Pornography and Motherhood

Madison Young isn't your average pornstar – she's an artist, a feminist, and a sexual educator. Young, born Tina Butcher, caused uproar when she exhibited a show, entitled Becoming Milf, at her gallery Femina Potens Art Gallery, that explored her own new found motherhood, as well as the societal myths and stereotypes of motherhood.  The above photograph caused such a controversy that some accused Young of pedophilia. "I’m brand new to motherhood.  My little girl is only eight weeks old right now.  I’m sure that sharing my life with my daughter will inspire, influence and affect my work in different ways as she gets older.  Right now, as the mother of a newborn, one of my greatest challenges is time.  I’ve always tried to balance more than is humanly possible in a day but now I have a tiny little being who needs and demands my attention 24/7.  I’ve had to really prioritize what areas of my life I need to be giving my energy to right now.  I’ll be working mostly local for at least Emma’s first year, and if I decide to take out of state or country gigs next year then it will be a family affair.  I take Emma along with me whenever I can, such as to university speaking engagements and to the art gallery, and Daddy watches Emma during the more adult-oriented work experiences."

Serum Versus Venom: Zero Surplus Garb

Left: White snow camo jacket with a multi-function convertible pocket. Right: Organic white cotton shirt and vintage military mechanic pant.

Serum Versus Venom continues its pursuit of Futurecraft© by aggressively colliding vintage military fabrics and workers' garb with modern, functional designs. The utilized vintage fabrics span 90 years of global military history. "We are not looking to re-use the old fabrics for the sake of nostalgia. Rather, we are simply looking for the best fabrics on earth. These vintage fabrics were built to last and the quality is unrivaled." - David Gensler

Room Editions

Los Angeles based photographer Patrick Hoelck's solo exhibition entitled “Room Editions” will open in Los Angeles this Thursday. “Room Editions” will showcase limited edition prints that have been hand picked from Hoelck's self-published book "Polaroid Hotel". The exhibition is curated by Daniel Salin and hosted by Stephen Webster. The opening will take place on August 25th between 7pm and 10pm at 202 N Rodeo Dr. Beverly Hills, CA 90210. The show will run through September 18th at Stephen Webster's private gallery in Beverly Hills.

[Excerpt] An Interview with Bruce LaBruce

Bruce LaBruce is a filmmaker, an artist, and a pornographer, and underneath the blood soaked sheets and layers of half rotting flesh of the undead he is one of the greatest auteurs and romantics of the last few decades. I was able to ask Bruce a few questions and we talked about important topics such as his childhood in rural Canada, the alternative gay movement, sex in art, and a few of his current and upcoming projects, including his film L.A. Zombie Hardcore, a documentary on the artist himself entitled The Advocate for Fagdom by French filmmaker Angelique Bosio, and a short film involving two female to male transexuals which will premier at the Berlin Porn Festival this October.

You wrote a memoir called the reluctant pornographer – what does pornography mean to you? Well, lately I've been saying, which has sort of gotten me in trouble, because lately I've been calling myself a pornographer and saying I express solidarity with pornographers – that all pornography is art, really, because its a form of creative expression, its the mediation of reality, its made by people who use the tools of cinema, or making art, so why shouldn't it be considered art as well? There's good art and there's bad art and there's good pornography and there's bad pornography, but its all sort of an artistic expression as far as I'm concerned.

How important is sexuality in art or expressing sexuality through art? For me personally, sex has always been an engine behind my work, both in terms of representing and in terms of making it, on a personal level, but I think the sexual and the creative drives are very much linked, but on the other hand I know people who are relatively, or fairly, or completely a-sexual who have very strong artistic drives, so I don't think that's necessarily the case for everyone. Certainly with the gay movement was always based on that kind of sexual engine as well, which for me is yet another reason why, for me, the assimilation movement, which tends to be more domesticated and kind of based on ideals of monogamy borrowed from straight culture - it kind of dissipates the energy of the gay movement in my opinion. Yeah, sex is so ubiquitous in pop culture and advertising that its kind of hard to ignore it as an artist.

