Ian McKay (writer)
Encyclopedia
Ian McKay is an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, critic
Critic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

, publisher, and translator.

Life and career

The son of former national hunt jockey and racehorse trainer Geoff Laidlaw, Ian McKay was born in Epsom
Epsom
Epsom is a town in the borough of Epsom and Ewell in Surrey, England. Small parts of Epsom are in the Borough of Reigate and Banstead. The town is located south-south-west of Charing Cross, within the Greater London Urban Area. The town lies on the chalk downland of Epsom Downs.-History:Epsom lies...

, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

, and studied at Chelsea School of Art. His first known publications were a series of punk
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...

 fanzines in the late-1970s, the most notable of which was Peroxide
Peroxide (punk zine)
Peroxide was a punk fanzine published and edited during the late 1970s by Andrew Thomas, Quentin Cook and Ian McKay . Inspired by punk zines such as Chainsaw, Peroxide lasted only two issues, with McKay being ousted by Cook after the first issue...

 (from which he was said to have been ousted by Norman Cook for serial incompetence ). In the early-1980s he also published The Irony of Romanticism
The Irony of Romanticism
The Irony of Romanticism was a short-lived alternative arts publication published during the early 1980s by the writer and critic Ian McKay.Contributors to the publication included, the artist Chris Samms, musician and video artist Nicholas Rye, and the English designer Vaughan Oliver...

, a short-lived alternative arts publication. In 1984, with several other writers and filmmakers, he was involved in the setting up of the organisation Music for Miners
Music for Miners
Music for Miners was a collective of UK writers, artists and filmmakers who attempted to engage young people with politics during the UK Miner's Strike of 1984-1985. Members of the collective included the television producer Don Coutts and the writer and artist Ian McKay...

 during the UK Miner's Strike
UK miners' strike (1984–1985)
The UK miners' strike was a major industrial action affecting the British coal industry. It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, and its defeat significantly weakened the British trades union movement...

 of 1984-1985. Since 1985, he has worked as a critic and writer for a wide range of art journals internationally and has published widely on subjects relating to visual art, cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, and the environment
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...

. He has also curated visual art exhibitions and worked as an academic in several UK universities. Since 2007 his writing has centred mainly on UK Rural Affairs
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...

, particularly in relation to the New Forest
New Forest
The New Forest is an area of southern England which includes the largest remaining tracts of unenclosed pasture land, heathland and forest in the heavily-populated south east of England. It covers south-west Hampshire and extends into south-east Wiltshire....

.

Critical writing

McKay began writing on visual art and the environment in the 1980s. During the late-1980s and 1990s, he travelled widely throughout the former Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...

, reporting on art and culture in the post-Communist states for Artscribe
Artscribe
Artscribe , titled Artscribe International from 1985, is a defunct British contemporary art magazine. It was notable for its commitment in the late 1970s and early 1980s to abstract art, and for giving popular art critic Matthew Collings his first break into contemporary art.-Founding and early...

, Artline International, Art Monthly, Art and Design, and The Antique Collector. Throughout that period he was also published widely in many journals and magazines, including: Apollo
Apollo (magazine)
Apollo is a British fine and decorative arts magazine. Founded in 1925 and based in London, it features a mixture of exhibition reviews, art-world news, profiles of collectors, and articles by scholars....

; Art Monthly
Art Monthly
Art Monthly is a magazine of contemporary art founded in 1976 by Jack Wendler and Peter Townsend. It is based in London and has an international scope, although its main focus is on British art...

; Arts Review; Artscribe
Artscribe
Artscribe , titled Artscribe International from 1985, is a defunct British contemporary art magazine. It was notable for its commitment in the late 1970s and early 1980s to abstract art, and for giving popular art critic Matthew Collings his first break into contemporary art.-Founding and early...

; Computer Weekly
Computer Weekly
ComputerWeekly was a weekly magazine for IT professionals which was published by Reed Business Information for over 40 years. The magazine was available free to IT professionals who met the circulation requirements...

; Contemporary Art
(for which he was Assistant editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

); Creative Camera; The Face
The Face (magazine)
The Face was a British music, fashion and culture monthly magazine started in May 1980 by Nick Logan.-1980s:Logan had previously created the teen pop magazine Smash Hits, and had been an editor at the New Musical Express in the 1970s before launching The Face in 1980.The magazine was influential in...

; Geographical Magazine
Geographical Magazine
Geographical is the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society , and was founded by Michael Huxley in 1935....

; The Independent on Sunday;
and Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...

.
In the mid-1990s, he published a series of undercover
Watchdog journalism
Watchdog journalism aims to hold accountable public personalities and institutions, whose functions impact social and political life. The term "lapdog journalism", for journalism biased in favour of personalities and institutions, is sometimes used as a conceptual opposite to watchdog...

 reports that exposed the complex political dealings of the British Green Party's
Green Party of England and Wales
The Green Party of England and Wales is a political party in England and Wales which follows the traditions of Green politics and maintains a strong commitment to social progressivism. It is the largest Green party in the United Kingdom, containing within it various regional divisions including...

