Artist Annalee Davis was walking in fields once used for sugarcane in her Barbados homeland when she spotted unfamiliar plants. “I was taught to see them as weeds but now I understand their value offering biodiversity to exhausted land and their historical use in bush medicine.” Davis started pressing and using specially mixed Victorian paint to draw these plants on old plantation ledger pages. Colonialism wiped out Barbados’s biodiversity in the 17th century by replacing local vegetation with the monoculture of intensively farmed fields of sugarcane, but wild plants are proliferating again. The series is now on show at Haarlem Artspace, Derbyshire, until 11 October as part of re:rural. “I want to use the plants to learn to listen to the land in another way and acknowledge its trauma,” she says.
Category Archives: Art and design
Banksy’s Monet tribute to go on sale for up to £5m
Tribute that adds abandoned shopping trollies to the impressionist image of water lilies to be sold at Sotheby’s auction
Street artist Banksy’s version of Claude Monet’s impressionist masterpiece will go on sale at Sotheby’s London gallery for an estimated £3-5m.
The painting, called Show me the Monet, was created in 2005. It is framed around Monet’s famous water lilies picture but is filled with jarring images of upside-down shopping trolleys and a traffic cone bobbing in the water.
Continue reading...Dazzling makeover of 90-year-old Spanish lighthouse divides opinion
Infinite Cantabria by Okuda San Miguel is a riot of colours, geometric shapes and animals
A 90-year-old lighthouse perched on a lush cape in northern Spain is at the centre of a cultural row after a dazzling paint job by a local artist left the tower outshining its lamp – and some critics blanching.
For almost a century, the lighthouse, near the Cantabrian town of Ajo, was a mute, monochrome sentry beaming its light out over the Atlantic.
Continue reading...Terence Conran, designer, retailer and restaurateur, dies aged 88
Family pay tribute to Habitat founder as ‘visionary who revolutionised the way we live in Britain’
Sir Terence Conran, the man who dragged Britain’s front rooms and parlours into the modern age almost single-handed, has died at the age of 88, his family has announced.
A designer, retailer and restaurateur who founded Habitat in 1964, Conran was at the centre of an aesthetic revolution that established England, and London in particular, as a European creative powerhouse.
Continue reading...Auf wiedersehen, techno: Berlin’s banging Berghain club reborn as a gallery
With nightlife in limbo due to Covid-19, the legendary temple of techno has reinvented itself as art gallery – with works by Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Wolfgang Tillmans and more
Inside a disused power station in east Berlin, a red-and-white buoy is bobbing mid-air, swooping six metres up and six metres down in rhythm to imaginary waves. The artist who had the idea to hang it there, Julius von Bismarck, has connected an automated pulley system via sensors to a real buoy in the Atlantic Ocean, mirroring its movements.
Usually, the waves crashing over the heads of visitors to these halls are made of sound, pumped out of a custom-built PA that many dance music connoisseurs consider the finest in the world: this is Berghain, Berlin’s mythical temple of bassy industrial techno.
Continue reading...On the frontline against Covid-19 in Ethiopia – a photo essay
Yonas Tadesse is an Ethiopian photographer based in Addis Ababa who has been documenting doctors and emergency workers fighting coronavirus since the beginning of the outbreak. This series focuses on the taskforce at the Eka Kotebe hospital in Addis Ababa
The first case of Covid-19 in Ethiopia was reported on 13 March, when a team of first responders took in a 48-year-old Japanese man. Having never seen anything like his condition, they did not know what to prepare for, and thus started their new normal of battling the coronavirus in Ethiopia.
Doctors, nurses, janitors, security guards and drivers donned hats they had never dreamed of wearing as they worked to develop systems and techniques to minimise the damage from the virus – often at the cost of their health, their home lives, their reputations, and sometimes their lives.
Continue reading...Portrait of a mentor: ‘granddaddy’ of National Art School campus finds himself the subject
Papua New Guinean student Lesley Wengembo has painted campus assistant Mal Nagobi for Australia’s famous Archibald prize
Alongside Malachi Nagobi, progress across the august grounds of the National Art School in Sydney is constantly – happily – impeded.
