Category: Art in Second Life

Currently open at Melusina Parkin’s gallery is Roadside, her latest collection of images taken from around Second Life, which will continue through May and June. Presented in Melu’s familiar and captivating close-up style, they present a series of pictures with a theme of road trips – but with a very specific focus, as she explains in the introduction to the exhibition:

Diners, motels, pump stations, garages are elements of a “road popular culture” developed in wide spaces crossed by monotone and endless roads. We can’t imagine a motorway without them.

Like mountains, hills, fields, lawns and rivers, they are part of any landscape we see when travelling through the country.

– Melusina Parkin

So it is that we have a series of images of motel signs, petrol (gas) stations and pumps, parked vehicles, wooden walls of motel cabins and more, each one offering a unique take on the idea of the Great American Road Trip. Within them are many of the icons of that tradition – the coupé with its top down, the ribbon of dead-straight road vanishing into the distance, the metal-sized roadside diner, the pannier-laden motorbike, and so on. However, they are presented in such a way that rather than simply offering a scene for us to appreciate, Melu once again frames them in a manner that invites a story.

Take Roadside 3, for example: a battered yellow coupé sits parked in the foreground, inviting us to consider it: it’s condition, who might own it, where might they be going, and so on. Then, beyond it and through partially shaded windows, we can see the familiar bright red vinyl seating of a diner – something that always inspires a feeling of warmth and comfort, and our thoughts are similarly comforted with ideas of good food and rest in a friendly environment, whilst also broadening the story of the owners of the car: what might they be eating, what conversations are going on at their table, and so on.

Similarly, Roadside 5, with the motorcycle parked before petrol (gas) pumps immediately spins out thoughts of the freedom of riding the open road through to (perhaps) thoughts of iconic road trip films like Easy Rider. And so it goes on around the four walls of the gallery space (a single room at the top of her store).

There is perhaps a wider context for this exhibit as well. June will mark Second Life’s 17th anniversary with the familiar Second Life Birthday celebrations taking place. The theme for this year’s event, the theme is road trips and vacations, so Melusina’s Roadside might be said to offer a lead-in to the celebrations.

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• Melusina’s Gallery (Time portal, rated General)

One of the best ways to see art in Second Life is to visit the many boutique galleries that can be found across the grid. I say this because they generally have limited space, and so offer a small number of artists on exhibition, allowing a visitor to better appreciate the art on offer without feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work or the number of artists.

Take Michiel Bechir’s gallery, for example. The latest exhibition there features the work of four artists: two offering individual exhibits, and two forming a joint exhibition.

With Sunrises, RoseHanry presents a collection of eight images on that subject, with her introduction:

The theme for this exhibit was born when I visited the amazing private SIM “Vintage Lace” owned by the talented Skip Staheli and Delinda Dench. I took a photo that I posted on Flickr by the name a new sunrise which is included in the collection of photos in the exhibition.

I grew up near beaches where I had the privilege to watch sunrises and sunsets building the skies in fascinating lights and colours, and I have tried to re-create that magic on my works in a different way that I am use to doing.

– RoseHanry

The result is a selection of eight tonal pieces ranging from monochrome through sepia to full colour that offer personal. In particular this use of tones helps to bring out the rich differences a sunrise can bring, from the seemingly black-and white of the very early dawn, when the Sun is so low on the horizon when facing it, the light seems to wash colour from your surroundings, through the the orange brightness that comes as the Sun climbs high enough for its light to be refracted by the early morning haze.

Across the foyer is an exhibition by Ethan Hawkins, offering a mix of landscape and avatar studies, with a lean towards the latter. These avatar images are of a personal nature for the artist, reflecting as they do his relationship with his SL partner, Tresore. However, they each represent scenes anyone who has been in a relationship will both recognise and empathise with the emotions they represent.

Ethan’s landscape images are similarly evocative, offering romantic views of locations in Second Life which have a sense of having been painted without the appearance of being overly post-processed. This exhibition is rounded-out a a series of four images of waterfowl and an owl that truly bring the subject matter to life.

The upper floor of the gallery features a joint exhibition by Ladmilla and Eli Medier, who between them run The Edge Gallery. They are perhaps best known for sharing Ladmilla’s images with Eli’s words, and have oft been featured in these pages. Here they share their images and styles. Both are accomplished in capturing pictures that offer a story, with their images here forming nicely contrasting, yet complimentary sets.

