Art news

The Bin-Gazer of Babylon: Oboe Ngua and the Global Waste Archive

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Some artists search for beauty in sunsets or salvation in the curve of a marble torso. But Oboe Ngua, the world’s only known female bin documentarian, has chosen a different muse: the humble municipal waste receptacle. While others chase light or form, Oboe chases litter. She is on an heroic, and unexpectedly poignant quest—to photograph every bin in the world.

Every. Single. Bin.

Oboe (surname Ngua) began her artistic odyssey sometime in the late 2010s, after what she describes as a “moment of quiet revelation” outside a Little Chef near Loughborough. The sun struck a dented council bin with just the right melancholy—a chiaroscuro of crisp packets and forgotten Monster Munch—and she knew she had found her life’s work. Since then, she has documented over 9,000 bins, across four continents, photographing them with the kind of reverence most reserve for endangered wildlife or church windows.

Her approach is unwavering: one bin, one image, full frontal, unfiltered. No embellishments. Just bin. The results are stark, strangely moving portraits of containers caught somewhere between use and abandonment. Her 2022 show Melancholy Bins of the Danube received critical acclaim, and was promptly banned in Hungary for “aesthetic pessimism.”

Her bins are categorised not only by nation and type—pedal, swing-top, dome-lidded—but also by mood. There are bins of defiance, bins of shame, bins that appear to be whispering something unspeakable into the night. She has spoken, with not a hint of irony, of “the psychological torque of the disused waste bin in Spain.” She refers to landfill sites as “mass graves of late capitalism.” Critics aren’t entirely sure if she’s serious, but she says she is.

Oboe is meticulous. She usually wears gloves. She carries no lighting rig. She once waited four days in a Polish lay-by to snap a recycling bin she had seen on a truck and tracked via Instagram. “It had a story,” she said simply, as if describing a war veteran.

Where most of us see the mundane, Oboe sees monuments to the overlooked. Japanese bins, she tells us, are “modest, a little bashful, with an underlying sense of order.” Italian bins? “Larger than necessary, full of performance, often in relationships with passing pigeons.” English bins? “Perpetually full. Slightly anxious. Trying not to complain.”

To some, her work is a joke stretched to absurdity. But the joke, if there is one and do not forget that she claims there isn’t one, is profound. Duchamp had his urinal. Oboe has the council-issue 240-litre wheelie bin, flanked by crushed Red Bull cans and scented nappy bags. Where Duchamp asked us to rethink sculpture, Oboe asks us to rethink life.

There’s something gently tragic in her quest, too. She knows she’ll never finish. “The world keeps producing rubbish,” she said in a recent panel discussion, “and so I’ll just keep documenting.” When pressed about the futility of the task, she mis-quoted Beckett: “Ever tried harder. Ever failed deeper. No matter. Photograph another bin.”

And so she does. With scissors for tape, a camera for brush, and the courage to look deep into humanity’s polyethylene soul, Oboe gives us a world we’d rather not see—but can’t stop looking at.

Goalie Goes Up: The Art of Leaping Toward the Impossible

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Somewhere between the sacred geometry of Kazimir Malevich and the muddy poetry of Sunday league football lies the artist known only as Goalie Goes Up—a name that evokes panic in both the penalty box and the gallery, with its reckless pursuit of glory. This is not merely an alias, but a manifesto. A gesture. An abstraction in motion.

To encounter Goalie Goes Up’s work is to be suspended in a moment of potential energy—“like a goalkeeper,” as one critic has noted, “leaving the safety of the line to chase a corner he will never reach.”* England fans know this sensation well: a bold dash, a nation breathless, and then the crushing inevitability of failure. A loop repeated every four years since 1966, with the unyielding optimism of Lear’s fool: “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.”

The work itself? Think digital paint not flung but placed, rather like limbs in a last-minute set piece. Shapes avoid collision. Lines buckle. Every canvas is a pitch, every mark a movement, yet not necessarily a goal. There’s a tension between aggression and grace, between the measured formation and the wild lunge. You do not look at a Goalie Goes Up work so much as hear it—boots scraping, lungs bursting, the sound of eighty thousand hopes deflating all at once. It’s as if Caravaggio had spent a rainy childhood watching Tranmere Rovers.

