Swindon Paint FestA town’s second annual paint festival has seen local street artists paint large murals to transform its streets.
Swindon Paint Fest was founded in 2022 and aims to revive the area’s street art scene.
Over 50 artists and six headliner artists travelled from the US, Spain and Ireland to be part of the festival.
Alongside the seven large murals, the paint fest also included live painting, an art market, exhibitions, workshops, and street dancers.
Back in the 1980s, Swindon became the murals capital of the UK as the town boasted over 40 murals.
Only Ken White’s 1976 Golden Lion Bridge and Sarah Faulkner’s 1985 Arkells Brewery are left from that time and the fest hopes to revive the street art scene in Swindon.
Co-organiser Caryn Koh said: “We want to enhance the town and to provide a platform for artists.”
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Bags of cow dung are thrown at the Thai architect Duangrit Bunnag at the Mirror gallery in response to developments in Thai politics. Duangrit invited the public to watch him keep his promise after he tweeted: ‘If the Pheu Thai party joins hands with the Palang Pracharath party, I will allow people to throw shit at my head’
Photograph: Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP/Getty Images
Tom Battista spent summers on the road with the iconic musician who brought those chasing the laidback lifestyle together.
INDIANAPOLIS — Fans around the world are mourning the loss of the legendary singer/songwriter, Jimmy Buffett, who died at the age of 76 Friday.
Buffett’s long-time stage manager is an Indy native and is is now reflecting and paying tribute to the legend’s life and legacy… with nothing better than an ice-cold frozen concoction.
“I’m gonna bury myself in margaritas. You know,” said Tom Battista.
Battista, also the owner of Kan Kan Cinema and Restaurant, spent summers on the road with the iconic musician who brought those chasing the laidback lifestyle together.
“Jimmy had such a great life and he spread joy everywhere he went,” Battista said.
He got to know the man behind all the beach bum anthems and travel the world with a close friend, granted, Battista usually couldn’t remember the words to his songs.
“He always made fun of me because I couldn’t repeat the lyrics if I had to,” Battista said.
Regardless, he saw how the music Buffett made effected people. Battista also says the legendary artist was just as down-to-earth backstage as he was onstage.
“He at dinner with us every night. He wasn’t a ‘Prima Donna’,” Battista said. “His legacy is have a good time you know, be honest, work hard, and play hard, and that’s what he did… he played hard,” Battista said.
There is one specific show the stage manager will never forget at the Naval Academy when the power went out.
“Jimmy says ‘give me an acoustic guitar,’ and he went down, sat on the edge of the stage and did a sing-a-long,” Battista said. “One of the people threw this [his hat] up onstage so I kept it. All of those midshipmen, they’re all gonna remember it for the rest of their lives.”
While it is hard for him to say goodbye, Battista is happy to reflect on the person Buffett was.
“It’s hard, but god, what a great guy,” Battista said.
Buffett had been battling a rare form of skin cancer over the course of his career, which he sold more than 20 million albums.
He had built more than just a music presence, Buffett also created restaurants, books, beers and even a Broadway show.
The beauty of being a professional photographer is that you have the freedom to pursue what you love on your own terms. However, with that comes arguably its biggest drawback: the loss of guaranteed steady income and financial security. Every freelance photographer goes through lulls, and it is important to expect them and to know how to get through them. This great video essay features a professional photographer discussing the issue and offering some helpful advice.
Coming to you from Samuel Elkins, this excellent video essay discusses the issue of lulls as a professional photographer and how to weather them. No doubt, it is important to take a very pragmatic approach to this and budget for these times, but there is also the mental side of it. It can be easy to become anxious and discouraged by these lulls, and while it is important to be realistic about your abilities and chances of professional success, you also need to understand that professional work often ebbs and flows. In fact, this can be a great time to explore personal projects to build your portfolio and expand your creative palette so you’re ready when the clients start to flow again. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Elkins.
An artist from Italy has opened a gallery, pop-up shop and art space in Old Market.
L’étoile Studio on West Street will play host to creative courses, a monthly arts and crafts market and an exhibition space, aiming to give a voice to underrepresented artists in our city.
The space is the brainchild of Marta Isabella Reina (@mireinart), a visual artist and art tutor whose work is inspired by folklore, mythology, religion and magic.
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Reina, who grew up near Milan and now lives in St Paul’s, said she wanted to offer “a space that combines art and crafts with spirituality and wellbeing”.
Reina’s studio has hosted art classes earlier in 2023 but in September the space will officially open to the public with an exhibition towards the end of the month
“I could have thought about having the space for myself only or turning it into a shop or a gallery, but I love to connect people and want to share the studio with people and artists, to give them a platform,” the former graphic designer, researcher, associate lecturer and teaching assistant told Bristol24/7.
“There are a lot of arts and crafts shops in Bristol but I always see the same items.
“I’m not criticising this, but there are so many people who don’t have a space to sell their wares so I hope L’toile will help this.”
Reina arrived in Bristol six years ago and became inspired to pursue her creativity.
She said: “I noticed Bristol has a kind of creative artistic vibe which really motivated me me. I was in a good career as a researcher, but I was suffering as I couldn’t express my creativity much.”
“The idea now is to dedicate myself completely to the art as a tutor and manager of the space.”
It was during the pandemic that Reina’s art began focussing on folklore, mythology, religion and magic
The name of the studio, L’étoile, translates to star from French and comes from Reina’s passion for tarot.
Reina explained: “A lot of the iconography of the tarot can been seen in Italy in churches, buildings and frescos – everywhere – so I was pulled by the symbolism of the cards.”
