The White Pube

This is a text about a specific painting: The Unbearable Lightness of Forgetting My Name by Noorain Inam, that I saw a couple months back at Noorain's solo show, Go back to sleep, it’s just the wind at Indigo + Madder. It's also a text about painting and imagining, your mind's eye and clarity, about feeling like things are over there but then also within you.

read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/noorain-inam-TULOFMN

& if u don't know, now u know: you can pre-order our book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠Poor Artists, here⁠⁠⁠⁠ (& ⁠⁠⁠⁠here if ur in the US⁠⁠⁠⁠).

Thank you to our ⁠⁠⁠⁠friends & supporters on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- if you'd like to support our work, ⁠⁠⁠⁠pls see our support page⁠⁠⁠⁠ for all the many ways u can do that. & HAVE A NICE BANK HOL!!! love u! xxxx

watching a film about distance and love in a week like this week!

read the text on the website: thewhitepube.co.uk/laisul-otherside

& FYI, CHEEKY PLUG: you can pre-order our book, ⁠⁠⁠Poor Artists, here⁠⁠⁠ (& ⁠⁠⁠here if ur in the US⁠⁠⁠).

Thank you to our ⁠⁠⁠friends & supporters on Patreon⁠⁠⁠ -- if you'd like to support our work, ⁠⁠⁠pls see our support page⁠⁠⁠ for all the many ways u can do that. & HAVE A NICE SUNDAY!!! love u! xxxx

a review! I'm sick! what's new. you can find the written version of this on our website; you can pre-order our book here; pat yourself on the back for making it through another week on this hellplanet

thinking about Serban Savu's 'what work is' Romanian pavilion at the Venice Biennale

read the text here: ⁠thewhitepube.com/work⁠

WHILE I AM HERE: you can pre-order our book, ⁠⁠Poor Artists, here⁠⁠ (& ⁠⁠here if ur in the US⁠⁠). Thank you to our ⁠⁠friends & supporters on Patreon⁠⁠ -- if you'd like to support our work, ⁠⁠pls see our support page⁠⁠ for all the many ways u can do that. & HAVE A NICE SUNDAY!!! love u! xxxx

This week's text is a mini review of a group show in Strand News, the newsagent where i buy a peanut butter kit kat chunky almost every weekday. Ft work by: Athen Kardashian and Nina Mhach Durban, Eden Chau-Morrow, Marcus Jefferson and Xooset, and curated by Tom Mouna.

read the text here: thewhitepube.com/strand-news

WHILE I AM HERE: you can pre-order our book, ⁠Poor Artists, here⁠ (& ⁠here if ur in the US⁠). Thank you to our ⁠friends & supporters on Patreon⁠ -- if you'd like to support our work, ⁠pls see our support page⁠ for all the many ways u can do that. & HAVE A NICE SUNDAY!!! love u! xxxx

I'm tired!!!!! you know the deal. the written version of this text is on our website.

a vignette about looking through windows, a love letter to the shrimp in Tai Shani's THE WORLD TO ME WAS A SECRET: CAESIOUS, ZINNOBER, CELADON, AND VIRESCENT @ the cosmic house

read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/taishani-cosmichouse

WHILE I AM HERE: you can pre-order our book, Poor Artists, here (& here if ur in the US). Thank you to our friends & supporters on Patreon -- if you'd like to support our work, pls see our support page for all the many ways u can do that. & HAVE A NICE SUNDAY!!! love u! xxxx

text version of this review here; our boat is going to be uploaded here; book cover reveal here!!!

This week's text is about houses, art and lying to estate agents. Read it here (thewhitepube.com/unreal-estate).

You can support our work on Patreon, & thank you to all our patrons!

I have been writing about problems for a while so I think it is time to talk about solutions. This episode is about a project by Cassie Thornton that is about to make my life better. You can find the text version here, the Hologram here, our book pre-order link here if you're in the UK and here if you're in the US 🌡️🌡️🌡️🌡️🌡️🌡️🌡️🌡️🌡️🌡️

A text about the student occupation of Goldsmiths, for Palestine.

As mentioned, some links:

- STRIKE OUTSET, sign the pledge here, FAQs

- Goldsmiths 4 Palestine

Here's a link to the text, scroll down to the bottom if you want links to any of the student orgs for the unis mentioned at the end -- they're all linked & i'll whack those up on ig stories when i post this too (we are @thewhitepube) if you want more un to date info.

If you want to see the written version of this, or the photos I took while I was running away, find both here; if you want to support twp and join our discord, info here; and if you want us to be on a best seller list because that would be quite funny, pre-order our book Poor Artists here 💋

This week's text is a story about a woman called Jane who wants to unlock her inner creative potential, through a boozy painting workshop.

read the text version here: thewhitepube.co.uk/caterpillar-memories

& thank you, as always, to our friends on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! If you'd like to support our work/writing, pls go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠our support page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠for more info about how you can do that :)

🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛

I've secretly been in France trying out a new residency at a place called The Mill. You can find the written version of this text on our website where there are also beautiful pictures I took because I am the world's greatest photographer enjoy, and as always, pre-order our book POOR ARTISTS if you want! it's coming out October 3rd so if you do it now you'll forget and then a lovely present will come through the door and you'll be like wow I'm so nice to myself

a super quick text about an exhibition! SHOW PONY, a group show at Islington Arts Factory, curated by Kelly Wu.

read the text here: thewhitepube.com/show-pony

This week's text is some art criticism as dystopian business science fiction

When did that transition from *Art* to *Creative Industry happen*, and what does it mean? Robert Peston VII, Business Culture Editor-at-Large for the Financial Times 4.0, is about to tell you!

read the text version here: thewhitepube.co.uk/creating-incorporated

& thank you, as always, to our friends on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠! If you'd like to support our work/writing, pls go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠our support page ⁠⁠⁠⁠for more info about how you can do that :)

Happy Easter I bet all of you are off work today you lazy gits!!!! this text is about WORKING ALL THE TIME and feeling CRAZY because of it. You can find the text version here and you can pre-order our book Poor Artists here and I hope you enjoy a day off work you really deserve it

A story about a sleepover at the National Gallery, in pursuit of answers to a question: what is the POINT of ART?!

read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/reviews/2024/overnight-museum

& thank you, as always, to our friends on ⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠! If you'd like to support our work/writing, pls go to ⁠⁠⁠our support page ⁠⁠⁠for more info about how you can do that :)

A text where I write about why I no longer want to write about Diversity. The history of institutional diversity policy, the historry of it's failings, but also -- my speculations about its future.

read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/divpol101

& thank you, as always, to our friends on ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠! If you'd like to support our work/writing, pls go to ⁠⁠our support page ⁠⁠for more info about how you can do that :)

For real! The written version of the review is here; our book Poor Artists is available to pre-order here. mwah mwah mwah goodbye

Where do artists live? HOW do artists live? i don't know, but this is a story about an immortal cat, the last artists left in East London & a squat in the 90s that's still here today!

read the text on TWP: thewhitepube.co.uk/london-2039

documentaries about chronic fatigue are boring and they should be horror films instead. You can find the written version of this text here and you can PRE-ORDER OUR BOOK POOR ARTISTS RELEASING OCTOBER 3RD HERE :D

A review of Sheena Patel's debut novel, I'm a Fan, and a short story about wish fulfilment, desire and how i really want to punch my Dad.

read the text version here: www.thewhitepube.co.uk/im-a-fan

& thank you as always to our friends on ⁠Patreon⁠! If you'd like to support our work/writing, pls go to ⁠our support page ⁠for more info about how you can do that :)

A classic review! A straightforward review! You can find the written version on our website here!

This week's text is a love letter to a painting: Philip Guston's Painting, Smoking, Eating. It's also a love letter to limbo, chewing gum, dead time and unalienated labour

read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/philip-guston

& thank you as always to our friends on Patreon! If you'd like to support our work/writing, pls go to our support page for more info about how you can do that :)

but it's actually a review of Liverpool City Centre. The written version of the text is on our website.

We have a cheeky bonus guest episode from Art Assassins, a collective based out of South London Gallery. They’ve been investigating the role galleries play in public life and they’ve put their research together in this episode -- enjoy & we will catch u next week!

If you want a peep at the transcript, it's available on the white pube website :)

A note from Art Assassins >>

"Galleries, Get it Together!" is a collaborative podcast created by South London Gallery based art collective “Art Assassins”, Audio Artist Weyland Mckenzie-Witter and Researcher Dr. Patria Roman-Velazquez with the aim of exploring the question: "What does an equitable and community-led Gallery look like and what stories should be told?"
Through weekly gatherings over 9 weeks, the group set out to interview: artists, (both independent and institutional) art workers and friends and family both native and new to South London. The result is an amalgamation of conversations and sound bites from all over, sharing different perspectives but also setting out to answer the question with the intention of implementing change within cultural institutions. 
Despite the range of participants and contributors coming from different backgrounds it is made painfully clear that an immense change is needed across the London art sphere and so the Art Assassins titled their podcast: “Galleries, Get it Together!”

Image/graphics credit: Esme Wedderburn

This week's text is a review of SALTBURN!!! TL;DR i thought this film was not at all weird, just a normal and sexy time and this is NOT a thinkpiece.

read it on the white pube dot com

& thank you, as always, to our friends on Patreon -- if you'd like to support our work, pls go to our SUPPORT page for lil links n bits :)

I convince Zarina to delete her Twitter account and we say goodbye to our 20s in this New Years Resolution episode to kick off 2024. Proper reviews start next weekend but til then, there's this. YouTube if you prefer video; transcription if you wanna read instead. We're going to try to write lots of reviews this year to make up for writing a book last year so get ReadYyyyyyy :D

I WENT TO THE OPERA! and it was amazing, and i love my job and i have so much to say and i cannot wait to tell you about it.

read the text version of this here: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/rigoletto-royaloperahouse/

& if i don't see u until next year, MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR! love you, hope you've had a nice 2023, and that u get to spend a bit of time having a lil rest and a mince pie w the people u love. hope u have a nice 2024 too! hope u r cosy and happy and warm love love love u!

