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Fashion is flocking to Frieze. What do brands stand to gain?

By in Art World News

Fashion is flocking to Frieze. What do brands stand to gain?
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At Frieze New York, which ran from 17 to 21 May, fashion and beauty brands were out in full force. Some, including Prada, ready-to-wear label RTA and skincare brand Dr Barbara Sturm, partnered directly with Frieze; others took advantage of the circus being in town to host unofficial events. There were pop-ups, collaborations, talks and product launches, as brands navigated different ways to capture the attention — and spend — of wealthy art lovers.

A conversation with Tracy Bussan, SVP of brands in culture for Diageo

By in Art World News

A conversation with Tracy Bussan, SVP of brands in culture for Diageo

In 2021, Diageo made a big play in sports marketing when it became the first official spirits sponsor of the NFL. Back in 2013, it signed a multiyear deal to be the exclusive spirits partner of the NBA. But the alcohol giant doesn’t just have its eye on national league sponsorships.

In fact, according to Tracy Bussan, SVP of brands in culture for Diageo, it has 55 team sponsorships across its portfolio, which includes Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Captain Morgan, Casamigos, Ketel One, and more. Local sponsorships, like its founding deals with Angel City FC in the NWSL and Austin FC in the MLS, help drive success for the company’s league tie-ups, she said. Ed Pilkington, chief marketing and innovation officer for Diageo North America, once suggested to Ad Age that its individual NFL team deals may have even contributed to the inking of the larger NFL deal.

At Marketing Brew’s summit earlier this month, we spoke to Bussan about some of the company’s latest work when it comes to cultural marketing, including sports and fashion partnerships.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What are some of the cultural tentpoles that are important to Diageo?

It can be anything from a Coachella to an Art Basel to Hispanic Heritage Month…Sports are a huge one. A ton of our brands are active throughout sports…Something we’re super proud of is we’re a founding partner of Angel City Football [Club].

What’s the value in sponsoring a team like that?

For local team sponsorships, it’s all about connection to the community, especially with football. People love the NFL, but they love the Green Bay Packers. We find so much success when we’re connected up into the league, but also then connected into that home team…Connecting our brands into that fandom really drives that passion.

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How do you go about matching up the individual brands within the portfolio to different teams?

It’s about that connection point through the brand, what the brand stands for, and what the brand’s purpose is. Johnnie Walker is a great one because Johnnie Walker is all about progress and driving female equity. That’s why they’re the founding partner of Angel City, and we just signed on Gotham FC [both teams in the NWSL].

You also mentioned other aspects of culture like music and art. What partnerships are you working on in those areas?

One is for Baileys. When you think about it, there’s an opportunity with the brand to bring in a younger, more diverse consumer. Right now, everybody knows that their parents love Baileys, but we want to get that younger generation to love Baileys as much, so we…collaborated with [celebrity stylist and designer] Jason Rembert…and co-created a marshmallow puffer jacket for aprés ski season.

[Tequila brand 21 Seeds] is doing a collaboration right now with Birdies shoes…They’re female-founded, as is Birdies…so it’s a collaboration that’s come together just based on the foundation of love for friendship and female empowerment.

For something like sponsoring a team or doing a fashion collab, how do you measure if those things are succeeding?

A lot of it is about earned [media] and the press that we’re getting. It’s about generating awareness, driving recruitment, and that buzz and talk value. So a big KPI we’re always going to have is impressions…From a sports partnership standpoint, we’re able to better track sales because they’re localized promotions, so we can look…in store with our retailers and see the increase in our sales based on the brand partnership in that area.

Unlocking the potential of AI in public relations

By in Art World News

Unlocking the potential of AI in public relations
imageRepresentative image”>
Representative image

Storytelling has been a timeless tradition, changing and adapting with each era and culture to serve the common goal of educating, entertaining, and inspiring audiences. With the dawn of the digital age, storytelling has undergone a transformation, with brands needing to adapt to new-age content formats, such as short videos, interactive media, and podcasts, to remain relevant and engaging with consumers.

Thus, for brands to truly succeed in today’s digital landscape, they must go beyond simply creating content and instead focus on crafting meaningful experiences for their target audience. This requires a thorough understanding of each platform’s unique characteristics and utilising digital tools to gather valuable insights. These may also be used to tailor messaging and establish a more personal connection with customers. In this mix of tools, one that stands most relevant today is Artificial Intelligence, a tool that has revolutionised the art of narrative seeding and reputation management.

While the adoption of AI has been gradual in the communications industry, it is now playing an increasingly important role in helping brands navigate this dynamic landscape. This is by using data-driven campaigns, automating operational tasks, analysing online interactions, and even producing personalised content. AI is enabling PR professionals to be more effective, efficient, and strategic than ever before.

