Art Encounters

What's my line? I'm happy cleaning windows, Take my time, I'll see you when my love grows. 'Cleaning Windows' - Van Morrison It was September and I had just returned from the U.S. having completed a J1 student visa. I stood in…

All those insecurities, That have held me down for so long, I can't say I've found a cure for these, But at least I know them, So they're not so strong, George Michael, Waiting (Reprise). It’s now a calendar year since I began…

‘I grabbed you by the gilded beams, That’s what tradition means.’ The Smiths, I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish. Last year, having skipped over it during my undergraduate years, I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. One…

Ach na dearmaid ar gcaithú, Cuimhnidh lámh ar an mead, A tháinigh muid tharais, Más féidir linn cuimhniú, is teacht ar an tuiscint, Más féidir linn tuiscint, maith (far an) croí. (But don’t forget our sorrows,…

‘Every set of phenomena, whether cultural totality or sequence of events, has to be fragmented, disjointed, so that it can be sent down the circuits; every kind of language has to be resolved into a binary formulation so that it can…

“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.” Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. The above quote is…

A few weeks ago, rumbling around in the garage, I came across a poster of the famous Japanese woodblock print (The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Hokusai) that was given to me as a present by my sister and brother-in-law when they returned from…

More from the Art Encounters series can be found here. Eggleston's photographs look like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis. On the weekend…

Note: This piece contains spoilers for Dunkirk It’s early August. I’m in the middle of trying to finish a load of writing projects, one of which is a book on film. I need a break, just to remind myself of why I’m doing what I do. I see…

Back in May of this year I wrote an Art Encounters article called The Rescue Act. It was about the events that led to my adopting a border collie called Oscar. The title was a bit tongue-in-cheek, like the title of an action movie and I was…