Tag: Art 2025

Joanna Kitten (Joaannna) makes a fourth – and welcome – return to Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, curated and operated by the talented Dido Haas, with an exhibition to see out the year.

It was at Nitroglobus that I first encountered Kitten’s work in a dedicated exhibition, and I was immediately captivated by her work. Until that point, she’d largely focused on landscape images; but with Noir, featured at Nitroglobus in October 2022, she moved towards more avatar-centric and narrative collections, often presented in monochrome, as was also witnessed by her second and third exhibitions at Nitroglobus: Fourth Wall in July 2023 and Nude in January 2025.

All three of these past exhibitions were engaging in the way in which they offered a narrative flow; one that was not necessarily linear in nature, but which nevertheless offered insights into a world both built by Joanna and somewhat reflective of her own as she lives it in SL. With Asphalt World, which opened at Nitroglobus on November 15th, 2025, Joanna continues this interweaving of narrative, imagination and images whilst adding a fourth strand: music:

Anyone familiar with my Flickr feed will know that music plays a big part in my creative process. One of my favourite bands is Suede, formed in the 1990s and credited with kick-starting the Britpop movement in the UK. They may be less well known than their more famous contemporaries, Oasis, but they have infinitely more depth.

In 1994, Suede released their album Dog Man Star, which features the song The Asphalt World—a track that, for me, evokes the vision of a dark, gritty cityscape.  …  This is the world I aimed to create in my images—enhanced with a touch of science fiction inspired by novels such as Neuromancer by William Gibson and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

– Joanna Kitten (Joaannna), describing Asphalt World

Thus, within Asphalt World we have a collection monochrome images captured within the region of Voodoo Land, a nocturnal urban setting. This forms a perfect backdrop for Joanna to offer her captivating studies, each one of which in turn offers flashes of the song’s lyrics wrapped in a film noir approach and edged with touches of science-fiction.

Given the use of the song as an inspiration for the exhibition, I would strongly recommend listening to it when visiting Asphalt World. This is what I did, and whilst viewing Joanna’s images I was struck by the way the lyrics could flow between them, sometimes a line or two landing in one, only to drift away and land on another, to be replaced by a different line.  Thus, Asphalt World became even more enticing fluid as a narrative in my eyes.

Another aspect of the images I appreciated – which might be accidental, to be sure, is the way several of the sculptures places across the gallery floor resonate with the song’s lyrics. Sisyphus, for example, with its representation of the hopeless act of pushing a rock uphill whilst knowing it will only tumble back own, seems to embody the song’s central hopelessness in trying to discern what goes on in the head and life of the featured girl when she is out of the lyricis’s sight – and control. Similarly, Easy Murdering perhaps offers a (very viscerally, admittedly) twist on how it feels when the sex turns cruel, and leads to a broken heart.

In all, Asphalt World is richly engaging in and of itself; a clear demonstration of Joanna’s skill and growth as an artist-photographer, elegantly framed within Nitroglobus.

SLurl Details

• Nitroglobus Roof Gallery (Sunshine Homestead, rated Moderate)

Cats and Birds is a small gallery space I had not, up until preparing this article, previously heard of or visited, so was pleased to have the chance to acquaint myself with another location celebrating art in Second Life. Operated by Gaby Gaby Valentin-Steampunk (Gabrielleval), it sits to one side of the nightclub of the same name, and I was drawn to it after reading about the December 2025 exhibition there, which features the imagery of Susann DeCuir.

For those own may not be aware, Susann is a fellow Second Life traveller and blogger, writing about her discoveries in Mein Zweites Lieben (My Second Life), covering all things SL, including the regions and art events she visits, as well as covering her own region of Angel of Pain, which I’ve also covered in these pages, and a broad swathe of SL news.

Entitled The Many Facets of Second Life, the exhibition at Cats and Birds is a veritable tour de force of Susann’s work as she documents the places she has visited and also touching upon her own interests within Second Life.

Susann has an admirable eye for angle, focus, composition and shot, allowing her to imaginatively and captivatingly capture the places she visits. She also has the eye of a storyteller and the gentle touch of a rightfully restrained editor; while she may well post-process her images (as most of us do), she does so gently and lightly, and always with a eye to her subject.