 Arts Policy Working Group at that time. Controversially, he also spoke regularly on a pro-censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

 platform at conferences in the UK, appearing alongside figures such as the media lawyer and freedom-of-expression
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...

 advocate Mark Stephens and the journalist and writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown MBE is a Ugandan-born British journalist and author, who describes herself as a "leftie liberal, anti-racist, feminist, Muslim, part-Pakistani...a very responsible person"...

. During this period he was also an outspoken critic of the developing cultural scene in the post-Communist states, his work being published alongside that of several prominent artists and theoreticians, including Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....

 and the Czech Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...

 artist Milan Knížák
Milan Knížák
Milan Knížák is a Czech performance artist, sculptor, musician, installation artist, dissident, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.-Childhood and early life in the Protectorate and in the former Sudetenland :...

 (now General Director of the National Gallery, Prague). During the later-1990s-2000s, he worked mainly on a series of book projects relating to the dance culture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...

 and urban youth
Youth
Youth is the time of life between childhood and adulthood . Definitions of the specific age range that constitutes youth vary. An individual's actual maturity may not correspond to their chronological age, as immature individuals could exist at all ages.-Usage:Around the world, the terms "youth",...

 topics, as well as curating visual art exhibitions, but in 2005, he returned to writing on the arts and culture industries for numerous magazines and as Editor at Large
Editor at large
An Editor-at-Large is a journalist who contributes content to a publication.Unlike an editor who works on a publication from day-to-day and is hands on, an editor-at-large will contribute content on a regular or semi-regular basis and will have less of a say on a specific field such as layout,...

 (Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

) of the British arts newspaper State of Art. In 2007 he published a controversial series of articles that sought to expose low-level corruption and spin
Spin (public relations)
In public relations, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against a certain organization or public figure...

 within the UK's independent artist-curator networks. For his research into this topic he was invited to participate in the Agendas V symposium in Venice, at the time of the 52nd Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

. He has also been an occasional contributor of film reviews to Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute .Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today...

magazine, Special Correspondent
Correspondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is a journalist or commentator, or more general speaking, an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, location. A foreign correspondent is stationed in a foreign...

 (Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

) for Photoicon magazine, and is listed as correspondent for the both the photography magazine f22, and a relaunched State magazine (formerly State of Art). In recent years he has increasingly written on environmental issues again; he now maintains a website via which he provides a commentary on issues pertaining to the New Forest and The New Forest National Park where he now lives.

Books

Ian McKay's book publications and book chapters include: Lonely is an Eyesore in Vaughan Oliver: This Rimy River (1994); On the Death of Czech Culture, in New Art from Eastern Europe (1994); Crossing the Bridge in Bridges (Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation) (1996), edited by Camilla Seaward; Locating the Wild Zone (2001); Mapping the Self (2002); Boyd & Evans: Looking Differently (2007), Defining Moments in Art (2008), edited by Mike Evans., and the large scale monograph Bernard Cohen: Work of Six Decades (2009), which was co-authored with the late art critic and art historian Norbert Lynton
Norbert Lynton
Norbert Lynton was Professor of the History of Art at the University of Sussex.He has published on architecture and on modern artists including Paul Klee, Ben Nicholson, William Scott. With Erika Langmuir, he coauthored the 'Yale Dictionary of Modern Art'...

. Being fluent in several European languages, McKay has also contributed to a number of academic text books overseas; most notably for Cambridge University Press (see: Academia, below). His most recent English language publications include the edited anthology A New Forest Reader: A Companion Guide to the New Forest, its History and Landscape (2011) which brought back into circulation several out of print texts, and Ahae: Through My Window (2011) which was an appraisal of the landscape photography of the Korean photographer Ahae (jointly authored with the General Director of the National Gallery in Prague
National Gallery in Prague
The National Gallery in Prague is a state-owned art gallery in Prague, Czech Republic. It is housed in different locations within the city, the largest being the Veletržní Palác....

, Milan Knížák
Milan Knížák
Milan Knížák is a Czech performance artist, sculptor, musician, installation artist, dissident, graphic artist, art theorist and pedagogue of art.-Childhood and early life in the Protectorate and in the former Sudetenland :...

).

Academia

As Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Art History McKay has lectured and taught at several UK higher education colleges and universities, including Chelsea School of Art (1985), Surrey Institute of Art & Design
Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College
The Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College was an art college in the United Kingdom. It merged with the Kent Institute of Art & Design on 1 August 2005 to form the University College for the Creative Arts at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester, now the University for...

 (1991), Kingston University
Kingston University
Kingston University is a public research university located in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, United Kingdom. It was originally founded in 1899 as Kingston Technical Institute, a polytechnic, and became a university in 1992....

 (1992–1994), and Southampton Solent University
Southampton Solent University
Southampton Solent University is a university of 17,000 students based in Southampton, United Kingdom. Its main campus is located on East Park Terrace near the city centre....

(formerly the Southampton Institute, 1994-2010). As Language Consultant he has contributed to several academic text books, including Repetytorium gimnazjalne and Slownik Nursowy: Indeks angielsko-polski (both for Cambridge University Press).

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK