iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Today's @artfund.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange theme is ‘queer joy’. I recently visited Anthony Shapland's autobiographical exhibition murmur @typawb.bsky.social - about masking, mimicry and self-discovery. 📷 Murmer, Anthony Shapland. Installation view, Tŷ Pawb, 2026. Photos by Harry Meadley

A life drawing model stands, with starlings using him as a perch.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Get a bit of day moon in your October 🌕

A photograph of the moon, visible in the daytime sky, roughly 8am, UK time

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It's curated by Marie Anne McQuay, who loves foregrounding a bit of prose in her exhibitions - a quality I really appreciate and enjoy.

Exhibition texts for murmur, and Anthony Shapland novel, A Room Above A Shop.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Mirror Selves: Anthony Shapland – murmur www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/09/mirr...

Installation image of Anthony Shapland exhibition, murmur. Pictured here, a nest of easels, with an interested looking art critic standing to its right.

A life model stands in Anthony Shapland's film work, being bothered by a starling.

More starlings! These on a small screen in Wrexham's Ty Pawb.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Working more on this today. Mostly making sure it has nice pics which - however vaguely - relate to writing, including this by @wildtwin.bsky.social, a collage from his memoir, Wild Twin which is two today (or thereabouts)!

A collage of image and handwritten text by Jeff Young.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

First week - after some five years as a VL/sessional member of staff - at LJMU as a real boy, teaching theory on Design & Illustration. I have a desk and everything!

Liverpool's metropolitan cathedral is reflected in the glass entrance to LJMU's art and design school.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

The latter is a bit crap (in Fringe) by comparison to his superior namesake; but David Robert Jones, played by Jared Harris, is great!

Jared Harris (son of Richard), here playing a handcuffed arch baddie David Robert Jones, in Fringe. You'll find you need more than those cuffs to keep hold of him!

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I've just revisited (ahead of writing a review) Wide Angle View, an exhibition @ RIBA North looking back at Architectural Review's Manplan, 'a ground-breaking and often uncompromising assessment of Britain’s built environment at the end of the sixties.' #ModWrite Monday

Text on the entrance to Wide Angle View, an exhibition of Architectural Review's Manplan series of publications that ran between 1969 and 1970. It reads: Architecture as social space in the Manplan series 1969-70

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Also saw Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma yesterday. Especially loved about the first third or so of it. Brooding uncertainty with Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson brilliant as a young writer/director and reclusive one time slasher flic star.

An uneasy looking Hannah Einbinder with Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I reviewed You Should Come with me Now in early 2018 “Stories that resonate, disturb, shock and confound…” The Double Negative » “Distinct stories that resonate, disturb, shock and confound…” You Should Come With Me Now: Stories of Ghosts — Reviewed share.google/EUW4zpCr7mBw...

The maze-like cover artwork for M John Harrison's 2017 short story collection, you should come with me now

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I don't know if I knew this about Eileen Agar. Very cool. 📷 ‘‘Photograph of a ship named ‘Discovery’ docked in Liverpool‘, Eileen Agar, 1930s‘, Eileen Agar, 1930s – Tate Archive | Tate share.google/nwLfAF8edxiA...

A 1930s black and white photograph of the Albert dock by artist Eileen Agar

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I wrote this about Richman and the Modern Lovers ahead of a Liverpool gig at the Kaz (way back in 2012!!!) The Double Negative » Jonathan Richman, Modern Lover share.google/rbkjU1oMJJIQ...

A really great image of a young Jonathan Richman in Breton shirt. I don't know who made it, sorry.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

This is the comp: Rough Trade rock and roll 1. Includes, alongside the modern lovers, cracking stuff from a bunch of my fave bands, including: the stooges, the Jon spencer blues explosion, the Von bondies, the kills - and tonnes more.

Front cover of Rough Trade Shops' compilation rock and roll 1. Split into square panels, the different panels - in black, red and grey - include images of those other parallel symbols of liberation - cars and motorcycles.

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

More importantly, it's international cat day. I always think bonbon has, roughly, the proportions of Godzilla 🐾😻

Chonky tabby cat lies adorably on his side, inviting the stroke that will no doubt bring consequences involving claws.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Vertigo, but Carlotta Valdes is a vampire.