Yet, beneath this appearance of chaos lies thought—philosophy, even. In the artist’s rare interviews (delivered in cryptic riddles on annotated team sheets), she suggests that her abstractions are gestures of belief in the face of impossible odds. “I leap,” she once wrote on the back of a canvas, “not to catch the ball, but to remain human.”

This is art not for the trophy case, but for the long journey home. As Voltaire put it, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”—or perhaps, one must imagine Sisyphus leaving safety behind and jumping for a late equaliser in extra time.

The cultural critics, understandably confused, have compared Goalie Goes Up to everyone from Cy Twombly to David Seaman. But such comparisons miss the point. This is not an artist who plays with stylistic coherence. Each piece is a stoppage-time decision. A scramble. A tangle of limbs and lines in search of transcendence. Some fail utterly. Some hit the post. But occasionally, gloriously, the art connects—cleanly, sweetly—with a viewer, and the crowd roars.

England’s record in World Cups (one win, eternal heartbreak) finds strange resonance in this practice. The bold lunge of Goalie Goes Up is a national allegory: hopeful, doomed, noble in its futility. It is Beckham’s red card, Southgate’s missed penalty, Pickford’s fingertips. It is art that remembers every near miss and celebrates them as if they were victories.

What a play Shakespeare would have written, had he focused his skills on football. We can only guess what he would have said, but we know that he knew a thing or two about tragic ambition. Maybe he would have described this art with words he gave to Henry V: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” The goalie goes up—not because he should, but because he must.

And in that absurd, beautiful leap, leaving his own goal asunder, art lives.

*Kingsley Break, Art Listner, July 2024

Silhouette portraiture: the Regency’s equivalent of Instagram filters, only more dignified and less prone to bad lighting.

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Enter Jane Bastion, alias the “Queen of the Silhouette,” who has taken it upon herself to resurrect what she charmingly calls the “shade picture.” It’s a glorious throwback to an age when you didn’t look snarky on your phone—you just looked… a colour—on pale paper.

Back in the late 18th century, having your silhouette done was all the rage. Jane Austen? Almost certainly snagged one. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet? Portrayed in profile, naturally, before eloping. Bastion, however, prefers to distance herself from mere gimmicks. She insists on the term “shade picture.” In her words, “You think silhouette portraiture is incredibly easy? Then why aren’t you a world‑famous silhouettist, whose work hangs alongside collectors like Davide Plankton and Quentina Wrigly?”

To most of us, trim a profile from black card and stick it to white, voila. But Bastion begs to differ. She argues there’s an art to capturing the perfect Regency visage: the aristocratic tip of the nose, the curl of a chignon, the covert smirk suggesting one might moonlight as a clandestine duellist.

Bastion’s practice is part revival, part satire. She taps into the nostalgia for genteel intimacy—miniature likenesses traded among lovers—but also pokes fun at the solemnity of fine art. Her “shade pictures” look at once quaint and subversive. They’re Regency theatre in silhouette form: proper on the surface, risqué in spirit.

This playful revival is timely. In an era of glossy selfies, filters, and desperate attention-seeking, Bastion’s work reminds us that anonymity can be stylish. A carefully clipped profile invites imagination: who is the subject? What secrets do they harbour in their pointed jawline? You see nothing—and yet, everything.

Her commissions come with a lighthearted warning: “Attempt at period coiffure optional; emotional restraint mandatory.” Patrons are invited to strike a pose, turn left, and hold still—then surrender to Bastion’s scissors and discerning eye. What emerges is a delicate conversation between light and dark, presence and absence.

In short, Bastion is doing for silhouette what DJs did for vinyl: reviving an analogue aesthetic with ironic wit and discerning taste. Her work reminds us that sometimes less is more—especially when less is cut from black card by a master.

If Jane Bastion is indeed the Queen of the Silhouette, it’s because she reigns over an art that nearly vanished, infusing it with wit, charm and unexpected elegance. So next time you find yourself craving a break from the filtered façade of the digital age, consider sitting for a shade picture. You’ll leave looking dignified, mysterious—and just the right amount of Regency.