Welcome to our Sunday Lecture series. This week's guest lecturer is from the Artists' Co-op. If you could save your questions for the end, and put your hands together and give our guest a warm welcome!

Read the text on the White Pube dot com: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-thoughts/portrait-of-a-co-op/

Leave a teacher/graduate emoji in the comments on ⁠our instagram⁠ once you’re done listening, and if you have any questions for our lecturer -- they may not get answered but please leave them in the IG comments too.

Thank you, as always, to our friends and supporters on ⁠Patreon⁠! If you'd like to find out about how to support our work and writing, please visit the ⁠support page⁠. thank you!

we've been meaning to record this story for the past year and a half but we actually just got so busy writing the book and we shouldn't really be messing about uploading podcasts about it because it STILL isn't done 🤡 if you want the transcription for this episode, check the podcast section of our website. if you wanna support our work, which hopefully won't sound as ridiculous an ask after you listen to the episode, you can do so here <3

I've written FAN FICTION about a REAL ARTIST. You can find the written version of this text here, and you can see which artist I'm talking about in the axe to hot dogs to maggot pipeline video that inspired the fiction here on YouTube or TikTok. Apologies.

This week's text is about all the art on the Underground, London's public transport network. A kind of love letter to it all, but also thinking about art's role in public life!

Read on the website: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/art-on-the-underground

Israel continues to commit horrific acts of violence and genocide against the Palestinian people, Gaza is still under blockade and potentially facing a ground invasion. Please email ur MP, if you haven't already, and ask them to call for a ceasefire & to stop the war in Gaza.

ALSO! on the subject of art x public transport: Banner Repeater is an artist-led contemporary art space & artists' publishing archive, they're based on platform 1 at Hackney Downs station -- at the moment they're doing some fundraising to cover running costs & repairs. You can buy an artist print, here's one of mine actually from back when i was an artist!!! -- very limited edition and rare! because the un-Publish project I did with them was my last project as an artist! If that's not ur bag, there are other prints available on their online shop. And if you'd rather just sling over a cute fiver and call it a day, they're taking donations on Open Collective. B/R are a non-profit and do some really cool work, & small orgs do not receive nearly as much public funding as they should! so **thank you** in advance for helping to support artist-led publishing!

Finally, **thank you to Jessica Vaughan from Art on the Underground for taking the time to speak to me -- our interview was the basis for this text.** If you've never noticed the art on the underground -- AotU have got an ART MAP!!!, but you can also have a look through their project archive.

Read the text version or access all the links/citations/references on the White Pube dot com: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/free-palestine/

LINKS:

1: Palestine Solidarity Campaign // Email your MP

2: Find your MP, Local Councillors, London Assembly Members (or regional equivalent)

3: Boycott Zabludowicz (TWP text from 2021)

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Did you know Nando’s has the biggest collection of contemporary Southern African art in the world? In this week’s SPECIAL episode, we have partnered with Nando’s to look into their massive patronage of the arts. Over the past 20 years, they’ve purchased over 28,000 thousand pieces! Why??? We meet with 3 artists in South Africa who have benefitted from this support — Nkosinathi Quwe, Colijn Strydom, and Viven Kohler — and we speak to Cape Town arts organisation Spier Arts Trust who run multiple artist development programmes sponsored by Nando’s. We hope you enjoy the conversations!! Full transcript on our website here 🌶 Leave a chilli emoji in the comments on our instagram once you’re done listening :D

Ty to Hyphen for putting us in touch w the nice people at Nando’s!!! If you can’t tell already, this is HUGE for us. huge I tell ya  

From Medieval times until, like, now!

Did you know: the BA Fine Art has only been around since 1972. What happened before that? The apprentice in the Master's workshop, the guilds, the Academies, the technical colleges and Bauhaus: how did we get here? Where did art degrees come from and how did artists learn to be artists throughout the entirety of art history?

Read the full text here: The Entire History of Art Schools

And if you're more interested in what's going on outside mainstream, in alternative art schools, my text before this was about that! read it here: A Portrait of a Different Kind of Art School

Vaping in the studio with a guy that runs an art school, but maybe not in the way you'd think.

read the full text here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/portrait3

thank you, as always. to our friends on Patreon! if you'd like to support more weird writing on twp, you can find out how to ⁠here⁠.

*for legal reasons, I didn't really. This text is part-review, part-short story, writing about Sam Cox's Doodle House in Kent. You can find the written version on our website, and if you want to support more weird writing, you can do so here.

This text is a story about a horse called Pomodoro who goes on a residency and has a little existential crisis about the nature of art as a kind of work.

Read the text version here.

Thank you, as always, to our friends and supporters on Patreon! If you'd like to find out about how to support our work and writing, please visit the support page. thank you!

I've written something weird again. Enjoyoyoyoyo. You can find the written version of this text here and if you want to support the weirdness (and also join our discord) see details here! if you can't support financially, sharing the text is a really really nice helpful lovely thing to do :) BINGOOOOOO

This week's text is about swimming pools and paintings -- a semi-review of Alina Grassman's show, Florida Räume, at Niru Ratnam.

Read the text here: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/swimming-pools/

& thank you, as always to our friends on patreon. If you'd like to find out more about how you can support the writing we do here at TWP, go to our Support page.

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WE'RE BACK! This week's text is... not a review? Sort of a review? Sort of a short story, too. It's about Come Dine With Me. Content note for food chat, sick chat, shit chat, and accidental weight loss. You can find the written version here and if you want to support more of this weirdo writing, please consider giving us £1 a month on Patreon or Kofi, or doing a one-off dono on Paypal; any sign-ups and donations of any amount grants you entry to our discord server, ie. the best place on the internet. See ya next week with a new text!!!

This week we've got a magazine episode! Three texts that discuss potential possibilities for Arts Education, which is like a really fancy nice way of saying: art school is bonkers. It’s a weird place for weird people doing weird things (we spoke about that at length a couple months ago, in an ep about Art School Horror Stories)

If that's the way art schools are, where's the wriggle room? What other ways could arts education be set up? How else can we do this in a way that feels a bit more comfortable, productive, helpful and educational actually? Certain things get handed down and no one ever questions them. So the three texts do that questioning, and they are: 

Thomas Hirschhorn @ Kochi Biennial
Art Squool
Manifesto, Ane Hjort Guttu

This week's text is a Portrait of a Curator in London! It's the third in my portrait series, where I talk to art workers about their lives, their jobs, the work they make! and then I tell you alllllll about it. The curator in this text has got so much to say about everything: the art world's exceptionalism, the curator as interlocutor, about how institutions are not destinations, but rather TOOLS. it's a conversation that gave me so many new thoughts and also new vocabulary! To talk about these thoughts (old and new) with -- so I'm really excited to publish this text because hopefully it'll give you (the reader/listener) the same feeling of new thoughts & vocab!

If you'd rather read this as text, it's up on twp's website, here: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-thoughts/portrait-of-a-curator-in-london/

Thank you, as always, to our friends and supporters on Patreon!

& pls leave me a (secret star emoji somewhere, you know where hehehehhee) see u next week byeeeee! xxx

Hahaha I've lost the plot, but this is always when my best writing happens. It's party time. This week's review is The Northern Boys, a rap trio of old white men. You can find the written version of this text here and I did a really tired video version if you want to SEE me rap. Thank you to our lovely supporters & make sure you listen to the end to find out the Emoji Of The Week 8-)

Apologies! for no new text, but we have another magazine episode for you. To celebrate Jai Paul's first live show n his set at Coachella, this ep features old texts that are about ✨SOUND✨ -- including my 2019 text ABOUT JAI PAUL!!

the texts:

[Jai Paul]
[Alexandra Pirici @ the New Museum]
[Symphony for 20 rooms @ Den Frie Udstilling, Copenhagen]
[Ain Bailey: Version @ Wysing Arts Centre]

[the podcast page on TWP homepage]

As always, thank you to our supporters on Patreon, apologies again that this isn't a new text! But hope you enjoy it all the same & make sure to stay tuned to the end for the ~special emoji~ to comment on the IG. byeee~ xxxx

little bit of a different episode this week because I am really not with it, bear with 😭 thank you to our Patreon, Paypal and Kofi supporters for tiding us over. see you next week xxx

ZM in convo with Holly Márie Parnell ! A filmmaker, a friend, a really lovely person !!! This podcast episode was mostly recorded at a live event a couple weeks ago at Sirius, an arts centre in Cobh, Ireland. Sirius are showing Holly's film, Cabbage, in the gallery until 15th April. We are also joined by Gabrielle and David, in audio form. We chat about loads of things: about the film itself but also beyond, about filmmaking as an act of love, engaging with text through the medium of film, shrinking your rig to try and make filmmaking a portable, inconspicuous practice as you relate to your subjects, and MORE! enjoy!

Cabbage is an intimate film made in collaboration with Parnell’s family, Cabbage looks at the complexities of bodily autonomy within an ableist paradigm. Taking place in the months leading up to an international move from Canada back home to Ireland - a country they had to leave a decade prior due to severe cuts in disability services - the film focuses on her brother David’s writings using eye tracking technology and her mother’s memories to explore how we shape a sense of self under the pervasive weight of unspoken assumptions and fixed definitions that get placed onto bodies. Dissecting layers of language, agency and power, the film is a subtle examination of how a human life is measured and valued.

Holly Márie Parnell, Cabbage @ Sirius!

find Holly on Instagram, find David on Instagram, find Sirius on Instagram

Thank you, as always, to our friends & supporters on Patreon! You make the work we do possible and sustainable. The criticism & content we produce is completely independent, so if you'd like to help support our work, you can find out more on our support page.

