Category: Reviews

Maison de la Chouette is a new art venue – at least for me – operated by the veritable Owl Dragonash, a superb patron of the arts herself, and also a talented Second Life photographer. A further gallery nestled within the Corsica South Coasters area, it joins the likes of NovaOwl and the galleries at Port Emyniad (and locations in between) in presenting the opportunity for visitors to explore the local landscape and trails and appreciating a rich variety of SL art (see: Art and a walk in Southern Corsica in Second Life).

I was drawn to Maison de la Chouette specifically because it is, throughout March and April, hosting an exhibition of art by Noa Cloud. The holder and creator of [REN] (of Noa is perhaps best known amongst SL explorers as the holder and creator of [REN], which I last visited in May 2023 (see: The idyllic beauty of REN in Second Life). Noa is a gifted writer, a musician and actor, and himself an explorer of Second Life. He is also a talented photographer-artist ([REN] is also home to his own gallery) with a focus on SL landscape and avatar studies.

At Owl’s Maison, he is presenting fifteen images showcasing his landscape work, and they are both beautifully rendered and carry a depth of artistic express which mark them as instantly purchasable for display in anyone’s SL home. Several of the pieces offer images of SL’s wildlife and animals, generally casting them in the most delightful way of telling a little stories of love, companionship, childhood and fun, utilising characters he discovered on his journeys around SL.

The images are present in both panoramic and square formats, with the latter offering a patterned border around them. This reminded me of the old postage stamps with there “crenelated” edges resulting from being torn off of their printed sheets along the perforations surrounding them. This patterning adds to the sense of these images belonging to a special collectable set.

Noa’s gift in his photography is to combine a skilled eye for framing and cropping with an equally keen eye for spotting both detail and the opportunity to offer a story with his work. The result is that there is a certain visual poetry imbued in the finished pieces; a suggestion that if they haven’t had a story or poem written about them, then one is due. Just take Solitary as an example of this or, on a more humorous and enchanting level, Beby Bird (which also stands as testament to the creativity of whoever is responsible for this pairing of birds).

Not that these are pieces that need to be dissected to be appreciated; they can be enjoyed very much in and of themselves, and the setting within Maison de la Chouette’s gentle Tuscan flair of villa and terrace (the is displayed both indoors (both floors) and out) demonstrate how perfectly Noa’s images lend themselves for display at home.

I understand that the “opening” party for the exhibition – in reality, a mid-point celebration – is to be held on March 19th, 2024, commencing at 13:00 SLT with live music by Grace Loudon, followed by a DJ set from 14:00 SLT. Might see you there!

Slurl Details

• Maison de la Chouette (Novatron, rated General)

In January 2024, Scylla Rhiadra presented an exhibition entitled Containers at Mareea Farrasco’s IMAGOLand Art Galleries (see: Containers: an artistic voyage of expression and constraint in Second Life). It offered an examination of how spaces – be they at home or at work or somewhere between, whether public or private – can both help organise and protect us as individuals whilst also giving us the freedom to fully express who we are, whilst at the same time they can also inform, contain, and constrain us in how we reveal ourselves to the world at large – and perhaps actually to ourselves as well.

Now, at HeArt and Soul Gallery, operated by Tom Willis and Lizzy Swordthain, she offers an exhibition of work which can be considered a further chapter on the theme, offering an alternative perspective. In Presence Scylla does not look and the manner in which the spaces we occupy and move through affect us – but how we impact the spaces and places through which we move, oftentimes long after we have departed.

We all leave a mark on the places we move through, and on life as a whole. The size of that mark obviously varies from the celebrated statesperson or global celebrity down through the favourite uncle or teacher from school; but our mark is undeniable:

We are presences even in those places where we are not, by virtue of our actual absence: we leave a trace embedded in what did not happen: the somethings we might have said that remain unspoken, or the somethings that might have been done that we were not present to do.

– Scylla Rhiandra, Presence, February 2024

As with Containers, the images Scylla supplies are studies in composition and narrative. Each holds a story, or at least a vignette which is clearly discernible. In addition, each image is again accompanied by a board containing a considered quotes from a piece of literature designed to further illustrate the image itself; and like those found in Containers, it is hard not to feel these selections offer insight into Scylla – and allow her to leave a further little “her shaped” hole in use which accompanies the one created by each picture. Certainly, I again felt that distant kinship with her purely through the pieces and authors she has selected.