With AI-powered PR, brands can leverage technology to create engaging and personalised content that resonates with their audience. AI-powered sentiment analysis enables brands to swiftly detect negative conversations empowering them to take prompt mitigating measures. Predictive analytics can anticipate potential crises, enabling brands to prepare a response beforehand. Furthermore, personalised content has emerged as a game changer, enabling brands to craft highly targeted and engaging content tailored to their audience’s needs and interests. A great example of using AI as a tool for storytelling is Google’s Year in Search roundup, as it humanises the brand by featuring real people’s desires, curiosities, and fears. The 2021 roundup highlighted wildfires and flooding as the top global search topics in the environmental section, demonstrating how with the use of AI even tech brands can foster excellent storytelling and generate more meaningful relationships with their audience.

Although the potential of AI is enormous, discussions of digital transformation raise two key issues, one of misinformation and the second of obsolescence.

One of the key risks of AI-powered PR is the speed and scale at which false information can spread. As AI algorithms learn and adapt based on past data, they may perpetuate existing biases and inaccuracies, leading to the dissemination of false or misleading information. This can damage the trust and credibility of the brand and can lead to financial loss, or even legal action. The second issue is whether AI will ever replace PR professionals. By looking beyond our industry, we can observe that other sectors are exploring the potential of generative AI. The legal profession is cautiously optimistic about utilising AI for creating frameworks and documents.

However, some in the banking sector have already prohibited it, citing security and compliance issues. In PR, AI can facilitate research and automate reporting, making our work more efficient and eliminating some of the time-consuming aspects of our jobs.

However, it’s essential to recognise that AI cannot replace the significance of human relationships. While AI can provide great benefits in terms of driving efficiency and showcasing the value of PR work, it’s essential to recognise that the core of PR is built on human relationships, counsel, and insight. Our industry should view AI as an enabler that allows us to focus on strategic and creative work by eliminating repetitive and mundane tasks.

Nevertheless, we must not disregard the emotional nuances and subtleties that come with human interaction and that we, as PR professionals, can bring to our clients. Ultimately, striking a balance between AI and human relationships will be critical for PR success.

  • Published On May 22, 2023 at 07:58 AM IST

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Porto’s photography biennial : Acts of Empathy – The Eye of Photography Magazine

By in Photography

Porto’s photography biennial : Acts of Empathy – The Eye of Photography Magazine

The third edition of Porto’s photography biennial, entitled ‘Acts of Empathy’, focuses on assessing today’s social, ecological, and economic resources, and re-imagining a regenerative future. Bienal’23 co-artistic directors Jayne Dyer and Virgílio Ferreira invited 70 artists and 14 guest curators in 14 locations in Porto, transforming them into dynamic creative spaces where visitors are invited to participate in artistic ‘Acts of Empathy’.

Bienal’23 explores our ability to feel, collaborate and drive change through artistic acts of connectivity, reparation, and healing via CONECTAR, EXPANDIR, SUSTENTAR, VIVIFICAR (Connect, Expand, Sustain, Vivify), four sections that intersect local and global perspectives.

While SUSTENTAR features creative laboratories in Portuguese urban centers that look into urban and regional sustainability issues, VIVIFICAR, through artistic residencies with communities, addresses one of the most pressing issues in low-density territories: the settlement of populations. Because these two sections demand concrete solutions and actions, EXPANDIR brings an experimental dimension by presenting academic and professional

socio-ecological initiatives for emerging artists. CONECTAR fosters diverse cultural and artistic ecosystems through the interchange of exhibition projects, ideas, and transdisciplinary practices on a national and worldwide scale.

Bienal’23 features projects that are supported by deliberate artist engagement in community and environmental activities in order to foster reparative acts and empathy for the future.

Bienal’23 Fotografia do Porto, Portugal
May 18 – July 2, 2023
Porto, Portugal
https://bienal23.bienalfotografiaporto.pt/pt

Mendrisio : WHAT MAD PURSUIT and The Swiss Architectural Award – The Eye of Photography Magazine

By in Photography

Mendrisio : WHAT MAD PURSUIT and The Swiss Architectural Award – The Eye of Photography Magazine

Designed by the architect Mario Botta, the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio, which stands on the Campus in Mendrisio – Università della Svizzera italiana, is a place capable of receiving and engaging in dialogue with the products of creativity. This is also the case with photography, whether it’s the show WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen, characterized by exhibition choices that mutually shape the photos with the spaces designed by Mario Botta, or rather the images of the Swiss Architectural Award 2022. In short, until 22 October, the Architecture Theatre Mendrisio offers a double exhibition proposal.

WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen

The project analyzes the relationship between architecture and photography, and how the latter relates to the exhibition context, in a constant process of dialogue and negotiation. A selection of photographic works by Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke and Bas Princen are on show, questioning the documentary function of photography, as a device that records and transforms reality at once, while contradicting its essence of a two-dimensional image by exploring its materiality.

Indeed, the images on display are conceived as objects, so retaining a relationship with both the space inside the frame and with the external space, too. Inspired by the essay of the same name by the British neuroscientist Francis Crick, the title of the show suggests the issues of intersections, combinations and confluences as a crucial element in the enhancement of a “system” as a whole, fostering exchange (multitude) over isolation (uniqueness).

In Shaping Stones, Aglaia Konrad combines buildings by well-known architects with anonymous works, linking them by the use of the same material and by a mode of representation (black and white photography). Armin Linke re-uses the pre-existing images in his archive and mixes them to create a new narrative that goes beyond the original context of production, challenging the notions of chronology, linearity and uniformity. Bas Princen photographs other representations, questioning what happens to them once they are duplicated and converted into two-dimensional images. In his work, these artworks undergo a process of interpretation, resulting in new and independent images, capable of disengaging from the original ones.

WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen, which aims to express the complexity of photography and its layered character, is curated by Francesco Zanot and promoted by the USI Academy of Architecture.

The Swiss Architectural Award 2022

The Auditorium of the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio hosts the exhibition of the projects selected for the eighth edition of the Swiss Architectural Award. Selected by a jury chaired by Mario Botta, the project by the winner, Xu Tiantian, founder of DnA Design and Architecture (China), includes works that Tiantian describes as “acupuncture” interventions aiming to revitalize historic settlements or pieces of landscape. It also focuses on civic instances (as they intend to serve local communities) and the quality of the proposed architecture, with their “marked attention to the context, by a precise and poetic attitude at the same time, and by the blending of different scales and themes, between architecture and infrastructure, permanent and ephemeral, reuse and ex-novo intervention”.

The exhibition, curated by Marco Della Torre and Stefania Murer, shows the works of 26 candidates from 14 countries and, along with more technical parts, also an interesting photographic section. 

Paola Sammartano

WHAT MAD PURSUIT. Aglaia Konrad, Armin Linke, Bas Princen
April 7 – October 22, 2023
Swiss Architectural Award 2022
May 5 – October 22, 2023

Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio
Via Turconi 25
6850 Mendrisio
Switzerland
www.tam.usi.ch/en

George Voronovsky’s Visions Of Ukraine From Miami Beach

By in Native

George Voronovsky’s Visions Of Ukraine From Miami Beach

What causes one artist to depict his traumas through some of the most horrific imagery ever produced in art history while another who experienced much the same paints beautiful, bucolic, peaceful, joyous pictures?

Si Lewen (1918–2016) saw the rise of fascism in Europe first-hand, fleeing his native Poland for France and then the United States after Hitler assumed control of Germany in 1933. Ukrainian George Voronovsky (1903–1982), similarly, immigrated to America. That would not be until 1951, however, a decade after the Germans took over Ukraine in 1941.

Voronovsky was among the millions of Ukrainians spared death for not being Jewish, but he was nonetheless enslaved in the regime’s forced labor camps, traumatized and separated from his family.

In an exhibition on view now at the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, previously reviewed by Forbes.com, Lewen’s desire to recall this time and process what he saw revealed itself in a shocking series of black and white drawings detailing the endless cycle of war. Frightening, angular, frenzied, serrated images. Columns of soldiers. Officers barking orders. The snapping dogs of war. Blood spatters. Rats. Barbed wire. Coffins.

The worst of times.

Voronovsky’s choice was to paint vibrant community festivals, colorful costumes, peace, tranquility, scenes of communal agriculture, happy residents going about their work, birds–my god, the birds!

The best of times.

Voronovsky’s the best of times can be seen now through August 13, 2023, at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta which presents the first exhibition of his work outside of Florida.

The artist first settled in Philadelphia, but while working for the railroad, made his way south to Florida by 1970. There, he embraced Miami Beach, a destination at the end of the rail line booming with Eastern European immigrants of his generation long before it was a notorious narcotics capital or international nightlife destination.

“George Voronovsky: Memoryscapes” features 60 of his mostly untitled and undated works, the majority of which depict youthful memories of a beloved life in Ukraine. Voronovsky transformed his Miami Beach hotel room into a paradisiacal art environment filled with these paintings and carved Styrofoam sculptures in the last decade of his life.