In 2018, I wrote an essay called the Problem with Diaspora Art. It set me off on a trajectory of thinking about the way art institutions interact with people of colour (as well as the fundamental politic that drives those interactions). 5 years on, I have complex feelings about this 2018 text. I often feel jealous of dancers: they get to do a run through, take a step back and assess what they did well and what they could improve, and then they get to say ‘ok, now let’s do it again’. I wish writers got to do that! — But they do! I can do whatever I like!!! So, second time lucky. Here’s the Problem with Diaspora Art 2.

you can read the text here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/tpwda2

thank you, as usual, to our friends on patreon! 

If you made it to the end! first of all, love you, second of all! pls comment a 🥭 MANGO 🥭 emoji on the IG post/tweet about this text. ok, thanks! 

new series! our brains are soup while we are busy writing a book so we are outsourcing your entertainment and learning and art-thinking; please enjoy the first of many interviews with interesting people we know, starting with v buckenham (website, twitter and instagram) and if you prefer your podcasts with bells and whistles and visuals, there is > a YouTube version of this < where you can see the art we discuss

first exhibition review since march 2020??? must be bad. Writing about edgelord artist strategies and how much things cost. The written version of this is on the art section of our website. Can't believe I had to write about art again. I'm so mad.

NEW PODCAST EPISODE! of the ultimate White Pube review: a 2016 text Gab wrote about Jesse Darling's show, The Great Near, at Arcadia Missa.

You can watch the video version of this on youtube: https://youtu.be/i_hlpuscENY   

& thank you as usual to our friends on Patreon! Find out more about how you can support us (& get cheeky sneaky access to the top secret & v exclusive TWP discord) here: thewhitepube.com/support

This week's text is a review of Sound of the Underground, a play on @ the Royal Court Theatre. Written by Travis Alabanza! co-created by Debbie Hannan! Starring icons from the UK's queer club scene! i loved it! 

read the text version of this review here: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/sound-of-the-underground/

thank you to our supporters on Patreon! & if you want to have a peep at this play, it's on until 25th Feb (here; https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/sound-of-the-underground/

! before you listen ! there are spoilers for the endings of both 2018 and 2022 games. I hope the scary gamers don't come for me. Enjoy this review of God of War Ragnarök, writing about narrative structure and fate. I've actually done a video version of this text spliced with scenes from the game if you wanna SEE what it looks like. I showed Zarina who had no concept of God of War and she was v impressed with the game. Written version on our website; support the white pube here <- thats how to join our discord too where we discuss things like this! 

this week's text is a review of Jake Grewal's Now I Know You I Am Older @ Thomas Dane. Less a review-review, more a text where the art is coincidental or circumstantial. about the  sun! and the landscape! and the sky! and i don't really know what the sublime is!!

read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/jake-grewal/ 

thank you to all our friends on patreon! 

Social media is not a fair space to showcase art but as much as artists want to delete their Instagram accounts, they feel like they have nowhere else to go. So what now? In this episode, we speak to Kim Foale (Geeks for Social Change) and artist honor ash to discuss the big secret project we are working on that we hope will provide an answer. 🎞 You can also watch this podcast in the form of a video, or read the transcript 📖 

This is the last thing we're publishing this year before we go on our annual December break (which we'll be spending in Ireland together writing the book shh). So, a big thank you for the 100,000+ listens this year, and thank you especially to our Patreon, Ko-fi, and Paypal supporters + everyone in our lovely discord!!!! :) If you enjoy the podcast, please tell your neighbour about it. Or your Nan. love from Gabrielle and Zarina x

This week's review is Tai Shani's exhibition at Gathering, the new space in London. Guest read by me, GDLP, because ZM has the flu, the text is about saints and bread and hallucinations in the body as well as in the gallery. You can find the written version on our website. Thanks for listening and see ya next week! 

bonus episode! Here is a gift: some good poems by Sean Prentice, just for you. Sean is the 27th recipient of the Creatives Grant funded by Creative Debuts. See you in 2 days with the next review :) 

My last text of 2022! It's a review of Sable but it's also a text about disability and deviance. You can find the written version on our website and I made a video version to round the year out. Thank you everyone for your support this year. I feel like a different person to who I was in January. Thanks for bearing with me!!! Thank you for letting me be a writer. It means the world. GDLP xxxxxxx

We asked our audience for the weirdest things they witnessed in art school and, unfortunately, they delivered. Today's episode is Art School Horror Stories, discussing bodily fluids, animals, weird students and weird tutors. We filmed this one so if you want to see our facial reactions, enjoy lmao. Before and after discussing The Incidents, we also talk about Martine Sym's new film The African Desperate which is about an art school in New York Becauseeee 🥁🥁🥁  this episode is sponsored by MUBI, our heroes, who are exclusively streaming the film. All of our listeners get 30 days free HAPPY HALLOWEEN.

* check The White Pube website for the transcription. We love you and we are sorry. But this was so funny we'll probably definitely be doing it again.

This week’s text is a review of The African Desperate, the new film by Martine Syms about an art school in upstate New York starring Diamond Stingily. 

You can read the review on our website here: thewhitepube.co.uk/misc/theafricandesperate/

The African Desperate is streaming exclusively on MUBI now. **Get 30 days free.** This text was commissioned by MUBI, and as usual, you can check our accounts to see what jobs we do & how much we are paid for them. We are alsooo gonna follow this up with a podcast discussing people’s art school experiences so keep ya eyes peeled over on instagram @thewhitepube. But if you wana get in there early, you can anonymously tell us the weirdest thing that happened to you in art school here.

This week's text is a review! Of Daisy Hildyard's novel, Emergency: a DARK PASTORAL FOR THE CLIMATE CHANGE ERA. Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. 

Read the text version on TWP here: thewhitepube.co.uk/misc/emergency/

As usuallll, thank u to our friends on patreon! 

We recorded an Ask Me Anything to celebrate 7 years of The White Pube. We get INTO it. We talk about Zarina's day job, the few days we worked for the Brexit festival, going viral, health, the future, what we would do if the other one died, and of course, our biggest fight ever. We actually filmed this one so if you want to watch it with some visual illustrations, the link is here and there are captions on the video too. It's all fun and games and gossip but just,,, thank you for allowing us to do this job. I can't believe it's been that long. I really, really can't believe it. Thank you to the 30K monthly readers on the website, to the 80K on insta, the 20K on twitter, to our 705 Patreon people, and to YOU the growing podcast listenership as well :) thank you sooooo much!!! 

If you listened to this episode, please comment the following when we share it on insta: Hi The White Pube - It’s me, your only reader. For Months I have created the illusion that you are writing to a large audience. But here’s the truth: all these people reading are me. And now, for you to be convinced of this, I will send this message from all my accounts.

This text is a little bit........different. But not that different really because it is still a piece of criticism. Listen to the end for an explainer if you are very confused and think that I really think these things. I definitely definitely don't.

You can find the written version of this on The White Pube dot commmmm our beautiful website that turns SEVEN YEARS OLD in 10 days holy moly (what have you got us for our birthday?? in child years we just started year 4 at school. we probably love Fortnite. We sleep in a teeny tiny single bed. We grow up to become art critics, what)

This week's text is about MY FAVOURITE PAINTING! (which is different to my favourite painter...) 

It's Simone Martini’s Blessed Agostino Novello Triptych, an altarpiece from 14th Century Siena. 

To read the text version of this (and peep the painting mentioned), go to thewhitepube.com/art-reviews/blessed-agostino-novello/

MERCH: https://www.weareprintsocial.com/the-white-pube

& as usual, thank u to our friends on Patreon!!! <3

We are happy to announce the 25th recipient of The Working Class Creatives Grant is Tomisin Adepeju, a Nigerian-British filmmaker based in London. This is the first recipient since we opened up the writers grant to a more general creatives grant, and we loved the work Tomisin sent in.

This is just a lil bit of info - raising awareness & marketing the new Creatives Grant. If you were thinking of applying - pls do!!! more info on TWP's website, on the grants page: https://thewhitepube.co.uk/grants/ where there's full submissions info & FAQs

If you want to sign up to Creative Debut's mailing list, here's the link tooooo: CREATIVE DEBUTS MAILING LIST

see u next week for a lil text baby & enjoy ur bank hol!!! xxxxx

Jodie Comer is the actress of her generation, pass it on!!! Writing about theatre and accents and Liverpool. Writing about truth and lies and change. You can find the written version of this on The White Pube. Listen til the end for today's emoji + thank you for listening I love you

I got COVID in January 2021 and I spent last year in a pit, stuck at home, no energy, in pain, dealing with the vague endlessness of Long Covid. In the middle of January 2022, I posted a one year update podcast episode where I told you lot how bad Long Covid continued to be. BUT!! At the end of that month, I had an in-person appointment with the Long Covid Clinic in Liverpool where they did a test and told me what brand of Long Covid I actually had. I was amazed. This episode is all about the disability COVID has left me with, POTS. Not to be a beg but please listen to this or read the transcript, because I would love more people to know what this is, how it works, and what people like me need to be comfortable. 

You can find the full transcript for this episode: https://thewhitepube.co.uk/podcasts/

You can support The White Pube here: https://thewhitepube.co.uk/support/

this week's text is about my favourite painter: Bhupen Khakhar :)

You can read the text version of this here - thewhitepube.com/art-reviews/bhupenkhakhar/ n there are lil pics of the paintings I've described in this text, if you wana see the real things rather than my description hehe

thank you to the patreon gan, as perrrrr - patreon.com/thewhitepube

A review, an emoji, and an update on our writing schedule :o I hope you like cats because this week I talk about the newly released Stray, a game I waited so long for. The written version of this text can be found on our website here. Thank you to our supporters; we have been trying in earnest to get a podcast sponsor all year and I think we are un-sponsorable so if you are a regular listener please consider giving us £1 a month if you're ableeeee ahhhh

This week's text is a guided meditation, a walk through Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics and Contemporary Art @ York Art Gallery. It's best experienced as audio, but just in case you're looking for it, the text version of this can be found on the White Pube dot com (here: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/body-vessel-clay/)

As always, thank you to our patreon friends! You can join the club here: patreon.com/thewhitepube

Another review that's not so much a review and more a reflection on disability. A game about needing things, a text about learning to want more. Survival game as chronic illness simulation. Also an account of my time in London. You can find the written version of this on The White Pube! Thank you to all our supporters, and make sure you listen to the end for today's emoji :-))))) 

This week's text is a review of Sun & Sea, an opera about climate change, at the Albany as part of LIFT. It's also a text about heatwaves and the Second Body.

