Chloë Ashby

United Kingdom

Author and Arts Journalist at Freelance

Author of FAMILY FRIENDS (coming 2026), SECOND SELF (2023) and WET PAINT (2022). Words in the Times, Guardian, Spectator, TLS et al. COLOURS OF ART (2022).

Articles

Double rum and hundreds of affairs: life with Gwen and Augustus John

3 weeks ago | thetimes.com | Chloë Ashby

In a self-portrait from 1902, Gwen John meets us with an unwavering gaze, pursed lips and a slight tilt of her head. Her auburn hair is tidily drawn back into a simple bun, and she wears a crimson blouse with a velvet choker pinned beneath a brooch at the base of her long, slender neck. Her younger brother Augustus (she called him Gus), who began work on his own self-portrait the same year, shares her almond-shaped eyes and strong nose.
Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely review - joyous show from art’s golden kinetic couple

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Chloë Ashby

It is a bright and sunny day in Somerset, and out on the neatly mown lawn at Hauser & Wirth, Niki de Saint Phalle’s voluptuous Nanas (“girls”) are positively sparkling. There are three of them (a nod to Botticelli’s three graces): one silver, one black, one white, all made from polyester jazzed up with colourful mosaic and shimmering mirrors. She has captured them mid-twirl, arms tossed in the air like they just don’t care, legs kicked out at jaunty angles.
Breast pumps, babygrows and unfinished drinks: the stunning parenting paintings every mother should see

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Chloë Ashby

Ten years ago, when the Scottish painter Caroline Walker was in her early30s, she noticed something happening to her artist friends who were having babies. “They were suddenly taken less seriously,” she says. At the time, she didn’t have children of her own, and she was sure that if she ever did, her life as a parent would remain separate from her art.
Kate Kitamura’s Audition is quietly intense

1 month ago | thespectator.com | Chloë Ashby

It is remarkable the web Katie Kitamura can spin around a scene as simple as a woman joining a man for lunch. His name is Xavier. We don’t know her name, but we do know she’s a successful actress. He’s beautiful, almost half her age, and she’s aware of how that must look to the other diners, the waiter hovering at her elbow, and her husband, who inexplicably enters after their food arrives before exiting in a hurry.
The mother of a mystery: Audition, by Katie Kitamura, reviewed

2 months ago | spectator.co.uk | Chloë Ashby

It is remarkable the web Katie Kitamura can spin around a scene as simple as a woman joining a man for lunch. His name is Xavier. We don’t know her name, but we do know she’s a successful actress. He’s beautiful, almost half her age, and she’s aware of how that must look to the other diners, the waiter hovering at her elbow, and her husband, who inexplicably enters after their food arrives before exiting in a hurry.
The road trip from hell: Elegy, Southwest, by Madeleine Watts, reviewed

2 months ago | spectator.co.uk | Chloë Ashby

Throughout her quietly compelling second novel, Elegy, Southwest, Madeleine Watts conjures a sense of trundling steadily towards disaster. The narrator, a young Australian woman called Eloise, is recounting a road trip that she and her husband Lewis took through the American Southwest in 2018 – while a deadly fire was sweeping through northern California. The trip was bookended by disasters you could describe as closer to home: before it, Lewis’s mother died; after it, Lewis disappeared.
‘I did it for the experience’: Amoako Boafo, the artist who painted Jeff Bezos’s rocket ship

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Chloë Ashby

Not every artist who skyrockets to fame makes it all the way into space. But that was the case for Amoako Boafo who, three years after his big break, painted three panels on the top of Jeff Bezos’s rocket ship. “I’ll be honest, I just did it for the experience,” says the Ghanaian artist, whose triptych blasted off in August 2021 and returned (intact) after an 11-minute round trip. If the opportunity should arise, would he ever be interested in taking a tour himself?
Putin has pushed Trump too far

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Owen Matthews |Gavin Mortimer |Ian Williams |Chloë Ashby

Perhaps Donald Trump is not quite the chump the Kremlin has taken him for. Trump is “pissed off” with Russia over its foot-dragging over a ceasefire in Ukraine, he told NBC’s Kristen Welker. More, Vladimir Putin’s demands that Ukraine’s government be replaced with a transitional one as the price for peace negotiations made Trump ‘very angry. If Putin has any sense at all, he’ll take those words very seriously.
Has French democracy been ‘executed?’

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Gavin Mortimer |Chloë Ashby |Robin Ashenden |Roger Kimball

Marine Le Pen’s political career was ended on Monday when a Paris judge found her guilty of misusing European Union funds. She was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, two of which are suspended and two will be served under an ankle bracelet. She was also fined €100,000 ($109,000) and disbarred from politics for five years. Few anticipated such a severe sentence and it is one that will send shockwaves not just through France but across Europe.
Has French democracy been “executed”?

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Gavin Mortimer |Chloë Ashby |Nicholas Farrell |Dylan Neri

Marine Le Pen’s political career was ended on Monday when a Paris judge found her guilty of misusing EU funds. She was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, two of which are suspended and two will be served under an ankle bracelet. She was also fined €100,000 ($109,000) and disbarred from politics for five years. Few anticipated such a severe sentence and it is one that will send shockwaves not just through France but across Europe.