Also like Containers, the collection making up Presence are layer in potential meaning and subtext. There is the meaning offer through the title of each piece, the reflection of that title and meaning through the selected text, the framing of the theme used to express the ide; all of which are expected. But then there are the more subtle aspects: those which lie in the way in which each piece chimes with us personally, the memories and thoughts conjured – perhaps most of all by the people who have touched our lives but who have now moved on in one way or another, only to leave one of those small holes in our thoughts and memories.

Another beautifully poignant and expressive series of Scylla.

SLurl Details

• HeArt and Soul Gallery (Durdanex, rated Moderate)

‘Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

– In Memoriam A.H.H (1850) Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The above words, written in the 27th Cantos of Tennyson’s elegy to his friend (and lover?) Arthur Henry Hallam- who died at the tender age of 22 -, have become something of a modern proverb since they first appeared in that poem. They are often offered in consolation to someone who has lost  – through death or other departure – a person who has meant so much to them.

The words, whilst generally sincerely meant, likely don’t come as much comfort for anyone in the throes of loss; rather they likely sound like a hollow consolation, such is the hurt, the loneliness, the sense of desolation which tend to overwhelm us at such times. However, the poem is more than a trite 2-liner; through its cantos, Tennyson expresses a range of feelings and reflections on the passing of his friend and a poetic essay on the cruelty of nature.

As such, it has much in common with Mihailsk’s latest exhibition, which opened within the Nitroglobus Roof Gallery operated and curated by Dido Haas (and which served to introduce Mihailsk’s art to the world of SL art exhibitions back in 2021 – see: Mihailsk’s Baptism of Fire in Second Life). Like that exhibition, this latest, entitled Lost is a highly personal selection of art, dealing as it does with his coming to terms with the lost – or rather, disappearance – of his Second Life partner.

Within it, and like Tennyson’s poem, Mihailsk explores the rawness of emotions as the loss is felt and the resilience of the heart which allows us to (perhaps) eventually accept and move forward in life. However, where Tennyson used 2,916 lines of iambic tetrametre, Mihailsk uses his marvellous, minimalist monochrome style (his lingua franca, if you will) across a dozen images to convey a similar depth of emotions, feelings, prayers and wandering thoughts as found in Tennyson’s poem. Each image is a poignant canto in its own right, elegantly conveying its feeling and sentiment even without recourse to skilling out its name via the Edit floater.

These are pieces which, so artfully created as they are, in places enfold a heartfelt sense of the artist’s inner emotions and sense of self whilst also reflecting his outward feelings and sentiments. Elsewhere, they reveal the wellspring of hurt and loss only one who has loved deeply can perhaps feel – and the resilience born of that love which can, in time, allow that person to look back on what has been lost and accept the proverb of Tennyson’s words as true.

Just take, for example, Take Care, and Be Well. Both offer kind sentiments to the one who has vanished, each with its butterfly symbolising taking flight to a new life / escape; at the same time, they both evoke a sense of loneliness and loss through the shadowed figure, standing either with hands thrust dejectedly into pockets or leaning against a bicycle with its promise of travels – but with nowhere to go. Then there is Wish, evocatively capturing those shadowed moments of hurt and want; when the one wish is to have all back as it was – whilst knowing it can never be so; or Mute Pain, perhaps the rawest of the images in terms of its emotional tone and impact.

And just as Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H carries broader themes within it, so too does Lost bear witness to the wider truth that whilst Second Life might well be a fleeting realm of digital “make believe”, the emotions and feelings we bring to it, or which are stirred within us as a result of our interaction here are as genuine, lasting and impactful as any we might experience within the physical world. Indeed, they may well be worse, in that this world is unique in the way people can simply vanish, leaving those who remain without any knowledge of why or where they went – or how they might be, physically and mentally. Thus loss here can be shrouded in the additional hurt of just not knowing.

Powerful, emotive and with a beating heart of love, strength and resilience, Lost is a stunning collection of images wrapped within very personal feelings which should not only be seen, but absorbed like the words of an elegy. When visiting, do be sure to view Adwehe’s sculpture Revival of Psyche, made especially for this exhibition and which helps underscore its emotional content.

SLurl Details

• Nitroglobus Roof Gallery (Sunshine Homestead, rated Moderate)