Do you think its more ubiquitous now than it has been? Well, I think that whats been happening in the last ten to fifteen years is that violence supplanted sex as the main driving force of popular fetish and popular advertising and certainly the media news sells violence and death in a very titillating kind of sexualized way - which is kind of creepy.

Full article and interview coming soon.....

Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

[PHOTO DIARY] Postcard from Padova

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"Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?" -- E.H.

We have finished filming and now holiday has officially begun ... I've been laying by the pool revisiting The Old Man and the Sea, as the drum of essential relaxation kicks, cloaked in reverberation.  In two daisies we will drive south to the heal, where the land smells of mafioso. Photo and text by Dustin Lynn who is in Italy shooting another short fashion film for Corto Moltedo. 

A SHOE IS BORN - GUIDI EXHIBITION

Guidi’s shoe collection is among the most coveted in the world. Tracing their origin back to the 14th century guilds of tanners and master shoemakers of Tuscany, Guidi’s shoes are the product of wisdom, tradition, and proprietary processing techniques. The ultimate result is the perfect shoe: a relic of an age which predates the paradigm of mass production and will likely outlast it. The Guidi Exhibition - "a visual journey through the handcrafted stages in the production of 988 guidi shoes," will be on view through at various galleries, boutiques, and ateliers throughout the year. The next stop will be the boutique Chegini, Wien in Vienna from September 1 to October 1.

[FAST] The Porcupine Racing Motorcycle

Rod Coleman on the AJS E95 'Porcupine' in 1954

The Bonhams Quail Lodge auction opens today in Carmel, California which presents a nice collection of rare automobiles, motorcycles and 'automobilia.' Lots include artist Frank Stella's 'Polar Coordinates' design, 1979 BMW M1 Pro-car and the pictured above Porcupine racing motorcycle - one of only four built. Bonham's Quail Lodge auction is on today August 18 and tomorrow the 19th.

GLEE Curated by Cecilia Alemani

Blum and Poe gallery in Los Angeles presents Glee, a group exhibition curated by Cecilia Alemani featuring Michele Abeles, Shannon Ebner, Sharon Hayes, Tobias Madison, Kaspar Müller, Virginia Overton, Joan Semmel, Andra Ursuta, Jakub Julian Ziolkowski. The exhibition Glee brings together artworks by nine artists from different generations, working in both America and Europe. Glee is an exhibition informed by a synthetic look; a show in which works appear coated in a shiny patina charged with a startling artificiality. Imbued in an atmosphere of joyful madness, the exhibition is agitated by a strange, at times erotic, tension. Simultaneously affected and sincere, superficial and deep, pop and rotten, the selected works share a blissful and seductive presence that can hide an incumbent sense of tragedy. Glee will be on view until August 27 at Blum and Poe.

Carlo Mollino: Un Messaggio dalla Camera Oscura

Born into a Turin architect and civil engineer’s family, Carlo Mollino studied art history and architecture and made a name for himself as a skier, racecar driver and aerobatic pilot, as an author and photo artist. Yet his international renown is primarily based on his work as a designer of furniture and exclusive interiors in the spirit of the gesamtkunstwerk – the German philosophy of total art. His organic language of forms was not least inspired by the form of the female body – as particularly evidenced by the part of his photographic work he always kept private: over 1,000 Polaroids portraying beauties of Turin’s night life in the nude in mise-en-scène settings. The pictures were part of the preparation of his “House for the warrior’s rest” (today: Casa Mollino), a villa in Turin on the Po River. An exhibition, opening at this month at the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, will juxtapose furnishings of the villa with a selection of these Polaroids for the first time. It explores the boundaries and bridges between this universal artist’s male erotic imagination and his intellectual and artistic attitude. On view at the Kunsthalle Wien from August 31 to September 25.

No Thoughts Zine

Thanks to Portland, Oregon's MICHAEL DEMEO & ALYSSA NOCHES for sending over their current issue of the NO THOUGHTS ZINE which I received in the mail.  With a clean, 'fuck-you-do-it-yourself' attitude, their sixth issue of No Thoughts actually gives me lots of thoughts – none of them pure.  Limited to 250 copies, Demeo and Noches curates a "series on sensuality and nudity, presenting an elegant yet unpretentious collection that celebrates the human form" with photographers all over the globe. www.nothoughtszine.com