Rounding out the gallery’s art is a selection of Michiel’s own landscape images, featuring some of the many locations across Second Life, with this selection carrying an emphasis on green.

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• Michiel Bechir Gallery (Embrace, rated Adult)

It’s been a while since I last visited The Eye Gallery, owned and curated by MonaByte. Originally opened in 2014 – although it has relocated since opening – the gallery offers exhibitions by invited artists as well as displaying Mona’s own work.

Currently, it is Mona’s work in both 2D and 3D that is on display within the gallery’s rooms.

My first steps in SL came through teaching: conducting various projects with my RL students. Then came Escuelita para Pekes, a place for friends where I shared beautiful moments lecturing to SL children. At the same time, learning to build became my passion and the sim 1+1 was my daily meeting place where true friendships were born. I also took art tours through different sims and galleries to help promote SL art. Then my sister and friend Duna Gant gave me the honour of managing Culture, the workshop responsible for poetry reading and other events at Artemis Gallery. My work with her was a wonderful experience.

– MonaByte describing her initial years in Second Life

Mona’s work a bold in tone and content, and red features heavily in the works on offer in this exhibition, with some of the exterior walls and spaces of the gallery coloured to match. Her 3D work is also rich in context, and emotion, each piece conceptual in is transmission of both: Balance, Freedom, Obsession, Conflict … Two pieces even celebrate her love of Red, which is also reflected in the 2D work in the main gallery building where as series of images of poppies and red flowers capture the attention.

The upper floor of the gallery annex offers a trio of landscape photos and two more fantasy-oriented images. They lean more to blue in their tone – a reflection of both the time of day at which they were taken and their subject matter.

An engaging and pleasing exhibition.

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• The Eye Gallery (Gigli Waves, rated Moderate)

The Carbone Gallery is a new gallery venture by Milena Carbone that opened at the start of May 2020, offering a venue in which she can display her own work and that of invited guests.

Milena is a relative newcomer to Second Life, having joined in mid-2019; as an artist, she is not afraid to use her work to stimulate the grey matter and challenge perceptions. In doing so, she draws inspiration from a number of sources: science, psychology, philosophy and religion chief among them. I became enamoured with her work after visiting Agape in Pace, a fascinating exploration of art, love, hate, religion, politics all offered with reflections on quantum field theory (see Art and quantum states in Second Life). As such, her art is not intended to be seen so much as experienced.

For me, art is not just about aesthetics or fashion, but must open reflection to the questions of our chaotic time. Art can help for a better world. An artwork addresses an important question with more questions. Otherwise, it is decoration.

– Milena Carbone

For the opening of her gallery, she offers two installations: Twins and Locked.

Twins, as the teleport board to the first of these installation notes, have long been the subject of many myths, with artists using them as symbolic representations. Describing itself as an expression of “four mythical aspects of twinship”, Twins is a layered piece that, while couched in in studies of twins, though the use of eight images, is equally an exploration of self. The four story elements of the installation  – Identity (also routed in the onset of puberty via the use of the “character” of “ephebe”), The Opposite, Replication and Fusion – all being as much about people as individuals as it is about the notion of twins sharing their lives.

Within this structure are also commentaries of conformity in the modern age, together with questions on whether the desire  / need / pressure to conform really offers happiness; philosophical musings on the the deals of love and partnership; and observations about outlook, human nature and the need to understand ourselves if we are to achieve balance.

Locked is a four-part story focused on the trials and tribulations the world-wide lock down that has resulted from the rise of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

As with Twins, it is reached via a TP board from the foyer of the gallery space, and takes for form of a four rooms opening off of a central hallway. Within these rooms are the four parts to a story. These can be visited in any order, although I’d personally recommend following them in the order Breakdown, Sideration, Glimmer and Amnesia; doing so allows the narrative threads and themes within the story to naturally grow in complexity as you progress.

Each room contains three images by Milena, a sculpture by Mistero Hifeng, and a “chapter” of the story; a seat in the middle of each room offers visitors the chance to sit and read the story and reflect on it through the presence of the images and sculpture. Again, while the core of the piece offers  reflection on isolation as a result of the pandemic, so too does it fold in many others aspects and thoughts – up to, and including a question on the nature of God him / herself.