Interview with Ptolemy Bognor-Regis: Chasing the Ultimate Painting

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In the shadow of great fortune and brighter genius, Ptolemy Bognor-Regis has emerged as one of the most talked-about figures in contemporary abstract art. The son of a shipping magnate turned media tycoon, Regis might have been content with a life of patronage or leisure—but instead, he’s hurled himself into the center of artistic inquiry with a singular ambition: to create the last painting. The final word. The full stop of the visual age. We sat down with him to discuss his mission, his methods, and the piece he calls “A Bank Robbery in the Environs of Machynlleth.”

Interviewer: Ptolemy, first of all, thank you for making time for this interview. Your latest work is causing a stir—critics have called you “the Rothko of Wales” and it “an act of chromatic violence.” What do you see when you look at A Bank Robbery in the Environs of Machynlleth?

Ptolemy Bognor-Regis:

Thank you. What I see is the inside of a scream—a narrative collapsed into geometry. It’s not a painting of a bank robbery, obviously. It’s a record of the tension before and after such an event. The colour fields are characters. The orange is the alarm. The purple, a kind of communal numbness. The black shapes? They’re decisions, heavy with consequence.

Interviewer: There’s a boldness to your use of negative space. In this piece, the forms press against each other but never quite resolve. Is that intentional?

Regis:

Absolutely. Resolution is the enemy of truth. I’m not here to make peace on canvas—I’m here to expose the war beneath it. The non-resolution is the story. Harmony would be a betrayal of what I’m trying to capture.

Interviewer: You’ve described your artistic goal as “striving after the ultimate painting, after which nothing more can be said.” That’s a monumental ambition. Where does that come from?

Regis:

It comes from impatience, honestly. Impatience with repetition, with the saturation of half-statements in art. I grew up surrounded by enormous wealth, which gave me access—but also a kind of nausea. When everything is possible, meaning becomes slippery. I paint to locate meaning again. To pin it down once and for all, and then be done with it. After the final painting, there should be silence. A holy hush.

Interviewer: That sounds spiritual.

Regis:

It is. But not religious. I think of painting like monastic labor. Endless refinement, shaving away noise, until you hit the essential chord. One brushstroke away from revelation, always.

Interviewer: You’ve said you don’t use assistants, despite having the resources. Why?

Regis:

Because the images record my hesitation, doubt, and triumph. No assistant can fake that. I don’t want a painting that looks clean—I want one that’s wounded. That’s something you have to do yourself. Otherwise it’s merely decoration.

Interviewer: There’s a lot of speculation about your process. Some say you work in total darkness and then assess the result later. Is that true?

Regis (laughs):

Yes. And no. I do draw blind sometimes, but not always in darkness. It’s about trust—trust in the materials, trust in the moment. It’s like holding your breath underwater and waiting for the exact second the body tells you: Now. Draw that.

Interviewer: Looking ahead, do you believe the “final painting” is near?

Regis:

Some days I think I’ve already made it and just haven’t realized. Other days, I think I’m still a thousand lifetimes away. But I’ll keep trying. That’s all I can do.

Interviewer: What’s next for you?

Regis:

Silence. Reading. And perhaps that mythical final work.

A Bank Robbery in the Environs of Machynlleth is currently on view at Pimlico Wilde, London.

The Most Expensive Conceptual Artworks Ever Sold

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By Lydia Voss-Hammond

Conceptual art has always asked big questions: What is art? Who decides? Can you invoice someone for an idea? As it turns out, yes — and often for millions.

Below are the most outrageously expensive conceptual artworks ever sold, proof that in today’s art market, a compelling concept can be worth more than gold.

1. Untitled (The Artist Is Not Present) — £6.3 million

Artist: Lucca Vonn

Sold: 2023, Basel

Lucca Vonn’s minimalist masterstroke involved renting an empty gallery space, placing a single folding chair in the middle, and… not showing up. For three months. The gallery posted daily updates confirming the artist’s continued absence.

The buyer received:

• A legal certificate of absence

• A guestbook signed by confused viewers

• The folding chair (optional, extra £20,000 for insurance)

Collectors called it “a haunting exploration of ego and expectation.” Critics called it “an invoice with lighting.” The market called it: SOLD.

