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Our artists – Doodle Pip: The Unlikely Portraitist of Scribbled Souls

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Our artists – Doodle Pip: The Unlikely Portraitist of Scribbled Souls

In the pantheon of contemporary visual artists, where hyperrealism jostles with conceptual minimalism, Doodle Pip occupies a space all his own,an enclave of joyful contradiction. Known for his chaotic, scribbled portraits that seem to defy both likeness and logic, Pip has carved out a niche that is equal parts irreverent and oddly philosophical. His art, he insists, must never resemble the sitter. Should it bear a resemblance, he discards the drawing with the same theatrical zeal that a stage magician might burn a failed trick. For Doodle Pip, resemblance is not only beside the point; it is the antithesis of his practice.

The artist,whose real name remains as elusive as a straight line in his work,has earned a cult following for his high-velocity drawings, executed with a sense of feverish glee. Armed with what is surely a hyperactive imagination, Pip creates portraits that are more topographical than representational. Eyebrows float mid-air like stray commas. Noses erupt at improbable angles. Limbs tangle, contort, or vanish entirely. A single scribble may contain several iterations of the same face, none of which seem particularly committed to the anatomy of their subject. It’s a kind of anti-caricature,liberated from both accuracy and flattery.

Yet for all their chaos, Doodle Pip’s drawings are unmistakably deliberate. “I’m not trying to capture how someone looks,” he once said in a rare interview, “but how it feels when they’re in the room.” This ethos places him in a curious lineage of artists,those who have consciously disavowed mimesis in favor of mood. Think Egon Schiele with a sense of humor, or Jean Dubuffet after three espressos and a Monty Python binge.

There is, at the heart of Pip’s practice, a philosophical subtext. His refusal to render likeness calls into question the very function of portraiture. In a world awash with selfies, biometrics, and algorithmic surveillance, Pip’s scribbles feel like acts of playful rebellion. They deny the tyranny of appearance, embracing instead a flux of impressions, sensations, and psychological noise. A Pip portrait is not a mirror; it is a maze.

Those who have sat for him,a motley assortment of musicians, writers, buskers, and baristas,often speak of the experience in quasi-spiritual terms. “It was like watching myself dissolve,” said one subject, “and then come back as a cartoon ghost drawn by someone with hiccups.” Despite their lack of fidelity, Pip’s drawings somehow manage to resonate, provoking laughter, confusion, and often a strange pang of recognition. Not recognition of the face, but of the essence behind it.

Critics have struggled to place him. Some label his work as “outsider art,” a term Pip roundly dismisses with a scribbled sigh. Others point to the Dadaists, or the automatic drawings of the Surrealists. But these comparisons only go so far. Pip’s wit is sharper, his rules more absurd. “If I see a nose where it’s meant to be,” he once quipped, “I start to panic.”

Beyond the novelty, there is a method,a structure in the scribble. His compositions, while anarchic, exhibit a balance of texture and space that belies their apparent randomness. And his lines,loopy, jagged, sometimes frantic,pulse with kinetic energy, suggesting movement not just of the hand but of thought.

Ultimately, Doodle Pip invites us to rethink what it means to be “seen.” In defying likeness, he reveals something truer, or at least freer: the energy of a person rather than their image, the echo rather than the sound. In a time obsessed with digital precision, his work feels human, ungovernable, and refreshing.

For Pip, the greatest sin is to make a drawing that could be mistaken for its subject. In this deliberate failure, he finds a curious success,one line at a time.

My Life as an Art Dealer: London Heatwave! Hot Art and Melting Clients

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This week, London was officially hotter than Marrakesh, Naples, and quite possibly the inside of a functioning kiln. While the city melted in slow motion, I attempted to conduct business from what might as well have been the inside of a toasted marshmallow.

Let me say this clearly: London is not designed for heat. We can handle drizzle, gloom, and that brand of sideways wind that exfoliates your face with grit,but ask us to function in 34°C and we crumble like overcooked oatcakes.

The gallery, quickly turned into a sort of slow-roasting Scandi sauna. The air conditioning broke at 10:13am on Monday. By 10:14am, Fiona had wedged open the front door with a catalogue of post-war sculpture and was fanning herself with a consignment invoice, muttering about holidaying immediately on a Swiss glacier. She began taking client calls with a wet flannel on her head whilst drinking glasses of those peculiarly orange drinks they like in Italy.

