Hell, War, Healing, and Community
Welcome to your June edition of Signified
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Announcing the June exhibition at : six : shot : gallery
Rodrigo Sarrat-Cave on ‘Reinventing the Royal City’:
The concept of a fabricated fantasy world was the inspiration for this series of images featuring New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. This city, located on the banks of the mighty Fraser River has been my home for the past thirty years. New Westminster (colloquially known as New West) is western Canada’s oldest city — established in 1859 as the capital of British Columbia. The city was named by Queen Victoria, as a result, New Westminster’s nickname is “The Royal City”…
Continue reading and see the art at : six : shot : gallery
Recently ‘Boosted’ in Signifier:
Rodin and Balzac, Approaching the Gates of Hell
Auguste Rodin’s controversial statue, known as L’Age d’airain / The Age of Bronze, had taken naturalistic realism to a skill-level rivalling the great sculptors of the classical era. It was intended as a poem in bronze capturing the moment of awakening to either joy or suffering, representing the state of mankind during the Bronze Age, as humans rose from their natural state and began on the journey to becoming ‘modern’…
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The Manga of Shigeru Mizuki, a Remembrance of War
To understand the magical realism in the hugely influential manga of Shigeru Mizuki, we need insight into his personal experiences of war and peace, death and life — how the maestro of manga discovered harmony in the midst of conflict and creative inspiration from the spirits of nature. About 20 years ago, in the fall of 2005, I visited Taiwan. It was a short stay of only two nights and three days, but it was a wonderful experience. I ate at…
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Die Brücke: A Bad Romance?
The movement that exerted the most profound influence on the Modern art, literature, and philosophy, that followed must be the Romantics. Admittedly, this is a sweeping statement, and open to debate, but nearly all aspects of modern life have been affected by either embracing or rejecting the Romantic ideals that have shaped not only aesthetics but politics, education, morality — the course of history itself. Often for better but…
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Popular Signifier
Spotlight on one of our most popular or trending articles…
Buzz On, La Vespa!
Not exactly a car but definitely utility transport for the people, in the form of a motor-scooter destined to become the epitome of Euro-chic. The Model T Ford was introduced, early in the twentieth-century as a tool to drive the USA toward prosperity. In late 1930s the KDF was a way to raise war funds, but immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany it was rebranded as the VW Beetle, a vehicle for international commerce to aid…
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The Signifier : six : shot : gallery global freeview!
There’s something for everyone among our showcases of contemporary art, illustration, photography… So, please, spread the word and share the link to the freeview archive page far and wide through you SNS channels to support the artists who have exhibited with us so far…. your friends won’t run up against a paywall and we hope this will help further promote and support our exhibiting artists and their work.
The Signifier : six : shot : gallery officially launched for January 2021 and every calendar month since has hosted an artist’s showcase of just six images linked by aesthetics, techniques, processes, philosophies, formal or conceptual elements. Some of those exhibiting with us are already well-established, internationally renowned artists, others are fresh ‘emergent’ talents, and some have gone on to win major accolades since featuring.
Go to the global freeview page and see the art at : six : shot : gallery
Celebrating Solstice: from the archives of Signifier
In this regular feature of our Signified Newsletter, we select a few articles from our archives linked by a monthly theme. Here are three articles drenched in summer sunshine…
Drawing Down the Sun
In the remote Utah desert lie four huge concrete tubes, large enough to walk through. They are arranged in a cross and each is 18-feet long, 9-feet in cross-section and weigh 22 tons, yet they are dwarfed by the expanse that surrounds them. If you enter these, you are offered protection from the baking sun and can enjoy vistas of distant mountain ranges which seek to centre you at a human scale within the landscape. Holes bored into…
First Impressions
In the early 1890s, after painting his famous Haystacks, Monet moved on to paint a beautiful series of Rouen Cathedral which have a sense of light that is almost more ‘true to the eye’ than a photo could ever be. He managed to achieve an unusually luminous effect, seldom seen with oils. Indeed, the photographic technology of the time would not have been able to capture many of the effects rendered by Monet, even though they would have…
The Poppy Field, a Celebration of Summer
Claude Monet’s Poppy Field, painted in 1873, is one of the world’s most famous landscape paintings. The expanse of scarlet poppies grow among high summer grasses below a backdrop of blue sky and white cloud. The rhythm of a treeline, complete with villa in the distance, divides the canvas horizontally. Four indistinct figures share their celebration of an idyllic summer’s afternoon. Yet this simple canvas challenged the strictures…
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…and, if you know anyone who enjoys reading “imaginative fiction at its best”, you can further support our editor and curator by recommending or purchasing their latest novels in the series, This, That, and The Other, written by Remy Dean with Zel Cariad and published by The Red Sparrow Press.
“Bursting at the seams with magic!”
“…will be enjoyed by fans of fantasy of all ages, particularly those who like classics, like the ‘Narnia’ saga.”
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