“Mal!” comes a voice, “hello Mal,” another. Every handful of steps, another person wants to stop to chat.
Continue reading...Bamboo airports and psychedelic oil refineries: Richard Rogers’ thrilling legacy
The visionary architect behind some of the world’s favourite landmarks – and some of its most expensive housing – is hanging up his pencil. Our critic assesses his impact
Richard Rogers has never been the retiring type. He made his name with buildings that exploded their inner workings on to their outsides, dressing galleries and offices with rainbow symphonies of ducts and pipes. He became known for an equally colourful neon wardrobe, along with his love of public debate and bon viveur lifestyle. Now it seems the time has come for the 87-year-old architect to hang up his pencil: he is formally stepping down from the practice he founded more than 40 years ago.
Not that the pencil was ever Rogers’ favoured tool. He has always been, by his own admission, a terrible draughtsman, and he is dyslexic. He prefers to talk, ideally over a glass of wine and good Italian food. A tutor’s report from 1958 concluded: “His designs will continue to suffer while his drawing is so bad, his method of work so chaotic and his critical judgment so inarticulate.” Yet in his four decades in practice, and as an advisor to government, Lord Rogers of Riverside has probably influenced the face of urban Britain more than any other architect of the late 20th century.
Continue reading...‘Fake’ Rembrandt came from artist’s workshop and is possibly genuine
Head of a Bearded Man revealed to be from same wood panel used for Rembrandt’s Andromeda
A tiny painting of a weary, melancholic old man long rejected as a fake and consigned to a museum basement has been revealed as one from Rembrandt’s workshop, and possibly by the man himself.
The Ashmolean museum in Oxford will this week put on display Head of a Bearded Man (c 1630) which was bequeathed to it in 1951 as a Rembrandt panel. In 1981, it was rejected by the Rembrandt Research Project, the world’s leading authority on the artist that effectively has a final say on attributions.
Continue reading...Banksy funds refugee rescue boat operating in Mediterranean
Exclusive: UK artist finances bright pink motor yacht that set sail in secrecy to avoid being intercepted by authorities
The British street artist Banksy has financed a boat to rescue refugees attempting to reach Europe from north Africa, the Guardian can reveal.
The vessel, named Louise Michel after a French feminist anarchist, set off in secrecy on 18 August from the Spanish seaport of Burriana, near Valencia, and is now in the central Mediterranean where on Thursday it rescued 89 people in distress, including 14 women and four children.
Continue reading...Treble Dutch: £13m old master painting stolen for a third time
Two Laughing Boys by Frans Hals seized in overnight raid at museum
It’s nothing to smile about for lovers of Dutch art. Police have reported that Two Laughing Boyswith a Mug of Beer, by the old master Frans Hals, has been stolen for a third time.
The Golden Age work, painted in 1626-7, was snatched from a small museum in the town of Leerdam, near the city of Utrecht, early on Wednesday morning.
Continue reading...Palestinians stage surprise ‘thank you’ event for Banksy in Bethlehem
Photographs of works go on display in Manger Square to celebrate British street artist’s contribution to diversifying tourism
Photographs of 20 pieces of Banksy’s artwork in Palestine have been displayed in the centre of Bethlehem as a thank you to the anonymous British street artist for helping diversify tourism in the city.
The images were collated by Palestinian photographers for the surprise exhibition in Manger Square.
Continue reading...Hunt is on for rightful owner of Nazi-looted French painting
Sign hangs next to Nicolas Rousseau artwork in Verdun asking public for information
A 19th-century oil painting stolen from Nazi-occupied France during the second world war has gone on display in an attempt to trace its rightful owners, after being returned by the son of the German soldier who was ordered to take it.
After 76 years in Germany, the small untitled artwork by the French painter Nicolas Rousseau is back in France and being exhibited at the World Centre for Peace, Liberty and Human Rights in the north-eastern town of Verdun.
