Currently open at Solo Arte is an art garden created by Terrygold and MelaniaBis that features the work of invited artists displayed in a series of pods. At the time of my visit, the garden featured the work of CioTToLiNa Xue, Dekka Raymaker, Annalisa Muliaina, and Terrygold, together and an exhibition of art by Magda Schmidtzau. These are individual exhibits, rather than a combined installation – Magda’s art being the most recent addition. As noted, Each artist has their work displayed in an individual pod, with the the pods either placed on, or close to, the garden’s lawn.
In this, the setting has something of a feel of the Explore and Enjoy exhibition from 2018, also designed and curated by Terrygold and MelaniaBis (see: Solo Arte: “explore and enjoy” in Second Life), albeit on a more modest scale. I have no idea if further pods will be added given the available space, although there appears to be room for more, if required. As it is, the four available at the time of my visit made for a contrasting group of 2D and 3D displays.
Solo Arte – Magda Schmidtzau (l) and CioTToLiNa Xue (r) – September 2019
Truth be told, I don’t have too much to say about the individual exhibits, as they all tned to speak for themselves. CioTToLiNa offers New Trips, which carries something of an echo of her piece from Explore and Enjoy, while Terrygold presents a piece from her 2018 installation, Rusted Farm (see: A Rusted Farm in Second Life), while Magda’s 2D art is, as always, captivating in it richness of avatar studies.
However, the reality is these are art vignettes that should be seen for themselves – and in the case of Dekka’s, tried, as it is interactive – so I’ll leave you yo pay them a visit.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Crossing Over and Night Walks
Open from September 10th, 2019 at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery curated by Dido Haas, are two independent – yet in some ways complimentary – exhibitions by two gifted artists. Crossing Over features a 3D installation by Kaiju Kohime located in the middle of one of the gallery’s two arms, while Night Walks presents a further series of Melusina Parkin’s unique studies of Second Life. Both installation and imagery offer a richly layered environment in which thought is strongly provoked.
Crossing Over is the second installation Kaiju is presenting since his return to Second Life (his first being a collaborative piece with Electric Monday and entitled Orizuru (which you can read about here). It forms, in the words of the exhibition’s introduction, a commentary on the changing face of society’s thinking and structure:
The vertical small worlds we used to live in, illustrated by male white religious oppression, are slowly tilting towards a more horizontal and more human engagement. This installation is about the continuing struggle between verticalism and a horizontal way of thinking and being, about the masks we put on to protect ourselves from our mirror image.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Crossing Over
The white-dominated element of religion (Christianity) is clearly symbolised by the main structure of the piece, which forms the framework of a great church. Within it, at the chancel, multiple white crosses float over the wireframe bust of a man as tendrils of light (thought / understanding / realisation?) fall from an angled blue cross to strike a mask that deflects them away – although it is showing signs of crumbling and breaking under their persistence.
It’s a clear and concise statement concerning religious oppression through the implementation of doctrine over belief / understanding. The white crosses stand as bars rigidly defining the dogma and the vertical nature of “white” Christianity as it is so sadly practised by some, wherein matters so often defined as “right” or “wrong” in terms of race, colour, gender and sexuality (perhaps more so in this present era than more recent times past). Meanwhile, the blue cross and the tendrils of light reflect that shift in thinking from dogma and vertical superiority towards the more compassionate, humanistic (and perhaps even more Christ-like?) “horizontal” view that we are in fact all equal; thus underlining the use of race, colour, gender and sexuality by some as masks and shields by which they seek to hold themselves apart from, and over, others.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Crossing Over
Night Walks, meanwhile, offers a series of images that take us on “journeys into a dark world”. As the introduction notes:
Streets are empty in the night. At 3 or 4 am we can walk around without meeting people (just somebody who is “still” or “already” there, according to the words of the great Italian writer Italo Calvino, a night owl or a worker). So, we can look at buildings, parked cars, windows, street lamps and benches as they are the true inhabitants of that dark world.