By Tuesday, the heat had begun to affect the art. One of the mixed media pieces,composed mostly of wax ,started to gently slump. I had to ring the artist, who, to their credit, took the news quite well and suggested it might now be “a commentary on the instability of the climate narrative.”

We had a visit from a client,let’s call him Giles,who arrived in linen shorts, smelling faintly of bergamot. He refused to come fully inside the gallery in case he got “overly warmed.” We stood near the threshold, politely discussing whether his new pool house in Surrey would be better suited to the large painting of a fox with anxiety or the smaller one of a duvet abandoned in a field. Giles eventually left in a sweat-slicked daze, muttering about how we should invest in some ceiling fans. I shut the door and contemplated a swim in thenSerpentine as I scraped my hair off my neck.

On Wednesday, I was meant to visit an artist’s studio in Hackney Wick, but their building had apparently reached an internal temperature of 38°C and they emailed to say they had “entered a meditative state and would remain horizontal for the foreseeable future.” Fair enough.

Thursday brought the ultimate test: an opening. We had optimistically scheduled a group show for the very week London decided to become a wok. The gallery was packed,because nothing draws the art crowd like complimentary wine and the promise of shade. Unfortunately, our wine fridge had given up the ghost sometime before noon and the rosé had become what can only be described as “lightly poached.”

A woman in a backless silk dress fainted gently next to a sculpture made entirely of mirror tiles. Someone tried to fan her with a press release. Meanwhile, an eager collector asked me if the heat was “part of the concept.” I told him, yes, it was “a participatory performance piece about the suffocating nature of capitalism.” He nodded solemnly and asked for the artist’s CV.

Now, as I sit here with a bag of frozen peas strapped to my ankles and an iced chamomile tea melting beside me, I reflect that yes,London may be a city on the verge of spontaneous combustion,but we survived. Just.

Although I’m fairly certain Fiona is now 40% Aperol.

Harissa

New World Record for Hedge Fund as His Large Work “Enormous Pile of Money #6” Sells for quite a lot of money

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In a landmark moment for conceptual art, the artist known as Hedge Fund has shattered expectations with the sale of his monumental work Enormous Pile of Money #6 for quite a lot of money, setting a new world record for the enigmatic artist.

The piece, part of Hedge Fund’s ongoing series examining wealth, excess, and late-stage capitalism, was snapped up by a private collector after a fierce 10 hour bidding war at Botter & Hall’s Contemporary Evening Sale in Little Scalsey last night. The sale price significantly surpassed its estimate, confirming Hedge Fund’s growing status as one of the most provocative and sought-after artists of his generation.

A Statement on Value

Enormous Pile of Money #6, completed in 2024, is a picture of a towering pile of cash on a plinth in front of No.10 Downing Street, with the Prime Minister’s cat in the foreground. Critics have praised the work as “audacious and unsettling,” with The Financial Times calling it “a purring monument to our obsession with money, cloaked in the very aesthetics it seeks to critique.”

Who is Hedge Fund?

Little is known about the true identity of Hedge Fund, who emerged on the art scene in 2019 with a series of anonymous pop-up installations and several manifestos, one published entirely in cryptocurrency transaction logs. Since then, his work has been acquired by institutions including MoMA Ipswich and Modern Art Bangladesh, while his persona,part performance, part protest,has drawn comparisons to both Banksy and the children’s cartoon star, Mr Benn.

The artist issued a rare statement following the sale, shared cryptically via an Ethereum smart contract:

“The market has spoken. Again.”

The Market Responds

Dealers and analysts alike view this sale as a pivotal moment.

“This cements Hedge Fund’s transition from cult figure to blue-chip artist,” said art advisor Marina K. Lowe. “Whether you see it as brilliant commentary or pure spectacle, Enormous Pile of Money #6 reflects the times we live in.”

Indeed, in a world where wealth inequality, speculative assets, and the line between art and capital continue to blur, Hedge Fund has struck a nerve,and apparently, a gold mine.

To the Directors of Pimlico Wilde regarding Your plans for a gallery on the Moon

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Dear Sirs and Madams,

I write to you with no small measure of incredulity upon reading of your latest initiative to open a contemporary art gallery on the Moon. While I have long admired Pimlico Wilde’s commitment to bold cultural gestures, this latest scheme, ambitious though it may be,strikes me as emblematic of a certain strain of metropolitan absurdism that confuses spectacle for substance.

