In anticipation of the British Museum’s forthcoming Indigenous Australia exhibition, we look at the rise of Aboriginal textile designs in fashion and interiors. Indigenous Australians’ oral tradition and spiritual values are based upon reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime – a sacred era when ancestral totemic spirit beings created the world. […]
“We don’t have codpieces now, but we have pretty tight jeans,” says Tim Knox, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum. There is now a noticeable interest in romantic male accessories and man-bags – a trend we pointed to in Tudor-themed Visuology Issue 1. These are the sorts of items mentioned by Matthäus Schwarz in a Renaissance […]
The oldest art ever discovered is now available for public viewing. But the cave paintings to be seen in the Ardèche region of France are in fact recent reproductions of the originals. The Chauvet cave, named after Jean-Marie Chauvet, one of the three people who found the treasure trove of Paleolithic paintings, is open rarely, to just a […]
No, it’s not a load of bollards, though there is one in the V&A’s latest exhibition, All of This Belongs to You. The stainless steel bollard in question (SP 400 by ATG Access), located amongst the railings and public signs of the ironwork gallery, is the type used in many of our public spaces, including […]
A far cry from bespectacled, retro-inspired geek chic – or the homogenized normcore look, is the trend for increasingly extreme tattooing and body piercing. Although tattoos have been around since Neolithic times, and 5000-year old mummified humans have been found with body piercings, the relatively recent association of such body adornments with sailors and criminal gangs has […]
Having a joke at the expense of the art buyer, or even the portrait sitter, is something of a tradition with artists. But what about the tax payer? The Gift Horse, a skeletal sculpture by German artist Hans Haacke, with live Stock Exchange feed ticker tape, is the latest expensive addition to the London public art scene. […]
Would you like to sin With Elinor Glyn On a tiger-skin? Or would you prefer To err With her On some other fur? During the period known as the Belle Époque, themes such as the beautiful animal-woman, the sphinx, the vampire, the femme fatale, the seductive serpent and Salomé were cultivated and stylized through Symbolic […]
Contrary to the media portrayal of older people, not all are sitting at home feeling lonely. This is just as well, because according to Age UK, there are now around 14.7 million over-60s in the country – that’s nearly 23% of the population. It is predicted that the number aged 65 and over will rise by […]
For anyone who didn’t see Valentino’s 2015 resort collection coming (see images below via Style.com), the multicolour mosaic trend has been building up for quite a while now, though most people still seem to be wearing normcore greige. Despite the so-called phenomenon of ‘colour-blocking’ (an opportunity for the style challenged to get away with bizarrely […]
As much as people try to be different, they rarely are… but Viktor Wynd is more unusual than most. In a world where little if anything shocks, Wynd’s interests and lifestyle are decidedly odd – sleeping with a pet snake wrapped around his feet, kissing a shrunken head goodnight, and collecting celebrity poo, for heavens […]