YO SOY LO QUE VEO

NGV | Mother and child

it’s one of the oldest and most enduring themes in art history. When MOTHER: Stories from the NGV Collection opens at NGV Australia next month, discover how artists across centuries have explored the layered, powerful and deeply personal experiences of motherhood. From Renaissance paintings to photography and bold contemporary pieces, this new exhibition features over 200 works by artists including Camille Henrot, Tracey Moffatt, Patricia Piccinini, Hayley Millar Baker and many more. MOTHER opens 27 March – 12 July at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, @fed.square – free.

1 Davida ALLEN, Baby 1989, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne colour lithograph, Purchased from Admission Funds, P205-1989.

2 Paul Jacoulet, The treasure, Korea, 1940 (detail). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased with funds donated by Vivienne Fried, 2022.

NGV | FUTURE COUNTRY

wen_kai_w | Fashion film directed for @zamx_co

Dream of a persimmon girl. unordered murmurs. Clothing is the poetic evidence and trace, the lifetime of youth and old age, the changing essence of others, eternal, intrinsic, the presence of both human and object.

INTERVIEW: INÈS BRESSAND 23.07.25 | PAN AFTER

Cleopatra's Bling | Happy Year of the Horse As the Tang Dynasty poet Li He wrote:

Natasha Yankelevich | Photographer + Designer.

"I am a photographer and designer from Moscow, working in the genre of staged photography, creating projects about people and stories. Each of my series is a version of what life could be like if I were a different person like a traveler, a re-enactor, a historian at Cairo University, a representative of the Miao people around Luang Prabang, or the owner of a baroque mansion in 19th century London. A photographer can look behind closed doors and encounter other cultures and professions. So in my shoots I immerse myself in a whole spectre of themes with their accents, aesthetics and meanings. I try everything that attracts me and seems to be a parallel universe.  Topics that invariably excite me: - renaissance aesthetics, renaissance person (universal human being); - ethnography, cultural peculiarities, the history of the region; - fashion, the effect of clothing on the individual (functionally and aesthetically); - folkloristics and the structure of fairy tales; - societies and social institutions (bygone and contemporary) with their distinctive features and identities; - charisma and charismatic personalities (past and present); - science and technology."

The Nation of Ten Arrows |

2. Soma the Radiant

3. Yamal Faces | The Nenets are one of the indigenous peoples of the North, inhabiting the coast of the Arctic Ocean from the Kola Peninsula to Taimyr. Traditionally, the Nenets are engaged in large-scale reindeer herding.  

On the Yamal Peninsula, several thousand reindeer herders roam, owning millions of reindeer. Some reindeer herders still lead a nomadic life, moving with herds along established routes - in summer to the north, and in winter to the south. The nomadic way of life has shaped many elements of traditional culture - a portable dwelling (chum), reindeer teams and sleds, clothing adapted to the ferocious climatic conditions. Reindeer herding camps are practically independent from the outside world and live on full self-sufficiency. People feed deer, and deer feed people.

4. Tahaddi al-burhan-of-tin-hinan

5. The Nation of Ten Arrows

JASMIN SPARROW | styling + jewellery

Sergei Parajanov (Sarkis Parajanian) | Master Film Director.

Today marks the 101st anniversary of the filmmaker.

“an avantgarde extravagant, sumptuous saga in color.”

- on New York’s Film Festival's flyer for Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, 1965, a moving love story, set in the picturesque Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains.

"Cazals unearths the career of a man born into a family of eccentric Armenian antique dealers, who showed remarkable talent through school, breaking into cinema only to sustain a relentless campaign by the Soviet regime, which imprisoned him three times. A fascinating exploration of the collages he produced during his years in prison, and featuring interviews with the director himself, Cazals’ film demonstrates the scope of Parajanov’s artistic vision, lovingly commemorating this rebel of art cinema."

- THE REBEL | PARAJANOV AT 100 DOCUMENTARY

"Sergei Parajanov is an auteur in the realm of cinema. Poetic, painterly and yet rooted deeply within the peripheries of the other high art forms, Parajanov presents us with masterpieces in Ashik Kerib, The Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and The Colour of Pomegranates. A contemporary of the great Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Parajanov is unique and distinct in his cinematic sense and sensibilities. This essay looks at the timbre of Parajanov’s classics through the eyes of a poet."

- Why Sergei Parajanov and His Films Matter | by Dr. Ampat Varghese Kosher for Silhouette Magazine.

A portrait of the revered 18th-century Armenian poet and musician Sayat Nova, the ‘King of Song’. Through his poetry and a series of lavish tableaux, the film charts his life from humble weaver, to king’s minstrel and cloistered monk before being martyred for his faith by invading Persians.

“I’ve always seen myself as little less… evolved.”

BETTER MAN  | Robbie Williams Biopic. Dir. Michael Gracey, 2024.

The look of their synthetic simian started with a scan of Williams for key features, but incorporated the proportions of Davies (for instance, his height so that the actors could look at each other, rather than tennis balls or sticks to create eyelines.). Ensuring that the range of human emotions could be presented within the ape framework was also key. “We wanted the audience to get swept up in [the film] and just forget they’re really watching the monkey,” explains animation supervisor Dave Clayton. “To do that, we kind of dialed proportions and his facial structure to include enough elements of the real Williams, to make him feel familiar and be able to capture those mannerisms, but enough of a monkey that he didn’t feel like you were shying away from this concept of him being an ape.”

Eileen Kramer | Australian dancer, choreographer, artist and writer – a true creative spirit – born in 1914, still making art until her death on 15 November 2024 at the age of 110. Beautiful.

“She shatters all manner of expectations, and it’s exhilarating. She is uninhibited, at her ease, vivacious, drawing you in with her naturalness and making you feel you’re involved in life itself.”

- Sarah L Kaufman, Washington Post, 5 February 2022.

Images:

eileen-kramer.com

THE SUBSTANCE | Dir. Coralie Fargeat, 2024.

Starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid.

“The Substance is a body horror movie, but its flashes of violence are ultimately about externalizing the inner-agony, both mental and physical, women endure for the shallow, fleeting approval of lascivious eyes. For even after such pain, self-inflicted or otherwise, the woman who once was a young girl remains visible.”

 - David Crow, Den of Geek

When asked to respond to shocked Cannes viewers’ remarks, director Coralie Fargeat comments; 

“... To be honest, I don’t care to upset people… I knew from the start that it would be a polarising film… This film is describing the violence of inequality that I feel around me…  This is violent, this is gross… This is the reality… Change happens when you open your eyes… anything that is going to help to open these discussions.  The subject will be confronted...  ”

 - Next Best Picture Interview with "The Substance" Director/Writer Coralie Fargeat

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to decide how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares to other expressions. It is your business keep it clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”