That Was The Week That Was – 30th August 2025

Bugs and Errors

At the beginning of the week I noticed my site was peppered with errors and bugs. The latest version of PHP had thrown up more issues with my old 2.5 install of Kirby which I had been patching for a long-time now. After trying to patch it again — which threw up more issues — I decided to take the plunge and finally upgrade my site to the latest version. So began a whole week of wrangling code to make it work.

One of the main gotchas is how the file naming system had moved from 1-foldername to 1_foldername. This may not seem like a big thing but when it takes you several hours to figure why all your pages are no longer showing up, it was not fun! The rest of the time was going through each template fixing various bits of syntax such as the thumb() method for creating thumbnails having completely changed, as had the way dates are generated. All of this is for the better of course, as it was previously patched up with the code equivalent of Sellotape.

Eventually, after several days of fixing things, the site was back up and running. Bastian and his team continue to do a great job with Kirby and it feels good to know I finally updated my previously archaic site.

Of course many will ask why even have a website these days? Well, I've had my site for twenty five years and it contains the entire archive of my work in that time. Nobody can tell me what I can and can't put on there. Nobody can switch it off. The platform it's on – the web - is not going to disappear because it got acquired by a big company. It's mine and I'm free to do with it as I please. It's also really useful too. Many times I've looked up how to do something, or how to write a certain piece of code and I've found it on my blog, having written it up in case it comes in handy later.

Subject to Change

Gazelli Art House announced a new group show entitled Subject to Change which I'm thrilled to be part of, showing a second work in the altarpiece series – the first having sold at auction at Christie's in February in New York. The show opens on October 3rd with a private view on October 2nd. More details here.

Aesthetica Art Prize

Opening this month for a five month run is the Aesthetica Art prize finalist's exhibition in York from September 19th. Myself and Gary Hustwit are finalists with our work Nothing Can Ever Be The Same which was first shown at the Venice Biennale in 2024. More details here.