Why is there only one Monopolies Commission? : British art and its critics in the late 1970s

This thesis examines the British art world in the period 1976-1981. The first section explores the crises in the artworld triggered by the International Monetary Fund Crisis of February 1976. Central to this analysis is the Labour and Conservative Party's ideological shift from culturalist paternalism to monetarist liberalism, the history and function of the Arts Council of Great Britain, the press scandals surrounding the Tate Gallery's purchase of Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII and the ICA's exhibition of COUM Transmission's Prostitution. The opportunist populist polemics of the 'crisis critics' (Richard Cork, Andrew Brighton, Peter Fuller and John Tagg) are then introduced alongside a discussion of the colossal changes in the British art press. This is followed by an analysis of Cork's defence of Conrad Atkison's work and of the Royal Oak murals. The second section looks at the postmodernism rejected by Cork and the populist crisis critics, namely, the scripto-visual work of John Hilliard, Victor Burgin, and John Stezaker. The influence of photoconceptualism on community artists and feminist artists is then examined. This is followed by an analysis of Art & Language's critique of 'Semio-Art'. This section concludes with an analysis of the 'new art history' in relation to the practices of Jo Spence and Terry Atkinson. The following section looks at 'conservative'/populist postmodernism as outlined in exhibitions such as The Human Clay (1976), Towards Another Picture (1978), Lives (1979) and Narrative Painting (1979). This includes extensive discussion of the work of David Shepherd, Peter Blake, Ron Kitaj, David Hockney, Steven Campbell, Women's Painting (Images of Men), and The School of London (The Hard Won Image). The final section opens with a lengthy examination of the agitational performances of COUM Transmissions, investigating their decision to abandon the publicly subsidised artworld in order to become the industrial band Throbbing Gristle. This is followed by an examination of British pro-Situationism, punk and new wave subcultures in the 1970s, relating them to the growth of the entrepreneurial art market of the early 1980s

Inventory’s paper assembly: fierce sociology, sovereignty and self-organisation in London’s small press publishing scene 1995 to 2005

This study attempts to deliver an intellectual history of the journal Inventory and its place within theories of knowledge, publishing, artistic practice, ethnography, politics and critical theory. The initial movement of the thesis, Chapter 1, establishes Inventory’s formal structure as a journal. Chapter 2 establishes the presuppositions and models for the use of a journal or magazine as a platform for heterodox cultural practice and inquiry. The study then follows Inventory’s proposition of a method derived from the fusion of the heterogeneous sociology of Georges Bataille and his circle in Chapter 3; and the speculative aesthetic theory, and ‘anthropological materialism’, of Walter Benjamin in Chapter 4. In Chapters 3 and 4 Inventory’s ‘constellation of methods’: surrealism – as a mode of research and publishing, rather than as a visual art – meets ethnography, the study of the culture of all humankind on a common plane of praxis. This partisan reappropriation of surrealist and ethnographic method is shown to generate a complex para-academic publishing and research project, one which has a relation to, but ultimately exceeds, contemporary theories of either the ‘artist as anthropologist’ (Joseph Kosuth), ‘ethnographic surrealism’ (James Clifford) or ‘the artist as ethnographer’ (Hal Foster). Chapter 5 discusses the journal’s presentation as writing or literature and the relation between the whole and its parts developed philosophically in the previous chapters in terms of the form of the journal itself as a constellation and the writing it cohered around and presented. This chapter therefore also discusses the development of mental or perceptual spaces of resistance to the restructuring of space discusses in the preceding chapter through experimental writing and publishing (artist projects, found texts, visionary or prophetic texts). The study subsequently situates the intellectual and cultural productions of Inventory journal within the dynamic social, political and cultural context of London in the 1990s and 2000s. This contextualisation is achieved by engagement, in Chapter 6, with a specific site of dissemination for Inventory, Info Centre (1999-2000), through it the journal associated with parallel cultural and political practices of self-publishing and self-organisation by artists, writers and activists in the late-1990s and 2000s. I argue that these practices sought to challenge existing forms of organisation, knowledge production, cultural and social totality during a period of capitalist restructuring of work, social reproduction, the urban environment and the institutions of art. The opposition to this restructuring and its re-colonisation of space in London is conceived both in terms of the production of critical commentaries on the production of space in the city (urban sociology, psychogeography); contesting established cultural histories (e.g. of surrealism, the Situationist International and conceptual art); creation of small autonomous institutions and development of mental or perceptual spaces of resistance through experimental writing and publishing. I argue that Inventory itself takes on a ‘self-institutional’ form in this situation, and as journal provides a space and singular spaces (in terms of individual contributions) for independent critical thinking (artist projects, urban sociology, found texts, visionary or prophetic texts). Chapter 7 presents the journal’s contribution to critical accounts of practices and legacies of urbanism (housing, city planning, spatial practices and government) in London in the post-war period and during the period of the journal’s publication (1995-2005). The journal’s identification of, and opposition to, forces restructuring London spatially during this period is conceived in terms of the production of critical commentaries on the production of space in the city (urban sociology and psychogeography). The Conclusion evaluates the aims of the study and reevaluates Inventory journal on the basis of the critical traditions surveyed in the prior chapters and in terms of problems arising from the path the journal followed and gaps between its projected programme or method and the achievements it attained

