Established & Sons took the event of the 2023 London Design Festival to add to their contemporary collection of lighting with the Filigrana 6 table lamp and the Mark Light. Designed by Sebastian Wrong and Martino Gamper, respectively, both are statement-making additions. The release took place at Betts Project Gallery, alongside a design intervention created by designer Tino Seubert that highlighted the craftsmanship of the Murano mouth-blowing technique used on both new pieces of lighting.
Wrong’s Filigrana T6 is now part of the growing Filigrana lighting family. The table lamp’s candy-colored stripes surround a mushroom-shaped Venetian mouth-blown, acid-etched shade that emits a soft, diffused glow when illuminated. The complex shape of the T6 is created through the use of a 16th century glass blowing technique that originated on the Venetian island of Murano, highlighting traditional craftsmanship, technical mastery, and contemporary design. The production process ensures that each lamp is uniquely one-of-a-kind. The T6 sits on a powder-coated, spun steel base with a black fabric covered electrical cable and dimmable switch.
Originally designed for the Marksman restaurant in East London, Gamper’s Mark Light also features traditional Venetian, mouth-blown glass with colorful edging and a diffused illumination. An opal glass shade is highlighted by colorful glass rings that are hand-applied during the blowing process. The pendant light is completed with acrylic and steel fixings and a fabric cable, as well as an adjustable steel suspension wire with a screw mounted fitting and positioning bar that ensures an even balance of weight. The Mark Light is available in three color combinations.
Yellow/Pink
Violet/Green
To learn more about the Filigrana 6 table lamp or the Mark Light, visit establishedandsons.com.
NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW), the challenger network built to transform marketing, today announced it has reached an agreement to sell its integrated healthcare marketing agency and pharmaceutical commercialization platform ConcentricLife to Accenture Song, the tech-powered creative group of Accenture (NYSE: ACN), for $245 million in cash.
“This disposition is consistent with our strategy of organizing our portfolio to focus on core digital services, including AI-based digital transformation; strengthening our balance sheet; and investing in our future,” said Mark Penn, Chairman and CEO Stagwell. “We believe Accenture Song will be a good home for ConcentricLife, consistent with their focus on growing presence in the healthcare and life sciences industry. We wish Ken and the leadership team the best in their new home.”
Completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory clearance and other customary closing conditions. Fairmount Partners is serving as the financial advisor to Stagwell for this transaction.
About ConcentricLife
ConcentricLife is an agency built to answer the rising customer demand on the health marketer. ConcentricLife spans three distinct specialist practices that bring over 20 years of deep subject matter expertise in rare disease, healthcare, and wellness, with sophisticated marketing capabilities spanning the organization. We put Health at the Center through our proprietary Human Connection Score™ designed to build optimal brand experiences at any stage of the health journey. For more information, visit www.concentric.life.
About Stagwell
Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW) is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.
CONTACT:
Sarah Arvizo
[email protected]
SOURCE Stagwell Inc.
October 25, 2023 —
The Indigenous Student-Led Indigenous Art Purchase Program (ISLIAPP) is looking for passionate Indigenous students at the University of Manitoba to join a committee that aims to decolonize art collections on UM campuses.
The ISLIAPP’s goal is to transform the composition of university art collections by adding contemporary Indigenous art each year, selected by a committee of five to seven Indigenous students.
This committee will engage with artists and curators and select works for acquisition. The new additions will receive exhibitions in the School of Art Gallery at the Fort Garry campus.
The ISLIAPP is looking for five to seven committee members who meet the following criteria:
Applications are requested in the form of a letter of interest, which should include some biographical information, an explanation of why you want to sit on the committee and some artists you’re excited about.
The deadline to apply is Nov. 9, 2023. For complete information and to apply, please visit the ISLIAPP web page. Students can also fill out the online application form.
Catherine and VW Fowlkes attended architectural school together – not at the same place (Catherine graduated from MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, VW from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design) but at the same time: “We lived together and had our own shared hell together,” says Catherine, with a smile. “I can’t imagine living with someone who was not understanding of the maybe false urgency that I felt, at all times. It was incredibly stressful as well as exhilarating – so it would be really hard to communicate to someone who wasn’t going through that, what the big deal was. Why are you so excited?”
Now, they share their personal lives and their business, Fowlkes Studio, in Washington, DC. For this week’s Milkshake, we asked them what it was like working in one of the world’s power capitals. “DC has a lot of, let’s say, Type A people – a lot of busy people, though I don’t think that’s necessarily unique to Washington,” Catherine says. “A lot of our clients are stressed, they’re busy, and to the extent that we can make their home an oasis, it can be calm, maybe they even feel like they’re on vacation in their own home – those are parts of the conversation we’re having.” VW adds: “There’s a cliché that people have “power walls” in their houses, like pictures of them shaking hands with senators,” VW says. “I don’t think we’ve done that – but it is true that it’s known to be a conformist town, and there’s a lot of historic preservation regulations in many neighborhoods. From an architectural standpoint, they tend to be a little bit more traditional in the front, and then clients give us license to be a little bit more daring in the back.”
Also in this week’s Milkshake, the Fowlkes share how they integrate craftsmanship into their residential projects, and what makes DC architecturally unique from other big cities in America – from sites like the National Cathedral and the street grid to the design elements that make the city’s embassies relevant to their countries. “The embassies in DC are very unique to Washington for obvious reasons, and the architecture of those embassies varies, of course, from country to country,” Catherine says. VW says: “Some of them are old mansions that have been kind of retrofitted into embassies, but many are reflective of those national identities. And it was really interesting as a child seeing that – in fact, I thought I wanted to go into the foreign service because I was so fascinated by the embassies. It never occurred to me that it was the architecture that was making me excited. Brazil’s, by [Oscar] Niemeyer, is one we drove by all the time – it’s a big glass cube on a smaller glass cube, and it’s out there. It was dazzling as a child.” For more, tune in!
Diana Ostrom, who has written for Wallpaper, Interior Design, ID, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets, is also the author of Faraway Places, a newsletter about travel.
Milkshake, DMTV (Design Milk TV)’s first regular series, shakes up the traditional interview format by asking designers, creatives, educators and industry professionals to select interview questions at random from their favorite bowl or vessel. During their candid discussions, you’ll not only gain a peek into their personal homeware collections, but also valuable insights into their work, life and passions.
The BBC’s award-winning series Planet Earth returned this month with eight episodic documentaries that showcase the most awe-inspiring, miraculous, and seemingly impossible-to-capture sights of the natural world. As usual, the stunning footage is paired with the iconic voice of now 97-year-old Sir David Attenborough and captures a wide range of animal life, from a rhinoceros lumbering through city streets to flamingoes attempting to nest among the flooded lands of the Yucatán Penninsula.
Shot in 43 countries for the past five years, the episodes are thematic, focusing on ecosystems like oceans and forests or topics like extreme living conditions and human impacts. As should be expected with anything planet-related in 2023, critics are warning that this season is as beautiful as it is frightening. The series includes the usual animal antics and predator vs. prey relationships, along with necessary adaptations and struggles faced by life on a planet facing catastrophic collapse and habitat destruction.
Watch the trailer above, and mark your calendars for November 4 when Planet Earth III premieres on BBC America in the U.S.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article The BBC’s Award-Winning ‘Planet Earth’ Returns for a Thrilling Yet Alarming Third Series appeared first on Colossal.
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Cherokee Nation is once again celebrating Native perspective and influence on the comic con scene with the return of SkasdiCon.
The family-friendly event will take place on Nov. 4 from noon to 7 p.m. at Northeastern State University in the University Center Ballroom at 612 N. Grand Ave. The event is free to attendees 18 and under, students with a school I.D., and those dressed in cosplay costumes. General admission is $5.
More than 40 Indigenous artists will be sharing their work alongside Native pop culture panels, film screenings, and a cosplay competition. This year, the competition categories have been expanded to also include a youth division.
“SkasdiCon Vol. II is shaping up to be an incredible event. We were blown away by the reception of this event last year, and we’ve worked hard to expand our panels, special guests list, entertainment and activities,” said Callie Chunestudy, cultural programs and events project manager for Cherokee Nation Cultural Tourism. “We hope the public joins us for an exciting day with talented artists and vendors who are eager to share their passion and love for both Native culture and pop culture alike.”
