Stan Portus is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in C Magazine, Ossian Magazine, Photomonitor, Emotional Art Magazine, Design Exchange Magazine, Review 31 and others.

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In the haze and turmoil: Responding to cherrypicker PARALLAX: Conspiracy Theories, Details, and the Act of Looking Closely

Essay
2023

An essay in response to Ellie Wyatt’s video artwork, cherrypicker, in her book PARALLAX: Conspiracy Theories, Details, and the Act of Looking Closely. (...)

A collision with a car has left me angrier than ever about cycling culture wars
BikeRadar

Article
2023

Coming back into the city, I felt rejuvenated from my ride – a rare feeling after the miserable weather we had through August and life getting in the way of cycling.

But just a mile from my house, I collided with a car that had pulled out of a parking space on the right-hand side of the road and was blocking my lane. (...)

Those behind the UK’s net zero plan will live to regret overlooking cycling and public transport
BikeRadar

Article
2023

The government’s revised net zero strategy has big plans for electric vehicles, but the lack of cycling, walking and public transport investment is a glaring omission. (...)

Introduction
Substack

Article
2023

I’ve decided to start a Substack. This is an idea I’ve played with since people began to self-publish work during the initial waves of the pandemic. It immediately struck me as something I’d like to do and after three years of deliberation, I’m finally doing it. (...)

Extinction Rebellion’s Tour Down Under protests should be a wake-up call for cycling
BikeRadar

Article
2023

If it’s inappropriate for a science organisation or Tennis Australia to receive funding from fossil fuels, why does the same not apply to cycling’s premiere early-season stage race? (...)

Electric bikes could solve many of our problems, if attitudes change
BikeRadar

Article
2022

Ebikes offer the solution to car dependency and transport poverty, but we need better infrastructure, updated attitudes and government backing. (...)

EP Vol. 3: Post-Craft
Sternberg Press

Publication
2022

EP Vol. 3: Post-Craft, edited by Alex Coles and Catharine Rossi, examines the practice, interpretation and mediation of craft. For this publication, Stan Portus researched the writing of craft historian and critic Peter Dormer informing the selections of Dormer texts included in this publication from Sternberg Press. (...)

Brompton CEO on building a ‘green’ factory and the contradictions of net-zero
BikeRadar

Interview
2022

In February this year, Brompton announced it will be building a new factory at Ashford in Kent, which is expected to open in 2027.

Brompton is currently the largest manufacturer of bikes in the UK, producing roughly 80,000 per year across its current factory in Greenford, west London, and its specialist titanium facility in Sheffield, in the north of England.

The new factory in Ashford will increase production capacity to approximately 200,000 bikes per year, with staff numbers rising from 850 to 1,500. (...)

Is the cycling industry getting real about its environmental impact?
BikeRadar

Article
2021

Cycling is often held up as an easy and effective way to reduce emissions to help curtail the devastating effects of climate change.

You don’t have to look far to spot examples of this. Cycling became a talking point at COP26, where many groups and individuals at the summit were espousing the potential of cycling as a low-emissions mode of transport, even if it wasn’t on the official agenda.

But there is a problem – compared to other sectors, the cycling industry has been slow to address (or even acknowledge) its own impact. (...)

“This is planet saving stuff right now”
BikeRadar

Article
2021

With the lowest carbon footprint of any mode of public transport, cycling has long been touted as an effective way to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions.

And with transport responsible for 24 per cent of global CO2 emissions from fuel combustion, there’s no doubt cycling can play an important role in curtailing the climate crisis.

Yet COP26, which began earlier this week, doesn’t seem so bothered by life on two wheels; the transport day on 10 November includes no mention of cycling (or even walking or trains, for that matter). (...)

Desire Discrimination Determination
BikeRadar

Interview
2021

For Dr Marlon Lee Moncrieffe, how the world of cycling responded to the wave of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 was a peculiar thing to witness. Cycling had started to talk about racism in the sport and its lack of diversity. But, as a Black man and former racing cyclist, Moncrieffe was reminded of being in school where he would be asked to leave the room for speaking about issues from a Black perspective and would return to find his white classmates being praised for giving a second-hand interpretation of what he had been saying. (...)

Cornish Clay
Ossian Magazine

Essay
2021

An analogue radio switches between stations, catching fragments of words and voices, before tuning in to recollections of different people’s relationships to the villages of Pendeen and St Just, located on the Penwith Peninsula at the far tip of Cornwall. The radio transmission forms the soundtrack to Cornish artist Callum Mitchell’s film Gorthwedh (2019). (...)

Eman Ali: Succession
Photomonitor

Book review
2020

The Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said ruled Oman from June 1970 having ousted his father, Said bin Taimur. His father was a figure whose rule had kept what was then Muscat and Oman as an isolated and distinctly un-modernised fiefdom that saw high illiteracy rates and endemic malnutrition. It was a state divided by sectarian, linguistic and cultural differences. (...)

