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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 09/07/2026

Today's @artukdotorg.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange theme is 'sacred symbols'. Our choice is Louise Giovanelli's Mise en scène (2025), an ambiguous painting suggesting one particular reading when, in fact, it is from a found image (a 1970s film) depicting a woman taking communion.

Louise Giovanelli's Mise en scène (2025) sees a woman caught in ecstasy - not of sexual pleasure, but in taking communion.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

I wrote about painting's continuing engagement with photography and film 📷🎥 📷 Louise Giovanelli, ‘Mise en scène’ (2025) www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/07/on-r...

Mise en scène (2025), a painting by Louise Giovanelli - depicting a woman in apparent ecstasy - of a found image of a 1970s film.

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

I had a piece commissioned by The Yale Review. However, since they published Christopher Sorrentino's sophomoric, frankly pathetic ode to using generative AI for his writing, I have told them in the strongest possible terms that I no longer have any interest in writing for them.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 24/06/2026

NEW//Questing, Colour, and Form ZAUM! – Reviewed Reckoning with uncertain times, a group exhibition taking its name from a century old movement is a tonic, says @doublenegativem.bsky.social www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/06/ques...

Exhibition leaflet for ZAUM! Pink text diagonally (l-r) spelling Z A U M ! on a blue ground

List of exhibiting artists in pink text on white ground

Seven abstract works on white gallery wall in the exhibition ZAUM!

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

From its landscape and self-image (commonly projected onto the silver screen) – here is a reflected, blurry version of what used to be called the American dream, and Ruscha gives us a front-row seat 📽️🎞️ www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/06/arti... 📷 Standard Study # 3 1963 © Ed Ruscha

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 14/06/2026

It's the final day of Artist Rooms: Ed Ruscha @ Tate Liverpool. Read @doublenegativem.bsky.social's review >>>

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 13/06/2026

The great American road trip – the frontier and its trappings – serve as departure point for artist Ed Ruscha, and a tightly focused Tate Liverpool exhibition, finds @doublenegativem.bsky.social www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/06/arti... 📷 © Ed Ruscha

A pleasingly grainy, black and white photograph of Greenblatt’s Deli, part of Ed Ruscha's Sunset Strip Portfolio. To the right, you can see palm trees and, in the background, maybe the Hollywood hills?

An onamatapeic work, this print has HONK in yellow block capitals against a blue ground.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 11/06/2026

From the Archive: Following Senna (2010) and Amy (2015), director Asif Kapadia turned his attention to profiling the destructive genius of Diego Armando Maradona >>> ⚽🏆 www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2019/06/dieg...

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Diego Maradona's Goal of the Century Mexico 86

Alt: Diego Maradona's Goal of the Century Mexico 86, in which the Argentine genius demolishes England

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 11/06/2026

From the Archive: World Cup Clichés: Graphic Design’s Approach To Football ⚽ 🏆 www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2014/07/worl...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 11/06/2026

Today's @artukdotorg.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange is football for the World Cup ⚽ 📷 Cevdet Erek, Away Terrace (Us and Them), 2025. Liverpool Biennial 2025 at 20 Jordan Street. Photography by Mark McNulty.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 03/06/2026

Reading Ruscha: "The letters OK (1990) perhaps reference Oklahoma, the state’s abbreviated form. It is worth noting that Ed Ruscha is an ‘Okie’ – a migrant to Los Angeles who has had to learn how to read this city." www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/06/read... 📷 © Ed Ruscha

The letters OK in salmon caps on a black ground. This is Ed Ruscha's OK (State I) 1990. ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. © Ed Ruscha

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

For the first time in a very long time, here's to starting the week off right, with our pick of the listings. Featuring talks, exhibitions, screenings, live film music and more, it's Culture Diary w/c 01-06-2026 www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/06/cult...

Director Celine Sciamma on set with the stars of her film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

In The Mediated City: The Imaging of Liverpool in Film, Anthony Ellis looks at how film can fix in our minds and memory a sense of place: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2024/04/the-...

Still showing a cityscape - imagining a Liverpool in transition - from The Reckoning (1969. Director: Jack Gold. Production Company: Columbia Pictures).

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

Reporting from last year's design biennale, Laura Robertson investigates Stone Circles, Wailing Women and Respecting The Dead, with a proposal that provokes us to ask questions about death, grief and architecture... www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/05/ston...

A large-scale, pale sphere takes up much of the space in a room: URNA is a long-lasting vessel for the dead

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

In the meantime, we'll be posting a little taster of what we do, and the kinds of things we tend to cover, beginning with a relatively recent piece on 2025 TLS Ackerley Prize-winning author Jeff Young Sacred & Profane: Haunted Paper www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/08/sacr...

A portrait photograph of author and artist Jeff Young, who is sat cross legged with his book Wild Twin on his knee.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

Wow, thank you for the lovely feedback. It was designed by a brilliant pair - web maestro John Wai and designer/artist Mike Carney. Over the years we've had the fortune of hosting some great writers and writing.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

We'd love to build up a bit of a community here - to talk art, writing, culture, etc. We've missed that, I think. So, say hi, tell us what you're doing. You might even like to have a read of the website!

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

Based in Liverpool and with particular attention to the north west of England (but with as broad a scope as we fancy), The Double Negative was founded by us, Laura and Mike. We felt we had things to say about art and culture in our part of the world that were going unsaid.

Photograph of Ugo Rondinone's 10-metre high multicoloured rock sculpture, Liverpool Mountain, situated within Mermaid Courtyard, adjacent to Tate Liverpool.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

Hello! It's been a while. There might be some activity on the website today. By means of (re) introduction, since 2011, we've been writing about art, design, film & music. Catch us here: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk

thedoublenegative.co.uk

The Double Negative

Arts criticism & cultural commentary since 2011

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/05/2026

Steve McQueen's Grenfell, showing @thebluecoat.bsky.social Tuesday–Sunday, 11.00–17.00, is essential viewing. The film reminds us we mustn't look away, mustn't forget.

Aerial view of London from the opening moments of Steve McQueen's Grenfell film

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 18/05/2026

Screening tonight @ picturehouse @factliverpool.bsky.social, Soviet era folk horror, Viy, based on the Nikolai Gogol novella of the same name. A tale of the grotesque, it weaves together witchcraft, fear and forbidden desire to great effect.

A film still from Soviet era folk horror, Viy. Here, we find a young man in fear of his mortal soul, stalked by a doomed revenant woman.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Steve McQueen: Grenfell | Tate Liverpool + RIBA North share.google/00Zk65KkxE9O...

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Steve McQueen: Grenfell | Tate Liverpool + RIBA North

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 09/05/2026

Us too. There are others working in the same vicinity - Jen Orpin is great, too, for instance. And there was a painter in a recent jmpp doing something very similar (whose name escapes me just now), but they're each their own style.

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Art Herstory @artherstory.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

New Books About Women Artists | Jan–March 2026 artherstory.net/new-books-ab... #newbooksaboutwomenartists #womenartists #artherstory

10 book covers arranged in 2 rows of 5 each. All of the books have to do with one or more women artists.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 07/05/2026

Loved her work since seeing it in the John Moores painting prize a few years back.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 07/05/2026

Today's @artukdotorg.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange theme is ‘Urban landscapes’. We've long been fans of Mandy Payne: "I wanted to work with materials that were integral to sites I was depicting." 📷 Urban Geometry I; Remnants Of A Welfare State; For The Many Not The Few. Images by Mandy Payne

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Art UK @artukdotorg.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Today's #OnlineArtExchange theme is ‘Urban landscapes’ for Jock McFadyen with Jem Finer: Underground (and Surface) Exhibition at Guildhall Art Gallery 🖼️ Join in by picking an artwork and using the hashtag 🙌 📷 Paul Clarke courtesy Guildhall Art Gallery

Close-up of a weathered Bank station sign with the iconic red circle and blue bar on a dark, textured wall.

Three people sit on a wooden bench viewing a large painting of Walthamstow Stadium with a blue sky backdrop in an art gallery.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Here's curator Darren Pih on Yves Klein (sharing on the artist's birthday): "His prodigious activities anticipated many of the movements that developed in the 1960s." 📷 Harry Shunk and János Kender, Yves Klein’s Leap Into the Void, 1960 www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2016/11/i-wi...

Artist Yves Klein leaps into the Void in a photograph made by Harry Shunk and János Kender, in 1960

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Art UK @artukdotorg.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Thanks for joining this week's #OnlineArtExchange 🌼🌸 Next week's theme is ‘women artists’ for Making Her Mark: A Celebration of Women in Art at Penlee House Gallery & Museum 'Spring Evening' by Joan Elizabeth Baker (1922–2017) © the artist's estate. 📷 Aberystwyth University

Group of people walking along a curved road near industrial buildings under a dusky sky with a white dog in the foreground.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I have a draft of the presentation I'm giving tomorrow at Who Does Not Envy with Us Is Against Us: A Conference on Working-Classness as Method in Creative Practice. It's tentatively titled: A Working Classness Confessional. I jest, but that was my experience in the writing of it. Pretty cathartic.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

The great Victor Burgin is a keynote speaker at Chester photography symposium! 📷 Here's a paper based on a 2004 talk he gave on the occasion of a Tate Modern Hopper exhibition ▶️ The Separateness of Things, Victor Burgin – Tate Papers | Tate share.google/SeBjLNzwnU1E...