You can read the text version of this review here: thewhitepube.com/art-reviews/sun-and-sea/

Thank you, as usual, to our friends on Patreon! 

For the 23rd TWP Writers Grant, we’re excited to announce that July’s recipient is Lottie Walker. Lottie sent us a collection of poems and we were immediately smitten with their cleverness and dexterity. Lottie’s poems had a sharpness, this citrus kick that felt like salt on a wound. They stung us and in the same, offered a full complexity that we could chew on. We’re sharing that collection of Lottie’s poems as well as the first chapter of the novel she’s working on: Wild Garlic. So, with the help of Creative Debuts, we are glad we can support Lottie with this month’s Writers Grant.

If you want to read the text version of Lottie's work, to look back at previous recipients, or to find out more about the grant, you can head here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/writersgrant :)

You can also listen to Beetroot Podcast, a poetry podcast hosted by Lottie & Marta Mcilduff, here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2y3dJQXNRjtXZeJSwkflhJ?si=f42d743214ec40c0

This week I'm thinking about all the identity art that just lets me know people with different identities exist and nothing more. Listen here or find the written version of this on the art section on our website where I have also added a p.s. with some more examples of Level One Identity Art. Wishing you shade and relief in this genuinely terrible heatwave. God help us all. 

Thank you to our Patreon/Kofi/Paypal pals who keep The White Pube's weekly writing going!!!! See you on discord for the post-text debrief!!!

This week's text is about Munch's paintings, a lil walk through of when i went to see the masterpieces from Bergen show at the Courtauld and had a really nice time

read it here: thewhitepube.com/art-reviews/munch/

and thank you, as usual, to friends on Patreon! 

😱

A book review! A book you should all go and buy now. This week's review is on Tell Me I'm Worthless, the debut novel from Alison Rumfitt. A book about a haunted house; a book about fascism. 

You can find the written version of this on the /misc section of our website

Thank you to our Patreon+Paypal+Kofi supporters for keeping us in business !!!!! Join the discord here 

This week's text is a review of Cloud Point, a group show curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, at Paradise Row. 

Read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/cloud-point/

Now the highest grossing A24 film of all time, this week's review is Everything Everywhere All At Once. I had an issue with the way it ended but I think that's on me 🤪 You can find the written version of this on the /misc section of our website & as always, thank you to our good looking genius supporters for keeping us in business we love you 

This week's text is a review of RIP Germain's show, Shimmer, which was on at Two Queens in Leicester. 

read it here: https://thewhitepube.co.uk/art-reviews/shimmerripgermain/

& as always, thank you to our friends on patreon! 

Do you know Hieronymus Bosch's painting The Garden of Earthly Delights? Do you know the Twitter bot that just posts close-ups of the painting all day long? This week's review is Bosch Bot, thinking about a bot as a curatorial tool and just how much more  engaged I am with the painting via this mad Twitter presentation than I would be if I was stood in the Prado in Madrid squinting at it IRL. 

You can find the written version of this on our website: thewhitepube.com 

++++ follow Bosch Bot here: twitter.com/boschbot

This week's text is a second portrait in our ongoing series, having a snoop and a natter, chatting to people around the UK for a sneaky peek into what creative life is like for people wherever they are. 

This text is a portrait of the co-Director of an artist-led space in Leicester, we go to a sports bar, eat Masala Mogo and chat about everything: from art as an alternative value system, to why charitable status is not always the answer, and why failure is good sometimes. 

you can read the full text here: thewhitepube.com/art-thoughts/portrait-of-a-director-of-an-artist-led-space/

you can also go back & read the first text in this series, Portrait of a Moving Image Artist in London, here: thewhitepube.co.uk/art-thoughts/portrait-of-a-moving-image-artist/

that's all! happy sunday & thank you, as per usual to our friends and supporters on patreon. i always look forward to hearing what you think, especially on the lil TWP discord, so thank you for you constant support and feedback! 

For the 21st recipient of The White Pube Writers Grant, we are very excited to support the work of Rutendo D. Bradley. Rutendo sent us an excerpt from the novel she started as part of her dissertation, ‘The Devil’s King,’ a project she is now hoping to work on full-time. The opening we read was so effective in its world-building, with its historical language and raw landscape, and its intense population of kings and knights and soldiers and the ways that they speak. The chapter also has this kind of fateful promise that this story is going to be different, it’s going to be important, just hold on — and we loved that, and we wanted to read more. So, with the help of Creative Debuts, we are glad we can support Rutendo with this month’s Writers Grant.

If you want the text version of The Devil's King, to look back at previous recipients, or to find out more about the grant, you can head here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/writersgrant :)

Apparently I'm just really into thinking about social media atm, so continuing on from the Chaotic Nightclub Photos review, in this episode I look at @afffirmations on Instagram. Thinking about sincerity, irony, not knowing what's going on, mental wellbeing, and how I want to spend my time online. You can find the written version of this review here. Thank you for listening 8-) Thank you to our Patreon/Paypal/Kofi supporters I love you

It's white girl art revisited! uh-oh. In 2019, I wrote a text that was read by way more people than I was expecting. It caused a stir, caused me nightmares, and I've buried my head in the sand about it ever since. In this episode, we re-read the text and give it a much-needed exorcism. You can find the transcription for this episode on our website here. I'm sweating

Thank you to our Patreon, Paypal and Ko-fi pals for supporting this writing - maybe not this piece in particular lol - but in general 

This week's text is a review of Shenece Oretha: Ah So It Go, A No So It Go, Go So! at Cubitt. It's also the last show of Languid Hands’ curatorial fellowship programme at the gallery, so i am rly happy n glad to be writing about this show, and hope i've made it clear that I LOVED THIS SHOW!!!

read the text version here: thewhitepube.com/art-reviews/sheneceorethacubitt/

& as per, thank you to our friends on patreon for supporting the writing :)

This week's text is something a bit different. It's not a review, it's not an essay, it's kind of just a story. So it makes me nervous, but here we are all the same. 

I don’t want to give the game away, I don’t want to let you in on the big secret. But this is fiction… slightly, sort of. This isn’t real - oh, but it is. I don’t know what to tell you, you’re just going to have to believe me.

read the text here: https://thewhitepube.co.uk/art-thoughts/portrait-of-a-moving-image-artist/

Thanks, as always, to our friends on patreon, and especially to the patreon gang on TWP's Discord server. i am so bad at naming texts, so thank you sincerely for helping me come up with a good title for this :)

This week's review is on Old, M. Night Shyamalan's 2021 release about a supernatural beach. It appears the filmmaker has a track record of exploiting disability for horror in his films but I don't often watch films so I personally had no idea. This text is me working that out 💀 

You can find the written version of this on The White Pube. Thanks for listening! And thank you especially to our Patreon/Ko-Fi/Paypal gang for supporting essays like this. 

We’ve known each other since 2013 but now we know each other on quite frankly an unnecessary level after recording this episode lmao. Using a few decks courtesy of So Cards, we ask each other questions and end up discussing smoking, Zarina’s dream job, education reform, how our exes don’t exist, IBS in public, taxi drivers, becoming Jack Grealish, and of course, our shared praise kink.

You can find the transcription for today’s episode on thewhitepube.com/podcasts

sorry in advance for all the TMI 

& you can find out more about So Cards here: https://www.socards.org!

💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 💜 

see you on Sunday for the next review!!!

TW: discussion of disordered eating

This week's text is about hunger. I don't know what it means anymore and that scares me, but it's ok because it is aimless, empty. 

Read the text version on the site: thewhitepube.com/misc/im-hungry/

and thank you! to everyone that supports us on Patreon, Ko-fi and Paypal!

Do you ever... cheat? I don't. No, I would never. Or I wouldn't. But then something happened that meant I started to cheat all the time. This week's text is called Learning to Cheat! You can find the audio version on our website here BUT I have actually made this text into a video that you can watch here. It's something I've wanted to try for a while and this text felt like the right one to try it on. Let me know what you think!

Thank you to everyone that supports us on Patreon, Ko-fi and Paypal!! We couldn't do it without ya

This week's text is a chunky art thought about the problems with London. Why is it so hard to be an artist, or an art worker, in London? Why is living in this city so fucking hard? What’s the problem with London, and WHY does it have a problem in the first place? WELL. I investigated. I spoke to: Haja Fanta, who works at HOME by Ronan Mckenzie; George Henry Longly and Prem Sahib, who run Ridley Road Project Space; Arman Nouri and Kwame Lowe, who work together as Kin Structures. I asked them a couple of questions, did some digging and now I'm here to tell you about the answers I found :)

if you want to read this as a text, it's on our website here

thank you to our readers for supporting our work on Patreon, Kofi and PayPal. we love u the most <3 <3 <3 <3

ALSO, pls rate & review the podcast so we can convince a sponsor to give us loadsa money money moneyyyyy - THANKS xxxx

This is 2nd episode in the our new series where we revisit the Big texts we wrote before we started this podcast! In this one, we revisit Zarina's 2020 text 'I hate Dishoom.' It caused... a ruckus online. How does she feel about it now? Was it even that deep? Did the owner of Dishoom get in touch and did they meet up to discuss it? Find out on the latest episode of the white pube podcast wooo & if you want the transcription for this episode, it's on our website here

thank you to our readers for supporting our work on Patreon, Kofi and PayPal. we love u the most  

This is a review of Beat Saber, a game I've been thinking about for years. It's a game I have only played once. When it was time, I sat down and wrote the review in one evening, which never, ever happens. But I just had to get this one off my chest, I think, and when I was ready, it was easy because all the words were already in my head. 