David Blandy: How to Fly / How to Live
thisistomorrow

Exhibition review
2020

The current Covid-19 pandemic has thrown the art world into a fight for relevancy that, as galleries and museums have had to close their doors, reveals the limits of their techie expertise. Many face new challenges, but the technophilic, literate, and adept are of course out there. David Blandy is one such case, and two new video works by Blandy, commissioned by John Hansard Gallery, reflect on the current crisis. (...)

Elvia Wilk: Oval
C Magazine

Book review
2020

Anja and her two friends Dam and Laura look out over Berlin from the top of the Berg, an artificial mountain and eco-community built on what was once Tempelhof Airport. Beneath them, they can see how Berlin has turned into one endless, debauch party, induced by the drug Oval, developed by Anja’s boy- friend, Louis, to induce generosity in anyone who takes it. For Anja, Laura and Dam, this moment provides the answer to a question that has been lingering on their minds: is Berlin over? (...)

Metahaven: Digital Tarkovsky
Emotional Art Magazine

Book review
2019

Andrei Tarkovsky may seem far removed from the modern day experience of smartphones, Instagram, and the near constant proclamations of diminishing attention spans. But in a new book from Dutch design duo Metahaven, Digital Tarkovsky, they want to make the case that our modern tech experience is in fact deeply Tarkovskyen, and is a new form of interface-based cinema. Metahaven’s opening gambit for such a claim is simple: in the US, the average time an adult spends on their mobile is two hours 51 minutes, just 8 minutes longer than Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). In China, the average time spent on a mobile is 4 minutes less than the film. They suggest you may even be reading Digital Tarkovsky on your mobile. I could only get hold of the e-book. (...)

James N. Kienitz Wilkins: This Action Lies
Photomonitor

Exhibition review
2019

You can hear James N. Kienitz Wilkins’ new solo show at Spike Island before you can see it. Audible from outside the gallery space is the booming, frenetic monologue delivered by Kienitz Wilkins over his film This Action Lies (2018). The film itself consists of three ten-minute shots of a Styrofoam coffee cup, which are spliced together to form a mostly static visual experience that occasionally changes lighting the cup from different perspectives. (...)

Jean Baptiste Del Amo: Animalia
Review 31

Book review
2019

At her father’s funeral, a young girl watches on as the villagers discuss what to do about a toad that has made its way into the open grave overnight and has been swimming back and forward in the mud. As the toad sits on top of the lowered coffin, the crowd agree it is a bad omen and the man cannot be buried with it there. The toad, one protests, is the devil. It is decided that the young girl is the only person small enough and in a bad enough state, in her scraggy, unwashed clothes, to be lowered down into the pit to pull the toad out. (...)

The 500: Rapha Bucket Hat
iiii Magazine

Essay
2019

In January this year, Rapha revealed the new kit collection for EF Education First Pro Cycling, a team atop the pile of the cycling world’s pros. For those who wait patiently for the release of a cycling team’s new kit for the upcoming season, there was, for once, a reward. In pink and blue acid-wash psychedelia the kit stands out against the drab, conformist blacks and clumsily placed sponsors’ logos of other pro teams’ kits. There was, of course, the usual attire, the shorts and the jerseys, but one item stood out. A bucket hat. (...)

Consumed
Design Exchange Magazine

Film review
2018

“The ecological crisis we face is so obvious that it becomes easy,” writes philosopher Timothy Morton in his book, The Ecological Thought, “to join the dots and see that everything is interconnected.” From the microscopic to the macroscopic, and beyond to the unfathomably big, everything on this planet is entangled in an unimaginable set of relations. Morton conceptualises this as a mesh. (...)

Berlinde De Bruyckere: Stages and Tails
thisistomorrow

Exhibition review
2018

When you visit Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, what is striking from the very beginning is the grandeur of the location. Nestled just outside the village of Bruton, the large complex of restored farm buildings seems at odds with the local rugby club’s goal posts, that are just visible above the site’s perimeter. Inside the gallery, the warmth of the brick walls welcomes you, and the surrounding land is framed beautifully in floor to ceiling windows. Because the landscape is immediately so integral to the experience when visiting these galleries, it feels odd that in the first room of Berlinde De Bruyckere’s exhibition ‘Stages and Tails’, the windows are covered up. (...)

Art and China after 1989:
Theater of the World
thisistomorrow

Exhibition review
2018

Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, at the Guggenheim Bilbao, aims to show the recent history of Chinese Art, bracketed by the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the Beijing Olympics in 2008, two events that radically altered China’s relationship to itself and with the rest of the world. This is the second iteration of the exhibition after its first staging at the Guggenheim, New York last year – an exhibition that was shrouded in controversy and has resulted in a show that includes what feels like an overwhelming 120 works by 60 artists, spread out across 6 themed sections. (...)

Mark Jenkin: Bait
Design Exchange Magazine

Interview
2018

Mark Jenkin’s latest film presents economic conflict in one of Britain’s most remote corners through narrative, aesthetics and the production process itself.

Cornwall seems trapped at a kind of perpetual crossroads. Much of its identity is understood through industrial history, with mining existing in the county for almost as long as memory itself. The same goes for fishing, but for some time now both have been competing with another business; namely tourism. (...)