Thus we are offered a series of night-time images taken from around Second Life offered in Melu’s unique perspective where she uses minimalism and close focus to tremendous effect. These are images that offer not so much a picture of a location but a glimpse into a world; sharply defined and focused they might be in their composition, but behind each one of them sits an entire story into which the imagination can fall.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Night Walks
Empty streets at night can be both enticing and frightening. We can be alone, even when just beyond the few inches of stone or brick that may separate us from the interior of house or apartment building, we know there are others, sleeping peacefully or – if lights are still to be seen through curtailed windows – going about their lives as we tread the pavements outside. Thus, we can wrap ourselves in a cloak of our own thoughts without fear of interruption or distraction.
But at the same time, the streets late at night can be unsettling: the familiar can be redrawn by the simple fall of light and shadow; doorways that by day might be welcoming can by night become places of menace. Thus – and again as the liner notes state, “Serenity and fear live together in the dark and empty streets. Which of them wins, depends on our mood. In the night the dark enchanting forest of the city becomes the landscape where the contrasting sides of our souls live.”
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Night Walks
And it is in this contrasting sides of the soul that the link is formed between Night Walks and Crossing Over is formed. It is said that it is in the depths of night that one can most clearly hear the voice of God – or the voice of conscience, if you prefer. That quiet, insistent voice of challenge against dogma that cannot be silenced by the distractions of daytime life or deflected by the masks we might otherwise wear when not so deeply alone, and which calls into question our structure doctrine of thinking and encourages us towards a more open – dare I say “horizontal” view of the world around us.
The symbolism within and between both Crossing Over and Night Walks is both rich and powerful, offering multiple ways to interpret each as individual pieces and as interconnected exhibits (there is something of a symbolism for death in Crossing Over, for example, and the small hours of the night as seen in Night Walks are said to be the time when death visits the most – ideas which can taken interpretation of both into a whole new dimension).
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Night Walks
In this, I could go on to write at length on both, but I’ll resist putting words into the artist’s mouths and ideas into your heads. Instead, I would encourage you to go to Nitroglobus and view both, and allow them to jointly speak to you. Both Night Walks and Crossing Over officially open at 12:00 noon SLT on Tuesday, September 8th, 2019.
On Sunday, September 8th, Cica Ghost opened the latest in her monthly installations – and it is simply wonderful in its light-heartedness.
Silly is just that: a marvellous retinue of silly characters in a lush green landscape full of whimsy that would right at home in a children’s story or a scene in The Beatles Yellow Submarine. All of which is wrapped in an About Land joke by Cica:
Q: What is a cat’s favourite colour? A: PURRRR-ple.
Cica Ghost – Silly, September 2019
Across the vivid grass, two-dimensional shoots of many different hues periodically rise in bursts of speed growing, shoots forming as they do so. Except instead of becoming flowers, the buds they sprout become “fingers”, turning the plants into hands that wave in greeting before they descend back into the ground. Fluttering over these are similarly colourful and equally two-dimensional butterflies, their faces lit by happy grins.
There are no trees here; instead huge mushrooms rise over the landscape, casting broad, umbrella-like shadows, while the hump-backed hills are littered with boxes that have their own role to play. It is, in a word, a happy place, rich in humour. but it is not the scenery – whether in two-dimensions or three – that capture and hold the attention; it is the major characters within it.
These are a marvellous mix of the seemingly ordinary – cow-like creatures atop a hill and worm-like characters – to the quite bizarre. Some additionally have more than the usual allocation of heads or expected number of legs, but all of them would be perfectly at home within an animated film – a feeling that has added depth courtesy of the music stream Cica provides for the installation, which should definitely be played during a visit!
Cica Ghost – Silly, September 2019
As with all of Cica’s installations, there are plenty of opportunities to get involved in the setting – places to sit, places to dance, and more. Just mouse-over the boxes scattered around and click when you see the sit icon. Where you end up might surprise you; one box certainly offers a new meaning to the term “in the belly of the beast”, while another might leave you feeling lighter than air! There’s also a free gift you can use to take to the skies and become an airborne participant in things.