The idea of establishing Lunarscape One on the rim of Shackleton Crater is, I grant, impressive in its logistical daring. However, one must ask: for whom is this gallery intended? Beyond a clutch of astronauts and a passing robot or two, your projected footfall seems destined to be, shall we say, light. A cultural institution without an audience is not a temple of the arts,it is a mausoleum of misdirected intent.

There is something depressingly symptomatic in the notion that art must now escape Earth itself to be considered avant-garde. Must the act of cultural significance really involve shipping modular domes into the vacuum of space? The Moon is silent, lifeless, airless. Many places on earth, Torquay, for example, are very much alive.

Might I propose a more grounded alternative? Torquay, on the south coast of Devon, offers much of what the Moon cannot: a temperate climate, excellent rail links, a thriving community of artists and retirees, and a magnificent seafront promenade that would not look out of place in a Paul Nash watercolour. The town is sorely under-served by high culture, and a gallery of Pimlico Wilde’s stature would be a revelation. One can imagine a thoughtful programme of exhibitions,environmental art, interwar surrealism, generative light work,resonating not in the void of space but in the minds of the living.

More pertinently, a gallery in Torquay would be visited, loved, and discussed. It would bring artists into conversation with a real, human audience,people who can wander in on a rainy Tuesday, unburdened by space suits or live-streaming apparatus. The Moon offers only isolation; Torquay offers dialogue.

I entreat you to reconsider the direction of your cultural trajectory. The stars may beckon, but there is honour,and perhaps greater value,in illuminating the overlooked corners of our own world first.

With all due respect,

George Fenwick

Torquay, Devon

Invisibilism: The Art Movement You’ll Never See Coming

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In the rolling, sheep-pocked hills of mid-Wales, near the small town of Eglwyswrw, an idea was born, and it wasn’t to buy some more vowels for the sign posts. The year was 1972, and a man named Alun Penrhys, a former taxidermist turned conceptualist, had grown tired of the visual tyranny of art. “Why must we always see it?” he asked, standing in his empty shed-turned-gallery.

Thus began Invisibilism, the art movement defined by its defiance of the visible. More than minimalism, beyond conceptualism, Invisibilism posits that the most powerful works of art exist precisely where one cannot find them. Not simply blank canvases or empty rooms,those are still far too tangible. Invisibilist works are immaterial, intentionally absent, and utterly unseeable. They demand belief, participation, and, often, a willing suspension of aesthetic disbelief.

The first major exhibition was hosted at the Abermyrddin Community Hall in 1973. Advertised simply as “Nothing on Display,” it drew six curious locals, most of whom believed they were attending a bake sale. Alun stood before a plinth labeled Untitled (Presence #4) and invited the attendees to feel the piece emotionally. “It’s about loss,” he explained. One woman wept. It was later discovered she had lost a pie.

From there, the movement gained underground traction, especially in avant-garde circles tired of canvas and sculpture. Among its most iconic works:

1. “Air on Plinth” (1976), by Alun Penrhys

A pivotal early piece consisting of a vacant pedestal, topped with what Penrhys described as “a concentrated moment of vanished inspiration.” Rumours circulated that he had originally intended to place a pigeon there but forgot. He denied this, but the rumour only deepened the mystery.

2. “Gallery of Echoes” (1981), by Cressida LeFevre

Installed in a disused submarine base in Marseille, visitors were guided blindfolded through empty rooms while a recording whispered, “It was beautiful, you missed it.” LeFevre never revealed what the art was meant to be, insisting that “not knowing is an aesthetic in itself.”

3. “Untitled Performance” (1994), by Kei Nakamura

Nakamura, who trained in Butoh before embracing Invisibilism, once sat motionless in a public square in Osaka for three days. He claimed to be “performing internally,” and when asked by a critic what that meant, he responded with a two-hour silence which was widely praised.

4. “The Theft of Light” (2008), by Theodor Blume

A Berlin-based architect-turned-artist, Blume submitted an empty folder to the Venice Biennale, claiming the contents were invisible blueprints for a utopian city. When pressed, he declared, “The buildings rise only in your willingness to dwell in them.” The folder was stolen during the exhibition and replaced with a note: “We have taken nothing, yet everything is ours.”