A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 6: Periodical Articles, Subject Listing, By De Waal Category

This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. Volume 6 presents the periodical literature arranged by subject categories (as originally devised for the De Waal bibliography and slightly modified here)

A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 9: All Formats—Combined Alphabetical Listing

This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. This volume contains all listings in all formats, arranged alphabetically by author or main entry. In other words, it combines the listings from Volume 1 (Monograph and Serial Titles), Volume 3 (Periodical Articles), and Volume 7 (Audio/Visual Materials) into a comprehensive bibliography. (There may be additional materials included in this list, e.g. duplicate items and items not yet fully edited.) As in the other volumes, coverage of this material begins around 1994, the final year covered by De Waal's bibliography, but may not yet be totally up-to-date (given the ongoing nature of this bibliography). It is hoped that other titles will be added at a later date. At present, this bibliography includes 12,594 items

A Holmes and Doyle Bibliography, Volume 5: Periodical Articles--Secondary References, Alphabetical Listing

This bibliography is a work in progress. It attempts to update Ronald B. De Waal’s comprehensive bibliography, The Universal Sherlock Holmes, but does not claim to be exhaustive in content. New works are continually discovered and added to this bibliography. Readers and researchers are invited to suggest additional content. Volume 5 includes "passing" or "secondary" references, i.e. those entries that are passing in nature or contain very brief information or content

Maritime expressions:a corpus based exploration of maritime metaphors

This study uses a purpose-built corpus to explore the linguistic legacy of Britain’s maritime history found in the form of hundreds of specialised ‘Maritime Expressions’ (MEs), such as TAKEN ABACK, ANCHOR and ALOOF, that permeate modern English. Selecting just those expressions commencing with ’A’, it analyses 61 MEs in detail and describes the processes by which these technical expressions, from a highly specialised occupational discourse community, have made their way into modern English. The Maritime Text Corpus (MTC) comprises 8.8 million words, encompassing a range of text types and registers, selected to provide a cross-section of ‘maritime’ writing. It is analysed using WordSmith analytical software (Scott, 2010), with the 100 million-word British National Corpus (BNC) as a reference corpus. Using the MTC, a list of keywords of specific salience within the maritime discourse has been compiled and, using frequency data, concordances and collocations, these MEs are described in detail and their use and form in the MTC and the BNC is compared. The study examines the transformation from ME to figurative use in the general discourse, in terms of form and metaphoricity. MEs are classified according to their metaphorical strength and their transference from maritime usage into new registers and domains such as those of business, politics, sports and reportage etc. A revised model of metaphoricity is developed and a new category of figurative expression, the ‘resonator’, is proposed. Additionally, developing the work of Lakov and Johnson, Kovesces and others on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), a number of Maritime Conceptual Metaphors are identified and their cultural significance is discussed