Fresh from Oslo Fashion Week, a fashion film, directed by Marie Kristiansen, for Oslo based designer Fam Irvolla, who hit the runway yesterday with a new collection. Fam Irvolla, who graduated from Central St. Martins in 2008 and has worked with the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Gareth Pugh, is "very much inspired by Alice in Wonderland, cartoons, toys, food, cakes and candy."
Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona acquires the archives of Jack Welpott.
A handwritten joke by artist Richard Prince.
Published by Ooga Booga, Fruits and Nuts is a handmade board book by Laura Owens that takes its title from a play on the joke about California being full of fruits and nuts. The pages of each book are hand-glued with actual newsprint from different Californian 1960s newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle, Berkeley Barb, and Los Angeles Times, and then silkscreened, making each book truly unique. Inside pages are screenprinted with an illustrated alphabet of fruits and nuts. Covers are hand-painted by the artist, and vary in color. Each copy is entirely handmade and features different original newsprint on each page. Wednesday night, Feb 8th, 7-9pm, at the Ooga Booga store on Tu Bishvat (the Jewish holiday of fruits and nuts) will be a celebration of the publication of Fruits & Nuts. Copies of the book will be available for viewing and purchase, the artist will be present, and refreshments (champagne, California-grown fruits and nuts, etc.) will be provided. Ooga Booga, 943 N. Broadway #203, Los Angeles CA 90012
Christopher Lusher of Hillbilly Magazine sent over a link to a fascinating project – a collection of photographs he found in the garbage by a mysterious photographer named Marty Mannington – all beautifully scanned and presented on a tumblr platform giving a unique, albeit posthumous, narrative to a life that would otherwise remain anonymous. Lusher: "This is a collection of photos I found in my garbage one day in a large, baby blue suitcase. The only thing held within was photo album after photo album. A narrative ran through all of the photos from various stages of Mrs. Manningtons life. The final and most recent photos show an ill Mrs. Mannington in her hospital bed and thats where the narrative ends. I am presenting these photos here as a platform for someone who clearly enjoyed photography and am offering a chance for the passed to speak. They are presented without titles or information as to give the viewer more of a dynamic, spontaneous and perhaps haunting experience. Music is added to enrich the feeling and mood of the photos." Visit Marty Mannington's strange world.
A detail of Diana Thater's The Future Was An Illusion, 1997, a new acquisition by the MOCA Los Angeles.
Todd Hido at Stephen Wirtz, San Francisco. Photo by Austin McManus.
6 months and 13 days, Threw my heart out the window Cause the truth is scary, The future even more, so I Pick up a bottle- Hello old friend- Let’s take off to the moon. It’s a place inhabited by Beautiful men, music, Cigarettes, French films, Laughter, moaning, mumbling Giggles of the idiots, Insomniacs, and finite dimensions Of conversation- your name, your age, Your day, your sign- how are you? I’m fine. Baby, come with me, To my crater on the north side of the moon. I’ve got a rotating bed and a hot tub. It feels good to be loved, no, Desired- to have complete control. I listen instead of speak, and no one asks me questions. I find myself in front of mirrors, talking, philosophizing, kissing, Making love With imaginary man/men. I see their faces, but I won’t say for Fear I’ll jinx the possibility Of true love. Boy, What a cliché. A 20 year old mystery woman, she Dances alone (if you see her call Craig) at 1-3-OOOOO Oh my god, The Earth looks so beautiful from here, So empty, so peaceful. I could live there, when I retire. I could live there when the party’s over. I could live there with--I won’t jinx it, For fear I’ll die alone. I could live there when I remember Where the hell I dropped my heart. From a city window somewhere, long ago. Don’t remember what city. If you see it, call me. It’s red, and small, and I hope it’s still beating.
Stay tuned to Pas Un Autre every Sunday for a new poem Nina Ljeti.
Self portrait by Adarsha Benjamin in Los Angeles
"A stellar girl, a radiant girl who clutches onto the moon and arrives in an unknown land, on unmarred ground, as immaculate as her white ensemble. Is this the end of reality, the beginning of a dream?" The new Vanessa Bruno fashion film directed by Stephanie Di Giusto starring Kate Bosworth.
Photograph by Adarsha Benjamin
From artist Richard Prince's Girlfriend series. One of the greatest contemporary artists.
As the release date inches closer for the highly anticipated adaptation of that Mona Lisa of American literature The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and and Carry Mulligan, I can tell we'll be hearing a lot about the Fitzgeralds this year. The world that F Scott. Fitzgerald brought to the page was one contradictory to our current times, but perhaps because of our times there is a shred of vicarity to the whole thing. Now, from F. Scott and his wife Zelda, like an upper-crust version Bonnie & Clyde, comes the reprint of a story F. Scott once wrote for Motor magazine called The Cruise of the Rolling Junk. In an early series of journalistic pieces for Motor magazine, F. Scott Fitzgerald described a journey he took with his wife Zelda from Connecticut to Alabama in a clapped out automobile which he called the "Rolling Junk." It is a piece of writing whose style, in free-ranging alternation of fact and fiction, has been compared to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. This book collects together the articles as one text, illustrated with the original illustrations of Fitzgerald, Zelda, and the "Junk." You can purchase the book here.
