Artwork: Kelly Akashi’s Be Me (Cultivator), 2019, cast stainless steel and flame worked borosilicate glass
A new artwork from American artist Kelly Akashi to be featured at FIAC Contemporary Art Fair in Paris this year at François Ghebaly Gallery’s booth, Be Me (Cultivator), 2019. Love her work (see my two art stories Feel Me and Ripple).
Simply exquisite.
I’ve just begun Philip Pullman’s second volume of The Book of Dust trilogy: The Secret Commonwealth. Set in Oxford almost ten years after the end of His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy (the HBO/BBC tv series will be released in November) , the story continues the adventure of Lyra Silvertongue, now a student at Oxford, and her daemon, Pantalaimon. Pullman’s storytelling is masterful, and as with the previous books, I’m already loving it!
Artwork: Le Bateau ivre 2015 (@pejac_art)
Amazing and devastating artwork by Pejac (@pejac_art), Le Bateau ivre (2015).
And in his words: “Once upon a time in our planet...”
A cautionary tale, and quite real.
I didn’t know what to expect from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ new album, Ghosteen, not after barely being able to listen to The Skeleton Tree, with its raw grief and pain. The first thing that hit was Cave’s voice—it wasn’t the brittle, thready and barely able to breathe voice from the previous album. No, it’s rich and deep, with a range of effects that weave with the often sparse, electronic and piano score that reminds me more of Warren Ellis and Cave’s soundtrack collaborations. And the songs…Cave is a poet and storyteller and these songs speak of hope, light, wonder, longing and a spiritual dimension; of deeply felt experiences and dreams, but mostly, each song is a love song.
If you have the time, just listen to Ghosteen (you can stream it on SoundCloud). It’s a beautiful, surprising and haunting journey.
Writing by @jsnwrks (source: @buber_nebz)
A quote from artist Henri Matisse. And yep, it does 😊
Artwork: Tracey Emin, Believe in Extraordinary, 2015
Great insight on creativity from Tracey Emin:
"I gave up painting, I gave up art, I gave up believing, I gave up faith. I had what I called my emotional suicide, I gave up a lot of friendships with people, I just gave up believing in life really and it’s taken me years to actually start loving and believing again. I realized that there was a greater idea of creativity. Greater than anything I could make just with my mind or with my hands, I realized there was something…the essence of creativity, that moment of conception, the whole importance, the whole being of everything and I realized that if I was going to make art it couldn’t be about…it couldn’t be about a fucking picture. It couldn’t be about something visual. It had to be about where it was really coming from."
(Source: @_nitch)
Artwork: Phoenix by Seth (@seth_globepainter)
Another beautiful work by Seth (@seth_globepainter), Phoenix, for the ‘Out in the Open’ mural project with @kirkgallery in Aalborg, Denmark.
Artwork: Yinka Shonibare, Butterfly Kid (boy) IV, 2019
Love this—Yinka Shonibare’s mixed media installation, Butterfly Kid (boy) IV 2019.
British-Nigerian artist Shonibare’s work deals with issues of race, migration, post-colonialism, globalisation, and often features iconic Western art references with an ironic and playful twist. The Butterfly Kids series was inspired by environmental issues, and suggests notions of escape, endangerment, collapse, and extinction, yet also, it alludes to liberation, beauty, freedom and hope.
And perhaps that kids, in their efforts, will and knowledge, will be the creators, activists and leaders of a new world.
I loved it so much—I wrote an art story about it. Check it out.
Yep—so over it.
Flow and freedom.
A short film about Ukranian skateboarder and jazz musician, Sasha Protenko. Living in the moment, doing what makes you feel present and alive, going with the flow.
Director Pavel Buryak spoke about the film saying: “I tried to show how jazz and skateboarding culture can exist together in one person. The saxophone is meditative and helps you journey into the subconscious. Then there’s skateboarding, which is part of the road to self-discovery and real courage.”
Magic.
(source: www.nowness.com)
Image: Seesaw installation by architecture studio Rael San Fratello, 2019
Three pink seesaws were installed recently at the US/Mexican borderwall. Positioned between the steel slats along the stretch of wall between El Paso in Texas and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, the installation allowed children on both sides to play together. The seesaw installation was created by the architectural studio Rael San Fratello.
In an IG post, architect Ronald Rael (@rrael), who has protested Trump’s call for development of the borderwall, commented on the installation: "The wall became a literal fulcrum for US-Mexico relations and children and adults were connected in meaningful ways on both sides with the recognition that the actions that take place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side."
Artwork: Christine Sun Kim, Words Shape Reality, Jefferson City, USA, 2018
American artist Christine Sun Kim was born deaf and makes art about sound. She creates art that hinges on communication—its visual, social and textual subtleties—challenging the notion of sound as simply an auditory experience. She incorporates language—sign (ASL, American Sign Language), written, spoken—using symbols, words, drawings, noise, vibration, sight, touch, movement, performance and technology, expressing an expansive engagement with the world, and a complex relationship with deaf culture. Through her art Kim extends the possibilities of language and communicating, shifting people’s perception of being deaf as a restriction, of being “less” involved and able to interpret and communicate complexity.
