This 1985 Atwood has never shifted from my top ten, and, like 1984, it works because there’s nothing in it that isn’t happening right now, to someone, somewhere. While Orwell’s future is made richer with language (it includes a glossary), Atwood’s uses small, creeping increments of privation in the hope our ears prick up a…

What a beautiful day it was to be motoring through parts of the country I normally only glimpse from a hurtling train, with L and N, past distant lamb and dry stane dyke, towards Cample Line. Lorna’s excellent show, Spolia, manages to seamlessly meld geology, ancient mysterious objects and sculpting (both natural and intentional) with Irn…

Thanks to a University of Cumbria Institute of the Arts related trip South, I got to see the Hiorns show at the Ikon (Birmingham). He seems like an old chum, having seen his work at Transmission and installed it at the Collins Gallery (University of Strathclyde, and now long gone) back in the day (that’s…