STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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Cantonese Cowboy
JAN WOOLF is sucked into a unique vision of the urban US from the perspective of immigrant and queer communities
Cell Door Slot, 1986, Acrylic on canvas; Prison Bunk Beds, ca. 1988—91
Acrylic on canvas
[Courtesy of the Martin Wong Foundation]
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
Martin Wong, Malicious Mischief
Camden Arts Centre
MARTIN WONG (1946–1999) is a free spirit, and Malicious Mischief is peculiar in the good sense; peculiar to something, rather than weird. What he is peculiar to is the queer and immigrant scenes of west and east coast America, with a sort of controlled playfulness. And boy could he paint.
Some of the figures can seem like Robert Crumb cartoons, and then you see a foreshortened body like one of Michelangelo’s. There’s homage to Peter Blake’s detritus in shop windows. Some clean line painting, and then a scumble of oil paint as delicious as Rembrandt or Bacon.
But Wong is his own man and paints human life struggling against decay in a money-obsessed America. His textured walls, brickwork and gates are full of the fading hope of people who might have seen America as a second chance, rather than an opportunity for money making.
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