Stories by name

Los Angeles: Though Ruby and I have been within each other’s orbits for years, we didn’t meet until this interview. We have a lot in common beyond mutual friends. We both grew up in Inverness, California; our fathers and mothers were artists; we each had a lot of freedom growing up; and we both went to…

I wake, and I know that no one’s scheduled to arrive today. A line from a Jorge Luis Borges short story wraps itself around my bones: ‘You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream’. I recall the dream I had on my first night in solitary confinement, about two months ago,…

Tucson: Neglected, ignored, unknown, or unrecognised, the artist garnering little or no attention during their lifetime who nevertheless keeps plugging away is a common cliché. A stereotype covering the spectrum from those who toil in obscurity to be forgotten forever, which is normally the case, or the ones discovered and in some cases celebrated posthumously….

Tehran: At the beginning there was daddy sperm. DADDY is Reza Shafahi, born in 1940 in Saveh, Iran, an ancient metropolis located southwest of Tehran, known for its pomegranates, melons, wheat, and cotton. Saveh is a wealthy city, once ruled by Reza’s father, a rich patriarch who until the late ‘30s owned pretty much every…

Los Angeles: Roger (pronounced ‘Ro-jay’ in the French–German manner of his hybrid hometown of Saarbrücken) Herman is an artist from Germany who has lived in California since 1977, and Los Angeles for almost as long. Roger is a painter and, since the mid ‘80s until recently, was an influential teacher at the University of California’s…

Los Angeles: I first encountered Ricky Swallow online. Or rather, what I actually encountered was an anonymous blog called Ready for the House. It was an album quilt of objects—hundreds of objects—stitched together by some mysterious collector in California. Navajo jewellery. Nineteen-forties wave splitters from Papua New Guinea, worn and weathered from time at sea….

New York City: I was walking down the street one day with my friend Malcolm McLaren. Richard Hell was across the street walking in the opposite direction, and didn’t see us. Malcolm turned to me and said, ‘Modern people look the way they do and dress the way they do because of Richard’. Malcolm went…

Concept by Ana Dominguez & Omar Sosa            

Mental as anything Sydney: I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but if you’re Australian, you’ve probably heard of Reg Mombassa. Since coming into existence in 1951 Reg, aka Chris O’Doherty, has infected everything he touches with his askew, laconic sensibility. From suburban landscapes to Dadaist creations with religious motifs—his work is coveted by…

It even has a name Miami: As Art Basel Miami Beach beckons its disciples to gorge on art in a show of reverence and decadence, Marvin and Ruth Sackner, who live across the bay, go about their quiet routine in what was once the duplex penthouse of the Venezuelan pop star El Puma. They decided to…

The GPS tells me in its female voice that I’m only one kilometre away from my destination, and as I enter the tunnel the radio cuts out on the best single released in 1967. The side lights come on automatically, and, now that I’m out of the rain, I think about turning off the windscreen…

The adventures of Ryan McGinley New York City: Sitting in Ryan McGinley’s apartment is not unlike looking at his photographs. Exposed, handmade kitchen shelves communicate DIY insouciance, a bathtub in the centre of the room was practically made for mischief, and, on a brutal New York winter morning, flourishing plants suggest a perennial spring. Everything lining the…

At the time I got this space, in 2007, I was tempted to go and live in the countryside, and in fact I spent a few weeks in Mallorca looking at amazing houses with palm trees, swimming pools and fireplaces. While in the middle of the countryside, I realised it wasn’t the time for be…

One of the many joys of staying in JB’s house is having access to his library, a lifetime’s collection of ideas, interests and thoughts arranged over a wall of bookcases. In his collection, I found a copy of The Art of Rosanjin. Rosanjin Kitaoji was a highly eccentric Japanese potter famed as much for his…

Recently, someone asked me: why does an architect who wants to make a living as a product designer work as a bike messenger? I actually remember my first six months after graduating; working in an architect’s office was a frustrating experience. Drawing plans all day wasn’t what I expected. When I quit, I decided to…

