Ian McKay (writer)

Ian McKay (born 1962) is an English environmental writer, critic, publisher, and translator.

Life and career

The son of former National Hunt jockey and racehorse trainer Geoff Laidlaw, Ian McKay was born in Epsom, Surrey, and studied at Chelsea School of Art. His first known publications were a series of punk fanzines in the late-1970s, including Peroxide (from which he was said to have been ousted by Norman Cook for serial incompetence^[1]). In the early-1980s he also published The Irony of Romanticism, a short-lived alternative arts publication. In 1984, with several other writers and filmmakers, he was involved in the setting up of the organisation Music for Miners during the UK Miner's Strike of 1984–1985. Since 1985, he has worked as a critic and writer for a wide range of art journals internationally and has published widely on subjects relating to visual art, cinema, music, and the environment. He has also curated visual art exhibitions and worked as an academic in several UK universities. Since 2007 his writing has centred mainly on UK Rural Affairs, particularly in relation to the New Forest.^[2][3]

Critical writings

McKay began writing on both the visual arts and the environment in the 1980s.^[4] During the late-1980s and 1990s, he travelled widely throughout the former Eastern Bloc, reporting on art and culture in the post-Communist states for Artscribe,^[5] Artline International,^[6] Art Monthly,^[7] Art and Design,^[8] and The Antique Collector.^[9][10] Throughout that period he was also published widely in many journals and magazines, including: Apollo; Art Monthly; Arts Review; Artscribe; Computer Weekly; Contemporary Art (for which he was Assistant editor); Creative Camera; The Face; Geographical Magazine; The Independent on Sunday; and Private Eye. In the mid-1990s, he published a series of undercover reports that exposed the complex political dealings of the British Green Party's Arts Policy Working Group at that time.^[11] Controversially, he also spoke regularly on a pro-censorship platform at conferences in the UK,^[12] appearing alongside figures such as the media lawyer and freedom-of-expression advocate Mark Stephens and the journalist and writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. During this period he was also an outspoken critic of the developing cultural scene in the post-Communist states, his work being published alongside that of several prominent artists and theoreticians, including Slavoj Žižek and the Czech Fluxus artist Milan Knížák (now General Director of the National Gallery, Prague).^[13] During the later-1990s–2000s, he worked mainly on a series of book projects relating to the dance culture and urban youth topics,^[14] as well as curating visual art exhibitions,^[15] but in 2005, he returned to writing on the arts and culture industries for numerous magazines and as Editor at Large (Eastern Europe) of the British arts newspaper State of Art.^[16] In 2007 he published a controversial series of articles that sought to expose low-level corruption and spin within the UK's independent artist-curator networks.^[17] For his research into this topic he was invited to participate in the Agendas V symposium in Venice, at the time of the 52nd Venice Biennale.^[18] He has also been an occasional contributor of film reviews to Sight & Sound magazine, Special Correspondent (Vienna) for Photoicon magazine,^[19] and is listed as correspondent for the both the photography magazine f22,^[20] and a relaunched State magazine^[21] (formerly State of Art).

Environmental and Social History writings

In recent years, McKay has increasingly written on rural and environmental issues again, though latterly focussing on social history and class issues as they pertain to environmental conservation in Britain. In 2012, he published a controversial account of his research into the recent social history of the The New Forest National Park^[22] where he now lives.^[23] Backgrounded by the 2011 debate about England's forestry future following the UK government's introduction of the Public Bodies Bill to The House of Lords,^[24] which would have enabled the Secretary of State to sell or lease public forests in England.,^[25][26] he highlighted the factional infighting that emerged among several pressure groups within the New Forest itself, in turn revealing the story of a long history of social exclusion in the area which, he argued, had been engineered by the wealthy and several organisations charged with the New Forest's care.^[27] In particular, the book focussed on the plight of the New Forest Gypsies who were forcibly placed first in Forestry Commission camps, and then municipal housing during the post-war years. The New Forest: A Gated Community of the Mind was followed by Nova Foresta Zapovednik: The New Forest at Breaking Point (co-authored with the Russian environmentalist Anna Kolchevska) in which he argued in favour of a conservation approach that broadly resembled the Zapovednik system in the former Soviet Union, where assigned areas were given the highest degree of environmental protection, often being restricted to the public.^[28]

Books

Ian McKay's book publications and book chapters include: Lonely is an Eyesore in Vaughan Oliver: This Rimy River (1994); On the Death of Czech Culture, in New Art from Eastern Europe (1994); Crossing the Bridge in Bridges (Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation) (1996), edited by Camilla Seaward;^[29] Locating the Wild Zone (2001); Mapping the Self (2002); Boyd & Evans: Looking Differently (2007),^[30] Defining Moments in Art (2008), edited by Mike Evans.,^[31] and the large scale monograph Bernard Cohen: Work of Six Decades^[32] (2009), which was co-authored with the late art critic and art historian Norbert Lynton. Being fluent in several European languages, McKay has also contributed to a number of academic text books overseas. Among his most recent English language publications are the edited anthology A New Forest Reader: A Companion Guide to the New Forest, its History and Landscape^[33] (2011), which brought back into circulation several out of print texts,;^[34] The New Forest: A Gated Community of the Mind;^[35] and Ahae: Through My Window (2011) which was an appraisal of the landscape photography of the Korean photographer Yu Byeong-eon(Ahae) (jointly authored with the General Director of the National Gallery in Prague, Milan Knížák).^[36]

Academia

As Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Art History McKay has lectured and taught at several UK higher education colleges and universities, including Chelsea School of Art (1985), Surrey Institute of Art & Design (1991), Kingston University (1992–1994),^[37] and Southampton Solent University (formerly the Southampton Institute, 1994–2010).^[38] As Language Consultant he has contributed to several academic text books, including Repetytorium gimnazjalne ^[39] and Slownik Nursowy: Indeks angielsko-polski ^[40] (both for Cambridge University Press). He retired from academia in 2011.

Notes and references

External links

• Guardian Interview (2002)
• Agendas Conference, Venice (2007)
• Photoicon magazine
• A New Forest Notebook