Latest news with #artinstallation
Telegraph
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Blenheim Palace replaces stolen gold lavatory with £10 substitute
Blenheim Palace has replaced its stolen golden lavatory with a replica with which visitors can pay £10 to take a selfie. The historic country house, which was the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, is planning to put the attraction in the Water Terraces. It comes after the original £4.75 million golden lavatory artwork, named America, was stolen from the Spencer-Churchill's family home back in 2019. Five men broke into the palace using sledgehammers, before ripping out the solid gold lavatory and fleeing in a stolen Volkswagen. The working lavatory, plumbed as part of an exhibition by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, had been on display for just under a week before it was taken. James Sheen, 40, Michael Jones, 39, Fred Doe, 36, and Bora Guccuk, 41, were accused of being part of a gang who planned and carried out the 'bold and brazen' burglary of the Oxfordshire stately home. Sheen was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to burglary and transferring criminal property in 2024, while Jones was found guilty of burglary in March 2025 and sentenced to 27 months. Doe, from Windsor, was convicted of conspiracy to sell the stolen gold and given a 21-month-long suspended sentence in May, while Guccuk, from west London, was cleared of the same charge. The golden lavatory was probably melted down after it was stolen and has not been recovered since. Blenheim Palace said the replica, which has been spray-painted gold and stuck to an old pallet, is 'aimed to be a fun focal point for visitors to sit down for a selfie with a difference.' A spokesman for Blenheim Palace said: 'We take the theft of any property extremely seriously, but with the incredible global interest in the golden toilet theft and the recent court case coming to a conclusion, we thought some light hearted amusement with a budget alternative in our gardens would raise a smile and become an unlikely new stop-off point for visitors to our stunning gardens.'
CTV News
3 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
New Stadium Yards apartment and art installation honours Black fur trader
The grand reveal of art installation Joseph Lewis in a red canoe outside Lewis Block in Stadium Yards on Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (David Mitchell/CTV News Edmonton) A new rental building in the city is paying tribute to one of the earliest documented Black fur traders in Edmonton from over 200 years ago. The 229-unit apartment building Lewis Block in Stadium Yards, a seven-acre urban village, is across the street from Commonwealth Stadium. It also features a 25-foot public art installation of Joseph Lewis in a red canoe - dubbed The Steersman. The building is named after Lewis, a 'highly accomplished' canoe man with the Hudson's Bay company in the early 1800s. Lewis is believed to have lived as a free Black man decades before slavery was abolished, according to Rohit Group. 'His story reflects the journey of many who've chosen to build a new life in Edmonton: bold, entrepreneurial, and focused on creating something lasting,' a media release from Rohit Group said. The artist who created the art installation says it's an honour to create a piece of Edmonton history. 'I knew right away when I read about his story and his history that I had to make a sculpture and my interpretation of an abstract canoe and a silhouette of a steersman on there,' said Slavo Cech, the artist who designed and created the art piece. 'If it makes you smile then I've done my job.' Lewis Block apartment building The 229-unit apartment building named Lewis Block in Stadium Yards. (David Mitchell/CTV News Edmonton) Russell Dauk with Rohit Group, a real estate development company, says the team has designed a great, livable community in Stadium Yards. 'You feel proud when you deliver a product to your customer that they're happy to live in and I think we've done that,' Dauk told CTV News Edmonton on Tuesday at the grand opening. He says the area is an 'incredible piece of livable property' with the nearby LRT station, Commonwealth stadium, the River Valley and commercial stores. Two stages of the project have been developed with people already moved in.
