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Nicole Flattery

Nicole Flattery's criticism has appeared in the GuardianThe Irish Times and the LRB. Her story collection Show Them A Good Time was published in 2019. Her favourite Chantal Akeman film is News From Home.



Articles Available Online


Chantal Akerman’s ‘My Mother Laughs’

Book Review

October 2019

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

October 2019

There’s a scene in the documentary I Don’t Belong Anywhere, about the Belgian filmmaker’s Chantal Akerman’s life and work, where she discusses her only...

Book Review

August 2018

Lorrie Moore's ‘See What Can Be Done’

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

August 2018

Lorrie Moore writes in her introduction to See What Can Be Done that, at the start of her career,...

When I first visited Caragh Thuring in her east London studio, there was an old man lurking in the corner He was bearded and curly haired, with orange cheeks, peppery eyes and bright lips that were puckered into a small red beak He looked surprised, maybe a little embarrassed and, although this won’t mean much to you, a little like my dad, which is how Thuring and I continue to refer to him ‘I couldn’t tell you where he came from’, she said, looking over his fading features (which I should mention were rendered once on linen, and again to the left on a dog-eared piece of paper) ‘I was going to stick him on top of another painting, but I thought that would be a bit much, so I’m saving him for later’   This approach is indicative of Thuring’s painterly methodology, one characterised by reclamation and continuation A healthy disposophobic, Thuring hoards imagery and ideas from all walks of life, and then rolls them out slowly, revisiting certain particularities from linen to linen Her latest works, on display across Thomas Dane’s twin London spaces until January, are informed by Ardyne Point, a now-derelict development to the southwest of Dunoon in Scotland which, framed by towering oil rigs, once sought permission to manage the nuclear waste from decommissioned submarines (the application was withdrawn following protests from local residents) Contrastingly, her exhibition at London’s Chisenhale Gallery last year involved a number of serene works inspired by the ‘picture windows’ of Dutch suburban homes, their white ledges interrupted by smatterings of leaves and spotty ornamental vases   In spite of their seemingly unrelated starting points – from the residential to the rigs – the two bodies of work remain visually linked Brickwork, for instance, a leitmotif that Thuring adopted shortly after leaving college in 1995 as a ‘shortcut’ to signify construction, lurks in the background of both – previously, these bricks have been painted, now they are woven into the very fabric onto which the paintings are built Silhouettes of figures, too, fade in and out, as do man-made structures, graphic patterns, and expanses of untouched

Contributor

January 2018

Nicole Flattery

Contributor

January 2018

Nicole Flattery’s criticism has appeared in the Guardian, The Irish Times and the LRB. Her story collection Show Them A Good...

Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘Her Body and Other Parties’

Book Review

January 2018

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

January 2018

I’m reluctant to admit this but it’s often easier for me to write about a book I hated rather than a book I loved....

READ NEXT

feature

April 2017

Everywhere and Nowhere

Vahni Capildeo

feature

April 2017

Part of my reluctance to write on citizenship is that as a poet, a worker in delicate, would-be-truthful language,...

Interview

August 2016

Interview with Brian Evenson

J. W. McCormack

Interview

August 2016

There are at least three Brian Evensons, all of them EXCEEDINGLY IMPROBABLE. First, there’s Brian Evenson, the prolific author of...

feature

November 2012

Life outside the Manet Paradise Resort : On the paintings of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Orlando Reade

feature

November 2012

*   A person is represented, sitting in what appears to be the banal and conventional pose of a...

 

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