“... more persuasively to us from the margins of the technological landscape.’ In the catalogue Will Self writes of Ballard’s ability to see the nature of what has grown up around us: ‘Bleak man-made landscapes, technological, social and environmental developments and their psychological effects – these are aspects of the dystopian society we all live in ...”

“... manifestations, because they are so humble, so daily, because people don’t use them as a form of self-definition, and because the differences between them are real: a Crunchie is not just a differently packaged Mars bar – it’s a genuinely different thing. Consumers will have sincerely held differing opinions about their merits. Added to this is the fact ...”

“... under the footage of Boyle’s triumph. YouTube, you could say, is the depot for international self-realisation. Danny MacAskill, a young guy in Edinburgh who can do brilliant tricks on his mountain bike, gets himself filmed and somebody sticks it up on YouTube. Three million views. The young guy’s a legend. Andy McKee, a man who picks and slaps his ...”

“... on themes from Hogarth, which included some wonderful late flourishes, role-playing (many are self-portraits) and memorable images. The florid iconography and symbolism of the Café Deutschland series spills over into the late works, but without the political imperative the vitality somehow dwindles. One of the most striking paintings in the Ashmolean ...”

“... merit, most of them gratuitously concerned with the Second World War and so helping to sustain the self-justifying national myth: Women of the Second World War, Animals in War, Bomber Command etc. Then there is the Armed Forces Memorial in the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, unveiled in 2007: an impressive circular structure in which a diluted ...”

“... asymmetry that fractured the psychological monotony, touching some faultline in his subject’s self-possession. He must surely be a fool – this guileless, posh young Londoner, this obverse of Ingres’s Monsieur Bertin – to allow himself to be so immobilised. See how, in his slouch, his figure balloons away from that absurd little apex of a head, his ...”

“... budgets to individual GP practices); the replacement of health authorities by ‘NHS trusts’ (self-governing accounting centres with borrowing powers, and their own finance, human resources and PR departments) and the splitting of purchasers from providers (the planning and delivery of services was to be undertaken by separate bodies, with the money ...”

“... side two). But the sense of time slipping away is perhaps best expressed – with anger, despair, self-deflating bathos – in the refrain of ‘Girl Loves Me’: ‘Where the fuck did Monday ...”

“... of what went wrong was blunt: ‘Civil servants are by their nature cautious. There is collective self-discipline and people wanting an easy life and becoming morally and intellectually lazy, so they just do what the minister wants.’ Now, of course, that minister is Boris Johnson, a man who has written of the ‘watermelon smiles’ of Congolese ‘tribal ...”

“... any discernible paperwork. I have never met anyone more blithe about the contrast between their self-image and the facts of their life. He sees himself as an entrepreneur bringing a much needed service to market. He is helping people realise their dreams – it just so happens that these dreams involve extra-legal measures. Others see him as the villainous ...”

“... but before the camera sees her above water she has turned into another person: her grown-up self, swimming in a different latitude. She is Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), from Spectre, now living happily with a retired Bond in Jamaica. I’m not sure what to make of this shift of twenty years or so between shots, but it’s certainly memorable, and ...”

“... bonnacon is shown expelling faeces, a feat which, the inscription notes, it commonly performs in self-defence.The map’s humanoid creatures are some of its most compelling. There are dog-headed men (seemingly engaged in conversation) as well as a ‘monocule’ or Sciapod: a man with only one foot, extended into the air. He cuts a lonely figure, as does the ...”

“... crazy parties, leopardskin pants and a pony-tail. But now her parents are puzzled. Where is their self-centred daughter? She hasn’t gone to town. Come on. You come down. * The publican wants God as a partner, the businessman, the wife, oh the girl with scars on her wrists taking her baby to God the shiftless drunk no one trusts who lives in a packing shed ...”

“... meditation on artistic susceptibilities. Martin has in part reconstructed a clinical scene: a self-declared mirror-touch synaesthete (here played by the Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca) is asked to watch objects and bodies gently slapped or palpated, and is quizzed on whether or where she feels anything in response. The result is a work that doesn’t ...”

“... general human and animal condition. This is less true of the other work in the show, in which the self-deprecating humour extends to the teasing deprecation of some of his fellow artists and indeed the viewer. One of the ways in which Shrigley offends against the tenets of much contemporary art practice is that he admits to presenting a persona in his ...”