Robert Leonard

Contemporary Art Writer And Curator

Anti-Social Media

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Once upon a time, we imagined the Internet connecting us, one and all, as a big happy family. But now, we see how it separates us, creating enclaves, breeding trolls. In Kill All Normies  (Alresford: Zero Books, 2017), Angela Nagle charts the evolution of online subcultures of both the left and right, and shows how they paved the way for the emergence of the alt-right and Trump. It’s a fascinating, scary little book.

Nagle shows how sanctimonious, intolerant, and prescriptive the online left has become. Its clicktivists, snowflakes, and social-justice warriors are obsessed with safe spaces and parking their privilege. But this has a sinister side. In insisting on the scarcity of virtue, the left polices ever more arcane forms of political correctness. The left eats itself.

Nagle understands the emergence of the anti-establishment alt-right—rude and crude, misogynist and racist—as a reaction to this. It’s impressive how far she, as a left-winger, will go to understand their toxic mindset and how it has evolved in the online petri dish. Paradoxically, she also reveals how much this new brand of right-wing thinking has taken from the left, from Gramsci’s cultural Marxism and from postmodern art strategies of irony and transgression. It makes it hard to beat.

Clearly, we’re in a new phase of the culture wars. Nagle offers a roadmap to the rabbit hole. Required reading.
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Who Am I?

I am a contemporary-art curator and writer, and Director of the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. I have held curatorial posts at Wellington’s National Art Gallery, New Plymouth’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Auckland Art Gallery, and, most recently, City Gallery Wellington, and directed Auckland’s Artspace. My shows include Headlands: Thinking through New Zealand Art for Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (1992); Action Replay: Post-Object Art for Artspace, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, and Auckland Art Gallery (1998); and Mixed-Up Childhood for Auckland Art Gallery (2005). My City Gallery shows include Yvonne Todd: Creamy Psychology (2014), Julian Dashper & Friends (2015), Francis Upritchard: Jealous Saboteurs (2016), Colin McCahon: On Going Out with the Tide (2017), John Stezaker: Lost World (2017), This Is New Zealand (2018), Iconography of Revolt (2018), Semiconductor: The Technological Sublime (2019), Oracles (2020), Zac Langdon-Pole: Containing Multitudes (2020), and Judy Millar: Action Movie (2021). I curated New Zealand representation for Brisbane’s Asia-Pacific Triennial in 1999, the Sao Paulo Biennale in 2002, and the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2015. I am co-publisher of the imprint Bouncy Castle.

Contact

BouncyCastleLeonard@gmail.com
+61 452252414

This Website

I made this website to offer easy access to my writings. Texts have been edited and tweaked. Where I’ve found mistakes, I’ve corrected them.

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