Thus, throughout all of her captures of regions and settings, she never moves away from the environment settings in which they are found. Instead, she uses her editing skills to compliment the composition of landscape and environment through which she has roamed, rather than the use of alternative settings within the viewer many of us might opt to us. Whilst there is nothing wrong with opting for alternative environment settings when taking photographs, it is nevertheless true that there is always a risk of spoiling the intent presented by the location; thus, by encouraging herself to stay within the bounds of the local EEP settings, Susann remains truer to the original.

Through the 25 images within this collection – each one neatly displayed with a name plate which, when clicked will offer the observer the chance to see it in much greater detail within Susann’s Flickr – we are not so much spectators (or beholders, if you will) of Susann’s artistry and photography; we become fellow travellers with her. We journey through the worlds she has visited, sharing her time and space and sharing in her unique and gifted perspective on Second Life and its beauty and wonder.

A genuinely engaging exhibition, highly recommended, and my congratulations to Susann. Please note the exhibition will run through until December 31st, 2025.

SLurl Details

• Cats and Birds (Burning Desire Island, rated Adult)

As I continue to try to catch up on what’s going on in Second Life, I took the opportunity to hop over to the Avalonian Gallery, operated and curated by Moon (Moon Dragonheart), a 20-year veteran of Second Life (and fellow “Brit”) and his SL partner Luanamae Heartsong. This is one (which might actually be relatively new to the SL art world) of the many smaller, boutique-style galleries which can often pass unnoticed in the scheme of things, especially by those of us who blog art, so a slap across my writs in this regard, but which nevertheless quietly hosts engaging exhibitions.

Located on its own sky platform above the Mainland continent of Heterocera, the gallery is housed within one of Cain Maven’s instantly recognisable and elegant buildings. A large terrace bordered by hedgerows sits before the gallery, offering both the Landing Point and (presumably) space for event openings.

At the time of my visit, the gallery was hosting an untitled exhibition of art by Dante Helios (Dantelios). Also hailing from the UK, Dante splits his SL work between landscape images and erotica, noting:

Both of these themes fascinate me and continue to bring me pleasure in SL. I enjoy exploring beautiful sims and trying to capture the feeling of being there. I also enjoy seeing how women are far freer to express their sexuality in SL through their avis than they are in RL.

For this exhibition, the focus is on Dante’s landscape work, which I find to be rich, evocative and finely balanced in the use of post- (and possibly pre-?) processing to create pieces that can open the door to the imagination, allowing it to paint stories of its own – or which can simply be appreciated for their beauty.

The gallery building is split into two rooms, large and smaller, and Dante’s exhibition might be seen as being loosely split between the two.

Within the larger L-shaped room, entered directly from the terrace, is a display of images largely (entirely? I admit, there were two I didn’t recognise) within a region I’ve always found to be richly engaging on many levels: Buddha Garden, the work of Gian (GianArt Clip). It’s a place I’ve visited numerous times since 2022 (the most recent having been in August 2025), and the images Dante presents here offer and entirely new outlook on the setting, presenting it with a sense of mystical beauty that is quite marvellous.

The smaller room presents a collection of eleven pieces captured from around Second Life. They again include personal favourites – the now departed (and missed) Elvion, the ever-captivating Chou-Chou (the cathedral of Memento Mori perfectly captured and instantly recognisable as I place I’ve spent a lot of time within and have filmed in the past).

Also to be found (although I admit I had to peek at the name of the pictures for these) are Luane’s World, Angel of Pain, and Storybook, all of which have been locations featured in these pages, and the spirit of all of them is perfectly captured in Dante’s images.

I’m not sure how frequently exhibitions are staged / changed at Avalonian Gallery or how long this exhibition has been running. The latter being the case, I would recommend hopping over and viewing sooner rather than later. In terms of the former, I fully intend to keep an eye on the gallery’s group notices and outlets such as the various SL Arts groups for future exhibitions.

SLurl Details

• Avalonian Gallery (Perizoma, rated Moderate)