Adam Lowe

This is the catalogue for the ongoing exhibition of antique and contemporary tapestries and carpets produced and organised by the Giorgio Cini Foundation with Factum Arte, Madrid, due to run on the Island of San Giorgio until 18 September 2011. The main idea
of the exhibition is to focus on Vittorio Cini’s great interest in tapestries and at the same time explore developments in contemporary art and the renewed ability of artists to use the medium to tell very varied, compelling stories from present-day life. The works in the catalogue range from late 15th-century tapestry depicting the destruction of Jerusalem to Azra Akšamija’s textiles on ethnic cleansing in Bosnia Herzegovina, Grayson Perry’s vast allegory of contemporary life in the Walthamstow Tapestry and Mark Quinn’s “flowers” of our manipulated natural world. Consequently, this is an exhibition that puts the woven image back at the heart of contemporary artistic practice.… (more)

I was given this book to review.

There are lots of ways one could define Troglodyte Rose, urban dystopia, bizarro...but at its heart Troglodyte Rose is a fairytale, an old one, straight out of Grimm's more far fetched imaginings. Rose and Flid (a hermaphrodite) live in a dystopian world, half-described, half felt, where they're something of a Bonnie and Clyde. In their search for meaning or life in a world that's simultaneously been sterilized and organized for the benefit of some, and is dirty and savage for others, Rose and Flid come across a drug, Haze, which functions almost like bottled hope.

While they're high everything is possible, including traveling to other worlds and rescuing princesses, or even the more mundane--feelings of satisfaction and peace. But of course Haze is highly illegal. The only way to get it is to steal from the pipes that carry it up to the upper classes, the elite (and captive) who are the only ones allowed to dream. When Rose and Flid get caught siphoning the pipes the full force of the Justicars come crashing down on them. Homeless, destined for only death or slavery, Rose and Flid set out to bring the whole world down with them, via revolution.

A very visual, but chaotic tale Troglodyte Rose is never without either the fairy tale feeling, or the brutal hope that Rose and Flid can make better lives for themselves. Some readers will be put off by the completely illogical world setting, but others will find within these pages a beautiful tale of freedom that skirts traditional storytelling rules.… (more)