About

The Toe Rag is a quarterly, print magazine covering contemporary non-profit and independent culture in London that spans visual art, music, architecture, theatre, performance, fashion, politics and literature. It presents critically focused writing and ideas alongside more playful content and events listings.
The Toe Rag is both a guidebook to the city and an intimate look at its artists, independent spaces and creative possibilities. As a registered C.I.C. (Community Interest Company) with non-profit status, we are firmly rooted in our commitment to serving the community.

Issue 4, A/W 2024

GAMES & RULES

Games exist to scaffold play, where invention and imagination are set against rules and regulation. They are at once innocent and very much serious.
From politics and culture to language and the arts, games offer a critical tool to grapple with the machinery of the modern world. Games are forms of world building: while they may reproduce the codes and norms that structure our everyday lives, they also offer environments to test and break them.
Issue 4 invited contributors to consider questions surrounding games and rules. Why do we impose rules on the freedom of play? How do rules and games order our lives? What would it mean to use games to analyse our political, cultural and economic regimes? How do rules create the necessary tensions for artistic transgressions and encounters?

OUT NOW

FEATURING:

Olivia Allen, Ilana Blumberg, CAConrad, Hector Campbell, Matthew Cheale, Sam Cottington, Nina Cristante, Jesse Darling, Oliver Evans, Ed Fornieles, Peli Grietzer, Isabella Greenwood, Chiara Haefliger, Will Hainsworth, Geumhyung Jeong, Athen Kardashian, Tom K Kemp, Sharon Kivland, Dilara Koz, Hongxi Li, Inge-Vera Lipsius, Whitney Mallett, Dani Marcel, James Martin, Lily McMenamy, Thomas McMullan, Peter Miller, Sam Moore, Allegra Mullan, Gabriella Nugent, Ethan Price, Lucila Safdie, Carina Kehlet Schou, Jay Temperance, Amalia Ulman & Ben Ware.

Imagery from Issue 4

Photos from the Issue 4 launch party at The Mandrake Hotel

Issue 3, Summer 2024

DREAM WORK

Issue 3 explores how we dream alone, but also collectively: as organisms in entangled environments, and as social beings. In psychoanalytic terms, the dream-work is the passage between our conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings and desires. Yet dreaming is also a form of collective political work that we do in our waking hours, to bring new worlds into existence and refuse others.
We welcomed contributions that explored the oneiric reveries, subconscious desires and hallucinatory visions of the city. What happens to the dreams that fail, that decay, that dissipate under the conditions we find ourselves living in?

FEATURING:

Nour Ben Saïd, Jacob Barnes, Matthew Barney, Daria Blum, Chanel Beads, Ilana Blumberg, Jip Boxstart, Bertie Brandes, ML Buch, Hector Campbell, Guendalina Cerruti, Irina Costin, Lu Rose Cunningham, Nina Davies, Marie Davidson, Ben Ditto, Will Ferreira Dyke, Monique Fei, Douglas Gordon, Isabella Greenwood, Miles Greenberg, Athen Kardashian, Graham Lambkin, Laila Majid, Isabel MacCarthy, Aram Masharqa, Vee Matsumari, Crystal Murray, Louis Blue Newby, Max Peston, Kembra Pfahler, Bart Price, Georgina Quach, Oisín Roberts, RALLY Festival, Sebastián Sánchez-Schilling, Coumba Samba, Dean Sameshima, Rosa Sittig-Bell, Ella Slater, Mary Stephenson, Adam Stamp, Jay Temperance, Katy Trame, Evie Ward, Robert Wilson, Lena Willikens, Henry Woodland, Alfred Yatlong Yeung & Bea Ysolda.

Imagery from Issue 3

Issue 2, Spring 2024

CONSUMPTION

Issue 2 took the theme of CONSUMPTION in the most expansive possible sense: as digestion, materialism, commodity fetishism, excess, waste, disease, devotion, obsession. To consume, or to be consumed by something: whether thinkingly or unthinkingly, conspicuously or inconspicuously, as transaction or transformation.
We welcomed material that engaged critically with the theme and stretched it to its limits, exploring the contemporary politics of consumption in London and its diverse histories.

FEATURING:

Oluwatobiloba Ajayi, Alvaro Barrington, Isa Barzizza, Ilana Blumberg, Betsey Brown, Hector Campbell, Aria Dean, Georgia Gordon, Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck, Isabella Greenwood, Sofia Hallström, Tom Hardwick-Allan, Tiger Hornby, Athen Kardashian, Colton Karpman, Lena Pola Leszczynska, Margaret Liang, Millie O'Connor, I.W. Payne, Matteo Pini, Pope.L, Ethan Price, Jago Rackham, Maddy Routon, Cooking Sections, Diyora Shadijanova, Gabrielle Sicam, Eduard Solaz, Maria Sowter, Phyllis Stein, Lily Samarine, Sung Tieu & Pol Wah Tse.

Imagery from Issue 2

Launch party at Sweetings Restaurant, 8th March 2024

Issue 1, Winter 2023

LOCALITY

The inaugural issue addressed how creating a London-focused publication draws boundaries around ideas and spaces, engaging with politics of inclusion and exclusion.
We considered how giving a voice to local issues risks precluding perspectives from outside this geographical boundary, or understanding the city within a global context. Exploring the small-scale communities, climates and economies of place, we published a breadth of materials, from archival interrogations to knitting patterns.

FEATURING:

Thibault Aedy, Em Bauer, Ilana Blumberg, Hector Campbell, Nina Davies, Yasmin N.D, Niamh Glanville-Frayne, Isabella Greenwood, Tayshan Hayden-Smith, Haseeb Iqbal, Luk Man Hon, Athen Kardashian, Isabel MacCarthy, Valentina Magaletti, Paul McGann, Solomon Garçon, Arthur Osofsky, Archie Owen, Max Peston, Planningtorock, Jem Perucchini, Inez de Rijke, Sebastián Sánchez-Schilling, Sin Wai Kin, Jame St Findlay, Liv Thomas, Gray Wielebinski & Lydia Wilford.