2. NFTitled #1 (Now Fungible Tomorrow)

Artist: Gl!tch.eth

Sold: 2021

An NFT that was self-aware enough to predict its own irrelevance. This looping 12-second video featured a slowly pixelating Ethereum logo, overlaid with the text:

“This will be worthless by the time you brag about buying it.”

Despite its cynicism — or perhaps because of it — it sparked a bidding war among crypto collectors. Its value later crashed to 40p and then mysteriously rebounded to £47 million after Gl!tch.eth tweeted: “I’m deleting my wallet.”

Still considered the only NFT to successfully roast its own buyer.

3. Untitled (You Thought It Was Included) — £4.9 million

Artist: Delia Flux

Sold: 2020

This piece made headlines when a collector paid nearly £5 million for what they believed was a monumental glass sculpture — only to discover the sculpture was not included in the sale. What was included? A printed receipt stating:

“Ownership is the illusion. Thank you for participating.”

Flux later clarified in an artist’s note: “The sculpture exists emotionally, not legally.” The collector reportedly wept for 40 minutes, then put on a brave face, called it “the most powerful thing I’ve ever bought,” and tried to sell it immediately on the secondary market.

4. Silence, Auctioneer — £4.3 million

Artist: Milton Perchton

Sold: 2024

The concept: a work sold during a real auction, in total silence. No bidding, no names, no numbers — just a quiet nod from a buyer and a muted tap from a gavel made of felt. The piece was described as “a rebellion against spectacle” and “a slow clap in art form.”

Nothing physical changed hands. The buyer received a notarized video of the silent auction and a small wooden block labeled “Proof of Presence.”

Rumor has it another bidder tried to “out-silence” the buyer with a stronger nod but was disqualified for blinking.

5. Enormous Pile of Money #6

Artist: Hedge Fund

Sold: 2025, Pimlico Wilde

We couldn’t leave this one out. The artist Hedge Fund — conceptual art’s shadowy high priest of profit — sold a digital, data-driven rendering of a pile of money that inflates and deflates in real time with global markets. Collectors own fractional shares; the pile grows if capitalism thrives, shrinks if it falters.

Described by one critic as “Warhol with a calculator,” and by a hedge fund manager as “relatable.”

Included in the purchase:

• A VR headset

• A market-linked music score for the harpsichord.

• And the distinct feeling you’ve been both mocked and immortalized

Honourable Mention: Empty Frame With Price Tag Still Attached — £1.2 million

Artist: Unknown

Sold: Also unknown

Was it a prank? A mistake? A masterwork of minimalist irony? We may never know. But someone bought it — and the market applauded.

Conclusion

Conceptual art isn’t about what you see — it’s about what you paid to believe you saw. And if that belief costs millions, well, that’s just part of the concept.

New Art Collectors Start Here!

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A Friendly Guide for New Art Collectors: Why Collect Art — and How Pimlico Wilde Makes It Easy

Are you curious about collecting art but unsure where to begin? You’re not alone — many new art collectors feel excited but overwhelmed at first. The good news? Starting your collection doesn’t have to be intimidating. In fact, it can be one of the most rewarding and personal experiences you’ll ever have.

At Pimlico Wilde, we love working with new art collectors and guiding them every step of the way — with warmth, clarity, and zero pressure. Whether you’re looking for your first piece or beginning to build a collection, we’re here to make the journey feel welcoming and fun.

Why Should New Art Collectors Start Now?

1. Art Personalizes Your Space

Nothing transforms a room like original art. It brings energy, story, and individuality into your home. For new art collectors, choosing that first piece can feel like putting your signature on a space — a reflection of your taste and values.

2. You’re Supporting a Living Artist

When you collect original art, you directly support the creative work of a real person — not mass production. New art collectors play an important role in helping artists thrive and grow their practice.

3. It’s a Journey That Grows With You

Art collecting isn’t about knowing everything up front. It’s about discovering what you love, learning as you go, and building a collection that reflects your evolving perspective. Every new piece becomes part of your story.