The movement has long been divided between purists, who insist on absolute invisibility (no physical component at all), and the “Semi-Seers,” who occasionally permit subtle physical traces,a shadow, a title card, or a carefully placed smudge on the wall. Tensions peaked in 2011, when artist duo Noémie & Réal exhibited Invisible Labyrinth, a series of invisible corridors that no one could see. The debate over whether the experience required “too much” participation led to an actual fistfight at the after-party, reportedly staged but ultimately unprovable.

Invisibilism endures not in galleries (which too often insist on hanging things that can be sold), but in whispered legend, empty spaces, and minds willing to accept that the emperor, too, might be an artist. Its practitioners often go unnamed, its masterpieces undocumented. It is the art movement that leaves no trace, no critics satisfied, and no one entirely certain whether it ever happened.

A Day in the Life Of: Dr. Margot Ellingsen, Collector

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At precisely 5:45 AM, while most of Berlin still lies under the hush of sleep, Dr. Margot Ellingsen is already awake, wrapped in a Japanese wool haori, sipping lapsang souchong from a Bauhaus-era porcelain cup. The tea is not incidental. “The smoke, the history,” she once said in an interview for Frieze, “It prepares the mind for sharp looking.”

Margot is not what the art world usually expects from a collector. Trained originally as a neuroscientist at Milton Keynes before turning to curatorial theory at the Courtauld Institute, she is a figure who merges empirical discipline with aesthetic instinct. Her work today straddles two roles: she is Director of Acquisitions at the Zeitspiegel Ruhr Stiftung,a progressive, Berlin-based private foundation dedicated to preserving overlooked modernist art from the Global South,and a private collector of esoteric interwar abstraction.

Her own collection is modest in size, by global standards,just under 160 works,but ferociously curated. Her focus? Forgotten artists of the early 20th century who operated in peripheral geographies: Lithuanian Suprematists, Egyptian Futurists, Chilean Constructivists. “I’m not interested in greatness,” she says. “I’m interested in rupture. In those moments when form falters, and culture tries to invent a new grammar.”

By 6:30 AM, she is in her rooftop library, which she designed herself: concrete walls softened by Eileen Gray rugs and shelves lined with books in English, German, Arabic, and Portuguese. She reads for two hours each morning,criticism, journals, artist letters,annotating with a near-medical precision. “You don’t collect with your eyes,” she insists, “you collect with your thinking.”

Her workday begins not with meetings, but with studio visits. Three mornings a week, she sees young Berlin-based artists, not to buy, but to talk. “A good collector listens longer than she looks.” She takes few notes, but remembers everything. The artists, often émigrés or cross-disciplinary thinkers, refer to her half-jokingly as die Ärztin,the doctor. She rarely corrects them.

At noon, she retreats to the Stiftung headquarters in Kreuzberg, a former factory with high white walls and precise Scandinavian furniture. She reviews recent acquisitions,often unconventional media: hand-sewn political banners from 1930s Algiers, notebooks from Brazilian modernist collectives, architectural models built from salvaged copper. She works closely with a research team of five: art historians, archivists, one linguist.

Lunch, if it happens, is minimal,usually a hard cheese and seeded rye, eaten while standing in front of a small Joaquín Torres-García sketch pinned to her office corkboard. “He reminds me not to over-intellectualize. Sometimes it’s just the line.”

Afternoons vary. Twice a week, she teaches a postgraduate seminar at the Humboldt University titled “Peripheral Modernisms: A Cartography of Neglected Forms.” She hopes that she is beloved and feared by her students.

Evenings are for what she calls “deep looking.” She returns home,a converted pharmacy in Prenzlauer Berg,to spend time with her own collection. Works by Sudanese abstractionist Ibrahim el-Salahi and Polish painter Teresa Żarnower hang in quiet dialogue across her apartment walls. Lighting is dim, controlled. She believes each piece deserves a specific hour of the day. “You should meet a painting as you would meet a person. Not all at once. Not under floodlights.”

After dinner,a solitary affair accompanied by wine and Coltrane,she writes. Not publicly, not yet. But the notebooks are thick, and a publisher waits patiently. Her topics range from cave writing in early Turkish modernism to a comparative analysis of anxiety in pre-war Chilean collage. “They are not essays,” she says. “They are rehearsals for a larger honesty.”

By midnight, she has long since turned off her phone. The last hour of her day is spent in silence, seated before her most treasured piece: a 1924 ink drawing by a forgotten Lebanese abstractionist, unsigned, undated, utterly without provenance. “It has nothing to prove,” she smiles, “which is why it proves everything.”