This layering is nuanced and subtle. in the central hall, for example, is a wall of photographs carefully selected by Milena over a period of days that both reflects our natural inclination to be close to others. However, interwoven with these images are others with a dark edge – reflections of both the darker sides to life and the anger and frustrations that can grow out of enforced isolation.

Also to be found within these rooms are question and musing about the current politic climate – notably the jingoism espoused in the petty nationalism / totalitarianism exhibited by the extreme right, the kind of future we are leaving to our descendants, and the choices we face for our own immediate future. All of which makes for a compelling, provocative piece.

As a first guest exhibition, the Carbone gallery also presents The Privilege of Ageing, a meditation on the subject by Harbor Galaxy, and which itself is a captivating study of eight images.

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• The Carbone Gallery (Woiler, rated Moderate)

Now open in the White Hall of Itakos Gallery, curated by Akim Alonzo, is Phenomenal Women, a joint exhibition by Cecilia Nansen and Maloe Vansant. The focus of the exhibition is to “interpret a poem about women” using Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman.

Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in 1928, Maya (a nickname bestowed on her in childhood by her older brother, Bailey  Jr., being derived from “Mya sister”) Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences – which were far from easy. Born into a stormy relationship between her parents which ended when she was three, Maya and her brother were dispatched by her father to live with her paternal grandparents for four years before he abruptly sent the children back to their mother. Whilst there, Maya was raped by her mother’s boyfriend; he served just one day in prison for the assault, but after being released, was brutally murdered. This left Maya mute for five years, believing that by speaking out against him, she had caused his death, possibly at the hands of family members.

From these harsh beginnings, Maya Angelou grew through multiple careers, including cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonisation of Africa, to become a celebrated actress, writer, director and leading member of the American civil rights movement, working with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

As a poet and writer, Maya often wrote on the themes of love, painful loss, music, discrimination and racism, and struggle. With Phenomenal Woman, written in 1978 when she was 50, she offers a piece describing the allure she has as a woman of middle-age, and what makes her irresistible to the opposite sex despite the fact that she does not fit into society’s definition of what makes a woman beautiful. It’s a subtle, engaging poem taking an unconventional subject and presenting it in an unconventional rhyming scheme and structure that both add to the poem’s allure just as there is much that is unconventional about her captivating appeal as a woman.

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size.

– Phenomenal Women opening

With their images in Phenomenal Women, Cecilia and Maloe offer a selection of views of women that are fascinating on  a number of levels. Firstly, they have very different styles. Maloe’s work tends to embrace darker colours and tones and a tendency away from an overt use of artificial lighting; Cecilia, meanwhile, tends towards brighter colours and tones and a broader use of highlights.

At the same time, both compliment one another through their use of camera angle, framing and cropping. In this, both artists demonstrate enormous skill in framing a story or message through a single frame.  Whilst visible in all of the pieces presented in this exhibition, this “complimentary contrast” is perhaps most clearly visible in the pieces Phenomenal Two – 2 (Maloe) and Phenominal-in-leather  (Cecilia), located on the upper mezzanine floor of the gallery hall.

As studies of femininity and feminine appeal, the 19 images are rich in the motifs that tend to make women attractive in the eyes of men and other women: body shape, application of make-up, cast of expression, curve of breast, use of clothing. Again, this makes for a powerful series, some of which almost ooze sensuality, whilst other use more directed aspect of nudity to convey the message.

How well one might feel they offer an interpretation of Phenomenal Woman is perhaps more open to question. While it might be more a commentary on the limiting means of how the female form is oft represented in SL more than any “failing” on the part of the artists, these are images that do present bodies and faces that sit almost in opposition to the opening lines of the poem, whilst it might be argued that the inclusion of a fair amount of semi-nudity in several of the pieces is in opposition to the more mysterious elements of appeal voiced by the poem, which stay away from the more obvious elements of female sensuality:

It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.

– Phenomenal Woman

(that said, nudity is not necessarily misplaced in the broader content of Maya Angelou’s life: one of her careers in her younger says was that of a sex worker.)

Thus, Phenomenal Woman is a complex exhibit, one almost of two individual parts: images and poem; yet both are connected through the complex intertwining of ideas, message and viewpoint.

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• The Itakos Project (WhiteGallery – ATL, rated Moderate)