Maz Ka-Nakki's Castle

The Fence has published an exposé on Stuart Semple (of Anish Kapoor 'feud' notoriety) which they have been working on for six months.

investigation reveals Semple / his studio / his partner Emily Mann (who's described as acting as his 'enforcer' in his business) :

mishandled £400k grant of public money intended for a public gallery, allowing the money to flow freely between the public project, his own personal studio and personal projects such as Culture Hustle (his online business selling paint etc)

underpaid or failed to pay many of his assistants to the tune of several thousand pounds each.

former assistants have taken him to court and he simply hasn't bothered to show up and he's threatened to sue former assistants who asked for their back pay

repeatedly funds ambitious projects that never see release eg Abode, an 'Adobe-rivalling' suite of creative software (he claims he still intends to release this)

encouraged a cult-like atmosphere at his studio in Bournemouth

was frequently in debt and having to negotiate with bailiffs etc for his debts while at the same time crowdfunding various projects

ran fake social media accounts boosting Semple and his work

The portrait that emerges is one of decades-long scam artistry tbh and someone who's juvenile, manipulative, narcissistic.

The Fence btw is a decent fairly small-circulation quarterly magazine from the UK which specialises in satire, investigative journalism, culture, and fiction. You can read the piece in its entirety if you register (which is free).

a few links:

The Fence's newsletter from April discusses this article & how Semple has tried to muddy the SEO waters

Semple threatened to sue The Fence for publishing this story - many of you are American so here's the relevant UK law on defamation.

The first thig that put up a solid red flag was the shipping material. It's cool that he has custom boxes for his studio, it looked really neat. Then I opened it and sae things like "Not for bean boy" printed all over the inside of the box.

Between Mirror, hyper pigments, and black 2.0, none of them were as extremely out there as the videos on his site made them seem. The colors are vibrant, the black is dark, and the mirror is shiny. But the level the videos showed them at are not levels I can recreate.

So like, he exaggerated as an advertising scheme. Alright, shame on him.

As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

MORE Fanfiction Classics! Yes I am currently obsessed with this. Don’t worry, I do have other binds in the works 😅

Berlin Angel by de_sire

Kill Your Darlings by messermoon

Stealing Harry by @copperbadge

Well on my way to a shelf full. I may have some pretty unhinged plans. I meant it when I said 2026 was going to be the year of the paperback.

I really love this illustration by @rem-mukh of Prince Proculo and his spider, because for chapters that AREN'T Proculo's perspective, this is the vibe. it's an epic grim dark fantasy.

and then you get to Prock's POV, and he's just a baffled alien brain slug who's been isekaid into fantasy world with no idea what to do about it, so it's all shitty slap stick and weird horniness.

maybe this will be tonally jarring, on a chapter by chapter basis! who knows! in any case, you can pre-order through the links below:

it took so long for this to click, but do you know what it reminds me of? the illustrations of Mervyn Peake, author of Titus Groan (which is THE penultimate gothic fantasy)

I have been impatiently waiting for the last hardware to come in to finish this bag. It arrived today, so of course I couldn’t stop working until it was finished.