Cica’s builds always offer something attractive. Sometimes they come with fun and frivolity, like Silly, others can be more thought-provoking or carry a narrative. It is this constant mixing of ideas and approaches that always made her installations worthy of time and attention. They are also why Cica is one of Second Life’s treasured artists.
Santoshima recently extended a personal invitation to me to view the latest exhibition at her Ribong Gallery. Entitled The Overwhelm, the installation is by Meiló Minotaur, and it presents a layered, animated piece that marks – for me, anyway – the first art installation to use Animesh within its presentation.
This is actually a difficult piece to quantify. In part this is due to the minimalism involved – a series of blocked-out spaces intended to represent a house; it’s also because viewing it, one perhaps gravitates away from the provided description towards an alternative possible interpretation.
The Overwhelm is both a house and a stage, where private life presents itself in its slow, disturbing anguish. This animated installation is about family, and about the overbearing weight of being responsible for a new life, about disconnection, excruciating loneliness, and the shared commonness of this experience.
– CapCat Ragu, explaining the Overwhelm on behalf of Mieló Minotaur
Ribong Gallery: The Overwhelm
The term “new life” suggests this is a piece about the anxiety surrounding a forthcoming birth; the setting suggests something else: the anxiety felt when a child has failed to return home as expected. This interpretation fits the later comment in the description, which defines the colours and tone of the setting as,”distressing mood, with an implication of imminent violence”.
But for me, there is a third interpretation: a couple who have in fact lost their child and are both surrounded by memories of that child in the form of the haunting wall images, and trapped within the simmering tension of loss, blame and recrimination. All of which, wrapped within that sense of grief, is waiting to explode outwards in anger and violence toward whichever of them gives cause through a wrong action or word.
Ribong Gallery: The Overwhelm
The Animesh models give a physical dimension to the atmosphere of anxiety, looming anger, anguish and hurt through their pacing, head movements, and through their shape. The exaggerated points of the male figure’s shoulders convey a sense of hunch-shouldered annoyance as he strides in his place, for example.
Curious, involved, oddly attractive, The Overwhelm is open through to November 2019.
SLurl Details and Related Links
The Overwhelm, Ribong Gallery (Mieum, rated General)
SL Through My Eyes – Jamee Sandalwood; Windlight Gallery, September 2019
SL Through My Eyes is an extensive exhibition of Second Life photography by Jamee Sandalwood that is currently open at the Windlight Gallery, curated by John and Eleseren Brianna. As the title of the exhibition – located on the upper floor of the gallery – implies, this is something of a personal look at Second Life, with Jamee introducing it thus:
This has been three years of inspiration in the making, and I am so proud to share it with you all. I hope you will find something that is special and reminds you of why you are part of this virtual world. SL has so many things to offer with so many talented and amazing people sharing their talents in ways that inspire. Each of these photos was taken as I was inspired by the beauty and creativity of someone who took the time to build something that was beautiful to me.
SL Through My Eyes – Jamee Sandalwood; Windlight Gallery, September 2019
Jamee’s work covers fashion photography, avatar studies, abstracts and – obviously – landscapes. And while the focus of SL Through My Eyes is on the latter, it also touches on her other areas of artistic interest as well. A number of the pieces include self-portraits that also have a slant towards fashion, for example, while a study of a lion’s head is rendered as a painting that, while not abstract in style, has a wonderful sense of abstraction about it which suggests it could have been sculpted and that were one to reach out and touch it, fingers would be able to trace their way over the lines and creases that appear to give form to the fur and mane.
It is this richness of life and presence in Jamee’s work that I find so attractive. Her landscapes in particular always strike me as not just capturing the memory of a location, but its very breath as well.
SL Through My Eyes – Jamee Sandalwood; Windlight Gallery, September 2019
Whereas others tend to post-process to the point that while they have produced a work of art in its own right, they have in doing so perhaps lost the core essence of the place their works features. In her work, Jamee offers a lighter touch, one that still results in expressing her artistic muse and creativity, but which also retains the essence of the place in which the original image was taken.