By Frances Beatty as told to Hannah Martin Long Island: Conversations with Ray Johnson were never ordinary. You wouldn’t ask, ‘How’s your family?’ Or, ‘Do you want some lunch?’ He spoke like a collage. He would just start saying things and it was like jumping on a wave and surfing on the language. It was…

In her West London home, on one of the stickiest days of a roasting hot summer, Ruth Rogers is as cool as a cucumber. Ruthie, as she’s known, is in full swing describing with a clipped-yet-husky American precision the sequence of tasks that take place before service begins at the River Cafe. Her living room…

The first time I ran away from home I was eight years old. The circumstances are unclear now, but it was almost certainly unjustified. Perhaps an argument about having to continue the piano lessons I dreaded so much, during which I was made to play scales over and over when all I wanted was to…

Paris: It’s late February and I’ve just got off the 7am flight from Barcelona to Paris. It’s overcast and cold. I’ve made my way from Charles de Gaulle to the city’s 13th arrondissement, and I’m standing outside a McDonald’s because the internet on my phone isn’t working. I’ve arranged to meet at an address on…

Chiang Mai & New York City: My first conversation with Rirkrit Tiravanija was at a Thai restaurant with a group in the East Village. Rirkrit and his friend Antto Melasniemi, the Helsinki-based chef, were discussing their idea for a cookbook that would compile the ‘bastardised’ recipes they had conceived throughout their friendship. I mentioned that…

Looking at the list of movies a cinematogra- pher has worked on is sometimes a blunt discovery of why your favourite movies are in fact your favourite movies. The cinematogra- pher, also called the director of photogra- phy, is the person on a movie set who physi- cally holds the camera, as well as being responsible for…

Le Kram, Tunis: Rafram Chaddad was born in 1976 on the island of Djerba, Tunisia. His grandfather was head of the island’s Jewish community, one which in Tunisia as a whole has now greatly diminished, becoming almost inexistent, even in its capital, Tunis, a city once alive with Jewish culture. In 1978 the family decided to…

San Francisco: Imagine it’s 1970. Being in Los Angeles, I was aware of a certain group of guys who were doing sculpture with clay. My girlfriend Waynna brought me this book, Objects: USA. It was more or less full of typical stoneware pots, some of them masterful and some of them adventurous within the typical stoneware…

Up early, eating a banana, walking over to Brownstones with its pirated (almost exactly like Starbucks) logo to say hi to the painfully sweet and smiling girls, the same two who worked there three years ago. Three years from now they’ll probably still be there. Got a coffee in the too thin cup that makes…

Gothenburg: I’m on a train on my way to see Swedish film director Ruben Östlund. It’s my first time in Sweden and the general state of midsummer-induced euphoria among the people I’ve been meeting has seduced me. It’s sunny, green, and the days actually don’t end. Ruben, who is originally from Styrsö, a small island off…

Anything but an artist Berlin: Postman, philosopher, gallerist, entrepreneur, science academy president, designer, club owner, writer—Rafael Horzon has done it all. Since he sold his own toaster as a work by a fictitious Japanese artist in his own gallery Berlintokyo in the 1990s, Rafael has been one of the main players of the culture scene in Berlin…

When I moved to New York in the summer of 2010 I didn’t have any friends. I couldn’t afford my own apartment, so I made the novice mistake of moving in with a random stranger I met on Craigslist. You hear horror stories about Craigslist roommates—OCDs, junkies, money scammers, rapists– but still, I thought, how bad…

I would coach but I wouldn’t kill the umpire New York City: The artist Raymond Pettibon lives in what has become a polarising structure on the Lower Manhattan skyline—Frank Gehry’s first residential skyscraper, simply called ‘New York’. Although he says he enjoys the views from his 57th-floor perch and the impeccable amenities, he readily admits to…