“L’étoile can be seen on one of the cards which shows a woman who is throwing water into water: the archetype of the giver.”
“Like the card, I wanted L’étoile Studio to make people feel good and free.
“The idea is also to create a constellation so people who come together here work as a connected force in harmony.”
The studio is found at 18 West Street
Courses planned for autumn include creativity Creative Flow Club by Elly Hopkins, Tarot Reading Course and Vintage Still Life Drawing by Reina and Make a Macramé Landscape Tapestry by Aggy.
The next market dates for L’étoile’s pop-up shop are September 9 to 10, October 14 to 15 and November 11 to 12.
In the gallery, Reina is organising an illustration exhibition by local artists on the last weekend of September. An application form for artists who would like to exhibit their work can be found here.
The venue’s first solo-exhibition will take place from the November 23 to 26 and is called Black Paintings: Post-Pandemic Collage and Mixed Media by Ergo Phizmiz.
For a full list of events taking place at L’étoile Studio, visit www.letoilestudio.com
All photos: Betty Woolerton
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“There is little required from you other than an engagement with art and guests, sunbathe, gossip and swim.” So read the itinerary sent to guests attending the annual summer meetings at the Hydra home of the British collector and patron Pauline Karpidas, who hosted the gatherings one weekend every July from 1996 until 2017.
The so-called workshops were, according to Sotheby’s European chairman Oliver Barker, a “who’s who of the contemporary art world at any given time”. Or, as Tate’s Gregoir Muir once put it, “a form of Annual General Meeting”.
Over the years, curators and museum directors such as Maria Balshaw, Nicholas Cullinan, Beatrix Ruff and Tim Marlow have attended, but, at the heart of the meetings were the artists whom Karpidas had collected and whose works adorned the family’s Hydra getaway, renovated under the eye of the French designer Jacques Grange. They included Jeff Koons, John Currin, Chris Ofili, Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas, Richard Prince, Urs Fischer and Nate Lowman.
The art world great and the good would visit the Karpidas family Hydra home every summer for a weekend of workshops and gossip. The house was sold earlier this year
Hydra became “this melting pot between great collectors and the young avant-garde”, says Barker, who was among those present at the last meeting in 2017. “It felt very edgy at the time. And I think the fact that it was not happening in a cultural hotspot, like London or New York also added frisson to it. Other art world luminaries with homes on the island include the American artist Brice Marden and the Austrian dealer Thaddaeus Ropac.
Now Sotheby’s is selling around 300 pieces from Karpidas’s Hydra collection, estimated to fetch more than €11m across two sales in Paris on 30 and 31 October. Her entire collection is thought to be worth several hundred million.
Karpidas grew up in a working-class family in Manchester. She initially went to secretarial college, but ended up setting up a small clothes shop in Athens in the 1970s. It was there she met her late husband, the Greek construction magnate Constantinos Karpidas, whose collection was more traditional and included a small group of Renoirs. With the help of the late Greek-American dealer Alexander Iolas, who is credited with discovering Andy Warhol, Karpidas began to acquire contemporary art in the early 1990s, having collected and studied Impressionist, Modern and particularly Surrealist artists. “Iolas pretty much came out of retirement to help Pauline build the collection,” Barker says.
Iolas also introduced Karpidas to the LeLannes, whom Karpidas and her husband regularly visited at their Ury home and studio, outside of Paris. “Pauline was there at the very beginning when the LeLannes didn’t have patrons, they weren’t even perceived to be artists,” Barker says. He notes a revival in today’s market for design pieces—“there’s much less distinction between contemporary art and contemporary design; design is no longer this quietly nerdy collector category”, he adds. In total, Sotheby’s is offering nine works by the LeLannes in its evening sale, with the most expensive, by Claude Lelanne—Très Grand Choupatte (2008) expected to fetch between €1m and €1.5m.
Barker acknowledges that Brexit has had an impact on business, though the decision to sell the collection in Paris and not London was chiefly down to the LeLannes’ market being unequivocally located in the French capital. “These days it’s almost immaterial where we sell; it’s no secret that these works are coming from Greece and they are going to another EU country, so, yes, it’s fairly easy logistically.” Though, with only donkeys for transport on Hydra, moving the works to Paris has been no mean feat—“ironically probably harder than Brexit”, Barker quips.
When it comes to the contemporary art in Karpidas’s collection, Sadie Coles has been pivotal. The London dealer has supported the collector’s acquisition of younger artists; as Coles puts it: though buying artists at the start of their careers is “more high risk than blue-chip options […] it gives her pleasure and stimulation, and she is extremely savvy about the choices she makes”.
Indeed, Karpidas was often the first to acquire works by many of the artists she collects. As Barker says: “She would be the first to admit that she didn’t necessarily have the financial means to buy Koons when he was a $10m artist but she could when he was a $1m or $2m dollar artist.”
Karpidas was an early champion of the YBAs. In 1997, for her second ever Hydra gathering, she hosted a mini-YBA show. Barker notes how Karpidas and one or two others including Janet de Botton “had ringside seats to what was going on in London in the early 1990s”. He adds: “Many of the artists really sought her out; Damian [Hirst] probably spearheaded this. They knew the principal collectors at the time and made a beeline for them to come and see their shows.”
Among the works being sold at Sotheby’s evening sale are Damien Hirst’s Wretched War (2004; est. €100,000-€150,000); while a work on paper by Tracey Emin (approximate est. $4,000-$6,000) and four photographic works by Sarah Lucas (approximate estimates range from $5,000 to $9,000) are in the day sale.
