Playing the Long Game

The game of chess is one of those incredibly fascinating, challenging, and all-consuming spectacles I fell in love with when I was a child, something that still sits at the heart of this chess column. I loved the game, the strategy, and well… the sheer thrill of the action. Who doesn’t like to win?

After a years-long break from the board, I stepped back into the arena by crafting art chess sets, and right on the cusp of it, I met Barry Martin, who used to write this column and sadly is no longer with us. It still breaks my heart, and what a bittersweet privilege it is to try stepping into his footsteps.

I devoured a book by Kasparov, Deep Thinking, Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins, before my interview at the World Chess Hall of Fame with international chess master Vitaly Naimer. I was young and eager to study how Kasparov saw the game, and to probe any correlations between his perceptions of chess and my own of art.

Kasparov nails it, the game as a battle against yourself. Your opponent is just an excuse. Not only must you predict someone else’s moves, but you also need to see your own through their eyes.

“To become good at anything, you have to know how to apply basic principles. To become great at it, you have to know when to violate those principles.”
― Garry Kasparov, Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins

What I completely failed to foresee was the sudden passing of our dear Barry Martin, who penned this column. It’s a bittersweet honour to fill his shoes, something I cannot even pretend to do fully.

But for everything he taught me through his joyful, radical, and principled art practice and critique, I would like to try to continue his mission in my own words and with experiences that pale in comparison to his, yet with the rigour, honesty, and curious mind of a student. Not just of his legacy, but of my own art practice, chess pursuits, and life’s wild turns. Hopefully, it will keep entertaining you and cracking open your minds.

As many of you might have read, Barry Martin died on 12th December 2025. He became my mentor soon after I fully devoted myself to art. I met him back in 2014 at a workshop he led at the gallery that represented me back then. I still remember battling for the opportunity to collaborate with Purling London, the luxe start-up art chess company, to create a custom chess set for them.

Who knew that through them and Barry, my first art chess set, which I titled ‘Addictions’, would end up in one of the first group shows I participated in, and that it would also travel the world? Who knew that through it, I’d be lucky enough to meet chess grandmaster, journalist, and author Raymond Keene OBE, who continued to support my art and chess endeavours from then on, and that I would dive into the creative underbelly of the chess world?

It turns out that a shocking number of chess players grapple with addiction themselves. I was deep in my mental health work back then, raising awareness about recovery, celebrating the darkness that can many times lead to profound healing and virtuous turnarounds. Some of us must face total shadow before choosing the light. Until we truly grasp it, we keep teetering between sides, until either life or we force that decision.

Marcel Duchamp, one of the art world’s giants, grew so fascinated by chess that he ditched painting for the board, art just couldn’t satisfy him anymore. There are more than 318 billion possible four-move openings in chess. The timing, the move, your opponent’s riposte, it all underscores how unpredictable and fragile life is. Every tiny choice nudges us closer to or further from the path we wish to follow. And we don’t even have full control.

If Barry were still with us, I wouldn’t be writing this piece, and we still don’t know what more is yet to come. Life is about relationships, and so is art, at least for me. The dance between the colour, the energy of the stroke, the gaps, the viewer, the work, the setting… It’s a mindfulness exercise, 360 degrees. What will be your next move?

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