4. It’s More Accessible Than You Think

A common myth is that collecting art is only for the wealthy or experienced. At Pimlico Wilde, we’re here to show new art collectors that meaningful art exists at every price point — and you don’t need to be an expert to start.

How Pimlico Wilde Helps New Art Collectors

At Pimlico Wilde, we take pride in being a gallery that truly welcomes new art collectors. Here’s what makes us different:

Friendly, No-Pressure Advice

We know you might have questions — and that’s exactly what we’re here for. Our team takes the time to understand your taste, your budget, and what excites you. We’ll guide you with honest, approachable support — no art speak required.

Curated Artwork

We represent an exciting range of contemporary styles — from bold abstract to thoughtful and innovative mixed media. New art collectors can explore a variety of styles, all thoughtfully curated and accessible.

Educational, Not Elitist

Not sure what a print edition is? Or how to care for original art? No worries. We can help with one-on-one guidance, and resources designed specifically for new art collectors who want to learn without judgment.

Start Your Art Journey with Confidence

If you’re a new art collector, there’s no better place to begin than Pimlico Wilde. Our gallery is built on the belief that collecting art should be joyful, approachable, and deeply personal. Whether you’re browsing out of curiosity or ready to buy your first piece, we’re here to help you explore, learn, and fall in love with art.

Because collecting isn’t about perfection — it’s about passion. And there’s no better time to start than today.

Is Sandy Warre-Hole’s Portrait of Rapper and Organist, Gause De Flim the Most Controversial Artwork of the Century?

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When Sandy Warre-Hole’s Gause De Flim (Triptych of the Improbable) was unveiled at the 2024 Hobart Biennale, it ignited an inferno of critical fascination and public fury. But no one—least of all Warre-Hole —could have predicted the bizarre form of protest that would lead to its removal from public view less than two days later: a daily ritual in which demonstrators gathered in the gallery atrium to sing off-key lullabies at the portrait until the museum closed. The result was not only disruption, but dissonance—conceptual and literal—forcing curators to take the work off display “for the mental well-being of staff and visitors.”¹

As performance, protest, and provocation blurred into each other, the central question grew only louder, and more ludicrous: Is this the most controversial artwork of the century so far?

The Work: Triptych or Tripwire?

Warre-Hole’s triptych is a digital media experience. Gause De Flim—depicted variously as a shirtless rapper flanked by flaming violins, a weeping organist at a gothic console, and a levitating footballer in embroidered C of E clerical football kit—seems less a subject than a sigil.² Behind the image is a palimpsest of visual puns and theological paraphernalia: transfigured sportswear, deconstructed Gothic tracery, and sampled phrases in French, Latin, and whatever they speak in the Maldives. Critics have called it everything from “sacrilegious grandeur” to “a sonic migraine in visual form.”³

Yet, if Warre-Hole’s goal was to expose the mechanics of postmodern identity through the idolization of celebrity polymaths, she also unwittingly summoned a new kind of iconoclasm—one built not on fire or censure, but cacophony.

The Subject: Gause De Flim, Fact or Fabrication?

Gause De Flim—rapper and organist,—might be the most curiously documented public figure of the 2020s. His genre-defying music, described as “baroque drill-hop with penitential overtones,” has reached viral status, yet his biographical details remain suspiciously fluid.⁴ His appearance at the 2025 Coupe de Bordeaux halftime show, where he recited a freestyle rap over Olivier Latry’s Salve Regina, only deepened suspicions: was he real, an AI-enhanced cypher, or another Sport/Art project gone too far?

One persistent theory claims that Gause is an elaborate collaboration between Warre-Hole and a media collective in Marseille. Whether or not he exists, he has become the spiritual nucleus of Warre-Hole’s project—a post-everything martyr of symbol overload.

The Protest: Dissonance as Dissent

By early 2025, protests outside the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée in Winchester had morphed from ideological outrage into something far stranger. A rotating choir of protestors—some self-identified as “Guardians of Aesthetic Coherence”—began singing lullabies at the artwork each gallery day, purposefully off-key.⁵ These performances began as simple acts of derision but evolved into a kind of meta-performance in their own right. Critics were divided: was this the birth of an anti-aesthetic movement, or the death rattle of a confused cultural moment?