“When I saw the work in person I just about died,” Katherine Jentleson, Merrie and Dan Boone Curator of Folk and Self-taught Art at the High Museum, told Forbes.com. “The surface quality of his painting across all of the different substrates he used–cardboard, canvasboard, canvas–is just breathtaking, and the Styrofoam sculptures boggle the mind with their delicacy. We committed to the show long before Russia invaded Ukraine, but of course that gave the exhibition an urgency and relevance. As one friend told me upon seeing the show, the Ukraine that Voronovsky upholds in his paintings is the Ukraine people are fighting for.”

While not unknown prior to this presentation, Voronovsky’s work was well out of any artistic mainstream, even from Jentleson and the High which possesses the finest collection of Southern folk art in the country.

“I often hear from people who have or know of the work of a self-taught artist that they think we might be interested in, but it is very rare that such artists have an entire body of work that is as compelling as Voronovsky’s,” Jentleson said. “The rich colors and beautiful compositions of his paintings translated easily as digital images, enough to get me to tentatively commit to the show, and of course his life story is fascinating as well.”

Painting Ukraine from Miami Beach

From his third-floor room at the Colony Hotel, Voronovsky eventually began painting his Ukrainian past, folklore-infused scenes and idyllic landscapes from his childhood memories in and around Kyiv. He also painted his American present, the bustling cityscapes and waterfronts of the rapidly transforming South Beach, but it’s the Ukraine pictures which stand out.

Without the financial means to purchase canvas in large quantities, he repurposed discarded cardboard including pizza boxes for many of his paintings, and he used Styrofoam, aluminum cans and coffee tin lids to create sculptures of flowers, fish, birds and woodland creatures.

These are reproduced in astounding abundance recalling contemporary Wisconsin painter Tom Uttech’s (b. 1942) landscapes of the north woods which would have appeared to him much the same as the pre-war Ukraine of Voronovsky’s childhood–the 49th parallel forms the political border between the U.S. and Canada and runs directly through Ukraine.

Thick forests. Fertile soil. Tremendous wildlife.

Voronovsky, like Uttech, pictures birds in numbers scarcely imaginable today, half a century into a human-caused collapse of biodiversity resulting in the loss of 70% of wildlife populations globally since 1970. But that’s the way it used to be, both in America, where flocks of the now extinct passenger pigeon were so great they could darken the sky, and in Ukraine.

“Voronovsky’s works are so idyllic that it can be easy to assume they are pure fantasy,” Jentleson said. “As we researched the kinds of flora, fauna, landscapes, architecture, and cultural traditions he was depicting, however, we realized that they almost all depict real places and experiences he likely had as a child in Ukraine and Crimea.”

The show brings receipts, displaying murals of historical photographs that anchor his paintings in his life experience.

“Doing this gives weight to what a powerful force the human memory is, both in terms of how long we can hold on to core memories, and how Voronovsky was able to use those memories to create, through his art, a kind of homecoming to Ukraine that otherwise eluded him,” Jentleson explains.

Homeward Bound

Around 1978, Gary Monroe, a young photographer who had been capturing life in Miami’s South Beach neighborhood—especially scenes of its flourishing elderly community—met Voronovsky after glimpsing the beauty of his creations from the sidewalk. Monroe and his circle of friends frequently visited with the artist, helping him access art supplies and documenting his life and art in photographs, film and writing, some of which is featured in the exhibition.

Monroe has made a life’s work champion Florida folk and self-taught artists including the Florida Highwaymen. When Voronovsky died, he left his art and personal effects to Monroe, who has gifted several pieces to the High, making it the first museum to acquire Voronovsky’s work.

The acquisitions and exhibition continue the Museum’s longstanding commitment to celebrating Southern self-taught artists. While Voronovsky took a roundabout way getting there, his work shares much with the Southern-born self-taught artists in the High’s collection.

“His use of cardboard as a substrate connects him to artists like Bill Traylor and Nellie Mae Rowe,” Jentleson said. “Rowe also used some Styrofoam in her work, but I’ve never seen an artist carve such a brittle material so beautifully. He is also connected to many artists in the collection, from Rowe to Howard Finster to David Butler or Annie Hooper, who created all-encompassing art environments with their art.”

Voronovsky, of course, was not immune to the darker emotions his wartime experiences would have embedded in him, but he never painted them. He never painted hunger or suffering or loss. In this way, his pictures are reminiscent of ledger drawings by imprisoned Southern Tsitsistas (Cheyenne) warriors who faithfully recreated images of their free life on the Plains, the buffalo hunts and ceremonies, following the Red River War and capture by the Army.

