For Spike #71 we’re seeing double. This one is all about couples, dedicated to partnerships in life, love, law, and labour. Whether you’re a serial monogamist, married to your job, or sublimating your crushy feelings into all that you create, it’s tough to deny the role that romance – or its conspicuous absence – plays in shaping our psyches and senses of ourselves. Might coupling be key to seeing beyond the self, opening us up to a more expansive, collaborative (co)existence? And do relationship breakdowns parallel wider social strife? Can the dusty old dyad be reconceived as radical?

What happens when art-world couples blend business and pleasure? Curl up with your soul mate – or settle into singledom – and grab a copy to read about the uses of love beyond love; the motivation posed by muses and rivals; psychoanalytic takes on partners’ promises; along with artist-couples, curatorial duos, rom-com heroes, spectres, fembots, and beyond.