Arts news

• March design news: celebrating council houses and the vulva spaceship

  28-03-2022 11:31
  
  Reviving great 80s artists, a history of queer spaces and bringing new life to a stately home In their introduction to the new book Queer Spaces, An Atlas of LGBTIQ+ Places, author Olivia Laing describes queer space: “It’s not just a physical building to hook up or hang out. Instead it’s an alternate universe, a secret network that runs right around the world.” The idea of a world where you’re allowed to write the rules and experiment is one that many creatives rela
  
  Read more

• ‘She broke boundaries’: how textile artist Althea McNish made Britain bloom

  28-03-2022 10:00
  
  An inspiration for Balenciaga and Dior, the flamboyant fabrics of the Trinidad-born artist brought Caribbean colour into 50s British householdsThe Trinidad-born British designer and artist Althea McNish’s bold textile prints rescued 1950s Britain from postwar gloom, ushering in the upbeat 60s with outsize flowers in a humid palette. Her early work with forward-thinking fabric producers such as Liberty, Ascher Ltd and Hull Traders brought Caribbean heat into British living rooms, while Chri
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUK1 on Twitter!