Something hilarious—for cat lovers at least! I’m a big fan of OwlKitty (aka Lizzie) @owl_kitty, and the latest parody of Godzilla VS Kong is freaking funny.
Enjoy! 😹😻
JR's Palazzo Strozzi
Artwork: Paste-up by JR (@jr), Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2021
Artist JR has created a magnificent trompe l’oeil paste-up creating a massive opening in the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, revealing significant artworks such as Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus, housed in museums that so many have been deprived of seeing because of the pandemic. The project is funded by the Palazzo Strozzi Future Arts Programme that supports contemporary art. Florence is one of my favourite cities in the world, so JR’s artwork and words resonate:
“They say the museums are closed. But it's up to us to open them. Here is Florence, the city of Boticelli, Donatello, Machiavelli and Dante, we opened the Palazzo Strozzi. These last few months, we have been deprived from the possibility to be together ... but we still have the freedom to dream, to create, to envision the future. Maybe, it's not much, but we have that!”
creation/lifework
Photo: Yohji Yamamoto (Getty Images)
Inspiring words from artist/designer Yohji Yamamoto:
"Creation is lifework, creation is how...you spend your life, you cannot divide life and the creation, it’s impossible. Shut your eyes, close your ears, don’t use your brain, use your heart, your soul."
Truth.
rainbows
Artwork: Painting by @kennyrandom
“…because we are made of colours.”
Wonderful wall by Italian artist Kennyrandom (@kennyrandom).
Cloud Piece
Artwork: Yoko Ono, Cloud Piece, 1963/2019, MOT, Tokyo (photo: Keizo Kioku)
For anyone who loves clouds…
Yoko Ono’s Cloud Piece (1963), exhibited in 2019 at MOT, Tokyo—
CLOUD PIECE
Imagine the clouds dripping.
Dig a hole in your garden to
put them in.
1963 spring
Do It Yourself
Artwork: paste-up by WRDSMTH, Los Angeles, 2019
Daily Reminder 😊
Infinite Circle
Artwork: Marco Godhino, Infinite Circle, 2021 (@marcogodhino24)
A visual Haiku by artist Marco Godhino, Infinite Circle (2021).
Beautiful.
Check out a recent art story I wrote on Godhino’s work, Home is no longer warm (2017).
A Yoshitomo Nara Day
Artwork: Yoshitomo Nara, recent sketch, 2021
Yep—feel like hiding from the world in my hoodie today…
Poetic Cosmos of the Breath
At the heart of Tomas Saraceno’s art is the questioning and reorientation of human beings and their experience of the earth, its atmosphere, environments, and non-human species. Saraceno’s practice connects art with life sciences and social sciences to create immersive projects that reimagine a world free from carbon, extractivism, capitalism, patriarchy and fossil fuels.
Saraceno’s participative installation at the Artist Airshow in Gunpowder Park London, 2007, titled Poetic Cosmos of the Breath brought his utopian vision of designing spaces such as cities that float in the air and change forms like clouds, to earth. This beautiful work involved creating a synesthetic experience using a giant dome made from iridescent foil weighted by sandbags that gradually inflated with increasing hot air as the sun rose. It invited people to interact with the natural rhythms of the sun, air, clouds, sky and a shifting rainbow of colours as the foil reflected and refracted light; to explore the boundaries of their perceptions with the natural elements of the earth and its atmosphere; to dream and imagine life lived in a cloud.
don't judge me
FKA twigs, Headie One and Fred again have teamed up to produce this powerful and stunning song and video, Don’t Judge Me, which is about being Black and British and having to deal with an “invisible oppressor”, namely cultural and institutional systemic racism, forces that are hard to see and act against.
What contributes to the impact of the video is the backdrop of American artist Kara Walker’s installation at the Tate Turbine Hall last year, Fons Americanus, a 13-metre tall fountain inspired by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, London. The installation subverts the celebration of British Empire and instead parodies the use of such memorials to elevate a narrative built on the hidden histories of the victor’s fortunes built on the transatlantic slave trade, exploitation, racism, and tragedy. Water is a key theme in the sculpture referring to this movement of slaves between Africa, Europe and America. And the figures Walker has sculpted in this faux-triumphal work are grotesque often bloated, throat’s slit, in shark-infested water, lives imperilled, anguished—making visible black children, women and men whose lives have been exploited and erased using the visual language of the perpetrators.
