Tracing the “quieter dread that sits beneath creative work” with Plates of Meat magazine

Silva Cunningham began publishing Plates of Meat in late 2020 at the age of 18. This year, she released The Fear Issue, informed by her growing distance from youth culture and gnawing fears underpinning creation. “It’s about the quieter dread that sits beneath creative work, the fear of mediocrity, of being neither loved nor loathed, just tolerated,” shares Silva. These are feelings only exacerbated by the many financial and accessibility obstacles faced by creatives today, paired with the anxiety of wondering if your work is good enough (and by what standard, set by who?).

This issue marks a turning point for the magazine: “Every issue of Plates of Meat has circled around the idea of visibility, the need to be seen, the panic of not being looked at, but this one asks what happens after that,” says Silva. Here, we delve deeper into the magazine’s latest issue, and poke around it’s pockets of foreboding.

The magazine is shrouded in biblical symbolism. Silva posits the King James Bible as the visual backbone of the issue. “The typography, the pacing of the text, even the use of white space,” says Silva. “I wanted it to feel like a school Bible left in a drawer, the kind that’s been scribbled on by bored kids waiting for the assembly to end.” Silva plays with blasphemy, scattering the issue with hand printed page numbers ripped from bins and notes scribbled in margins – all sins of the classroom. Youthful chaos flourishes in its pages, a maturing from the magazine’s early issues described by Silva as “impulsive, full of noice, lust, longing, and wanting to prove that London was alive, and that I was living in it”. The issue feels caught in the crossfire between sincerity and the humiliation of sincerity.

Upon picking up a copy, you’ll be met by artist Freddie Bannister’s pencil study of the singer-songwriter Celeste. Silva takes inspiration from divine depictions of fear, and this sense of liminality is translated into the slow, aching process in the issue’s creation. Both the front and back covers of the issue were created by Freddie, and the choice to have these created by the same artist is deliberate and devotional. The back cover is a silhouette of a man sitting and waiting in his car; anticipating. “The two images speak across the issue, one active, one inert, the sacred and the stalled,” shares Silva. The issue’s limbs are attached to separate subjects, torn in medieval fashion between action and passivity – the angel and devil of the creative process.

Speaking on the publishing world as a whole, Silva reflects on feelings of absence. “I don’t think we’re missing voices; we’re missing sincerity. Most independent publications operate as proof of taste, not as acts of risk,” says Silva. Print has been slapped with the label of death many times, but should we come to recognise it as currency and trend or as a vessel for the chalant?

You can purchase the Plates of Meat – Issue 9 – The Fear Issue on Antenne Books.