Volume 9, Issue 1 – February 2026

We are pleased to announce the publication of Riffs Volume 9, Issue 1: Pop! Art School Reunions

For this issue, Riffs collaborated with the artist, performer and musician Dr Anat Ben-David (Chicks On Speed / Central Saint Martin’s and RCA) to present workshops and performances at the Royal College of Art (RCA, London), Birmingham School of Art, and the University of Leeds. These events acted as a canvas and catalyst for some of the contributions to this issue of Riffs, reflecting on the relationships between pop music, pop art, art school, and experimental music and performance. The issue also includes pieces that consider the peculiar relationship between and tangled histories of “Art” and “Pop” and the “double lives” of those who practise across both domains, to include the fascination with media culture and pop stardom of pop artists and the erasure and sublimation of experimental music.

The full issue is available here.

Guest Editor: Ed McKeon (Goldsmiths, UK)

Each of the articles in this issue are listed below. Follow the title links to view and download individual PDFs.

Design work by Iain A. Taylor. Riffs front cover design by Adam Williams.

Ed McKeon – Editorial

Ed McKeon and Anat Ben-David – They want to control the weird thing, so weird things become not weird at all” – A conversation with Anat Ben-David

Esther Windsor – Rise Flap Lick

Bapz on Crack

Gavin Wade – Notes on 60 Verses / Endless Verses (2018–ongoing)

Ed McKeon – What’s (Visual) Art Got To Do With It?

Sam Coley – BowieArt: I want to sound like that looks

Gavin Butt – “Seized on the Wing”: The Tactics of Art School Pop: A visual essay

Richard O’Brien – Jeffrey Lewis’s Model of Art-Making: Between Amateur and Auteur

Richard Witts and Bryan Biggs – Deaf School

John Mowitt – To Riff, an Intransigent Verb?