The statement featured on Kim’s billboard Words Shape Reality powerfully underpins her artistic practice, in all its potentially layered meanings. The billboard was situated in Jefferson City, Missouri, USA, (2018) as part of a nationwide crowdfunded project by arts organisation For Freedoms called the ‘50 State Initiative’, created to engage the public in political participation and reaction. The organisation’s name was inspired by American artist Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms painting series (1943) based on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 call to Congress, advocating the basic human need for the public freedoms of speech, worship, want and from fear.
Artwork: by SpY (@spyurbanart), Luna, Madrid, 2019
Terrific installation by artist SpY (@spyurbanart, www.SpY-urbanart.com/) Luna, Madrid, 2019.
Artwork: by WRDSMTH, Hollywood, 2019
A new and great work by WRDSMITH in Hollywood.
Find the one who loves your work.
Artwork: PlasticWaste Labyrinth by Luzinterruptus, Madrid, 2017
Luzinterruptus is an anonymous artistic group based in Spain creating urban interventions in public spaces. They began creating work in the streets of Madrid in 2008 with the single purpose of using the medium of light to focus people’s attention on problems they found in the city that appeared to go unnoticed by citizens and authorities. The aim of the team is to leave lights on in the city so that other people can put them out.
The poetry of their work stems from this illumination: “We use light as a raw material and the dark as our canvas… light allows us to make interventions in a smaller degree and greater in others.”
One of their larger scale interventions has been the Plastic Waste Labyrinth in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor for its 4th Centennial Celebration (2017), constructed around the statue of King Philip III. They did a smaller iteration in Poland in 2014 and more recently in Buenos Aires (2018). Built using a month’s worth of plastic bottles that had been consumed in the plaza, the work graphically emphasised the amount of waste generated throughout the city every day, and that’s often not recycled appropriately.
Artwork: PlasticWaste Labyrinth by Luzinterruptus, Madrid, 2017
The walls of the maze measured 3 metres in height and comprised 15,000 bottles hung within transparent bags. Additional bottles were gathered from hospitals, universities and official institutions to make up the required amount to make the labyrinth. However they weren’t able to source bottles from the city’s recycling services, as they didn’t separate PET plastic waste from collections, which only highlighted the need for such an intervention.
While visually mesmerising—especially at night—the piece was not meant to be easy to experience. Luzinterruptus wanted people to feel discomfort when entering it, to experience the sense of being lost and hemmed in by plastic waste. This claustrophobia and sensory overload gave direct experience of the weight of the problem of plastic pollution—not just engaging with it as an abstract idea. Walking the labyrinth meant being immersed in the actual pollution so that it could no longer be ignored.
(source: www.luzinterruptus.com)
Artwork: @losthills_, Paris, 2019
Totoro! Great street art by @losthills_ in Paris. Big Miyazaki fan—so love this. Kind of creepy though with all the rats…
Artwork: Rinko Kawauchi Ametsuchi, 2013
Today, a friend sent me a poem he wrote, June Sun. Gorgeous and melancholic. Here it is:
June’s
bathing sun
- gentle in its
ministry
it gilds
dying leaves
shines
a passing fender
coaxes
dancing shadows
and then
is gone
© by Peter Matthews
Image: Franchise Freedom by @studio.drift - 300 Shooting Star drones flying above the IJ in Amsterdam, 2018
I read this today from William Wordsworth’s poem, The Excursion. It’s beautiful.
“To every Form of being is assigned,"
Thus calmly spoke the venerable Sage,
“An active Principle: - howe’er removed
From the sense and observation, it subsists
In all things, in all natures; in the stars
Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds,
In flowers and tree, in every pebbly stone
That paves the brooks, the stationery rocks,
The moving waters, and the invisible air.
Whate’er exists hath properties that spread
Beyond itself, communicating good,
A simple blessing, or with evil mixed;
Spirit that knows no insulated spot,
No chasm, no solitude; from link to link
It circulates, the Soul of all the worlds.
This is the freedom of the universe;
Unfolded still the more, more visible,
The more we know; and yet is reverenced least,
And least respected in the human Mind,
Its most apparent home.”
(excerpt from Book IX of The Excursion, 1853)
Artwork: what you do by WRDSMTH (@wrdsmth)
This resonates—new paste-up by WRDSMTH titled what you do, located on the boulevards of Hollywood (@wrdsmth).
Love it.
Image: eL Seed painting at the British Library for the exhibition, ‘Writing: Making Your Mark’ 2019
For the current British Library exhibition (showing until August 2019): Writing: Making Your Mark—a project spanning 5,000 years, across the globe, and that explores the act of writing, of leaving one’s mark—artist eL Seed created a painting for the exhibition with his distinctive calligraffiti script.
Language for eL Seed is about identity. Growing up as French-Tunisian, he felt conflicted about who he was and found that Arabic script enabled him to make a connection between his two cultural identities. It’s fascinating that the Arabic alphabet has symbols not present in other languages, which to eL Seed, creates infinite possibilities for expression and connection, especially in relation to his audience.
Speaking about the project, eL Seed said: “Once a bedouin in South of Tunisia told me, 'The one who doesn't leave a mark, didn't have a life'. I guess this is why I write.”
The painting for the exhibition features a quote from the Lebanese-American writer, Khalil Gibran, that was etched on his gravestone: “I am alive like you, standing beside you. Close your eyes and you will see me in front of you.”