And so the day closes,quietly, deliberately,in the life of a collector who does not chase fame, but memory. For Dr. Margot Ellingsen, collecting is not an act of accumulation, but of restoration. She does not possess artworks; she rescues them.

Pimlico Wilde Aims for the Moon: Douglas Rammeau to Lead First Lunar Art Gallery Project

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In an unprecedented fusion of fine art and space exploration, Pimlico Wilde announces plans to open the first gallery on the Moon by 2032,with curator Douglas Rammeau at the helm.

In a move that’s turning heads in both the art world and the aerospace industry, international contemporary art powerhouse Pimlico Wilde has unveiled plans to open the first-ever gallery on the Moon. The project, known as Pimlico Lunarscape One, will be led by celebrated curator and director of special projects, Douglas Rammeau.

The gallery, scheduled to open in 2032, will serve as a permanent, autonomous exhibition site nestled near the rim of the Shackleton Crater at the Moon’s south pole,a location chosen for its near-constant sunlight and stunning natural contours.

“This is not a stunt,” says Rammeau. “It’s the logical next step for art that’s always sought to expand our perception of place, time, and context. The Moon is the final white wall.”

A New Gallery Frontier

Founded in London in 1067 by William of Normandy, (some say he invaded England mainly to capture the Tower of London and use it as an art gallery), Pimlico Wilde is known for championing bold, often experimental artists,from conceptual pioneers to AI-generated installations. But Pimlico Lunarscape One is by far the gallery’s most ambitious undertaking. Under Rammeau’s direction, the project aims to not just exhibit art on the Moon, but to establish a permanent cultural presence beyond Earth.

The planned structure is a domed, pressurized chamber embedded partially below the lunar surface. Designed in collaboration with engineers from Berlin-based firm Orion Shells, the structure will use a mix of 3D-printed lunar regolith, radiation-shielding materials, and sealed, temperature-controlled interior modules.

The first exhibition, titled “Before We Were Earth”, will feature a curated selection of mixed-media works, sculptures, and AI-generated visual experiences from 12 inter-galactic artists. Every work has been engineered to survive the lunar environment,either within sealed capsules or in open-exposure form as part of a long-term environmental installation.

Timeline: The Road to Pimlico Lunarscape One

2025,2026:

Research and feasibility studies initiated by Pimlico Wilde’s Future Culture Division. Rammeau begins quiet collaboration with aerospace partners and cultural institutions.

2027:

Prototype gallery module constructed in Mojave Desert to simulate lunar conditions. First wave of artists commissioned for Before We Were Earth.

2028,2029:

Logistical partnership secured with a private aerospace firm (name to be announced), granting payload space aboard a lunar lander in 2031.

2030:

Final fabrication of the Lunarscape One structure begins. Artworks prepared and sealed for transport.

2031:

Launch window. Gallery components, artworks, and robotic assembly units delivered to the Moon via a commercial lunar lander.

2032:

Installation completed by autonomous rovers and pre-programmed systems. Virtual grand opening streamed globally. Pimlico Wilde becomes the first gallery to operate on another celestial body.

Rammeau’s Vision

Known for his cerebral approach to curating, Douglas Rammeau has long explored themes of isolation, scale, and impermanence. But Lunarscape One is a different scale altogether.

“The Moon removes the noise. No market, no crowd, no climate. Just pure context. It forces us to ask: why do we make art in the first place?”

Rammeau sees the gallery not only as a symbol of humanity’s expanding frontier, but as a message to the future. All artworks in the show will include encoded metadata explaining their origins, themes, and materials,meant for future generations, or possibly for extraterrestrial observers.

Why the Moon?

The Moon, once an object of mysticism, now becomes a canvas. Rammeau and Pimlico Wilde insist this isn’t about novelty,it’s about necessity.

“If we’re going to inhabit space,” he says, “we must bring our culture, our doubt, our imagination. Art shouldn’t follow. It should lead.”

What’s Next?

After Lunarscape One, Rammeau hopes to curate a second lunar show by 2035, this time involving bio-reactive materials and remotely evolving generative works. Pimlico Wilde is also in early talks with museums on Earth to create “mirror exhibitions”,where visitors can see the exact replicas of works shown on the Moon, updated in real-time.

