey objected on Twitter that she is not a “guy” and doesn’t wish to be addressed as one, since when that mode of address – friendly, casual, non-committal – has been… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: We’re on a Gender Bender – November 2018

Laura Gascoigne September/October 2018 “This is an urgent message. Time is running out!” warned an automated voice on my phone one morning. I slammed the phone down assuming it was a sales pitch, but whatever the voice’s motive it wasn’t wrong. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists the election of Donald Trump in… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Only A Matter of Time – September 2018

Laura Gascoigne July/August 2018 When the betting opened on this year’s Turner Prize in April, Forensic Architecture were favourites to win at 13/8. Architects just can’t stay away from art; they keep turning up in the Turner like bad pennies. It’s only three years since the prize was won by Assemble, that well-meaning group of… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: What’s At Ishoo with Political Art?- July 2018

Laura Gascoigne May/June 2018 Was Stone Age society more open-minded than ours? In December, just before Instagram was flooded with pictures of Kim Kardashian’s 37-year-old butt crack, Facebook decreed that an image featuring the front bottom of the 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf was “dangerously pornographic” and removed it, until forced to apologise two months later… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: No Offence But… – May 2018

Laura Gascoigne March/April 2018 In the Royal Academy’s Tennant Gallery a man in goggles is lurching around waving his arms like someone conducting an orchestra on ketamine. It could be a piece of performance art, but it’s too amusing. In fact the man isn’t air-conducting, he’s air-drawing and the results are appearing in real time… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Visual Experience with Knobs On – March 2018

Laura Gascoigne January/February 2018 You get a better class of junk mail in Hampstead. Recently a ‘stiffy’ (in the polite old-fashioned sense) arrived from something called ‘The Restory’. From its sober shade of indigo with silver lettering I guessed it announced the opening of a restaurant in a former rectory, but no, it advertised an… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: The Art of Mixology – January 2018