Embracing the Shadows
Finding a place to belong is Gaia Ore’s main focus after husband, Charles, the ‘Architect of the Age’, chokes to death on a piece of eel, leaving her alone in ‘the Construct’, a house where rooms are ‘units’ and clutter is banned. Rooting through her husband’s things, Gaia discovers intimate letters from the mysterious Selene, and in the midst of her grief begins writing to this ‘other woman’. Their correspondence leads to the organisation of an international architecture competition where four of Charles’ former adversaries — think Richard Rogers, Daniel Libeskind et al — compete to design a house his widow can call home. Perfect Architect is described in the promotional blurb as ‘a love letter to architecture’, and as much as it is, it is also a love letter to the epistolary novel. In this brave new electronic world, there is something a little nostalgic about Gaia’s discovery of Charles’ letters and her postal correspondence with Selene.
Kerry Ryan reviews Jayne Joso’s Perfect Architect.
In Bed with Tracey Emin & Stewart Home
What strange bedfellows Emin and Home make. Two artists so utterly different that they are almost each other’s opposites, if such a thing were possible. What they do share perhaps is a punk attitude, but not much else. Emin is truly an artist of her time, whether you rate her work or not. Like reality television she is uncomplicated, exhibitionist, soul-baring and embarrassing . She has become an art establishment figure, measured in fame and money, Tory-supporting and angry about paying higher rate tax, political only in a Daily Mail sense. Home on the other hand remains anti-establishment, avant-garde and a communist. His work is oblique, opaque, avowedly non-personal and overtly political, as likely to attack anarchists and counter-culture figures as capitalism or the monarchy. Where Emin is mercurial and sexually traumatised, Home is detached and playful. Emin tells you her truth, and Home challenges you about the nature of truth and its perception. Emin is television, Home is internet.
By Andrew Scott-Bolton.