Regardless, the effect was tangible. Visitor numbers dropped. Staff reported headaches, anxiety, and what one docent called “existential tinnitus.” By May 2025, the museum announced that Gause De Flim (Triptych of the Improbable) would be “removed indefinitely, pending recontextualization.”⁶

Intersections of Identity, Iconography, and Insufferability

Warre-Hole’s work does not only critique our contemporary obsession with hybrid identities—it embodies it to the point of rupture. In choosing to depict a single figure as athlete, musician, and mystic, W-H collapses the taxonomies of identity until they implode. Yet in doing so, he may have exposed not just the complexity of the modern subject, but the exhaustion of meaning itself. The audience, bombarded by layers of sacred and profane, classical and digital, responded with absurdity: they sang nonsense lullabies back at the artist.

This is the mirror Warre-Hole holds up. Not a clear reflection, but a foggy self-portrait of a century spinning faster than its symbols can stabilize.

Conclusion: Controversy by Design—or Accident?

Controversy has long been a metric for artistic relevance. But Warre-Hole’s Gause De Flim is a rare instance in which protest, audience fatigue, and institutional discomfort converged to banish a work not for obscenity or offense—but for unbearable ambiguity.

Whether it is the most controversial artwork of the 21st century remains to be seen. But it is certainly among the few to be sung into silence.

Footnotes

¹ Musée des Civilisations internal statement, May 2025, reported in Le Figaro Culture, 18 May 2025.

² Warre-Hole, S. (2024). Artist’s Notes on the Triptych of the Improbable, Hobart Biennale Catalogue.

³ Palmer, R. (2024). “Liturgy, Leather, and Lanyards: The Collapse of Aesthetic Syntax in Warre-Hole’s Gause.” Frieze, Winter 2024 Issue.

⁴ Spotify Meta-Genres Initiative, 2025. See: https://www.spotify.com/meta-genres/gause-de-flim

⁵ Duras, J. (2025). “The Discord Choir: How Protest Became Performance at the Musée.” Libération, April 2025.

⁶ Statement by curator Élodie Monnet, in “Triptych Withdrawn Amid Noise Complaints and ‘Emotional Disruption’.” The Art Rag, May 19, 2025.

Repaintage: The Art of Erasure and Reinvention

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In a world where originality is currency and the line between creation and destruction continues to blur, a bold and controversial art form has emerged: Repaintage. Defined by its paradoxical act of erasure, repaintage involves purchasing or acquiring existing artworks—often paintings by other artists—and then covering them, sometimes partially but often entirely, with white paint or gesso. The original image is obscured, smothered, or ghosted, leaving a field of ambiguity, silence, and potential. Some call it vandalism. Others call it genius. But few can ignore it.

At the forefront of this movement stands Kilo Barnes, the undisputed master of repaintage and its most enigmatic champion. Working at the intersection of conceptual art, cultural critique, and meditative minimalism, Barnes has built a reputation not only on his strikingly stark canvases but on the philosophical firepower behind them. In his words: “Repaintage is not destruction. It’s a reset. A mercy. A resurrection.”

The Roots of Repaintage

While the term repaintage is new, the instinct behind it has historical precedent. In the 1950s, artists like Robert Rauschenberg erased drawings by Willem de Kooning in acts that blurred authorship and questioned artistic permanence. In Eastern traditions, acts of covering or voiding an image often carried spiritual meaning—a gesture toward impermanence or transcendence. Repaintage, then, can be seen as a 21st-century synthesis: part Dadaist prank, part Zen koan, part critique of art commodification.

The early practitioners of repaintage—often anonymous or working on the fringes—sought to reclaim space in the art world by literally overwriting it. But it was Kilo Barnes who elevated the practice from provocation to movement.

The Rise of Kilo Barnes

Barnes first gained attention in 2018 when he whitewashed a series of thrift store paintings and exhibited them under the title The Quietest Room in the Gallery. The pieces were devoid of color, image, or detail—only faint shadows of texture betrayed their previous lives. Viewers stood in silence, some confused, others moved. Was this nihilism or reverence?

