Karen Kilimnik: Fashion, Victim, Fan, Fiction
A little over a decade after Brenda Ann Spencer’s 1979 school shooting at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California, Karen Kilimnik used the crime as the premise for an artwork.
The first modern school shooter was a sixteen-year-old girl named Brenda Ann Spencer. In 1979, she opened fire on Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California, from her house across the road, killing two adults, and injuring nine others. When questioned about her motive, Spencer reportedly replied, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.”
Exclusive to the Magazine
Karen Kilimnik: Fashion, Victim, Fan, Fiction by Gemma Topliss is featured in full in Issue 2 of Memo magazine.
Get your hands on the print edition through our online shop or save up to 20% and get free domestic shipping with a subscription.
Related
As Melbourne’s art institutions blur the line between art and design, a corporate logic of spectacle, lifestyle, and marketability takes hold. Is the NGV’s embrace of design a progressive expansion—or just kitsch in highbrow drag? And if public museums have abandoned art, who’s left to protect it?
Anabel Robinson’s paintings function like rooms—lived-in, layered, and shifting between figuration and abstraction. Her work invites a search for entry points, symbols, and hidden meanings.
