Autumn — Benjamin Hannavy Cousen

Ali Smith's superb prose has a kind of postmodern - modernist edge that sometimes makes me think of Virginia Woolf. Her subject matter, however, is always pertinent to contemporaneous cultural, political and societal issues. The novels are allusive and intense but also with a fantastic lightness of touch. The books often display an intense interest in paintings and the history of art and there are close readings of paintings within the novels. This helps to make the books very interesting to work with from a perspective of making paintings.

Ali Smith - Autumn

Autumn, complex, pointed and allusive, published in 2016 and about 2016 and Brexit. But it is also about the 1960s and the pop artist Pauline Boty. The collage here is from a Boty painting (Untitled). The colour's of Smith's text make a kind of circle or clock (or EU flag?). And it is serendipitous that the pink and azure colours in the top right (where the woman is looking) correspond to those in the Boty painting where they consist of lace collage