Walker is best known for her black cut-out silhouette wall installations depicting narratives of atrocities committed in the American South, and has said: “I’m gonna take everything I do about power and desire – and use the tropes of the slave narrative or the slave romance, like the antebellum romance, as the way to talk about these themes because this is something that clearly won’t go away. It will just keep being an unaddressed bugaboo in American culture.”
hope
What a gorgeous soul! Arlo Parks. She’s a poet/artist and her new track Hope from her upcoming album Collapsed in Sunbeams (Jan 29) hits the heart, as does the video which I posted here. Just beautiful.
remember
It’s critical to remember what can happen when fascism is unchecked. January 27 is Holocaust Remembrance Day. So I thought I’d share this, Italian artist Eron’s poetic tribute to a beautiful soul, writer Anne Frank, who died in Auschwitz, and whose diary has been read by countless people the world over.
Remember, because we can’t afford to forget.
(www.eron.it; @eron_artist)
Poetry Matters
Poetry matters.
And THIS. Listen to poet Amanda Gorman’s performance of her poem, The Hill We Climb, at the 2021 US Presidential Inauguration.
I got the chills listening to it. She nailed it.
On writing the poem, Gorman said this:
“America is messy. It’s still in its early development of all that we can become. And I have to recognise that in the poem. I can’t ignore that or erase it. And so, I crafted an inaugural poem that recognises these scars and these wounds. Hopefully, it will move us toward healing them.”
Chill
Trying to chill (and ignore the crazy news cycle coming from the US!), and I’ve got this on repeat, PawPaw Rod’s track HIT EM WHERE IT HURTS. Love it. Check it out.
Baby Yoda!!
Already missing The Mandalorian and can’t wait for season 3! Here’s Baby Yoda (Grogu) chilling on set with director Robert Rodriguez—cuteness overload! 😊
Eternal Luv
Artwork: mural by @ger_1, ‘Eternal Luv’, Athens, Greece, 2020
Beautiful—mural by @ger1_, Eternal Luv in Athens, Greece, 2020.
And the New Year—a kinder, brighter, lighter, hopeful and loving 2021.
ciao 2020!!
Artwork: by Blub (@blub_lartesanuotare)
Caio 2020!
Artwork by Florentine artist Blub (@blub_lartesanuotare), inspired by Botticelli’s depiction of the west wind Zephyr and nymph Chloris in Birth of Venus (1483-5).
Kind of perfect.
never-ever be afraid to colour outside the lines
Image: clean slate/blank wall—WRDSMTH (@wrdsmth) beginning a paste-up
Love this. WRDSMTH’s holiday/New Year’s message made up of select words/lines from his paste-ups:
follow your calling
trust your talent
chase your dream
believe in yourself
take a chance
dive headfirst into pools of unknown
fail better
do it for yourself
do what makes you happy
do what you love
aspire to inspire others
create — every single day
purple trees red bears green oceans
blue elephants
do something every day that scares you
if not now, when?
make your mark
and never-ever be afraid to color outside the lines
🚀
(@WRDSMTH)
fake plastic trees
2020—what can I say? This year has been a freaking rollercoaster. It’s been stressful, challenging, devastating, enlightening, hopeful. The holiday season—whatever you might celebrate (or not feel like celebrating)—and New Year’s has a lot of people thinking, well fuck 2020! Music has always been a cornerstone of my life, and this year especially I’ve turned to it for escape, freedom, solace and joy. So here’s something that made my heart smile and brought tears to my eyes, the amazing artists Phoebe Bridgers and Arlo Parks teaming up to play Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees. And if that’s not enough, Phoebe is wearing a skeleton onesie and they’re singing in a church. It’s just an awesome mix that reminds me what’s beautiful and possible in this world (and ignore the BBC promo schtick at the end!!!).
Star Force: Sci-Fisolation
The freakishly funny, zero-budget, pandemic-isolation short film, Star Force: Sci-Fisolation! Starring James McAvoy, Caitriona Balfe, Steven Cree, Kevin Mains, Brendan O'Rourke, James Kirk, Ross Mains, and Chris Forbes.
When out-of-work actors, directors and screen writers are bored…they get incredibly silly and have a lot of fun. Enjoy! 😊