Kimono Motifs, Midnight Rides, Jōmon Pots, and Sublime Silence
Art is a great talking point. Why not start a conversation by forwarding this newsletter to someone you know who shares your love of art? And, again, we have included ‘Friends Links’ so if you forward this to a non-subscriber, they can enjoy it just as much as anyone.
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Announcing the May exhibition at : six : shot : gallery
Theyla Cathbert on ‘Forever Ephemera’:
Flowers are beautiful. Most of us can agree on that. Even if we suffer from hayfever. Yet they are often very brief. Some lasting only a day or less, then they disappear. Nature that brought them before our eyes takes them back and saves their substance for the next time. Their beauty is transient and rots away, back into the environment. Not so all that plastic packaging that cannot be recycled. It goes into a big mass grave called a landfill…
Continue reading and see the art at : six : shot : gallery
Recently ‘Boosted’ in Signifier:
Reborn in Fire: Jōmon Pottery
Eurocentric art history often focuses on the beauty of Greek pottery, so I have only recently discovered the astounding ceramics of the Jōmon culture of Japan, which easily rivals the skill of Greek potters but uses very different forms. The Jōmon culture flourished in Northeast Japan over 15,000 years ago and endured for around 10,000 years — contemporaries of the Stone Age people in Britain who created Stonehenge…
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Beyond the American Gothic
I just experienced an incredible Aha moment. Two events that happened years apart unexpectedly collided in front of me and I was astonished by the depth of my ignorance. See that odd couple in the photo above? The ones at the farm, not the naked women frolicking on the grass. They may even seem familiar. Let me explain…
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Kimono is Our Language
People often compliment me when I wear a kimono in any country. I am happy and grateful that Japanese traditional culture is favoured around the world. In particular, I often hear comments such as “I love the colours” and “Kimono is elegant.” With a quick glance, many people notice the beauty of the colours, their shapes and forms. However, there’s so much more to kimono. This article will explore some of the meanings to be found in the patterns used and how kimono wearers communicate with others…
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Popular Signifier
Spotlight on one of our most popular or trending articles…
Daleks! Monsters of 1960s Pop Art
The Daleks would be in my Top 10 works of art, regardless of whether they are art or not! Created by Terry Nation and Raymond Cusick, they’re a true cultural icon of the 1960s and have continued to confirm this status ever since, officially becoming part of the English language (see the Oxford Dictionary). I am also cheating, sort of, because by citing the Daleks as one of my favourite pieces of ‘art’, then by association, I also get Doctor Who…
The Signifier : six : shot : gallery global freeview!
There’s something for everyone among our showcases of contemporary art, illustration, photography… So, please, spread the word and share the link to the freeview archive page far and wide through you SNS channels to support the artists who have exhibited with us so far…. your friends won’t run up against a paywall and we hope this will help further promote and support our exhibiting artists and their work.
The Signifier : six : shot : gallery officially launched for January 2021 and every calendar month since has hosted an artist’s showcase of just six images linked by aesthetics, techniques, processes, philosophies, formal or conceptual elements. Some of those exhibiting with us are already well-established, internationally renowned artists, others are fresh ‘emergent’ talents, and some have gone on to win major accolades since featuring.
Go to the global freeview page and see the art at : six : shot : gallery
ICYMI: from the archives of Signifier
In this regular feature of our Signified Newsletter, we select a few articles from our archives linked by a monthly theme. Here are three articles from our early years that ‘need some love’ and may have been overlooked…
Road to Nowhere: ‘Spiral Jetty’ by Robert Smithson
A single track ‘road’ spirals some 1500 feet out into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. It was constructed from black basalt and aggregate, using earth movers and road-building techniques and stood dark and stark against the waters until it repeatedly submerged and resurfaced with deeper precipitations of bright white salt crystals each time. Now, whenever it appears above water, in years of low rainfall, there is very little black left to show — it looks like…
The Art of Weaving Past into Future
Perhaps Hosteen Klah wouldn’t have thought of himself as an artist. He was a skilled singer of traditional healing songs, practitioner of herbal medicine, maker of ceremonial sand paintings — a great shaman. He was also expert in various Navajo weaving techniques. In fact, it seemed he mastered anything he turned his ambidextrous hands to. Klah first drew wider public attention when he demonstrated traditional sand-painting…
Out of the Blue
Yves Klein had been working with canvases of a single colour since the early 1950s and in 1957, as part of a solo exhibition he titled, Proposte Monocrome, Epoca Blu / Monochrome Proposition, Blue Epoch, he presented eleven canvases painted a uniform vivid blue. They were hung unframed and suspended on wires away from the gallery wall so they appeared to hover in the air. He stated an intention to produce “invisible paintings”, where the canvas disappears behind the colour…
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…and, if you know anyone who enjoys reading “imaginative fiction at its best”, you can further support our editor and curator by recommending or purchasing their latest novels in the series, This, That, and The Other, written by Remy Dean with Zel Cariad and published by The Red Sparrow Press.
“Bursting at the seams with magic!”
“…will be enjoyed by fans of fantasy of all ages, particularly those who like classics, like the ‘Narnia’ saga.”
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