More like a white Friar Tuck

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.

Yes Captain!

Fun fact! I didn't use a ship's curve once when drawing the ship but I used three to draw The Boy

Remember when Elon Musk said he would pay to fix world hunger if a plan was made, so the World Food Program came back and said here's the plan and we think it will cost $6billion. Then Elon just walked away from the promise.

There's an unprecedented spread of Ebola, a resurgence of previously near eradicated diseases, there is food and housing insecurity around the world.

The core concept of a superhero is an altruistic person who genuinely wants to make the world a better place. It’s not all the cool powers and whiz bang gadgets that make them superheroes, it’s the willingness to risk their lives for the betterment of others. Musk doesn’t get that. Musk thinks it’s the fame and the attention that comes with the whiz bang stuff that makes you a superhero. That’s what he wants. He’s Lex Luthor with neither the brains nor the Superman: a petty little man furious that the world doesn’t orbit around him, scrabbling for the next gain.

You do not get to profit, financially or attention wise or another way, off of a *potentially* queer jew whilst we are banned from pride events.

We do not know if she was questioning her sexuality but ultimately straight or if she was actually queer because she was killed for the crime of existing as a jew before she could come out. Queer rights obviously matter. Anne Franke is not the person you should be using.

You need to protect alive queer jews. You need to love all jews, not just the dead ones.

"But they banned zionists not jews", they banned jewish organizations, who refused to say they disavowed israel. That's like asking a local Chinese diaspora group to disavow the CCP or they can't be at pride.