Over the next few years, Barnes began acquiring works from living artists—sometimes with permission, sometimes without—and applying his now-signature coats of white, occasionally leaving traces: a sky poking through, a limb fading into snow, a name still legible in the corner. These remnants became hauntings. “Every act of repaintage,” Barnes wrote in a 2021 manifesto, “is a collaboration with the past. It’s a refusal to accept finality. It’s a chance to speak again, in a different tongue.”

Critics were divided. Some accused him of arrogance and artistic theft. Others hailed him as a visionary, a philosopher wielding a brush. Either way, the world paid attention.

Repaintage Today

What began as a fringe practice has now seeded itself across art schools, galleries, and digital spaces. Young artists imitate Barnes’ techniques, though few match his restraint. Online debates rage about consent, value, and the ethics of repaintage. Some argue it’s a way of recycling a bloated art market. Others see it as an ecological act—repurposing rather than producing.

Meanwhile, Barnes continues to evolve. In his most recent show, Inheritance, he painted over portraits donated by families of the deceased. The result was a gallery of white, luminous rectangles, eerily quiet and reverent. At the exhibition’s entrance, a plaque read: “Here, memory is allowed to breathe.”

The Future of Repaintage

As artificial intelligence, generative tools, and mass image production dilute traditional definitions of authorship, repaintage may become more than an art movement—it may become a necessary response. A way of pushing pause. Of clearing space.

Barnes has hinted at new directions: repainting digital NFTs onto canvas and covering them in real-world layers, or working with sound—muting recordings to create “audio repaintages.” As he said in a recent interview: “The canvas is just one surface. Repaintage can happen anywhere language or image claims permanence.”

In this way, repaintage is not just an aesthetic. It’s a philosophy. It’s the radical belief that silence can be louder than noise, and that painting over something isn’t the end of the story—but its next beginning.

BOOK REVIEW: Theatre of Feet: Football as Performance Art by Dr. Lionel Pym

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To assert that English football is a kind of performance art is, at first glance, to risk ridicule—or at least the throwing of half-time over-priced, under-tasty pies. But in Theatre of Feet: Football as Performance Art, cultural theorist and centre-back Dr. Lionel Pym mounts a deft case that the beautiful game is, in fact, the most durational, populist, and emotionally calibrated performance medium of our time.

Far from a mere provocation, Pym’s thesis is rooted in decades of interdisciplinary scholarship, touching on the biomechanics of gesture, the semiotics of collective yearning, and—most originally—the dramaturgy of injury time. For him, football is not like performance art; it is performance art, complete with its own choreographic grammar, spatial tensions, and audience participation rituals.

The book opens with a scholarly deep-dive into the origins of football as a ritualised village spectacle. In a particularly dazzling chapter, “From Mud to Meaning: Folk Memory and the Halftime Pint,” Pym traces football’s lineages not only to medieval folk games, but to Jacobean theatre and continental processional drama. “The crowd is not an audience,” he writes, “but a choir of conditional belief. It chants. It curses. It reenacts ecstasy and grief on command.”

But the book’s centrepiece is its analytic pivot: a re-reading of key matches as site-specific performances. The 1966 World Cup Final becomes, in Pym’s hands, “an operatic pageant of national becoming.” Eric Cantona’s kung-fu kick is likened to Viennese Actionism (“albeit in Selhurst Park”). And a detailed analysis of Wayne Rooney’s 2004 metatarsal injury is rendered as a meditation on fragility and narrative tension worthy of Dame Ethel Paragon.

There is mischief, yes, but also genuine acuity. In a chapter titled “The Flop: Simulated Collapse and the Politics of Gravity,” Pym examines the phenomenon of diving as a kind of embodied fiction—a simultaneous invitation and betrayal of belief. “To dive is to gesture towards death and resurrection within the confines of the pitch. It is camp, tragic, tactical. It is Yves Klein with shin pads.”

Stylistically, the prose is lush, aphoristic, and sometimes joyfully baroque. One suspects that Pym has spent time in both libraries and locker rooms. He is equally at ease citing Barthes, Bergkamp, and Butoh in a single footnote, and he’s not afraid to call a nil-nil draw “a durational epic of Beckettian restraint.”