A further attractiveness with this exhibition is the dressing Jamee has given the gallery space around her work: fantasy settings fronted by night flowers that seem to offer a way into the images; the accoutrements of a beach location accompanying her coastal and water images; ivy hanging from walls to bring together images of ruins and horses to form a vignette of their own. Among these elements are a series of small photos of Jamee and her SL companion, Matt Thomson; these add a further personal dimension to the exhibition that is delightful to see.
SL Through My Eyes – Jamee Sandalwood; Windlight Gallery, September 2019
SL Through My Eyes is an engaging and evocative exhibition of art by an exceptionally talented photographer and artist. I believe it will be open through until the end of September, and a visit is thoroughly recommended.
Angelika Corral and SheldonBR, curators of DaphneArts, have something of an affinity with the work of Edgar Allen Poe. In 2017 they hosted an exhibition of art marking 208th anniversary of his birth, and they have also produced works of their own focused on Poe, notably Dream Within A Dream, based on Poe’s poem A Dream Within A Dream, and a static installation modelled on Fall of the House of Usher.
Dream Within A Dream formed the leaping-off point for a series of immersive installations they have produced (and which has most recently encompassed the works of John Donne – see No man is an island). Now, and with an official public opening on September 2nd, 2019, they have returned once more to Poe, with a new immersive installation Annabel Lee, based on Poe’s poem of the same name.
Annabel Lee was the last poem Poe composed; it explores the themes of death, love and the hereafter – all common these for Poe – wrapped within a “ballad” about the death of a beautiful woman. Within it, the narrator recounts his love for the woman – Annabel Lee – which began many years ago in a “kingdom by the sea”. He believes their love was so intense, the angels themselves became envious to the extent they caused her death. Nevertheless, he believes that the love they shared was so deep, neither angels nor the grave can constrain it, and that their souls remain entwined. And so it is, each night he dreams of her, as he lies beside her tomb.
DaphneArts: Annabel Lee
Like so many of Poe’s poems, Annabel Lee is complex as much as it is dark. There is something of an autobiographical element to it, another facet oft present in Poe’s work. He himself fell in love with his cousin, Virginia Clemm, and in the words of the poem – “she was a child” – being just thirteen when Poe married her, and she died just two years prior to the poem being written. Thus there is an element that in writing about the loss of “Annabel Lee”, Poe is perhaps drawing on personal experience.
In keeping with these immersive environments designed by Sheldon and Angelika, a visit commences in a sky box, where visitors are given an interactive HUD as a temporary attachment, and which should be accepted (it will be automatically be attached, and should detach on leaving – if not, just click the Stop button, when displayed). The skybox also includes instructions on setting your viewer’s environment (if you are using Firestorm, then the local windlight should apply via that viewer’s parcel windlight support). Once the viewer is set in accordance with the recommendations, visitors are free to take the teleport board to the ground level and the installation itself.
DaphneArts: Annabel Lee
The ground level presents the poem through what Sheldon and Angelika call “Magical Realism” – the use of sounds, visuals and the spoken word (in this case, Angelika reading the poem) – to evoke a sense that the visitor is immersed within its unfolding story. It’s a technique that might also be described as “immersive literary allegory”: a visual setting that both directly frames the telling of the poem’s story (the “kingdom by the sea”) and the passing of Annabel Lee (shown through the presence of her tomb), whilst also offering cues to the deep story of love and loss.
This latter aspect is shown through the use of elements such as the candles (a clear symbol associated with death) and the path they mark (representing the path we follow through life to its eventual end, which is in turn symbolised by the tomb), and by the house. The latter (perhaps best explored after hearing the poem throughout), shows signs of past habitation with rooms and furniture slowly mouldering. However, these are themselves more broadly representative of the memories of love and life shared but which have come to an end; the memories we fight to hold on to after the passing of a loved one, but which inevitably age and fade with the passing of time.
DaphneArts: Annabel Lee
So it is that this is a deeply atmospheric and evocative setting; one that should be experienced rather than described. It sets Annabel Lee, the poem, almost as fairytale without in any way destroying or distorting the emotional span of the original.