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The Separateness of Things, Victor Burgin – Tate Papers | Tate

Victor Burgin, The Separateness of Things; Tate Papers no.3

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Victoria Gallery & Museum @victoriagallery.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Join a special in-conversation event with Liverpool-born singer Ivan Stax! Part of Toxteth: The Harlem of Europe exhibition, Ivan chats about the Black music scene in 1950s–60s and shares stories from his own career. 🎟 FREE! 📅 Thurs 23 April, 2pm-3pm 📍VG&M Info: orlo.uk/3ozGN

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 28/03/2026

On The Double Negative, of course ▶️✍️🖼️📽️

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Watching my partner make a presentation on Francesca Woodman. I love her work - a bona fide genius 📷 Francesca Woodman Space², Providence, Rhode Island (1976)

A blurred self-portrait photograph by Francesca Woodman, achieved with long exposure and slow shutter speed

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 21/03/2026

Two Barns-Graham Grindelwald paintings featured in recent Walker Art Gallery exhibition Turner: Always Contemporary 🏔️🖼️

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham paintings (of 1949 and 1994) of the Grindelwald glacier

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 21/03/2026

In 1949, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham climbed the Grindelwald glacier. The experience inspired her to create an extraordinary cycle of paintings. Back in 2022, we spoke to filmmaker Mark Cousins who, more than 70 years later, climbed the glacier himself 🏔️🎥🖼️ www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2022/10/the-...

Filmmaker Mark Cousins gazing up at a stunning mountain range

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 21/03/2026

It's the UN World Day for Glaciers. Laura Robertson spoke with photographer Kristján Maack, who has been documenting Iceland’s epic glaciers for over 40 years 🏔️📷 www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/03/the-...

An awe inspiring image of a glacier, taken by Icelandic photographer Kristján Maack

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 20/03/2026

NEW // The Big Interview: ahead of UN World Day for Glaciers, we speak to photographer Kristján Maack’s about his glacier portraits and a disappearing world www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/03/the-...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

Back in 2019, we spoke to Legg 12 months into her time at Tate Liverpool www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2019/09/weve... 📷 portrait of Helen Legg, Director, Tate Liverpool, photo © Tate (Roger Sinek)

Portrait of Helen Legg (2019), Director, Tate Liverpool, photo © Tate (Roger Sinek)

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

There's also the current waterfront regeneration project, and the planned reopening of anchor institution, Tate Liverpool, next year. Then there's the news of TL director, Helen Legg, leaving for a role with the Royal Academy. No shortage of stuff on the doorstep to write in depth about...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

Our last book, Present Tense, looked at the years following Liverpool's time as European Capital of Culture, and tried to gauge its legacy. Much has changed since - not least the toil from outside the EU, and the city's being stripped of its World Heritage status.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

Call me crazy, but I'm feeling quite optimistic about being able to cater to a relatively small but dedicated and engaged readership that wants more than video of a few seconds long, or ai slop!

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

One of our books, On Being Curious, published 10 years ago, focused on New Critical Writing on Contemporary Art From the North-West of England. It was our first in-house book of Contemporary Arts Criticism share.google/y5EkJb8n8OhQ...

Cover of On Being Curious: New Critical Writing on Contemporary Art From the North-West of England - The Double Negative's first book of Contemporary Arts Criticism

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

The primary platform will still be the website, but we'd love to do more print - both zine and traditional books. Check out the site containing more than a decade's worth of art coverage here: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk

thedoublenegative.co.uk

The Double Negative

Arts criticism & cultural commentary since 2011

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

When we launched back in 2011, I used to check the analytics constantly; knowing you're being read and having some kind of footprint is lovely, but I think this time, the focus will solely be on publishing the best writing we can. Of course , we'd love you to look forward to reading it!

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

Our instinct has always been to steer clear of 'clickbait' and the idea of 'content'. This feels truer now than ever, especially with the advent of AI usage.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

As we gear up for our return to publishing - on a hopefully regular basis - I'm wondering if what the world wants and needs from arts and culture writing has changed in the last 15 years? Thoughts anyone?

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