The word “skasdi” is Cherokee slang. It’s a playful word that represents pride, impressiveness, awesomeness, fierceness, or feistiness, which can all describe many comic book and video game characters represented by artists and cosplayers that participate at comic cons.
Guests can expect appearances from special guests, such as Jhane Myers and Kaniehtiio Horn. Myers is most known for her many productions, including “Prey,” “1883,” “Magnificent Seven,” and more. Horn has also spent time in the film industry in her recent role of Deer Lady in “Reservation Dogs” and her role in “Letterkenny,” for which she was awarded a Canadian Screen Award.
Guests can also expect an appearance from special guest Jana Schmieding. Schmieding is known for her breakout role as “Reagan” on Peacock’s “Rutherford Falls.” Schmieding frequents on FX’s “Reservation Dogs” and voices Zelda Fox on Fox’s animated sitcom “The Great North.”
For more information, including a full event schedule, cosplay rules and regulations, and a list of participating artists, creators, and cosplay judges, visit https://skasdicon.com/.
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Amid a region in conflict, Sotheby’s held its Middle East sale on Tuesday, securing high prices for some key lots, though achieving only a 54 per cent sell-through rate. How much this will calm the nerves of Middle East art market watchers, who are bracing for the shocks of the Israel-Gaza war, is unclear and largely depends on how far the political events will spread.
“Understandably, the mood of some buyers has been impacted by the devastating turmoil we are all seeing,” says Mai Eldib, Sotheby’s Middle East head of sales. “That said, since we opened the doors to the exhibition last week, we have seen good footfall, with people happy to celebrate the plethora of art from this rich region.”
The timing of the auction, coming less than three weeks after the start of the Israel-Gaza war, was hard to ignore. Works by modern masters, such as Shafic Abboud, Adam Henein and Mona Saudi, failed to move, and the Fahrelnissa Zeid piece that Sotheby’s had billed as the headline lot of the auction barely beat its low estimate of £350,000 ($424,392), selling for £355,600 – despite including a handwritten dedication from Zeid to her granddaughter on the back of the canvas. In perhaps an indication of how heavily the political events weighed on buyers, all works by Palestinian artists were sold, bar one, which also suggests the solidarity of collectors in the Arab market around the issue.
At 123 lots, the sale was also larger than most and achieved a total of £4.8 million, which is the highest for a Sotheby’s Middle East sale in London since 2016 – largely led by top lots. A beautiful, luminescent work of nestled blues by Lebanese modernist Huguette Caland justifiably surpassed its estimate of £200,000-£300,000 to bring in £445,000, marking an auction record for the artist. An equally strong work by the Palestinian artist Samia Halaby, whose retrospective is currently up at the Sharjah Art Museum, went for £381,000, well above its estimate of £100,000-£150,000. Painted in 1969, the voluminous geometric painting Seventh Cross No. 229 is from what is often considered one of the artist’s best periods of work.
The high sale total and records achieved suggest that strength in the market remains, particularly for established artists and top-tier works.
The Mena market’s upwards trajectory is markedly different to results elsewhere. As patchy sales at the Frieze fairs and Saturday’s Sotheby’s auction indicated, the mainstream modern and contemporary market is finally feeling the pinch of the Ukraine war, the interest rate hike and the cost of living crisis. The general market had been largely insulated from these shocks because of a series of rare single-owner collections that came to auction over the past year, which kept prices falsely inflated.
But the market, as always, has been on a different path. This autumn, all three of the major auction houses – Sotheby’s, with its sale on Tuesday; Christie’s, coming on November 9; and Bonhams, on November 15 – have put together impressively robust offerings. Sotheby’s large auction comprised parts of some major collections, including those of Maya Rasamny and Rana Sadik. Christie’s has a tranche of the famed Dalloul Art Collection, and Bonhams is bringing to market works by blue-chip modernists such as Shafic Abboud, Omar El Nagdi, and Shakir Hassan Al Said.