Portrait of the fictional Carlotta Valdes, as seen by Madeleine at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, in Hitchcock's Vertigo.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

I see Station Eleven, the adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel's pandemic novel, has just st landed on sky. You should watch it. www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2023/04/surv...

Two odd-couple leads of Station Eleven beat a retreat through a snowy suburbia in this pandemic-set drama adapted from the novel by Emily St. John Mandel.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

"But the thing made an image, lasting only a moment, like a sudden flicker of light." Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

Picture of film critic/writer David Thomson's new book, A Sudden Flicker of Light. Its artwork is a black and white photograph of people sat in darkness in a cinema, with a shaft of projector/celestial light dominating.

From the prologue: "In the nineteenth century our grasp on life was stimulated but compromised by the invention of the lifelike - the photograph, and then it moved."

David Thomson, A Sudden Flicker of Light: a revisionist history of the movies, Penguin

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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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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Painting after photography and moving pictures... 📷 I mørket (In the dark), 2025, Eva Helene Pade; Odalisque in Blue (small), 2024, Ella Kruglyanskaya; Mise en scène, 2025, Louise Giovanelli

I mørket (In the dark), 2025, by Eva Helene Pade - contemporary response to expressionism, reframing its female subject as active

In Odalisque in Blue (small), 2024, Ella Kruglyanskaya digs into the art historical canon, addressing the objectifying nature of 'Orientalism'

Mise en scène, 2025, by Louise Giovanelli engages with cinematic iconography, the gaze, and ambiguity, in this ecstatic representation of a woman's face in close-up

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

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

A wall of abstract paintings and objects in ZAUM!, a group exhibition at 50MV, an indie gallery space in Waterloo, Merseyside

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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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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), David Hockney, 1972

A man stands on the edge of a swimming pool, gazing down at another figure, under the surface. The submerged swimmer, and distortion lines of the water, seem to reference the 1917 Andre Kertesz photograph, Underwater Swimmer

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Underwater Swimmer, Esztergom, Hungary, 1917© André Kertész

Iconic black and white image of a swimmer beneath the surface of the water, by Hungarian photographer André Kertész.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I'm largely ambivalent about Hockney, who has died aged 88. Those iPad drawings; shilling for a right wing red top rag. But, openly gay when it was still a criminal offence, his painting often represented a kind of liberation, which still appeals.

David Hockney's Peter getting out of Nick's Pool (r), a key painting, on display at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

At the folks' for a couple of days. Wide range of thrillers to choose from. Quite enjoying my first go at Jo Nesbo 📗

A man silhouetted by the moon against a cityscape. (Cover artwork for Jo Nesbo's Killing Moon.)

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

I admit to knowing more about OD than Barber. He had a good eye for a cracking subject though. 📷 Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926)

A striking woman - wearing a miracle, no less - in a red and black dress sits, legs crossed, smoking at a table. On the table is a cocktail, a box of matches and open pack of cigarettes - everything any good journalist needs, surely.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Went for a very gentle jog/walk. Felt good - let's see if I can keep this up 🏃👟

Me in my fetching salmon (or maybe red?) coloured running gear, just back from a pretty pedestrian jog/walk, looking a bit sweaty nevertheless.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Composition in Yellow, Black and White (1949), Marlow Moss

An abstract composition by British artist Marlow Moss, this piece has black and yellow oblongs on a white ground, bounded by a raised partial grid of white lines.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Amazing and energising few days in Madrid - didn't realise quite how much I needed the refuel. Walking, great food, art, film, maybe a few drinks. Vilhelm Hammershøi; Georgia O'Keefe; Cine Dore

An unsettling painting by Vilhelm Hammershøi, the artist captures here sunshine streaming through a window - on the left - and a closed door to its right. Known for his interiors, the artist often painted the same scene multiple times over. This work is unusual in that it has been cropped in the framing by the owner, folding the painting on the left, obscuring Hammershøi's wife, Ida.

A couple of very appetising looking beers sit on a Madrid bar. Between them a small plate of manchego and bread sticks.

A painting by Georgie O'Keefe. Titled New York Street with Moon, the 1925 work is unusual for O'Keefe in that it appears not to feature any female genitalia.

The lustrous Cinema Dore, with curtain down

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

Writing in the vicinity of Lefebvre today: the right to the city; city as oeuvre. Old Henri is possibly going to be doing some heavy lifting.