You can find the written version of this on thewhitepube.com/games

& thank you to our Patreon supporters for keeping us in business. 

Ahhh

This week's text is a review of Inventing Anna, the newest Shondaland series about the Anna Delvey girlboss scam, on Netflix.

You can read the text version of this on thewhitepube.com/inventinganna

Thank you, as always, to our Patreon gang for supporting the writing and work! If you want to, you can support us on patreon.com/thewhitepube

We’re very happy to announce that the 18th recipient of The White Pube Writers Grant is... Tuğçe Özbiçer! Tuğçe is a London-based Turkish journalist, writer and photographer from Istanbul. We found real care and value in her writing, which reaches from searing human rights-focused articles to softer texts that reflects on lyrics, home and love. Not only did we feel this in Tuğçe’s work, but so did a friend who emailed us to back her submission, writing that ’I’m constantly in awe of the way she writes in a language that is not even her own. I’d love for your audience to be able to read her work too and for Tuğçe to realise that her stories are worth telling here.’ We agree and we hope you enjoy getting to know Tuğçe’s work as well.

If you want the text version of Arabesque, to look back at previous recipients, or to find out more about the grant, you can head here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/writersgrant :)

This week, I played the remastered Uncharted 4 that was released earlier this year as part of the Legacy of Thieves collection for PS5. It's a very cool game but that's exactly why I didn't like it. In this text, I write about how much I prefer embarrassment over coolness as a quality in the culture I spend time with. Written version on The White Pube! Thank you to our Patreons! I somehow forgot to mention the emoji summary in this recording so of course it's 🧗🥵😎. Happy Sunday everybody!!!

New series just dropped. We have been writing on The White Pube since 2015 but we only actually started this podcast at the end of 2020. There are a tonne of texts that we haven’t shared here. In this new series, we’ll be revisiting our old writing, reading it out and then discussing it. We’ll be chatting about whether or not we still agree with what we said. Does it make us cringe lol? If we were to write the same text now, what we would do differently? And of course, we’ll mention how the text was received and any related controversies that followed because god, there have been so many. These bonus episodes of the podcast will roughly be released twice a month — they’re gonna be throwbacks, exorcisms, apologies, and good times too.

For the first instalment, we revisit Gabrielle’s 2019 text ‘why museums are bad vibes.’ Spoiler: museums are even worse vibes here in 2022 💔

Find the transcript to this on our website here + we’re going to be uploading podcasts to YouTube now too!!!

Thank you to our Patreon supporters for being the best

This week's text is a review of SHE KEEPS ME DAMN ALIVE, a game by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. This text is (tbh) less a review, more a document or journal entry of my experience playing through, a way for me to write through my feelings and hold on to the intensity of this game. 

You can read the written version of this on our website here: thewhitepube.com/art-reviews/she-keeps-me-damn-alive/

You can watch Gab & Danielle's conversation here: gdlp.co.uk/posts/arebyte-interview/

You can support us on Patreon here: patreon.com/thewhitepube (& thank you to our patrons!!!)

This week's text is a review of the new Pokémon: Legends Arceus game. When the game came out, I literally sat down and played it for 5 days without moving, having the time of my life. But when it came to writing about it, I started to think about what I really want from a Pokémon game and how Arceus did and didn't match up. 

Written version of this review is available on our website here :)

Thank you to our Patreon supporters :) love you

This week's text is a review of Gut Feelings Meri Jaan, a show at Touchstones by Jasleen Kaur and a group of collaborators from Rochdale. 

The written version of this text is available on thewhitepube.com/art-reviews/gutfeelingsmerijaan/

And as usual, thank you to our Patreon gang for supporting our weekly writing! Hope u all have a cute n happy Valentines weekend, here r some kisses from us, 2 u xxxxxx

This week's review is on Unpacking, a small pixel art puzzle game about unpacking items into rooms, available now on Switch, Xbox, PC/Mac. And so, I... didn't love it. But this text is about how, actually, I don't even want to love everything I play. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes love is too much, sometimes I only want things to be fine. 

The written version of this text is available on thewhitepube.com/games/unpacking

Thank you to our Patreon gang for supporting our weekly writing! 

This week's text is a Very Embarrassing essay about why i love period dramas & yearning. tl;dr, they've got Hot Vibes. and other things have those same vibe. And i think i'm toxic femininity. down catastrophically bad, send help. 

You can read this text on thewhitepube.com/art-thoughts/perioddramas

Thank you to our Patreon supporters for keeping us fed & watered & causing chaos. <3

This week's review on Apex Legends considers the narrative value of an elaborate first person shooter, or why I have just sunk 557 hours into a game that goes bang bang. I love it. This was the easiest review to write in the world, the most enjoyable. The only problem was it took me away from the game for a few hours. Okay, posting this review and then going back to where I belong, the world of Apex Legends. 

The written version of this text is available here.

Thank you to our Patreon supporters for keeping the lights on (and the gas on, oh my god, the gas). 

Well, it's been a year. In today's episode, Gabrielle and Zarina sit down to talk about the impact Long Covid has had on Gabrielle's life, body, head, whole world. It's been a year of learning about the instability of chronic illness, trying to find stability through it, and failing over and over again. There is so much more to say on the matter but this is all the poison I could suck out of the wound for now. 

You can find the transcription for this episode here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/year-of-long-covid

Thank you to our Patreon supporters for their kindness and love. 

We are excited to begin 2022 by announcing the 17th recipient of The White Pube Writers Grant... 🥁... Rasha Baraka. In this episode, we introduce Rasha's work and she reads out two short pieces of her writing; Letter to my Coloniser & Jealousy.

Bio: Rasha Baraka is a freelance journalist and writer currently studying an MA in Culture Industry. She promotes, shares, and writes about a shape-shifting culture while striving to platform a plethora of voices and stories that are often underrepresented or marginalised in the media. She is currently working on a digital exhibition with a group of multidisciplinary artists to explore the metaphor of the margins in relation to space and identity.

If you want the text versions, to look back at previous recipients, or to find out more about the grant, you can head here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/writersgrant :) 

It's my (ZM) first text of the year! kicking off 2022 with a review of Lubaina Himid's show at Tate Modern. It's also a text about good art, magic, dreams & stories - a love letter for some paintings that transported me. 

You can find the written version of this text here. 

Thank you to our Patreon supporters and thank you to all our listeners here - catch u next time xoxoxox

Happy new year! For our first episode back for 2022, I've written about the games I've been addicted to over the years, whilst wondering carefully if addiction is ever okay - ever helpful. Have you ever been addicted to a game? What did it mean to you at the time? You can find the written version of this text here. 

Thank you to our Patreon supporters and thank you to all our listeners here. It's gonna be a good year, I am determined. 

We're ending the year by announcing the 16th recipient of The White Pube Writers Grant... 🥁... Molly Gough. In this episode, we introduce Molly's work and she reads out two short pieces of her writing.

If you want the text versions, to look back at previous recipients, or to find out more about the grant, you can head here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/writersgrant :) See you in 2022 :)

This week's text is a reflection on becoming disabled and how that has affected my writing. It's not what I want but maybe it's not all bad? And maybe thinking about good change instead of bad change all the time might help reframe what it means to be disabled (sometimes, for some people, like me). 

This is the final text on The White Pube for 2021 as we are about to go on our December break. We're still working behind the scenes on things like launching our new website, but we'll be quieter as we see out the year. Thank you everyone for your ongoing support, especially to our Patreon gang. I can't say thank you enough.

You can find the written version here and our Patreon is here. Have a nice Christmas everyone :)

This text is an art thought essay about the museum as part of the Neoliberal political project, a re-write of our 2018 text 'the Problem with Representation'. 

read it here: thewhitepube.co.uk/institutions-identity

Thank you to our Patreon family for your support, and thanks to you for listening :) 

Gabrielle writing about art again? Oh my god, the world must truly be ending. This week's text is a Love Letter to the Art World. It is a love letter but I'm pissed; a letter full of heartbreak about art and disability and the lack of imagination by mega funded art institutions. You can find the written version on thewhitepube.com where there is also a handwritten version too! Cute. I wasn't originally going to share this text tbh. It was commissioned by the young artists society in Oslo, Norway, who asked me what I would like to say to a room full of art people. These words fell out of me quickly in the middle of the night. I didn't even edit it, just wanted to let it be raw and fast. But it felt like white pube 1.0 and for that reason, I'm sharing it here too. It's my second to last main text of the year before the annual December break so I hope you enjoy it (I can also tell you a secret here if you're still reading: I'm not going on my December break this year because doing work on the white pube is truly keeping me sane so I'll see you here anyway!!)

Thank you to our Patreon family for ongoing love and encouragement, and thanks to you for listening :) 

We’re well into the second year of The Working Class Writers Grant now and we are thrilled to announce Recipient #015 is Polly Manning. Polly sent us two texts that both got me right in the gut in different painful ways. One was a quick, sharp stab and a gasp; the other was an uncomfortable hug from the behind that got tighter and tighter until I felt sad and sick. Acute, emotional, affecting and bleak. I read both texts back to back and I immediately wanted to read more -  and that’s how I knew we’d found our next recipient.

Bio:

Polly Manning is a Welsh writer, and currently lives in the upper Swansea Valley in south Wales. Whilst she has worked in screenwriting and film direction, her main interest is in prose fiction - in particular, the short story. Her stories focus on life in rural and de-industrialised parts of Wales, with a particular interest in the ways in which young people find subversive meaning within these often 'bleak' realities. She is disinterested in the sentimental depiction of Wales as a mystical, Celtic wilderness detached from the miseries of capitalist neoliberalism, preferring to write stories about the people that actually live there. She is a Welsh-speaker, and currently working on a collection of short stories.

