Ian Hamilton Finlay, In Revolution Politics Become Nature (1980)

A slogan is etched into a block of stone and the stone laid on a piece of red felt. There is something somewhat reverent about this inscription; the words carry weight and are to be handled with care. You read the title off the block. And then you read it in…

Martin Creed, Work No. 117, All the sounds on a drum machine (1995), at The Poetry Library

Work No. 117 by Martin Creed is a jokey little number. It consists of an audio tape on which can be heard, as advertised, every noise on a drum machine played in sequence. As it runs the gamut of automated sounds, it sounds like an ironic comment on the technology…

Review: Billy Childish – Unknowable But Certain

Exhibition: Billy Childish – Unknowable But Certain, The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, until May 2 2010 In a poem on the wall, we find that Billy Childish once wrote: “I am a desperate man who loves the simplicity of/painting/and hates gallarys [sic] and white walls.” Now that his recent…