A flight of stairs leads the eye to a grand old building

A flight of stairs leads the eye to a grand old building. A figure arrives in shot at the top right of the stairs.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Great photograph. Had a brush with him this past Friday (that third painting likely largely the work of Thérèse Lessore).

Walter Sickert gives us a glimpse of the music hall audience in The Gallery of the Old Bedford (1894)

Sickert's Fancy Dress, Miss Beerbohm (1908) - featuring an 'erotically posed' woman, likely Alice Mary, the sister of his friend, Max Beerbohm

An unusually 'romantic' scene for a by then ailing Sickert, this illustrative painting of a young woman set against a rural backdrop was likely guided by his wife Thérèse Lessore (more than 20 years his junior).

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Been up before six with this one the last couple of days. Even he looks tired here.

Our cat, bonbon (a chonky 14 year old tabby), who has been getting us up at about ten to six all week, looking a bit tired and crumpled out on the patio earlier.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

A panoramic painting of Liverpool's skyline from a bird's-eye view above the River Mersey.

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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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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Memory; image; hauntings. Think I've probably managed to work in a mention of Chris Marker's La Jetee in the PhD. (During a particularly bad period at the gallery, I'd take myself off to watch it - amazing that we had it on display for a time; all 28mins of it.)

A still of a young woman, mid gesture (sweeping her hair out of her face?), who's pivotal to Chris Marker's La Jetee.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Here's my review of @richardcabut.bsky.social's magical Ripped Backsides - "a little miracle of a book." www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/07/the-...

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Good weather this morning, which is handy as I'm off on a walk across Liverpool later - city as time travel; city as artwork; writing the city

A view from LJMU art school window of the modernist architectural feat, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral; in the foreground is Isabel Nolan's Where you are, what we are, with others, a sculpture inspired by the city's two cathedrals and stained glass windows.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Happily on the Mondrian train again. Here's his 1920 painting (by then, well into the neoplasticism years), No. VI/Composition No. II, reflective of the work we now most associate with his name, those strictly comprised of planes of red, yellow and blue, against a grid of black and white.

A neoplasticist work by the de stijl artist, Piet Mondrian; primary colours (red, yellow and blue) are plotted onto a grid, representing the beginnings of his mature style.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Post supervisor meeting treat. Needed and deserved that - I've been thinking/writing/doing non-stop, and I crashed a bit yesterday.

A lemon and walnut cake, cortado, a yellow notebook, and pen. The cafe setting seems apt for somebody who's been thinking and writing about flaneurism lately.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Meanwhile, later that decade, plans were afoot for a so-called 'Tate for the North' on the derelict Albert Dock.

A pamphlet outlining the conversion of a derelict space on Liverpool's defunct Albert Dock into a new Tate for the north. The site, currently undergoing another renovation, is set to reopen in spring 27, providing a gallery for the 21st century.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Almost like they're taking a stroll through Tarkovsky's 'zone' 📷 Liverpool 8 Neighbourhood, Liverpool circa 1970 © Don McCullin

A black and white photograph of an adult and child holding hands as they walk through Liverpool's Toxteth of the 1970s. It's photography as time travel; you can hear their footsteps.

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Mike Pinnington ✍️ @doublenegativem.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Liverpool's pre-redevelopment Albert Dock 📷 Courtesy of Liverpool Record Office

Archive photograph of Liverpool's Albert Dock prior to its repurposing in the late 80s as the home to what was then dubbed a 'Tate of the North'; it's a sorry sight/site, showing the then defunct space, empty of water and people.

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

Class - it's a big deal. 📷 Installation view of Sean Edwards' Wales in Venice 2019 Undo Things Done exhibition; Sean Edwards' un un un un un un exhibition catalogue

Installation view of Sean Edwards' Wales in Venice 2019 Undo Things Done exhibition. Large-scale red capital letters on the white gallery wall read UNDO THINGS DONE

Red capital letters on a white book front cover read un un un un un un

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

My first brush with Burgin was with the series, Fiction Film (1991), loosely based on Breton's Nadja. Far from relying on the reputation of the founder of surrealism, the works make for a psychogeographic phantasmagoria in their own right.

Screen print by Victor Burgin from his series, Fiction Film. Based on Breton's Nadja, it captures the woozy feeling of pursuit - looking but not quite finding - through Paris streets. Here, we find ourselves directly behind a ghostly figure ascending steps.

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