Links below if you want to read her work:

Read: Spider

You can find Polly on Instagram and Twitter

If you’re a working class writer, and would like to find out more info about our Writers Grant, pls visit the Writers Grant page on our webby for the FAQs and submission info! Thank you to Creative Debuts for funding the grant and allowing us to support working class writers in this way :)

This week's text is a review of Sutapa Biswas's show: Lumen at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge. 

It's also a lil bit different to my normal texts, bc it's written as an audio tour. So you can listen to me guide you round in person, or listen on an imagined art date, IRL or art guided meditation. 

read the text here: thewhitepube.com/sutapabiswas

This week’s review is The Forgotten City, a game about a place where nobody is allowed to sin or everybody will turn into gold statues - or so they say. It is a game I didn’t know was a horror game until I felt my body tremble. And that’s a good thing. I have really come to love this genre so much. So I’m sharing this review today in honour of Halloween. Maybe you’re looking for something to play or maybe you just want to hear its spooky tale, either way I hope you enjoy the review.

The written version is available on https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/the-forgotten-city

And thank you to our Patreon fam for supporting!!!! 

This week's text on the White Pube is a review of 3 for 1 at Camden Art Centre: Adam Farah, Phoebe Collings-James & Zeinab Saleh.

tl;dr (& SPOILER): I think the decision to put on 3 separate solo shows, in the space that'd normally contain 1 solo show, at the same time is racialised. 

Read it here: thewhitepube.com/3for1camdenart

This week's review is on BLACKTRANSSEA, the new game by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. It is currently on show at QUAD in Derby as part of Danielle's first solo exhibition. If you can't get to Derby, like me, then the game is available to play online at blacktranssea.com. This review is about writing to remember, colonisation, mother nature, games in exhibitions, and new endings for us all. 

The written version is available here + as always, thank you to our Patreon gang for supporting The White Pube I love you

Thanks for listening 

This week's text is a review of the 2021 Turner Prize! We've never reviewed the Turner Prize before, and i don't know why?!? it's such a Moment™️. But this year, there has been so much noise about all the nominees being collectives, and I went up to the Herbert on a press trip to go have a look round with the rest of the press pack - felt like i literally HAD to review it lmao. SO here it is, a long chunky extended cut: mini reviews of the work being presented, as well as a run down of the wider TP vibe. Also, a soft proposition for the Turner Prize to be more like the X Factor, that i'm only HALF joking about. 

If you want to read the text version of this, please visit: thewhitepube.com/turnerprize2021

i also mention a few other text, linked here: 

BOSS's statement about being nominated

Juliet Jacques' article for Frieze, about what this year’s Turner Prize tells us about the arts after a decade of austerity.

Morgan Quaintance's eternally relevant essay, Teleology & the Turner Prize or: Utility, the New conservatism

The only reason The White Pube can still exist is because some of our readers choose to support us each month on Patreon. If you wana, you can chip in a couple £s a month, if not no worries!!!!

Happy weekend! & enjoy!!! :) 

This week’s review is Kena: Bridge of Spirits, the recently released game from Ember Lab about a young spirit guide who helps troubled spirits move on. It looks great, gameplay is solid, but the story just did not land. For people who want a big combat challenge, go for it. But for those who play games searching for magical, dramatic stories, I don’t know if this one quite works.

Written version: thewhitepube.com/kena-bridge-of-spirits

Thank you to our Patreon fam for supporting the weekly writing on The White Pube

&&& thank you to Ember Lab for sending a copy of this game for review. And the stickers. Thank you for sending me stickers.

This week's text on The White Pube, is a review of a film! Manifesto, by Ane Hjort Guttu, which is aw a few weeks ago at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival. This text is also a cheeky excuse to think a bit about art schools, and especially, my time at CSM (which is quite a while ago now bc i am literally geriatric).

You can read the review here: thewhitepube.com/manifesto-anehjortguttu

The only reason The White Pube can still exist is because some of our readers choose to support us each month on Patreon. If you wana, you can chip in a couple £s a month, if not no worries!!!! 

ok that's all, love u have a great weekend n see u in 2 weeks xoxox

This week's review is No Longer Home, a small game about two people who have just finished an art degree and are now getting ready to pack up their flat and leave London. Now, I KNOW this premise is relatable for at least 50% of our audience, lmao, I see the google analytics and I know. But if it's not, this text is mostly just about remembering the weird things that happen in our lives, and trying to answer the question, 'what form should remembering take?' This game is available on Mac and PC currently but is about to be released on Switch and Xbox One in October. 

The written version is here & as always, thank you to our Patreon gang for supporting these weekly texts! 

We’re entering the SECOND year of The White Pube Writers Grant if you can believe it. We are very pleased to announce that the 13th recipient is fellow art critic Andy Grace Hayes. Writing from Glasgow, his substack Another Gay Handout brings together exhibition reviews, book reviews, and essays on aesthetics and the climate. We haven’t been able to run around Scotland’s many different art scenes in a long, long time but reading Andy’s reviews felt like the light, piercing criticism and gossip that comes of visiting exhibitions with clever friends. We very much support that, and we’re subscribed to the mailing list so looking forward to reading more. We hope you enjoy it too!

Bio: Andy Grace Hayes is a Scottish writer living in Glasgow. He writes exhibition reviews and records video essays that engage with local work, queer art, terrible art, and mass media. Hayes writes to be confrontational and to flirt. He aims to create an archive of gossip, institutional criticism, and off-the-cuff diatribes. 

You can find links to Andy’s work on the Writers Grant page: both the two text reviews that he reads in this podcast ep (Carpeted Bathroom, an Exhibition Review of ‘Sex Club’ AND! A Dumpster Fire and ‘Dampbusters’) as well as 2 video essays: Pleasure Park and the Legacy of Tom of Finland, and The Aesthetics of Calm: Whitecubing in the White Cube. You can also find Andy on Twitter & Instagram.

If you’re a working class writer, and would like to find out more info about our Writers Grant, pls visit the Writers Grant page on our webby for the FAQs and submission info! Thank you to Creative Debuts for funding the grant and allowing us to support working class writers in this way :)

This week's text is a review of an exhibition that doesn't exist. 

'Gab suggested I write a review of a fictional exhibition, one that doesn’t actually exist. And the idea grabbed me, because in writing about something that doesn’t exist, I thought I could burrow through and write about something that should.'

read the text here: thewhitepube.com/doesnt-exist

This week’s review is Red Dead Redemption 2, the 2018 game from Rockstar. I think about escaping into fiction and creating fiction as a way to escape. Part fan-fiction, part review. Part player, part creator. The text is spoiler-free so if you haven’t ever played the game (or maybe especially if you happen to be halfway through), I hope you enjoy listening.

You can find the written version here & thank you to our Patreon gang for all of your support. It really means the world.

This week's text on The White Pube is a review of Ain Bailey's show, Version, at Wysing Arts Centre over in Cambridge. In this review, I think about about generosity, overlap, and liquid, as well as ~vibey~ descriptions of sound works. 

You can read the text version of this here: thewhitepube.com/ain-version

The White Pube is proud to be reader supported on Patreon! If you would like more info about why or how, or even to chip in with the support and sign up to become our patron like in olden times, you can do so here: patreon.com/thewhitepube

This week's text is about the fact I've got the ick for Love Island itself. Season 7 has been rough but the roughness didn't begin here. I'm done with this show. I can't be dealing. 

Listen on this podcast or find the written version on The White Pube here. Thank you to our Patreon supporters for enabling this very specifically mad kind of writing. We love you a lot. 

Happy Sunday! This week's text on the White Pube is a review of the London spectacle dubbed 'a £2million SLAG HEAP'!!! it's: Marble Arch Mound!!!

This is also a text where i talk about public art after 11 years of consecutive Conservative governments, increasing reliance on private funding, and the wider corporatisation of the arts. i try to be an alien archaeologist from the future, and ask: if the Marble Arch Mound is a monument, what is it a monument to? and what does it tell us about the culture and people that made it? 

if you want to read the full text, go to thewhitepube.com/mound

The White Pube is proud to be reader supported on Patreon! If you would like more info about why or how, or even to chip in with the support and sign up to become our patron like in olden times, you can do so here: patreon.com/thewhitepube

I watched all 11 seasons of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and now this funny little review exists. It's a text about chronic illness, reality TV, and finding relief in other people's issues. Hope you enjoy! The written version of this text is available on our website here > https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/rhobh < and as always, thank you to our Patreon supporters for keeping The White Pube in motion. We literally couldn't do it without you, especially while I am so out of it with Long Covid. If you too want to support TWP on Patreon, head here 💜 

This week's text is a review! of Camara Taylor's <a rant! a reel!> at Cubitt. It's the third show in Languid Hands' ongoing curatorial fellowship program, called <No Real Closure>.

You can read the text version of this review here: thewhitepube.com/arant-areel

Coinciding with this show,, Camara is also premiering a film, <holus-bolus>, online at Edinburgh Art Festival. It's available until 29th August. 

'As entry to the exhibition is free, and many of us have a renewed commitment to mutual aid, we ask those that are able to donate any amount, big or small, to Glasgow-based MORE (Migrants Organising for Rights and Empowerment), a group of migrants and members of the community campaigning for the right to work, study, good housing and to be treated with dignity. Donate to their Climate Justice Is Migrant Justice fundraiser here.'

^^ The handout mentions this, and since we get a few new patrons every sunday, if you were considering signing up to our Patreon this month, pls consider putting it off for a month n donating to MORE's Climate justice fundraiser instead :)

This week's text is a review of 54 The Gate, an online show that is also a game, on Arcadia Missa's Open Office. it is also a text about how i just want art to be FUN, and why i think that's important, n worth considering when making an exhibition - especially right now!

you can read the text here: thewhitepube.com/54thegate

This week’s review is 'We Dwell in Possibility,' the new game by Robert Yang and Eleanor Davis commissioned for this year’s Manchester International Festival. I write about pandemic horniness, public sex, Hieronymus Bosch and lockdown lifting. Not suitable for younger listeners. 

You can find the written version of this review here; and you can play the game for free here.