It’s uplifting, in a sense, thousands of miles from home and loved ones and familiarity, traveling back in the mind, recreating these places through art; surely those hours spent remembering and reproducing such scenes were happy ones, and, doubtless, melancholy.

For Voronovsky, maybe that’s where the birds come in. Jentleson thinks so and created a special installation of them in the exhibition’s final gallery.

“No matter where Voronovsky was in his life, he would have been able to admire birds, whether in the yard of a Nazi labor camp or on the shores of South Beach,” she said. “Their freedom of movement and also their ability to travel long distances in flocks that stay together may have meant something to him as someone who was forcibly displaced from his beloved homeland, only to move through much of his life alone.”

Art and Wind Festival breezes into San Ramon

By in Art World News

Art and Wind Festival breezes into San Ramon

One of San Ramon’s oldest traditions is returning to Central Park this year, which is set to be awash with high-flying and brightly colored art and kites in a well-known marker of Memorial Day weekend in the Tri-Valley.

The Art and Wind Festival is making its annual return with four stages featuring an array of live performances, two food courts and carnival rides, in addition to signature activities such as free kite-making for children and 150 arts-and-crafts vendors.

While there are a range of options for on-the-ground entertainment on tap, participants also flock to the popular event for a glimpse at sky-born spectacles in the form of kites.

“One of the most exciting elements of the Art and Wind Festival is the professional, choreographed kite flying,” said Amalia Kulczyck, recreation marketing coordinator for the city of San Ramon. “These world-class kite flyers come from throughout the Western U.S. and put on demonstrations throughout the entire festival.”

The unique twist on spring and summer celebrations has made the Art and Wind Festival an increasingly beloved crowd-pleaser for participants across the Tri-Valley as well as the greater Bay Area.

“The things people come back for every year are definitely the professional kite flying, the kids’ kite making, and that’s always really fun because the winds always seem to be so high in the park,” Kulczyck said.

The event first took shape decades ago in 1989, in the form of a small street fair showcasing visual arts just six years after San Ramon’s incorporation, drawing artists and revelers to the growing city ever since.

“It was such a popular event that it became a full festival filling most of San Ramon’s 40-acre Central Park,” Kulczyck said.

In addition to kites, art, food and entertainment, highlights of this year’s festival include hot air balloon launches both days of the event and a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter landing that Sunday (May 28) at 2 p.m.

As the festival has solidified itself as a San Ramon tradition in the decades since its inception, the city’s Arts Advisory Committee now commissions an art piece to represent each year’s event, with Bay Area artist Malti B. Lee selected to create the piece representing this year’s event that is currently on display in City Hall.

In addition to being based in the Bay Area, Lee’s overall focus on the comparison, contrast and complementary aspects of flowers with cityscapes makes her a natural fit for San Ramon in the late spring as the city’s urban landscape continues to take shape.

“Having lived exclusively in large metropolitan cities, pockets of vibrant flowers were always found against the backdrop of buildings,” Lee said in her artist’s statement. “The same way that noticing the fusion and contrasts of urban environments brought me moments of joy, calmness and reflection, my hope is that I can help others feel the same.”

A range of Lee’s work is on display in a solo exhibition that debuted on May 2 coming to its end at the end of the holiday weekend on May 30 at the Lindsay Dirkx Brown Art Gallery in the San Ramon Community Center, with the artist making an on-site appearance at the gallery from 12-4 p.m. on May 29.

“Each painting is inspired by somewhere I’ve been first-hand, there’s a story behind each one,” Lee said.

Another major attraction of the festival is its Memorial Day program honoring lost service members and veterans on May 29. In addition to the hour-long ceremony, the day will see the “Commemorative Field of Flags” from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. allowing those with loved ones lost during or after military service to have a flag placed and displayed throughout the morning and early afternoon in their honor.

The festival’s main events are set to run from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday (May 28) and Monday (May 29). More information, including a schedule of performances and activities, is available at www.sanramon.ca.gov.

NewJeans, Le Sserafim Featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List

By in Art World News

NewJeans, Le Sserafim Featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List

May 22, 2023 08:23

K-pop girl groups Le Sserafim and NewJeans have been named in Forbes magazine’s 30 Under 30 Influential People in Asia.

The two groups were listed as part of the Asian Entertainment and Sports category. Forbes highlighted NewJeans’ quick rise to global started, saying the group is on track to become “another K-pop sensation.” Le Sserafim is said to be “one of the most popular K-pop girl groups.”

Every year, Forbes magazine selects 30 young people from each region who have made remarkable achievements in 10 fields, including art, marketing, technology, finance, and distribution.

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