Continue reading...La Caravana del Diablo: a migrant caravan in Mexico – photo essay
Photojournalist Ada Luisa Trillo has won the Guardian’s Portfolio Review award at Format photography festival this year. Her powerful piece of work on the migrant caravan follows the people who left Central American countries to reach the US
In January 2020, fleeing violence and poor economic conditions, a group of Hondurans organised a huge migrant caravan that travelled through Guatemala into Mexico. After travelling for eight days, the caravan crossed the Suchiate River into Mexico and were met by the recently established Guardia Nacional composed of former federal, military and naval police.
Continue reading...My father, Picasso: secret daughter tells of posing in pink bootees
A book of family memories paints the artist as doting dad, rather than the callous, ageing womaniser depicted by others
Pablo Picasso was still married to the former ballerina Olga Khokhlova when he became captivated by a 17-year-old girl outside the Galeries Lafayette in Paris in 1927.
He was 28 years her senior, but Marie-Thérèse Walter soon became his muse for voluptuous portraits and gave birth to his daughter before he moved on to the next of his many relationships, with Dora Maar, the surrealist photographer and painter.
Continue reading...Magnum reviewing archive as concerns raised about images of child sexual exploitation
Agency to review historical photographs after issue raised on website and social media
Magnum Photos, one of the world’s most celebrated photographic agencies, is to re-examine the content of its archive of more than 1 million images after accusations it made available photographs that critics said may show the sexual exploitation of minors.
In a statement, the president of Magnum, Olivia Arthur, said the agency, whose founders included Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, had begun an “in-depth internal review to make sure that we fully understand the implications of the work in the archive, both in terms of imagery and context.
Continue reading...Berlin nightclub Berghain opens to all for lockdown art exhibition
Visitors can view work by likes of Olafur Eliasson and Tacita Dean and take guided tours of venue
Berlin’s legendary Berghain nightclub will relax its notoriously strict door policy for art lovers from next month as the venue turns into a gallery while the German capital’s nightlife remains on hold because of the pandemic.
Berghain, housed in an old power plant on the border between the Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg districts, will from 9 September show works produced during the Covid-19 lockdown by 85 Berlin-based artists, including established figures such as Olafur Eliasson, Tacita Dean and Wolfgang Tillmans and younger names such as Shirin Sabahi, Christine Sun Kim and Sandra Mujinga.
Continue reading...Looted landmarks: how Notre-Dame, Big Ben and St Mark’s were stolen from the east
They are beacons of western civilisation. But, says an explosive new book, the designs of Europe’s greatest buildings were plundered from the Islamic world – twin towers, rose windows, vaulted ceilings and all
As Notre-Dame cathedral was engulfed by flames last year, thousands bewailed the loss of this great beacon of western civilisation. The ultimate symbol of French cultural identity, the very heart of the nation, was going up in smoke. But Middle East expert Diana Darke was having different thoughts. She knew that the origins of this majestic gothic pile lay not in the pure annals of European Christian history, as many have always assumed, but in the mountainous deserts of Syria, in a village just west of Aleppo to be precise.
“Notre-Dame’s architectural design, like all gothic cathedrals in Europe, comes directly from Syria’s Qalb Lozeh fifth-century church,” Darke tweeted on the morning of 16 April, as the dust was still settling in Paris. “Crusaders brought the ‘twin tower flanking the rose window’ concept back to Europe in the 12th century.”
Continue reading...Imperial War Museum unveils film marking 75 years since Hiroshima bomb
Video by Es Devlin and Machiko Weston tells story of nuclear bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
A powerful 10-minute video artwork marking the 75th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been released by the Imperial War Museum in London.
The museum commissioned stage designers Es Devlin, who is British, and Machiko Weston, who is Japanese, to make the piece, which tells the stories and explores the impact of the bombings from different perspectives.
Continue reading...Tate removes reference to ‘amusing’ restaurant after racist images in mural draw anger
Exclusive: gallery removes reference to venue as ‘most amusing room in Europe’ as calls grow for artwork’s removal
Tate Britain has removed a reference to its restaurant as “the most amusing room in Europe” after complaints about racist depictions in a 1920s mural.
The Rex Whistler restaurant is covered floor to ceiling in a specially commissioned mural by the eponymous British artist titled The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, which depicts the enslavement of a black child and the distress of his mother. It also shows the boy running behind a horse and cart which he is attached to by a chain around his neck.
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