For World Aids Day, a new audio project will play important speeches and clips that catalogue the ongoing fight against HIV/Aids
“Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Homophobia has got to go!”
This was a chant from New York’s ACT-UP demonstration in 1989. Now the audio clip of this protest will echo throughout Greenwich Village in the coming month.
Continue reading...My Gaza by Jehad al-Saftawi is a personal account of peoples’ suffering as they go about their lives under Israeli blockade
Working as a journalist in Gaza, says Palestinian photographer Jehad al-Saftawi, is like walking barefoot in a field of thorns. “You must always watch where you step. Each neighbourhood is composed of its own intimate social network, and travelling through them with a camera makes you a significant suspicion.
“You’re caught between the two sides of the conflict: the rulers of Gaza limit what you can photograph and write about, imprisoning and torturing those who disobey. At the same time, the Israeli army sees you as a potential threat that must be eliminated, as has been the fate of many Palestinian journalists.”
Continue reading...Two days after a helicopter pilot revealed its existence, people began sharing their own shots of the unexplained piece
Some intrepid visitors have been flocking to a remote part of southern Utah in a bid to be among the first to see the mystery metal monolith.
The structure in the Red Rock desert was first discovered last week from the air by a helicopter pilot and wildlife officers who were carrying out an annual count of bighorn sheep.
Continue reading...The Resolute desk at the White House is made of timbers taken from a Royal Navy ship. It projects pure power. Is that why the defeated US president has switched to an occasional table?
Has Donald Trump conceded the presidency by design? Is his choice of furniture betraying a subconscious admission of defeat? When the outgoing US president gave a speech this week saying he would depart if the electoral college voted for Joe Biden, his words came as less of a shock than the desk he chose to sit at. It was tiny. It sent out a clear signal. And that signal was “loser”.
Jokes about the shrunken size of Trump’s desk – one photograph, taken from low down, captures his legs barely fitting beneath it – are easy. So let’s not. You want to see a real ruler’s desk? The Resolute desk in the Oval Office is the definition of one: a massive fortress of a working space, like an aircraft carrier with legs, sporting the US eagle at the heart of its heavy Victorian carvings. Its timbers are British in origin: they come from a Royal Navy sailing ship, HMS Resolute, that once braved the icy waters of the north pole. And in a final addition of defensive machismo, Franklin D Roosevelt had the front bulwarked so no one could see his leg braces and discover he was disabled.
Continue reading...‘I heard from the ship that two bears were walking directly towards us. I told the scientists to pack up. When they said no, I showed no mercy’
In the autumn of 2019, I joined an expedition to the Arctic. We set sail from Tromsø, Norway, on 20 September, on the Polarstern icebreaker. There were 100 people on board – 60 scientists and 40 crew – but the ship was big enough that it never felt crowded. There were people you didn’t see for days.
The plan was to find the perfect ice floe to anchor to, then drift for one year through the central Arctic Ocean and the six-month long night of the Arctic winter – about which we have almost no scientific data. The study was the first time that this oceanographic, sea ice, atmospheric, ecosystem and biogeochemistry research had ever been done at this scale. On 4 October, the ship turned off its engine in order to become frozen into the sea ice. That was the last day of daylight. The days got shorter very quickly, and the darkness was intense. Mostly it was overcast. You couldn’t see the stars. You couldn’t hear anyone speak, either, because of the constant wind.
Continue reading...They set out to capture the forgotten France, the everyday architecture of emptied towns and overlooked villages – before their uniqueness is lost for ever. Eric Tabuchi and Nelly Monnier talk us through their vast photographic atlas
From the industrial north to the sun-baked south, Eric Tabuchi has spent two decades scouring the landscape of France with an obsessive eye. In 2008, the Danish-Japanese-French photographer created a beguiling series called Alphabet Truck by sneaking up on 26 different articulated lorries on the move and photographing the single giant letter adorning each one’s rear, from A to Z. In 2017, he made Atlas of Forms, a 256-page guide to all the shapes, from pyramid to polygon, the world’s buildings are based on. And in 2017, he joined forces with the painter Nelly Monnier, also his partner, to create the Atlas des Régions Naturelles.
This sprawling, unwieldy multipart portrait of a nation takes as its foundation the 500-odd régions naturelles, or non-administrative areas (a bit like British counties) into which mainland France is divided. Monnier and Tabuchi are slowly making their way around the country, arriving in each area with a minimum of preconceptions. First impressions are key, the idea being to shoot a few characteristic landscapes, then to work their way up through the area’s vernacular architecture, with everything dictated by local conditions.
Continue reading...Structure compared to monolith featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey while John McCracken gallerist says object is not sculptor’s work
A giant, metal mystery slab has captured the attention of millions, as people speculate over how such a structure came to be in a remote part of southern Utah.
The object was first spotted last week by a helicopter pilot and wildlife officers who were flying above the rugged area to conduct an annual count of bighorn sheep for the state. It immediately drew comparisons to the monolith featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as inviting suggestions it could be the work of extraterrestrials.
Continue reading...Changing Rooms’ flamboyant master of maximalism has made a great living out of being himself. But is lockdown altering him? Is he suddenly dressing down, or brooding on the tragedy that marked his childhood? And does he have any decor tips for our interviewer?
If curating your surroundings for a Zoom call is an art, then Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is its maximalist master. Immersed in the dark colours of his 17th-century manor-house living room, he sits with enviable poise, one arm cocked and propped on his thigh, as though modelling for a portrait. Flanked by a medley of blue velvet and patterned cushions, the latter matching his William Morris-inspired sofa, he is lit by an assortment of lamps.
