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alice rawsthorn at the serpentine summer garden party in 2016
Alice Rawsthorn: ‘I spent most school lunch breaks practising northern soul dance steps in the cloakroom.’ Photograph: Nick Harvey/Rex/Shutterstock
Alice Rawsthorn: ‘I spent most school lunch breaks practising northern soul dance steps in the cloakroom.’ Photograph: Nick Harvey/Rex/Shutterstock

Alice Rawsthorn’s cultural highlights

This article is more than 5 years old

The design critic on Maggie Nelson’s beguiling writing, a truly creepy sculpture and a northern soul classic

Born in Manchester, Alice Rawsthorn has been described as “the best design critic in the entire world”. She studied art history at the University of Cambridge before beginning her career as a journalist for publications including the New York Times, the Financial Times and Frieze. From 2001 to 2006 she was director of the Design Museum. She has published several books including a biography of Yves Saint Laurent and Hello World: Where Design Meets Life. Her latest, Design as an Attitude, is out 14 June (JRP Ringier, £16).

1. Book

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

Maggie Nelson: ‘Her writing defies categorisation.’ Photograph: Dan Tuffs/The Observer

I recently fell for the work of the LA-based writer Maggie Nelson by reading Bluets, which explores her obsession with the colour blue, and found it so mesmerising that I immediately ordered and devoured her other books. Always beguiling, her writing is powerful, incisive and so singular that it defies categorisation, as memoir, nonfiction, or whatever. Reading Nelson can be unsettling. Her observations of gender politics and personal identity in particular are so raw, honest and urgent, that they always prompt me to see some aspect of life very differently.

2. Library

Irma Boom’s library in Amsterdam

Book designer Irma Boom. Photograph: Ilvy Njiokiktjien/NYT/eyevine

Making studio visits to talk to designers is a boon of writing about design. One of my favourite studios is that of the brilliant Dutch book designer Irma Boom. You can see the new books Irma is working on there as well as the incredible collection of historic books she has acquired over the years. Many of them are from the 15th and 16th centuries and the 1960s, which she believes were the most dynamic eras for book making. Irma has constructed a library in a neighbouring building, where anyone can go to see and study her books.

3. Art

Jordan Wolfson: Coloured Sculpture at Tate Modern

Jordan Wolfson’s Coloured Sculpture. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA

Thrashing around one of the Tate Modern Tanks is a giant robotic marionette, which is destroyed bit by bit by being bashed repeatedly against the concrete floor. Like all the work of the US artist Jordan Wolfson, it forces us to confront ominous aspects of contemporary life. He modelled the marionette on Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Mad magazine’s mascot Alfred E Neuman and the 1940s cowboy puppet Howdy Doody. But they weren’t equipped with facial recognition software that enabled their eyes to stare spookily at you. Nor were they hellbent on self-destruction accompanied by bursts of Percy Sledge’s When a Man Loves a Woman.

4. Garden

Hollyhocks, Boundary Garden on Arnold Circus

Hollyhocks at Arnold Circus, east London. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

A summer treat in east London is seeing the hollyhocks bloom in Boundary Garden on Arnold Circus. The garden opened in 1900 at the centre of the then new Boundary estate, one of London’s first public housing projects, which was built on the site of the notoriously squalid Old Nichol slums. The rubble of the slums was used to construct the garden as a circular hill topped by a bandstand where the “industrious poor”, who had moved into the estate, could enjoy their rare days off. Boundary Garden is always gorgeous, but is at its best with its giant hollyhocks.

5. Design

Ore Streams

Disposably yours: can designers help with the problem of recycling our quickly obsolete tech? Photograph: Alamy

Ore Streams is an ongoing research project by the Italian designers Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi of Studio Formafantasma into a major design challenge – how to ensure that the millions of digital products bought each year will be disposed of and recycled responsibly. They began by mapping the gigantic, often global illicit trade in e-waste and analysing its social, political and economic impact, as well as the dire environmental consequences by talking to recyclers, designers, manufacturers, politicians and Interpol. Tellingly, many of the recyclers had never discussed their work with designers before.

6. Music

Dobie Gray’s Out on the Floor

Dobie Gray: ‘Out on the Floor is as joyous as ever, and impossible not to dance to.’ Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

As we lived near Wigan in my mid-teens, I spent most school lunch breaks practising northern soul dance steps in the cloakroom. I’ve loved northern soul ever since and despite tough competition from the esoteric tracks that friends have unearthed over the years, my favourite is still one of the most popular anthems, Dobie Gray’s Out on the Floor. He recorded it in 1966 after moving from rural Texas to LA, hoping to become an actor and making ends meet by working as a singer. Out on the Floor is as joyous as ever, and impossible not to dance to.

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