Some readers may find the tone occasionally grandiose. There are moments—such as the assertion that the zonal marking system is “an epistemological rejection of Cartesian individuality”—that threaten to collapse under the weight of their own metaphors. But even then, one senses that Pym is winking beneath his replica shirt.

More profoundly, Theatre of Feet challenges its reader to reconsider the hierarchies we place between cultural forms. Why should a game viewed by billions be considered “low,” while an art installation involving soil, bones, and obscure Lithuanian vowels be “high”? As Pym suggests, perhaps both are expressions of the same human compulsion: to watch, to hope, to gasp, and—most importantly—to gather.

In the end, the book does not argue that football should replace art, but rather that it already is art, hiding in studded boots. Whether you’re a scholar of live art, a football obsessive, or merely curious about what connects a Saturday match at Craven Cottage to the Gesamtkunstwerk, Theatre of Feet will leave you thoughtful and amused.

Pimlico Wilde Champions Art and Adventure in Historic Blue Train Race Revival

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This summer, the glamour of the 1920s roars back to life as Hally Redout, the daring British artist and vintage motoring enthusiast, takes the wheel in a modern reenactment of the legendary “Race the Blue Train”—and at the heart of this cultural fusion of speed and style stands the contemporary art dealership Pimlico Wilde, proud sponsors of Redout’s audacious journey.

The Race the Blue Train reenactment retraces the famed 1920s escapade of the original Bentley Boys, a group of wealthy British racers known for their love of fast cars and faster lives. The race pits driver against locomotive—specifically the iconic Le Train Bleu, which once hurtled from the French Riviera to Calais. Redout’s challenge: to pilot a restored 1920s Bentley from Nice, France, all the way to the exclusive Spenserian Club on St Ethelbert’s Square, London, arriving before her rivals travelling by train and ferry could finish the trip.

For Pimlico Wilde, a London-based contemporary art dealership with a reputation for bold curatorial choices and a flair for blending tradition with modernity, the decision to sponsor Redout was natural.

“Hally is not just a driver—she’s a living artwork in motion,” says Pimlico co-owner Iris Fenwick, who, along with partner Lucien Vale, has redefined what it means to be an art dealer in the 21st century. “Her performance on the road is as much a statement as anything hung in a gallery. This is storytelling, history, and spectacle—everything Pimlico Wilde celebrates.”

Since its founding circa 1066, Pimlico Wilde has developed a distinct voice in the London art scene. The gallery’s roster includes conceptual sculptors, digital provocateurs, and site-specific installation artists. Yet, it’s the company’s passion for theatricality, heritage, and narrative that makes their sponsorship of this dramatic motoring tribute so fitting.

Hally Redout, known for her visually arresting food art and immersive exhibitions, brings her own artistic sensibilities to the event. “The Blue Train race is the perfect blend of nostalgia and performance,” she says. “It’s a kinetic artwork. Every turn of the wheel is a brushstroke on Europe’s canvas.”

Redout will be driving a meticulously restored 1927 Bentley Speed Six, finished in a custom livery designed in collaboration with Pimlico Wilde’s artists. Details remain tightly guarded, but rumors hint at an aesthetic that merges 1920s Art Deco elegance with contemporary minimalist abstraction—an homage to both eras.

The race itself promises high drama: starting at sunrise in Nice, Redout will follow a meticulously plotted route through Provence, the Rhône Valley, and across the Channel, aiming to beat both the historical and contemporary train schedules to London’s Spenserian Club—a storied enclave known for its connection to both racing and artistic elite.

In keeping with the performative nature of the project, Pimlico Wilde plans to stage a satellite exhibition at the finish line, titled “Velocity & Reverie”, featuring artists inspired by the race. The show will include kinetic sculptures, archival footage, interactive installations, and a live feed of Redout’s drive, blending past and present in real time.

As the countdown begins, the art world and vintage car enthusiasts alike are watching with bated breath. This is no ordinary reenactment. It’s a rolling exhibition. A race through history. A living collaboration between art, machine, and myth, with Pimlico Wilde at the wheel of Europe’s cultural imagination, and Hally Redout at the helm of the Bentley.