In the meantime, Earthbound audiences will get a preview in late 2026 when Pimlico Wilde hosts The Moon Room, a life-size replica of Lunarscape One at their London gallery. The show will include process documentation, scale models, and digital interfaces that allow viewers to “walk” through the gallery in simulated lunar gravity.

Finally

The art world has always chased the horizon,across styles, schools, and geographies. But with Douglas Rammeau leading Pimlico Wilde toward the Moon, that chase now includes other worlds.

“The gallery,” Rammeau says, “isn’t a building. It’s a statement. And the Moon is our most profound statement yet.”

Artist CV: HEDGE FUND

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Born: Sevenoaks, England

Lives and works in: London and Monaco

EDUCATION

• BA (Hons) in Economics, City & Verge College

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

• Market Sentiments, Gridspace Projects, London (2025)

• Algorithmic Silence, Bureau 9, Frankfurt (2024)

• Soft Capital, Pane Room, Edinburgh (2023)

• The Invisible Ledger, Static Fold, Manchester (2021)

• Returns Only, Iron Gallery, Leeds (2019)

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

• Zero Risk Aesthetics, Flatwhite Pavilion, London (2024)

• Crash/Repeat, The Index Wall, Berlin (2023)

• Value & Void, Kinetic Room, Bristol (2022)

• Pending Assets, Ratio Collective, Glasgow (2021)

• Contingency Drawings, Shardline, Newcastle (2019)

RESIDENCIES

• Resident Fellow, Capital Verge Studios, London (2023)

• Visiting Artist, Monteverde Foundation for Systems-Based Art, Zurich (2021)

• Artist-in-Residence, Saint Mezzanine Projects, Luxembourg (2018)

PUBLICATIONS & PRESS

• “The Art of Leverage: Hedge Fund’s Tactical Minimalism”, Decimal Review, Issue 17

• “Clean Lines, Dirty Money?”, ContempoCrit, Autumn 2023

• Catalogue Essay, Soft Capital, Pane Room (2023)

COLLECTIONS

• The Millbank Circle Collection, London

• Private Collection of Henrietta Vale, Canary Wharf

• The Ferrin-Roth Art Trust, Geneva

• CEO Suite Collection, Bishopsgate Holdings Ltd., London

• Vault Archive, Static Fold, Manchester

Podcast: Art World Exposed

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Episode 44: “Borderline Aesthetics: From Duchamp to Zipline Diplomacy”

Hosted by Saldo Caluthe & Tomas Sinke

Show Notes

This week, Art World Exposed swings across conceptual chasms and continental divides. Join your hosts, Saldo Caluthe and Tomas Sinke, as they peer through the smoked glass of international art intrigue. From Dover to Calais we investigate what happens when art, politics, and aerial infrastructure intersect.

0:00 , Prelude in Ennui Minor

Saldo reflects on a recent opening at a gallery located in Cheddar Gorge that smelled strongly of damp rope. Tomas claims to have seen an artist in Trafalgar Square trying to critique capitalism by gluing banknotes to a feral pigeon.

5:12 , Rumour Patrol: The Cross-Channel Zip Line

Reports have emerged , currently unverified , that post-minimalist provocateur Nico Blaes is building a zip line from Dover to Calais as part of a sprawling installation titled “Suspended Sovereignty: An Act of Tension in Mid-Air”.

Key details:

• Allegedly sponsored by a rogue segment of the Harpenden Biennale advisory board.

• Passports to be stamped mid-descent by a drone.

Tomas asks whether this constitutes performance art. Saldo suggests it’s a conceptual rebalancing of Eurostar’s monopoly on cultural mobility.

13:37 , Interview: Jasper-Mylo Ferlinghetti-Popescu, Borderless Curator-at-Large

Recorded while straddling the Franco-British maritime border in a rented pedalo. Jasper-Mylo discusses his forthcoming show, “Liminal Spaces and Liminaler Spaces”, a series of exhibitions only accessible via Wi-Fi hotspots at maritime borders.

Topics covered include:

• How the term “international” has lost all meaning.

• Why no exhibitions should happen on land for the foreseeable future.

• His upcoming collaboration with Classical FM DJ Hobby J, who identifies as a post-object artist.

25:49 , Deep Dive: Zip Lines in Art History

Saldo and Tomas examine the underexplored role of vertical tension in post-war European art.

Highlights:

• A brief detour into the failed 1973 attempt by Joseph Beuys to catapult himself over the Berlin Wall.