It is a stark contrast to my more modest framing – a single pine bookshelf and a large houseplant. I show him the rest of my living room: pale blue walls, a navy/charcoal sofa, a single cushion with Julianne Moore’s face, a coffee table, a few more palms and a TV unit. Britain’s best-known interior designer doesn’t spare my feelings.
Continue reading...City angered by apparent theft of bike chained to post near stencil of hula-hooping girl
A bicycle with a missing wheel accompanying a Banksy mural in Nottingham has vanished, prompting sadness and frustration in the city.
The artwork depicts a girl appearing to hula hoop with a tyre from the bike, which was chained to a nearby pole outside a beauty salon.
Continue reading...Pioneering Ndebele artist fears young people are losing a sense of their roots
One of Africa’s best-known artists has made an impassioned appeal for governments and communities across the continent to preserve their traditions and culture in the face of globalisation.
Esther Mahlangu, 85, said that she was worried young people in Africa were losing a sense of their roots.
Continue reading...Her father’s Christmas Day tradition of showing his old slides to the family inspired Panebianco’s award-winning series, which connects tender memories to the present
When US photographer Catherine Panebianco was a child, her family moved around North America a lot: by the time she entered high school she had had maybe 10 different homes – “in Pennsylvania, Georgia, a couple places in California, two places in New York…”. One constant, though, was a set of photographic slides. Her father, Glenn, a metallurgical engineer, had taken the pictures when he was a young man in Toronto during the 1950s and 60s. On Christmas Day each year, wherever they were, Glenn would lug out a hulking, prewar metal projector and set up an old slide screen. The family would then gather round, the children in pyjamas with a bag of popcorn, and listen to stories they had heard “a bazillion times”.
I wanted my hand to be in there… it links the series and I wanted my past and present to be physically linked
Continue reading...Galleries are closed due to Covid – so a group of artists have taken to displaying their work from their houses for passersby. Our writer takes to the streets
It is not a good time for art lovers. The second lockdown has closed galleries once more – I’m imagining portraits waiting moodily in the National Gallery in London to be admired again; Van Gogh’s sunflowers wilting further – and so it is not a good time for artists.
Artists Walk is an initiative that aims to improve that state of affairs. It’s a simple idea for an art trail that began as a joint endeavour between printmaker and painter Rosha Nutt, and her art marketing consultant friend Holly Collier. Those who in normal times would be exhibiting in galleries or community spaces can now place their work in the windows or surroundings of their homes for passers-by to admire. Kind of like “how much is that doggy in the window?” Except that it might be that Picasso sketch of his dachshund.
Continue reading...Australian fashion is taking notice of the country’s oldest design traditions – and we’re only just scratching the surface
Continue reading...Work features images by some of the most famous photographers of the past century
One warm June weekend 61 years ago, a scruffily bearded Argentinian on his way from Cuba to Cairo stopped over in Madrid. With almost a day to kill between flights, he did what any tourist of the time would have done: explored the city, visited a bullring, had breakfast and did a little shopping.
He was, however, no ordinary tourist. A photograph taken very early that Sunday morning shows the unmistakable figure of Che Guevara standing in boots, beret and battle fatigues, one hand hooked over his belt and the other clutching a newspaper.
Continue reading...Affectionate friendship between the two poets and artist Barrie Cooke, united by a love of fishing, revealed in a collection of correspondence that was believed lost
A “treasure trove” of unseen poems and letters by Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney and the artist Barrie Cooke has revealed the depth of a close three-way friendship that one Cambridge academic has described as a “rough, wild equivalent of the Bloomsbury group”.
Cooke, who died in 2014, was a leading expressionist artist in Ireland, and a passionate fisherman. Fellow fishing enthusiast Mark Wormald, an English fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge, came across his name while reading Hughes’s unpublished fishing diaries at the British Library. He visited Cooke in Ireland, and discovered the close friendship between the three men.
Continue reading...With the world feeling more distant than ever, photographers were this year called on to translate their vision of the new humanity into images seen through their own eyes. David LaChapelle and Steve McCurry are among those who contributed
Continue reading...Artefacts held by British Museum and other western institutions were looted by British forces in 1897
A new museum designed by Sir David Adjaye is to be built following the most extensive archaeological excavation ever undertaken in Benin City, Nigeria, raising hopes of a resolution to one of the world’s most controversial debates over looted museum artefacts.
The kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria and not to be confused with the modern-day country of Benin, was one of the most important and powerful pre-colonial states of west Africa.
Continue reading...Exhibition explores how surrealist movement influenced culture and design in 20th century
Anyone tiring of the many mundane strictures of the new normality can, in Madrid at least, escape temporarily into a world where hands serve as chairs, tables spin on bicycle wheels and horses obligingly proffer lamps from their heads.
An exhibition in the Spanish capital examines the countless ways in which the surrealist movement has influenced culture and design over the past century, from the sofa Salvador Dalí modelled on Mae West’s lips, to the music videos of Björk.
Continue reading...Sale by Christie’s in London of 2,400 vintage images ranges from the dawn of space age to the last men on the moon
Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind is on sale to the highest bidder after a private collector released a treasure trove of Nasa images from spaceflight’s golden era for auction, including the only photograph taken of the first human walking on the moon.
Related: Apollo 11: the fight for the first footprint on the moon
Continue reading...Trump-like visage grafted on to a carving in Palencia recalls earlier inept restoration
In the footsteps of the unintentionally iconic Monkey Christ, the Tintin St George, the near-fluorescent Virgin and Child– not to mention the less than sinlessly executed Immaculate Conception – comes … well, it’s hard to say.
The latest Spanish restoration effort to provoke anguished headlines and much social media snarking is, or rather, was, a carved figure adorning an ornate, early 20th-century building in the north-western city of Palencia.
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