Many of the pieces collected in ‘Poor Things’, the excellent new exhibition at the Fruitmarket, use humour, but perhaps none quite as pointedly as Rebecca Moss’s video installations, 'Thick-Skinned' and 'Home Improvements'. Both works demonstrate Moss’s interest in slapstick as a way of examining ‘the gap between being a body and having a body: between… Continue reading Rebecca Moss: the art of slapstick
Berlant and Early: Intellectual vaudeville
It feels a little superfluous analysing Kate Berlant and John Early’s work when the commentary is largely built in; to point out that they revisit certain preoccupations, like social performance and competition, for example, feels somewhat redundant when the revisiting is itself a theme of the work. That interest in refining an idea or an… Continue reading Berlant and Early: Intellectual vaudeville
Sanford Biggers’ Chimeras
Sanford Biggers’ Chimeras series brings together the bodies of well-known Greco-Roman sculptures with over-sized heads formed by African masks. The mashups create a complex and tonally ambiguous effect – incongruous certainly, but not necessarily comic. Biggers has spoken about his interest in artwork that has an ‘unfamiliar’ tone; arguing that ‘a great artwork can make… Continue reading Sanford Biggers’ Chimeras
Leo Reich: Literally, Who Cares
Leo Reich’s debut Fringe show is dazzling. A portrait of rabid Gen Z narcissism that is brilliantly funny, and despite the artfully superficial persona, threaded through with melancholy and rage; emotion which is ironic and also not. Reich is incisive about the conditions that have generated contemporary pathologies - the warping effects of technology for… Continue reading Leo Reich: Literally, Who Cares
Jerk
The BBC 3 sitcom Jerk, stars Tim Renkow as an anti-hero who exploits his cerebral palsy to get away with bad behaviour. Widely acknowledged to be ground-breaking in its representation of disability, the series is a radical departure from the narrative conventions that situate disabled characters as either victim or saint. With a clear kinship… Continue reading Jerk
Catherine Cohen: the twist?… she’s gorgeous
‘The Twist...? She’s Gorgeous’, Catherine Cohen’s recent Netflix special, sees her concoct a flamboyant spectacle of feminine narcissism, in a show characterised by a rather perfect tension between self-regard and self-deprecation, conceit and vulnerability, play and pain. Part of what’s dazzling about Cohen’s performance is the sheer speed and precision with which she moves through… Continue reading Catherine Cohen: the twist?… she’s gorgeous
Reasons to be Cheerful
Nina Stibbe’s novel, Reasons To Be Cheerful, the third volume in a series of semi-autobiographical novels, hasn’t been short of recognition, winning the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize in 2019, and the Comedy Women in Print Prize in 2020. As is so often the case with comic novels, though, critical suspicion lingers – with some critics… Continue reading Reasons to be Cheerful
Rutu Modan’s Tunnels
A thrilling adventure story, Rutu Modan’s new graphic novel, Tunnels, is also very funny. The story has a buoyant, almost farcical energy, and there’s a satirical aspect too, an empathetic satire which is fond rather than acrimonious. As with her previous work, Modan’s subject is Israeli life, and the story’s archaeological focus shows the preoccupation… Continue reading Rutu Modan’s Tunnels
Mike Birbiglia: orchestrating anxiety
Mike Birbiglia creates masterful endings. It’s not good form to talk about endings, especially in stand up, when an effective ending can be so transformative. With tension such a key component - both at the level of individual jokes and of fully developed sets or specials, with punchlines and closers providing the release (or… Continue reading Mike Birbiglia: orchestrating anxiety
Mark Leidner: Anti-myth myth-making
Returning the Sword to the Stone, the title of Mark Leidner’s newest collection, gestures to renunciation, or reversal, and the invocation of myth is developed by a line within the poem itself: ‘removing royalty from your bloodline by returning the sword to the stone’. The notion of reversing or undercutting myth threads throughout the collection,… Continue reading Mark Leidner: Anti-myth myth-making
Humour in the Arts 