Francis Gooding

Skateboarders​ see the world in their own way. They have a unique appreciation for aspects of architecture that otherwise go unloved or overlooked, and their unorthodox investigations of the postwar built environment constitute the most detailed and intimate engagement with modern urbanism made by any social group. Who else has searched out and realised the potential of the least promising...

The​ word is not the thing. In spoken language a word is a distinctive sound or series of sounds. It does not have a ‘natural’ relationship to the thing it stands for. Ferdinand de Saussure theorised that a sign is made up of two parts: the signifier (the physical form taken by the sign, for instance a spoken word or its written representation) and the signified (the concept the...

Most​ people in most places, past and present, have seen magic as a part of life: potentially dangerous but certainly efficacious, an essential, everyday means of getting things done. A good-luck charm, a visit to the shaman, a love spell, a holy talisman, a lock of hair, a photograph of someone you love: who truly believes such things are without meaning? But does any of it really work?

A...

Half​ acrobat, half can-can dancer, Picasso’s Salome kicks her leg up as Herod Antipas, corpulent and sagging, takes in the spectacle, flanked by his bride, dark-eyed Herodias. The king’s rheumy gaze is fixed on his stepdaughter’s nakedness. In the corner, a kneeling servant proffers Salome’s reward, chosen at her mother’s behest: the severed head of John the...