Generally, this strength in terms of supply demonstrates that sellers feel it is a good time to put works up for auction. A large part of the optimism stems from the growing share of Saudi buyers, both individual and institutional. Increasing numbers of Saudi modernist works are appearing on the auction block: Artists such as Mohammed Al Saleem, who was the founder of the Saudi Art House in Riyadh in the 1980s, used to be relatively infrequent at auctions; yesterday an Al Saleem work from 1986 blazed past his auction record, going for £889,000, from a £100,000-£150,000 estimate. Perhaps even more significant, again from Sotheby’s, were the sales of three works by Abduljabbar Al Yahya – Saudi modernist born in 1931 – that all went above estimate despite his art not having a huge market and it being his first time at auction.
“While auction houses always keep the identity of their buyers confidential, heated bidding for particular works has coincided with the entry of new bidders to the market from across the region” says Meagan Kelly Horsman, managing director of Christie’s Middle East.
“Over the past few years we have seen instances of extremely competitive bidding that can suggest to the market the involvement of regional institutions. There is a few factors to consider when looking at this: One, that when a work sells significantly above its estimate, that there is not one, but a minimum of two parties who are deeply engaged with the acquisition of the work. Secondly, what is it about the content that is engaging clientele to bid competitively? We have seen exceptional examples of modernist works obtain high prices due to the scarcity on the market, such as Dia Al Azzawi’s 1964 work on paper Gilgamesh Epic No 4, which realised $119,700 against an estimate of $15,000-$20,000 in our Dubai online sale in May of this year.”
Horsman, who took over from long-time Dubai head Michael Jeha, comes from a market background in the UAE and has helped Christie’s lift its faltering results from two years ago, when they dropped the Middle East sale from their calendar. That spring fixture has now reappeared as a Dubai online auction. Its first edition in this format was held in May and had a 90 per cent sell-through rate.
Sotheby’s did not disclose the buyer of the untitled Al Saleem painting, which takes inspiration from the Riyadh desert, but it seems likely that a Saudi collector or one of its new institutions would have bid so ferociously for the work by one of the country’s pioneers.
Saudi collectors have made their presence felt at the sales in other ways too. Some watchers note that there has been less nudity and fewer political works, as the sales tailor themselves to the tastes of a new and more conservative group of buyers – much as they did in the early days of the Dubai sales.
And more Saudi collections are coming to auction. The Sotheby’s sale included work from Shatha Ibrahim Al Tassan, an important early Riyadh collector who founded the Hewar Art Gallery in the Saudi capital in 2006. Al Tassan’s works were included among three other female collectors in the sale – including the late Rasamny, the widely admired collector who was an important supporter of Middle Eastern art, as first chairwoman of the Royal Academy and member of both the Tate and the British Museum’s Middle East and North Africa acquisition committees. Sotheby’s also offered works from Sadik, the Palestinian collector who lives in Kuwait and has also put together a hugely respected collection of Middle Eastern and international art.
The high quality of the Christie’s and Bonhams sales will probably lead to similar results. From the Dalloul collection – totalling 48 works – Christie’s has as its top lot Fille a l’imprime (Girl in a Printed Dress) (1938) by Mahmoud Said with an estimate of £350,000-£550,000. As an aside, Dalloul bought the same work in 2018 at Bonhams for £512,750 (including premium). An incandescent blue Kamal Boullata carries an estimate of £20,000-£30,000 but should probably go higher given the beauty of the work, and Palm Tree (2001), an extraordinary geometric painting – almost verging on the Casablanca School in style – by Ibrahim El-Salahi is on at £30,000-£50,000.
Lots in their various owner sales, to be held the same night, include a large-scale photograph from the Desert of Pharan series by Saudi artist Ahmed Mater (estimate £40,000-£60,000, from an edition of three plus an artist’s proof) and a softly geometric Etel Adnan (Untitled, 2003, with an estimate of £60,000-£80,000).
