I keep going back to that amber surface, Griffin’s yellows, the hair falling onto Salmond’s rugs. Knowing that a picture can flatter my taste has not stopped those colours and textures from getting to me. I would feel ridiculous making beauty answer for the weather outside my window, although I would miss them if they were gone. Some of my impatience for the physical magazine comes from wanting to give these images more time than I usually allow anything on a screen

EVERYBODY HERE IS FAKING IT, INCLUDING THOSE WHO ARE RIGHT – Valerie You

Mog Griffin’s Cyclops, placed above the story’s opening, had already made me susceptible to this tenderness. Two butter-yellow bodies settle into one another against a dark ground, their thighs swelling into curls while their hands almost meet at the centre. The small faces look distracted, as though the bodies have achieved an intimacy their owners are still thinking about. I love the warm ochre gathering under the limbs and the absurd generosity of their proportions. They have been distorted into something I want to sit beside, and after all the embarrassment in Barber’s story, their ability to occupy so much space together looks enviable.

– EVERYBODY HERE IS FAKING IT, INCLUDING THOSE WHO ARE RIGHT – Valerie You

Griffin’s Helix introduces Wilms with a yellow figure curled upside down around a blue pole, pink gathering along the edges of its limbs against a deep navy ground. The rounded toes and spirals make the contortion look almost delicious, though I keep trying to work out where the weight would hurt. Earlier, Griffin’s painting “The Contortionist” folds a similar body into a red-brown rectangle, one eye still open amid the cramped limbs. I like the refusal to make these bodies less pretty because their positions look difficult. By Helix I am pleased to recognize that yellow again, the way I might be pleased to see somebody familiar at a party before remembering how complicated they are.

– EVERYBODY HERE IS FAKING IT, INCLUDING THOSE WHO ARE RIGHT – Valerie You