Spanish designer María Escoté presents her Winter 2012/2013 collection, entitled Shock, with a wonderfully strange fashion film directed by Nacho Naya and by starring actress Miriam Giovanelli, and Sugar Shack by Children of Darkness.
Pictured above, Abbey Meaker photographs a piece by Mike Kelley at Art Basel Miami last December. Mike Kelley, who has reportedly ended his own life at 57 years old, was an artist with an outsider spirit who found himself not only on the inside of the art world, but on the top, and found it too hard a cross to bear. Kelley's work involved found objects, textile banners, drawings, assemblage, collage, performance and video. He often worked collaboratively and had done projects with artists Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler and John Miller. Kelley was often associated with the concept of abjection, "the state of being cast off." Photograph by Natalia Vuley.
Maybe its her haunting refrains - no death can tear us apart – or maybe its her spiritually profound lyrics, but I'm almost certain her music can only come from a soul that has traveled a myriad universes, and loved and lost a myriad times, only to resurface, like a wave from an opposite and infinite shore, through the voice of Mirel Wagner. Wagner, who was born in Ethiopia and grew up in Espoo, Finland, has certainly been to the crossroads. At 7, Wagner, who's record label biography alludes to the fact that her family name goes back the famous composer, was given violin lessons, and at 16 she was already writing songs and shyly performing them at open mics nights in Helsinki. She was subsequently discovered by Jean Ramsay, an American music journalist living in Finland who was impressed by her talent, and the next thing she knew she was recording an album. The recordings, financed by photographer and friend of Ramsay, Aki Roukala, were completed over two days, 12 songs straight – 9 of which can be found on her upcoming debut album which was recently released in Europe on Bone Voyage Recordings, and will see its American release this March 27 on Friendly Fire Records. One of those tracks, No Death, is a tragic murder ballad in the same vein as Leadbelly's In The Pines or Townes Van Zandt's Waitin' Around to Die. It is a song about love and tragedy, but tragedy with a brilliant and dark solution. Only when you listen closer do you realize that it is a song about necromancy and never has fucking the dead seemed so romantic: well its gonna get colder/ but my love will ignite/ what was left to smoulder/ I move my hips/ in her I am home/ I’ll keep on loving/ till the marrow dries from her bones. But maybe its the dead that will love us the most – without controversy and without conditions – no death can tear us apart.
Pioneering photographer, Eve Arnold, who died last month, age 99, is the subject of a memorial exhibition of her work, mounted in London, her adoptive home. Art Sensus will present over 100 unique photographs and a new book of the work of American photographer Eve Arnold (1912-2012). Curated by Brigitte Lardinois, All About Eve will offer a spectrum of incredible works, both vintage and modern, all drawn from Arnold’s personal archive. The only solo exhibition to feature Arnold’s work in the UK this year thus far All About Eve has been selected from a private collection, which also loaned some of the prints for the book. Of the works in the book, almost half have been little exhibited and rarely published, if at all. The book, published by Thames & Hudson, entitled Eve Arnold's People, includes texts by Angelica Huston and Isabella Rossellini, but is currently completely sold out and not available for purchase. All About Eve will be on view at Art Sensus March 2 through April 27, 2012, 7 Howick Place, London.
Photograph by Hedi Slimane, London
A new book, entitled Francesca Woodman: The Roman Years Between Skin and Film (Contrasto), takes a new look at the life and work of Francesca Woodman through a fresh analysis of the photographs and writings from her Roman sojourn. A precocious artist and a figure caught between two cultures –American and Italian– Francesca Woodman reached the acme of her artistic parable in Rome, where she fully defined her aesthetic and stylistic sensibilities. The book is available here.
Art by Daniel B. SierraAmerican composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist John Cage, who died in 1992, would have been 100 this year and there are a slew of events to celebrate the centenary – including EVERYDAYJOHNCAGE in the city of Rimini, Italy where every single day of 2012 from January 1st to December 31st a viral system distributes publicly and privately, fragments and materials related to John Cage, and an exhibition entitled Things Not Seen Before: A Tribute to John Cage, a visual art exhibition at Tempus Projects, organized by Independent Curator Jade Dellinger. Inspired by a line from a letter the curator (as a student – in the late 1980’s) received from the late, great composer concerning the work of Marcel Duchamp, Cage noted: “I am not interested in the names of movements but rather in seeing and making things not seen before.” Visit www.johncage.org to see all events.