Bonhams’s top lot is a triptych from the Lebanese master Abboud from 1984, with an estimate of £300,000 to £500,000. An oil on wood panel by Kadhim Hayder, The Martyr from 1969, is given an estimate of £120,000 to £180,000, while Tekrarre (1985) by Charles Hossein Zenderoudi – one of a number of Iranian artists in the sale – carries an estimate of £80,000 to £100,000.
Though political events are shifting, the expanding base of buyers in the Middle East market – and the race for masterpieces – is set to carry the market forward.
Updated: October 25, 2023, 4:25 PM
For my generation, the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania was a place of mystery, both exotic and dangerous. The first time I visited was in 1990. I went with a group of journalists and a couple of archaeologists – we were pretending the visit was an “archaeological tour”. There was no translator and we had maybe four words of Albanian between us. Needless to say, the writer I was with had a pretty hopeless time trying to interview people, but as the only photographer in the group, I had a fantastic trip.
We were there for a few weeks, touring communes and cooperative farms as well a tractor factory where no tractors were being made. We got as far as Shkodër, on the edge of the Accursed mountains, but were only able to make a very limited trip to the north, which was what really intrigued me. Exploring that mountain region only became a possibility 18 months later, following the collapse of the communist regime.
This time I went for the Sunday Times, along with writer Ian Thomson. I’d kept in contact with someone in Tirana who let me know when the snows had melted enough for us to get into the mountains. Having spent some time in Romania shortly after the 1989 revolution, I knew times of change can be a great opportunity to visit places that have been isolated – things are chaotic, but suddenly there’s a chance to really see what’s going on.
Enver Hoxha [the dictator who ruled Albania for more than four decades until 1985] had never really controlled the north of the country and village life had resisted his influence. Up there, people followed the Kanun, a set of codes based on honour and blood, dating from medieval times. The villages often felt almost medieval too, with horses and carts and astonishing outfits. I had shot in black and white during the previous visit and decided to do so again. I’d brought colour film, but black and white gave the images a timeless quality.
We had a great driver, Lida Kita, who also acted as our guard and an empathetic and well respected translator. It was down to her that we got invited to a wedding in the village of Bogë, where this picture was taken. The mountain villages tended to be either Muslim or Catholic – there was no edge between them, but nor was there any intermarrying. This was a Muslim wedding, an arranged marriage, I think, but there was still a lot of drinking. The celebrations went on for a week – we only lasted a day.
The picture is quite painterly – it has a chiaroscuro effect, with the bride lit by a window. On the left, people seem to be whispering to each other, laughing and joking, but she is isolated. This was taking place in the house of her new husband’s family, where she would be living under the rule of her mother-in-law. She looked so unhappy and no one was really talking to her. The groom had just been given a little box containing a “trousseau bullet” by the bride’s father as part of her dowry. The idea is that this can be used in the event of desertion or infidelity. It’s a symbolic and traditional gift, but given how friendly everyone else seemed, this still came as a shock to me.
Meanwhile the groom was partying hard. I have another photograph of the couple arriving, both looking nervous, but though I didn’t see the wife touch a drop, everyone else ended up drinking and dancing. For that day I was essentially the wedding photographer by default, and was expected to drink a toast of raki – colourless homemade moonshine – with every male guest. Eventually I blacked out. I was staying at a nearby hotel and members of the wedding party must have carried me back, because I remember coming to in my tiny room with all my equipment and rolls of film beautifully laid out on the bed opposite. On the contact sheets, you can see that my compositions become increasingly loose, but as soon as I saw this image I thought: “Gosh!”
Gulag: A Journey into the Darkness of Stalin’s Siberian Prison Camps, by Barry Lewis, is published by Fistful of Books. A Kickstarter campaign closes on 4 November
Born: London, 1948
Trained: “Originally a chemist, taught for three years, then RCA for two year MA with Bill Brandt as tutor”
Influences: “Bill Brandt, August Sander, Joel Meyerowitz”
High point: “Starting the agency Network Photographers in 1981 and winning the 1991 Oscar Barnack (the inventor of the Leica) award for humanitarian photography for work in Romania”
Low point: “The end of Network Photographers in 2005 alongside the growth of the internet”
Top tip: “Keep fit, be bold, ask questions, listen, read, wear good shoes”
