This fanzine was published on the occasion of the exhibition, The Critic as Artist, which took place at Reading Museum, England, in autumn 2017.

Curated by Michael Bracewell and Andrew Hunt, The Critic as Artist was an exhibition about and for the Irish writer and dramatist Oscar Wilde, who had been a visitor to Reading prior to his imprisonment at Reading Gaol, and whose ideas and legend remain startlingly contemporary.

Combining the historical and the contemporary, notions of the cult of the beautiful with the role of the critic, symbolist fantasy and the many-layered relationships between life, morality and art, The Critic as Artist aims to combine substantial homage and renewed interpretation of Wildean aesthetic theory, while remaining very much in the spirit of his own serious play – the ‘new Hellenism’ of artistic ideas.

The publication is very limited edition to 200 numbered copies and contains contributions by the following artists and writers: Miles Aldridge, Michael Bracewell, Stephen Buckley, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Lucienne Cole, Dexter Dalwood, Donna Huddleston, Andrew Hunt, Travis Jeppesen, Gareth Jones, Scott King, Linder, Bertie Marshall, Malcolm McLaren, Henry Cyril Paget, Katrina Palmer, Alessandro Raho, Cally Spooner, and Katharina Wulff.

Co-published with Reading International.

Cover artwork: Donna Huddleston, Oscar and Nico, pencil on paper, 2017.