I didn’t do it: artist wins case over disputed work

It was one of the more peculiar cases the art world has seen in recent years, involving two artists with very similar sounding names – and varying degrees of fame.

Robert Fletcher, a former Canadian prison official, claimed that he had bought the painting 40 years ago from Doig, whose works sell for upwards of tens of millions of dollars, while he was serving a jail term in Canada. The painting, once valued at $10 million (£7.6 million) was signed Peter Doige – with an “e”. Doig, who was living in Canada at the time insisted that the painting was not his, and that he had certainly never served time at Thunder Bay Correctional Centre in Ontario, where Mr. Fletcher was working.  Mr. Fletcher claimed that Doig had renounced the work to avoid admitting that he had spent time in prison.

Now, a court in Chicago has ruled that it was a case of mistaken identity, after the sister of Peter Doige, Marilyn Doige Bovard, recognised the work as her late brother’s.

Via The Times 

Angell Town artwork unveiled by street artist Lhouette

Ciaran Robinson, a street artist who goes by the name Lhouette, has unveiled his angel of Angell Town crafted in his idiosyncratic silhouette method as he donated a bespoke piece of artwork to the estate in Brixton.

Mr. Robinson gathered ideas for the piece during a visit to the estate earlier this month where he held a workshop with dozens of young people in Newbury House. He said he wanted to add something colourful to liven up the estate and teach young people how to work with stencils and spray paint for the first time. The artwork could now be hung in the new Angell Town School, which is set to open its doors for the first time next month.

Via Evening Standard

Bloodbaths and bad dreams: Shaun Tan's fairytale sculptures

Shaun Tan, a writer-illustrator made his name with dark, unsettling picture books such as The Rabbits. Now he’s swapped his pencil for clay to make miniature nightmares based on the stories of the Brothers Grimm.

When he discovered Inuit soapstone carvings and pre-Columbian pottery on trips to Canada and Mexico, it sparked the idea of using small sculptures to tell the Grimm stories. The resulting figures are almost primitive in their simplicity, a nightmarish mix of cute and gruesome. He shortened each Grimm story into a snapshot, pinpointing what he calls “the DNA of the tale, the core that haunts people forever.”

“It’s like when you wake up from a bad dream – you never remember the whole dream, you remember the most disturbing part. So I eroded these stories down.”

Via Guardian

Zanele Muholi’s best photograph: out and proud in South Africa

Zanele Muholi has been working on a photograph series called Faces and Phases for a decade in order to creating positive images of black lesbians and transgender people in South African society, and the work dedicated to a close friend of her who was a so-called ‘curative’ rape survivor died in 2007 at the age of 25. 

“I felt I needed to remember the people that were growing up in front of me, and to see myself as one of ‘us’ rather than one of ‘them’. The project is about us being counted in South African visual history. I think that’s true photography – to say that you were present.

One of the most challenging things about being a queer visual activist in South Africa is not having access to spaces to exhibit my work here. The attitude of politicians towards LGBT people fluctuates a lot. When one of us has been killed – or there are elections – you find a lot of support, and then when it’s over they come up with a different agenda. That’s why it’s so important to have our own people in politics, in medicine and in the media.”

Via Guardian

Anya Hindmarch Selects Artworks to Sell at Sotherby’s

Ms. Hindmarch, a British trade ambassador and trustee of the Royal Academy of Arts and the Design Museum in London has added another job: guest curator for a high-profile auction house. She has selected 10 works to go under the hammer as part of the latest Sotherby’s Contemporary Curated sale in London on 20 September. Celebrity collaboration have been a fixture of the New York branch of Sotheby’s since 2013, as part of its efforts to attract new audience to the art world.

She is known for her irreverent designs, which have included bags inspired by candy wrappers and cereal boxes, as well as a more recent line of leather stickers embossed with cartoon-style graphics and smiley faces.

“I’ve always tried to be as heavily involved as I can in the art scene here in the UK simply because I find art so life-enhancing, particularly modern art. It is never just straight paint on a canvas. Like fashion, it is rooted in desire and self-expression, finding outlets for emotion and telling people who you really are.”