John Akomfrah: Purple
thisistomorrow

Exhibition review
2017

Old news reel footage shows a woman, hat pulled down to her thick rimmed glasses and coat buttoned all the way up, being interviewed about a leak of soap within the water system. Standing in front of a frothing stream, contaminated by household detergent, the interviewer asks the woman what she thinks of the incident. The woman laments that of course, it is a terrible thing. But when the interviewer pushes her, asking in his clipped RP accent, “Would you yourself stop using detergents?”, she becomes more reticent. “Well,” she says, before pausing, “I don’t know about that”. (...)

“When Did You Last Buy a Joint of Beef?”: East London Big Flame and the People’s Food Co-op

Essay

2017

Just before Christmas in 1973 a small group of people living on the Lincoln Estate in Bow, East London, set up a food co-op. Their reason for doing so was simple: rising inflation and stagnating wages. Since the beginning of a Conservative rule in 1970, rent, food, and other consumables had been going up in price, whilst wages remained the same. In short, people had to spend an increasingly high proportion of the money they earned just to get by. They named their venture the People’s Food Co-op. It aimed to provide for everyone in need on the Estate and was run by the residents themselves. (...)

Meet Me in the Present: Documents and their Afterlives
Royal College of Art

Publication

2017

Meet Me In The Present: Documents and their Afterlives is an anthology of essays which examines the power of collective action. Spanning twenty-one acts of resistance — from letters exchanged between black power activists to the ethos of protest being brought into the Victoria and Albert Museum — these essays consider what it means to survive against all odds within a changing society. Drawing from the motives and experiences of those who have protected the right to access shared resources, Meet Me in the Present tells the stories of these diverse defenders. The book calls for public spaces, and for ideas to be made public in a time when ‘the commons’ is increasingly under attack. (...)

Studio Integrate: Where biology and history meet
Design Exchange Magazine

Interview

2016

Looking at the Flux table, legs protrude out from different points and at different angles, morphing into what seem like upturned tree stumps. It appears to be, simply, an organic, expressive form. But with London based practice, Studio Integrate and co-founder Mehran Gharleghi things are never that straight forward. (...)

Informally hardcore and critical: Juha van ’t Zelfde, Lighthouse and Brighton

Interview
2016

“I have vertigo.” Juha van ‘t Zelfde tells me when I ask about his first exhibition, Dread. “Trying to understand what my vertigo was about I came across this book by Søren Kierkegaard called The Concept of Dread, and suddenly it opened up this whole world.”

In The Concept of Dread Kierkegaard contends that imagining the possibilities of what might happen is heavier than accepting reality. If one comes to accept what happens and what can become fact, then the burden of dread becomes lighter. (...)

Conditions for Memory
Arc Magazine

Essay

2016

In Lamia Joreige’s film Embrace (2004), two figures pull at one another’s arms, moving on and off the grainy screen. Behind the figures cars race past in front of a warehouse. Bathed in red light that comes from the road it is hard to see the blue evening sky hanging over the sea in the distance. In this clip what is actually happening is unclear; with every movement what the figures are doing can be reread, reinterpreted, reimagined. (...)

Domaine du Muy
Disegno Article

2015

Less than one hour’s drive from St Tropez in the south of France is a new sculpture park featuring works by Antony Gormley, Yayoi Kusama and Arik Levy. Unlike more manicured parks, Domaine du Muy is an untamed environment. Artworks find themselves competing for attention with nature as they run free in the 10-acre park. (...)

Harry Bertoia – From Nature to Sign
Disegno
Article

2015

Celebrating the centenary of artist and furniture designer Harry Bertoia, today’s Summer Reading is the exhibition catalogue for From Nature to Sign, a retrospective exhibition held at Bertoia’s childhood home in San Lorenzo di Arzene and the Harry Bertoia Gallery in Pordenone, both in north-eastern Italy, earlier this year. (...)

The Writings of Josep Lluís Sert
Disegno
Article

2015

A new book dedicated to the writing of modernist architect Josep Lluís Sert (1902-1983) comprises 16 essays Sert wrote between 1951-1977. The Writing of Josep Lluís Sert, edited by Eric Mumford, contains work ranging from speeches and articles published in magazines, to an essay Sert wrote in memory of the critic Siegfred Giedon after his death, offering a comprehensive collection of work. (...)

Technophilic Fashion
Disegno

Article

2015

Compared to other design industries, fashion has been slow to embrace 3D printing. It remains in thrall to handcraft.

Download EP01 is therefore significant. Devised by Belgian fashion designer Bruno Pieters and Spanish fashion consultancy Comme des Machines, it is a collection of 3D-printed accessories, comprising combs, buttons, keyrings, and shoe clips shaped like panthers and fig leaves. (...)

Eduardo Paolozzi’s Studio of Objects
Disegno

Interview
2015

A grainy, black and white, skeletal structure floats on the screen. “Because the resolution of the scan wasn’t as high as we hoped, we’ve gone for a more intaglio feel,” says artist Gilly Booth, describing her 3D-scan of Eduardo Paolozzi’s studio at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. (...)

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