Thank you for listening & thank you to our Patreon gang for supporting!!! 🌸 

Announcing the 11th recipient of The White Pube Writers Grant: Dora Maludi!

Dora sent over a collection of poems, and they really stood out and grabbed us. Dora’s poems are like small concentrated squares full of infinite detail. She writes about writing; the writing process like vomiting. She describes scars like borders. She writes like she is speaking to someone over your shoulder. And she summons whole scenes out of sketches to create these acute and honest atmospheres. We’re so glad we can support Dora through this grant, and we hope you find a similar joy in her work too! And thank you to Creative Debuts for providing the funding that allows us to offer this grant!

Bio: Dora Maludi is a fine artist and poet from London. Her practice is centred around exploring the relationship between form, language and landscape through the means of sound, video, text and movement. Anti poetry, surrealist poetry and Dada techniques inform her writing style, with the notion of rejecting traditional forms being a thorough line in her artistic endeavours. Alongside this, she is currently working on a soundscape series exploring the theme of endings and writing poems towards her first collection.

Find Dora’s Soundscapes on Bandcamp here  

You can also find Dora on Instagram here 

Read Dora's poems on the Writers Grant page

You can find out more about the Writers Grant here 

This week's review is Ghost of Tsushima, the 2020 video game about a Mongol invasion on the island of Tsushima set in the 13th century. Did I like it? Did I dislike it? The answer is no to both of those questions and I spend this text trying to figure out why. I also wonder: what does it mean when a violent story is just so beautiful? Can you be afraid of a villain you do not know? And how do you fight for something you don't quite care about?

The written version of this text can be found on our website here. Thank you for listening & thank you especially to our Patreon supporters. You are the best.

This week’s text is about the final walk in Death Stranding, the 2019 game by Kojima Productions. Back in November, I wrote a spoiler-free review that convinced a tonne of you to play it. Somebody even bought a whole PS4 off the back of that text. I return to the game now to write about its ending and to think about how emotion is achieved through narrative structure, character development, song, gameplay and loss of control. This text is chunky. I have not held back in any way. It took weeks to put together and it is the longest thing I have written in a very long time. But I dunno, it feels warranted. Again, someone bought a PS4! I get an email every other week off strangers thanking me for introducing them to the game! I am becoming a Death Stranding academic. Put me on Mastermind, I’m ready.

The written version of this text is available on thewhitepube.com/death-stranding-final-walk but this audio recording is fun because it features clips from BB’s Theme, a song by Ludvig Forssell, performed by Jenny Plant, (c) Sony Entertainment. Enjoy!

This week's text is a review of ~Salmon: A Red Herring~, the Art Now show by Cooking Sections, at Tate Britain. 

Talking about my split feelings; between being a hardline cynic and wanting to be a Good Vibes Person, n how i liked this show against my will. 

Read the text here: thewhitepube.com/cookingsections

This week's text is an essay called: Boycott Zabludowicz. 

Since 2014, there has been a call to boycott the Zabludowicz Collection, a gallery in London that is owned and funded by Zabludowicz Art Trust, and its associated institutions: Daata Editions and Times Square Space. The Zabludowicz Art Trust is financially associated with companies that have dealt arms to Israel's military, invested in property in Occupied Palestine, and that provide maintenance and services to the Israeli Airforce.

In this essay, I tell you why the boycott exists, why it is important and impactful, I tell you how the Zabludowicz Collection goes about operating despite the boycott, and then I explain some nitty-gritty practicalities about the boycott as #praxis. If you’re ready to dismiss this because you already know where you stand: just hear me out. I’ll even run you through both sides.

If you want to sign the BDZ boycott, and pledge to refuse your work, labour and the sale of your artwork to the Zabludowicz Art Trust, or visit any of its institutions, you can do so via this form.

For more information, please visit the BDZ website.

You can read the text version of this essay here: thewhitepube.com/bdz where you'll be able to find all the important links mentioned in the text. 

Normally, at the bottom of each text, we have a link to our Patreon. But if after this text, please consider donating the money you'd give to us  directly to MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians).

We’re so pleased to announce, the 10th recipient of the Writers Grant has been given to Natalie Dunning. This feels like a really special and emotional moment, not just because this is the 10th grant to go out(!), but because I feel such an affinity with Natalie’s writing. Her text ‘Why I sometimes like my chronic pain’ made me reflect on my relationship with long covid — something I am struggling with, but something that means I no longer sweat the small stuff precisely because of that struggle. Another text, ‘Hiking the uncanny valleys of Red Dead Redemption 2,’ made me fall in love all over again with the vast experiences we can have in video game spaces; and how vital and wonderful access to adventure can feel in a sick body. She writes through these subjects with such clarity - her tone is raw and optimistic, and basically I have been thinking about her texts ever since she sent them our way. We’re so glad we can support Natalie through this grant, and we hope you find a similar joy in her work too.

Bio:

Natalie Dunning is a writer and designer from Manchester. Art school led her to work in bars, schools and temp agencies. A health scare led her to write about the things that she cares about; health, food and culture. Her recent work has focused on alternative perspectives of chronic pain, gaming and pain management. She is currently writing about the joys of chicken splits, dystopian wellness cafes and cooking with fire. 

Links below if you want to read her work, listen to it, or follow Natalie online:

• Read Hiking the uncanny valleys of Red Dead Redemption 2
  
• Read Why I sometimes like my chronic pain
  
• Find Natalie’s website here
  
• You can also find Natalie on Twitter and Instagram

You can find out more about the Writers Grant here

this week's text is a book review (!!!) of Mieko Kawakami's Breasts and Eggs! 

read the text here

This week I've written about The Last of Us Part II and doing things in video games you don't want to do. I don't know if this is necessarily a review, it's more just a text about the thing. Trying out something newwww. As always, the written version of this is on our website: thewhitepube.com/the-last-of-us & thank you very much for listening.

This week's text is a review! of Walter Price's show, Pearl Lines at Camden Art Centre. This is the first show I've seen in person since last Autumn, and honestly i spent the last half of this text trying to figure out why galleries feel weird now. 

You can read the text here, and peep some pics of it too. enjoy the rest of ur sunday n the long weekend! 

We’re so pleased to announce, the 9th recipient of the Writers Grant has been given to Natalie Tan. Natalie has a bi-weekly newsletter called Simmer Down, that reflects on food and memory, and she sent us some back issues (links below). After we started the /food page on our website last year, we've been hoping to be able to support somebody else's writing around the subject & then Natalie’s work came along. It is so sensitive, descriptive, atmospheric and personable. The writing feels all visibly based in the political and the historical too, which we found incredible value and energy in. It's really enjoyable writing to read, as both writers and wannabe food-eggheads ourselves. So we are really excited to be able to support Natalie and Simmer Down, and we hope you find the same joy in her work

Bio:

Natalie Tan is a cultural practitioner and writer based in London. Expressed with an unbridled passion influenced by the forever-classic emo tracks of the 2000s, she examines maladaptive wistfulness, traditions formed from migration, and the impact of colonialism on Hong Kong and its diaspora. She is the author of Simmer Down, an ongoing, bi-weekly reflection on food and memory, and is currently writing her first play on family, loss, and Hong Kong as part of Bush Theatre’s West London Playwrights’ Group. Her work has been included in diaCRITICS, Radio Slumber, and the Breakfast B Reading Series.

Links below if you want to read her work, listen to it, or follow Natalie online:

• Read Strawberry Jam-Tinted Glasses
• Read On the Reliability of Dumplings
• Read through the rest of the Simmer Down archive
• You can find Natalie on Twitter and Instagram

You can find out more about the Writers Grant here

A bit of a different one this week: I have written about the podcast I fall asleep to every night. It's Episode #328 of 'My Brother, My Brother and Me,' titled 'The Anxiety-Free Cruise.' I write about sleep, imagination, tabletop games, and joy. 

You can find the written version of this on thewhitepube.com/mbmbam

Thank you to the Patreon gang for your ongoing support and love.

This week's text is a review!

I'll be chatting about Tales from the Silk Road, a cluster of films curated by Baesianz, and hosted on Nowness Asia.  

At the time of writing, there are 3 films up: Inside Out, by Sarah Khan / Wake Island: Last Ruins, directed by Mohamad Abdouni / Reality Fragment 160921, by Qigemu.

While i talk about the films briefly, this is more a text to ease back in to talking about institutions, and how they affect the way we articulate a new and tentative collective identity. 

Read the full text here.

At 7.30 on Wednesdays, a Labrador Club meets up on the main field. If I time it right, which I usually do, on Wednesday mornings I run through a sea of labradors; fat, young, long haired, golden blonde, chocolate, black, grey around the whiskers. They sniff up at me, follow me up the hill and round the fields. Their ears flap as they gallop alongside me, bodies lurching in time with the slap of my feet hitting the tarmac.

This week’s text is a cute lil bit of writing about bodies, the park, and the weirdness that is being born n bred in London. And running too, it's also about running. Read the full text here. 

This week's review is Fall Guys, the 2020 platform battle royale that went viral last summer. It's taken me a long time to write about it but I'm glad I waited til now! I won my first game 2 days ago and it clicked the review into place -- I use this text to talk about my absolute deep love of obstacle courses, Takeshi's Castle, and what it's like to win a survival of the fittest game as a sick person.

You can find the written version of this on thewhitepube.com/fall-guys 

:)

We haven't recorded a chatty episode in literal months, so we have a quick catch up on what we've been doing since we last spoke to you - and then we just get into it. This is the Long COVID Episode. Gab got COVID as soon as 2021 struck, and it just hasn't gone. It's long COVID now and the number of symptoms have doubled. We talk through everything, we have a cry, and we sit in that puddle together. 