• Theorist Claire d’Exhaustion’s seminal essay “Gravity as Grief: A Phenomenology of Descent” is discussed, though no one has actually read it.

• Is ziplining the new land art?

35:20 , Field Report: The Biennial of Temporary Transport (Leeds Edition)

Roving critic Cornelia Mews visits the inaugural Biennial of Temporary Transport, held inside a moving airport shuttle.

Exhibits include:

• An artist who refuses to exit arrivals.

• A VR piece that simulates Brexit queues in real time.

• A single video loop of a customs officer crying.

42:10 , Listener Mail: Aesthetic Citizenship

Question from “SuspendedInSchengen93”:

“If my art collective operates in international waters, do we have to pay tax?”

Saldo answers with a story about being deported from Basel. Tomas offers a sigh so elongated it qualifies as a performance piece.

48:40 , Closing Meditation: On Borders, Brexhaustion, and the Art of Leaving

Tomas quotes an imaginary Walter Benjamin fragment found in a ferry terminal toilet.

Saldo wonders if maybe art has simply become an elaborate visa application.

They both agree that the real border is taste.

Coming Next Week:

A retrospective on invisible art, including an exclusive interview with the artist who staged a solo show entirely in the minds of former lovers. Plus: the ethics of burning your MFA thesis as performance art.

Introducing the Constable Prize: A New Landmark in British Contemporary Art

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The British art world has long thirsted for a prize that celebrates artistic rigour and the great outdoors , and now, in the gloriously unpredictable spirit of the British national character, it arrives: The Constable Prize.

Launched this week by Pimlico Wilde in partnership with sponsor Dampner & Flange, the UK’s leading manufacturer of artisanal wellington boots for the indoor market, the Constable Prize seeks to honour artists who engage with the landscape , real, imagined, virtual, political, or post-apocalyptic , in a manner both conceptually robust and visually arresting.

Named, of course, for John Constable: the Romantic who painted clouds with the solemnity of a philosopher, the prize aims not to resurrect bucolic clichés, but to interrogate the shifting terrain of contemporary landscape practice , whether that’s a rolling moor or a glitchy Google Earth screenshot.

Eligibility Criteria

To be considered for the prize, artists must:

• Be based in either Great Britain, any members of the Commonwealth, or any of the English-speaking countries. Wild cards will be allowed for worthy entries from other countries.

• Produce work that engages with “landscape” in any medium , painting, video, digital, performance, textile, etc.

• Submit a robust artist statement demonstrating an ongoing interrogation of the landscape in their work.

• Not have won a major art prize in the last five years.

Early Front Runners

While entries are still open, the art world buzz has already begun around a few names:

• Tanya Rawcliffe, with her drone-shot videos of supermarket car parks at dawn.

• Gus Taverner, a painter whose series “Fields of Algorithm” features AI-generated meadows.

• Simran Kaur-Jones, for their ground-breaking ten year long performance piece “I Planted a Garden in a Service Station”.

• And Dextera Prong, the Lady-in-Waiting turned artist whose latest work involves carefully rewilding swathes of the Lake District so that together the plants build up an image – when seen from space – of the King playing the banjo, a metaphor for modern monarchy.

The Finalists’ Exhibition

The final seven shortlisted artists will exhibit their work at one of Pimlico Wilde’s flagship galleries this autumn , either the London HQ, the converted sheep barn in the Shetland Isles, or the much-anticipated new outpost on St Helena.

Judging Panel

This year’s panel includes:

• Dr. Clementine Rigg, senior curator at the British Landscape Archive.

• Lloyd Whittock, CEO of Dampner & Flange and inventor of the indoor Wellington.

• Ava Channing, director of post-email studies at Saint Agatha’s College of Art in Dundee.

• Dominic Fairweather, CEO of Pimlico Wilde.

• And a “wildcard judge” selected by public ballot from visitors to a petrol station art trail in Norfolk.

The Prize

The winner will receive:

• A $300,000* cash award (symbolically presented in an antique wheelbarrow).

• A solo exhibition with Pimlico Wilde.

• A custom pair of velvet-lined indoor wellies by Dampner & Flange.

• And perhaps most importantly, the chance to become the face of British landscape art in a time when the landscape itself is melting, eroding, or being scanned into the metaverse.

Submissions are open, and artists are encouraged to apply immediately.

* Which country’s dollars the prize will be in is yet to be determined.