Recent work
Irresistible Digital Gloop – Charlie Stein review‘FAD Magazine, 14 October 2023.
So Here’s the Sea, But Where are the Sharks – Damien Hirst reviewFAD Magazine, 21 July 2023.
A Space of Possibility and DramaFAD Magazine, 17 July 2023.
Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons reviewFAD Magazine, 06 March 2023.
ART
Critical Theory
CULTURE
Cultural Memoir
IDEAS
Philosopical Analysis
From the blog
An extract from my first novel
Luke drops out of uni, befriends his cocaine dealer, and gets a boyfriend. Everything’s going so, at least until well until it starts going wrong.
Read moreIn the Midst of Life, Morrissey is in Debt, etcetera
As a lifelong Morrissey fan, it has become difficult in recent years to defend him and even more difficult to like him. Now it seems like as if there is no going back because the music that he constantly plays says nothing to me about my life.
Read moreBryan Moriarty, Sounds Like Fun – review
A funny, heart-warming story about what happens when a pair of twentysomethings embark on an open relationship.
Read moreWork in progress
Forgotten Promises: Encounters with Damien Hirst
In this work of narrative nonfiction, I use a mixture of critical theory and cultural memoir to construct a defence of Damien Hirst. I chronicle my obsession with Hirst and explore how his work has shaped my aesthetic and intellectual development.
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Dive Boy: a novel
My first, and perhaps only, novel tell the story of Luke, who drops out of a philosophy degree, befriends his cocaine dealer and gets a new boyfriend all in the same week. Everything is going so well until Luke gives in to temptation and then does the worst of all possible things to cover it up. His boyfriend is oblivious and has his own secret to keep.
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Here We Are Now: Essays on Culture, Music and Memory
Essays about the link between pop music and autobiography.
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My personal library
Check it outTalks, tours and lectures
Find out about my artist talks, gallery tours and public lectures on art and philosophy.
Latest events
Q&A with Daniel James, author of ‘The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas’
Gallery 46, London, 11 June 2022.
Gallery Tour and Artist Talk with Celina Teague & Richard Stone
Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, 14 May 2022.
Curating
Bankley Gallery, Manchester, 2018
Euroart, London, 2016
Benedict Redgrove: Everything & Nothing
Display Gallery, London, 2015
Richard Stone: the end of england
Galleries Goldstein, London, 2012
Contact me about curating opportunitiesAbout me
Daniel Barnes
philosopher, writer, teacher
I was born on the Isle of Wight in the year that both Jean Baudrillard’s ’Simulacra and Simulation’ and Arthur Danto’s ‘The Transfiguration of the Commonplace’ were published.
After an unremarkable childhood spent reading, listening to music and dreaming of stardom, I trained as a philosopher at Cardiff and Nottingham. My PhD defended an unfashionably strict form of aesthetic realism and offered a resolution to the Heidegger/Schapiro debate over the meaning of van Gogh’s ‘A Pair of Shoes’. Although I have long since departed academia, I consider philosophy to be the primary occupation in my writingfor I am less concerned with reporting, describing or informing than I am with the interrogation of ideas and furthering a critical understanding of why we produce and enagage with art and culture.
The restless life of the mind, eternally searching for intellectual challenge in the grip of capitalism, has led me along varied paths. I have worked as a curator, gallery invigilator, bookshop assistant, freelance art critic and proofreader, but teaching and writing have been my staples. I have written for FAD Magazine and Trebuchet, Aesthetica, this is tomorrow, Spoonfed, ArtSlant, Tirade, Platea and Winq. My book, The Value Industry, is available from amazon.
My work is a fusion of contemporary art, popular culture and philosophy, resulting in a unique form of cultural memoir and criticism. For the last decade or so I have been working on a book that chronicles my encounters with Damien Hirst and explores how his work has shaped my aesthetic and philosophical outlook. I am also working on a collection of essays about about the link between pop music and memory.
Art | Culture | Ideas
Contact me
Ask me anything, offer me work, tell me something interesting