The transcription for this episode is available here: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/the-long-covid-episode (written by Michael Lacey)

Thank you for listening :-(

this week's text is a book review (!!!) of Mike Phillips' The Dancing Face. Originally published in the 90s, it has been republished this year, as part of a 6-book series selected by Bernadine Evaristo, called Black Britain: Writing Back. 

read the full text: thewhitepube.com/thedancingface

Time flies, we’re now on the 8th recipient of the Writers Grant, and we are so happy to announce it has been given to Orna Kazimi. Orna sent us a short publication, called Catfish (which you can read below). We haven’t had the chance to support many Artists (with a capital A), but we were really excited by Orna’s approach to writing as a component in a wider visual practice, and we identified with it too. Catfish is sensitive and lucid. We love the way it presents complexity, memory, the spatial weirdness of navigating embodied states, its nuance and subtlety. We’re so glad to be able to support Orna & her work, and we hope you’ll see the tenderness that we saw.

Bio:
Orna Kazimi is an afghan artist based in London. Orna’s work and research explore personal encounters of migration in relation to collective memories of displacement through drawings, installation and writing. Her works have been shown at sight and sound workshop at Tate Exchange- Tate Modern- London 2018, overprint at Centre de la Gravure et de l’image imprimée museum-Belgium 2018, Art Amongst War: Visual Culture in Afghanistan-TCNJ Art Gallery- New Jersey 2014, 4th Afghan Contemporary Art Prize Exhibition- Queen’s Palace- Afghanistan 2013. She was awarded the Caspian Arts Foundation Scholarship (2016) and studied at Central Saint Martins in London (2018).

Links below if you want to read her work, listen to it, or follow Orna online:
Read Catfish on our website now
You can find Orna on Instagram @ornakazimi
See more of Orna’s work and practice on her website 

Spoiler-free review of the best game I've played in literally months, and the first horror game I've ever played. I shouted out loud on my own at one point because I got so scared and somehow I'm still recommending you play it for yourselves. Mundaun was created by Hidden Field (Michel Ziegler) and published by MWM Interactive last month. You can find the written version of this review on the white pube dot com as per uzj. Hope you are all good! We'll be back with the /real/ podcast very soon. Long covid is long, my apologies. 

this week’s text is a cute lil art thought! the title is not clickbait, it is genuinely the question I am asking: thinking around Beeple & NFTs, but also just like... everything.

read the full text: thewhitepube.co.uk/canwhitepeopleberadical

For this week's review, I played on a live claw machine remotely and... I hated it. Not good, not cool, not fun at all. And also potentially dangerous for people prone to compulsive spending. Yeah, I would steer clear. 

You can find the written version of this text at thewhitepube.com/clawee

happy Sunday the gang, I think this is my favourite game review I've ever written and I hope you enjoy it even if you don't play games. It's about Maquette, the newly released title by Graceful Decay and published by Annapurna. I write about love, needing help, and my world inside a pearl. 

You can find the written version of this on thewhitepube.com/maquette 

:) have a lovely day.

Hi podcast gang, I've been off sick with covid/long covid but I've been able to record audio for some recent reviews + uploading em now! 

This is a review of NUTS, the game in which you play a researcher collecting data on squirrels. Unfortunately, it broke before my eyes. But was still nice to see squirrels I guess? You can find the written version of this text here on our website: https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/nuts

hi gang, it's gab. Sorry for the absence. I have been out of action because covid, and now I've got long covid, but my voice is finally strong enough that I can record the reviews I've been publishing over the past few months.

This is a review of the video game Calico in which you have a cat cafe and you can pick up horses. It's magic and calm and I wish it had been 10x longer. Please make a DLC specifically for me. Thanks. The written version of this text, which was originally published Feb 14, is on https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/calico

Hellooooo podcast listeners, it's gab. long time no speak! Sorry for the absence. I have been out of action because covid, and now I've got long covid, but my voice is finally strong enough that I can record the reviews I've been publishing over the past few months. 

This review of Art Sqool was originally published March 7th, writing about the 2019 game I thought would allow me to feel the big stretch of the art school experience once again. Unfortunately, it did not deliver. The written version of this text is on our website https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/art-sqool

Posting this week's review here, while the podcast is on hold for a bit. So, in case you missed it, here it is on PODCAST PLATFORMS TOO This week's text is a review of Run! BTS, the variety show webseries from SOUTH KOREAN BOY BAND, INTERNATIONAL STARS, WORLDWIDE SENSATIONS.... BTS!

The text version of this is on our website here

& here's a video of me reading on IGTV too.

Hope you enjoy it, and if this review makes you wana watch it too, I've left links to my top 3 episodes in the lil footer!

We're going to start posting reviews here in between the big podcasts we do, hope you enjoy! This week's review is Death Stranding, the 2019 video game by Hideo Kojima that has completely changed the way I feel about the people in my life, the year we're facing, and the medium of gaming as a whole. I have written a spoiler-free review in an effort to bring other people to the game because I hope it can help you in the same way it has helped me: I'm left more prepared to face the challenge of 2020, and more able to process and accept what has happened. It is cool, devastating, uplifting and strange, and this review is somewhere between a wake and a love letter, written with 95 hours on the clock. Thank you Kojima Productions for making this.

The text version of this is on our website here:

& there's a video of me reading on IGTV too.

Our last review of the year so I'll see yas in 2021!

Hello allies and frenemies, it is Gabrielle and Zarina - art critic / game critic baby gods. This time you don’t just have to put up with us telling stories and making each other laugh - this episode is actually USEFUL, thank GOD. It is the funding episode! And for it, we are joined by Anna Hart who is going to talk us through everything you need to know about (arts) funding (in the UK). When we were students paying 9 grand a year, CSM decided to allow us one teeny tiny lesson about art funding, and there were limited spaces in the class, ffs. Luckily, we both booked on. And thank god because it was led by visiting tutor and arts producer extraordinaire Anna Hart. She taught us so much in that one class and it’s always stuck out in our minds as being pretty foundational (Gab actually ended up working for Anna on AIR, who make art with people in places). We wanted to rope Anna into this podcast episode to do an explainer on funding because it’s tricky (like honestly what is it, how do I get some for myself, and where is the money coming from?). In this episode, Anna chats to us about the logistics of arts funding, the criticisms of it too, and offers some tips on writing a good application. Have a listen and hope it is useful!

> A transcription for this episode is available on our website 

> Find out more about Anna’s work with AIR

> Reach out to The Hour for artist coaching

> Here's the Successful Funding Application Library

> We are reader-supported by our Patreon gang, love you.

> And finally, the transcription for this episode is made possible due to sponsorship support from Creative Debuts

Hosts: Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad

Guest: Anna Hart

Jingle: toynoiz made this legendary tune for us back during the era of the 1st podcast years and years ago

Hello cowards and abominable entities, it is Gabrielle and Zarina - art critic / game critic baby gods. This episode of our podcast is, quite frankly, a continuation of last episode's mild chaos. We talk about reality TV: why we loved it, what we can't stand now we're in pandemic-lockdown, and what we'd do if we were mind-bogglingly rich. We chat about That Tweet about Kim Kardashian's birthday, and why being a millionaire is FUCKING DESGOSTENG, but also, for some unknown reason, Gab tells us a story about how her driving test was terminated for dangerous driving!? it's funny, that's all u need to know. A lot more of those same wheezy laughs, this time directly into microphone, Gab does a little wee from laughin that hard. I promise next episode we'll have some actual art content that is useful and serious, we've just got that end-of-year feeling; wana bunk off French lessons, or watch a film in class on the box telly, instead of doin work. Anyway, this is all still valuable highbrow art critic stuff, bc we have some INTERESTING thoughts about reality tv & rich people, and look back at Gab's review of 13 seasons of the Kardashians from 3 years ago. 

Subscribe/follow/woteva for future episodes including artist interviews, ramblings, advice and more. We are reader-supported by our Patreon gang, love you.

> A transcription of this episode is available on our website thewhitepube.com. 

Hosts: Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad

Jingle: toynoiz made this legendary tune for us back during the era of the 1st podcast years and years ago

Hello friends & enemies, it is Gabrielle and Zarina - art critic / game critic baby gods. This second episode of our much-lauded podcast is a lil lockdown special where we chat about the bits o' ~culture~ that've been getting us through the hellscape that is 2020. We chat about Gab's freaky psychic connection with the radio, (romantically speaking) why Zarina loves period dramas, and like... maybe some actual book recommendations are in there. But tbh it's mostly chaos? A lot of wheezy laughing away from the microphone, and tryna hold in an enormous honking snort laugh while Gab tells a story about how she nearly proposed on a bungee jump in the Millennium Dome. All Quality, Top-Notch, Intellectual, high-brow Art Critic stuff. ok, that's all - ENJOYYYYYY!

[a note: Gab had to record her half of this episode on zoom, so the audio is a bit crackly. apologies to all the sensitive ears out there, she's already bought a new SD card so this should be a one-off tech-fiasco]

Subscribe/follow/woteva for future episodes including artist interviews, ramblings, advice and more. We are reader-supported by our Patreon gang, love you. 

> A transcription of this episode is available on our website thewhitepube.com

Hosts: Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad

Jingle: toynoiz made this legendary tune for us back during the era of the 1st podcast years and years ago

Hello friends and cowards, it is Gabrielle and Zarina - art critic / game critic baby gods. We used to have a podcast once upon a time when we were in university together and it was easy enough to start recording the conversations we were already having, and on the occasion of our FIFTH birthday wtf we are bringing it back. We start this new era of lockdown podcasting with the full origin story of how we came to begin our little website and why, again wtf, five years later it is still our actual job. Covering uni, values, audiences, writing, travel and the move into games, we go through every little step of this journey in detail. Most of our freelance work over the past few years has involved doing a 1 hour version of this talk in different art schools and galleries, so reaaaally, we are shooting ourselves in the foot a bit by putting the ultra deluxe version online. Oh well. Subscribe for future episodes including artist interviews, ramblings, advice and more. We are reader-supported by our Patreon gang, love you. 

> A transcription of this episode is available on our website thewhitepube.com

Hosts: Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad

Jingle: toynoiz made this legendary tune for us back during the era of the 1st podcast years and years ago