Fast Company
4 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
New York City's plan to turn subway platforms into art galleries
The New York City subway is not a glamorous scene to behold. Between the grime, the crime, and the occasional scurrying rat, it is best experienced in small doses and only when the need arises. Unless, that is, you're traveling through Grand Army Plaza. As of May this year, anyone passing through the Brooklyn transit hub will be stopped in their tracks by a 7-foot tall, papier-mâché T-Rex looming over what may well be New York City's most outlandish bodega. Titled Rex's Dino Store, the bodega is located inside one of the city's defunct newsstand kiosks. It features newspapers with titles like The Maul Street Journal, Jurassic Park Slope, and various pun-laden products like a 'Steg-Yun' poster and 'Snarlboro' cigarettes, all purchasable with a 'Master-claw' card. Alas, none of the items on display at the bodega are actually for sale, since it is an art installation more akin to a diorama. 'We are also glad to bring some whimsy to MTA riders' commute,' says artist Sarah Cassidy, who created the project with artist Akiva Leffert. 'Even if you're having a bad day, it's difficult to resist a good dinosaur pun.' Subscribe to the Design latest innovations in design brought to you every weekday SIGN UP Privacy Policy | Fast Company Newsletters But according to Mira Atherton, a senior manager in the MTA's real estate department and the curator of the initiative, Rex's Dino Store marks a turning point for the initiative, which has primarily grown through word-of-mouth. 'It's in a very visible part of the station, and it's such a fun and creative and loud activation,' she says. 'In the past month, I've gotten so many inquiries from artists.' The vacancy struggle The MTA has long struggled to fill its retail spaces. Of the roughly 195 retail units scattered throughout the subway system, only 52 are open for business, reflecting a staggering 75% vacancy rate that has worsened since the pandemic stalled foot traffic. Previous attempts to reinvigorate them have included leasing to coffee kiosks, and ATMs. Some have floated more radical ideas. Assembly member and NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has proposed transforming these unused spaces into crisis and drop-in centers to assist unhoused New Yorkers. His $10 million initiative would fund outreach workers stationed inside empty units, offering immediate care and connecting individuals to longer-term services. Meanwhile, the goal of the Vacant Unit Activation Program is to enchant the transit experience by bringing moments of unexpected delight into the city's drab underground corridors. Might these art installations eventually attract paying tenants? Atherton says that hasn't happened yet—but it's not off the table. And if a commercial partner does express interest in a location, the art installations don't necessarily have to go the way of the T-Rex. 'The hope is it will inspire retailers—but that could work for an entire corridor rather than a single unit,' she says, noting that some subway stations have more than one vacant unit. A problem with a solution Atherton was entrusted with the project in January 2023. At the time, she says, the vacancies were 'a problem with no solution.' First, she considered launching a design challenge for architecture and design students, or bringing on a master tenant to program the spaces, but ultimately, she landed on an open call for artists and cultural organizations. It launched in November 2023 with a purposefully non-prescriptive brief. 'We don't want to say 'this is what you should do,'' says Atherton. 'The point is that the MTA doesn't know. I would have never thought of putting a dinosaur in a bodega.' (The program is entirely separate from the better-known MTA Arts & Design initiative, which has its own budget and commissions permanent mosaics, murals, and digital works across various subway stations.) The first installation opened in May 2024 and was created by artist Natalie Collette Wood, in partnership with the nonprofit ChaShaMa. Titled Urban Oasis: Nature in Transit, it was located at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, where Collette Wood transformed an empty store into a lush, plant-filled terrarium, granting New Yorkers an unexpected pocket of calm in Midtown Manhattan. At the time of writing, a total of eight stations feature active art installations, each with their own focus and flair. At 50th Street, in Manhattan, an installation titled Safe Space by artist Traci Johnson imagines a pink, plush interior designed to provide the comfort of a mother's womb. At 81st Street, near the Museum of Natural History, an interactive piece called SoundBooth invites passersby to plug in their instruments for a spontaneous busking session. And at Jackson Heights–Roosevelt Avenue, the Queens-based nonprofit Los Herederos has turned a former retail unit into a vibrant, community-inspired space that doubles as a home base for their web radio station, LH Radio. A play on the subway? Urban Oasis at 53rd Street, offering a fresh perspective on the same stretch of corridor. And later this year, if all goes to plan, Atherton hopes to unveil her most ambitious idea inside a long-abandoned unit at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The idea? An as-of-yet-undefined collaboration with a theater group called Jewel Box, which already hosts plays in a speakeasy-style room. 'There's a ton of vacant space that's difficult to program because the electrical systems are outdated and the power supply is very limited,' she says, but she's determined to get creative. At Grand Army Plaza, the MTA had to undertake some construction to make the kiosk usable. Cassidy and Leffert faced several challenges and bureaucratic hurdles, from securing artist insurance to fireproofing the materials—including Rex himself—but they say the delays only gave them more time to sculpt a better dinosaur. (The entire installation cost about $5,000 out of pocket.) Initially, the pair had proposed an immersive sound installation, but the MTA rejected the idea on safety grounds. Sound equipment, for example, would require live supervision, and there was no budget for that. So, they went back to the drawing board. The kiosk already had a newsstand with a countertop and shelving in place, so the cogs started turning. 'A bodega… on the moon? A bodega… for cats? It was an old bodega. So how old was it? A bodega for dinosaurs?' From there, Cassidy says, 'the puns started to write themselves.' The final deadline for Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech Awards is Friday, June 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Wild rodents, fascist warnings and a haunted carpet: Wolfman Tillmans storms the Pompidou
In September the Pompidou Centre in Paris closes for five years for renovation. The building is nearly 50 years old and needs to be cleared of asbestos, and to reconnect with Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers' original design after years of architectural accumulations. Many of the departments are already moving into temporary new homes, including the huge Bibliothèque publique d'information, the public library usually based on the second floor. Nearly all of its contents have been emptied out, but before it's stripped back altogether, Wolfgang Tillmans has been invited to deconstruct it another way. His show, Rien ne nous y préparait – Tout nous y préparait (Nothing could have prepared us – Everything could have prepared us) covers all 6,000 sq metres of the space. It's an inspired setting because Tillmans' work circles around questions of information. He makes documentary photographs but questions the parameters of photographic vision. In his ongoing Truth Study Center he collates newspaper cuttings, photographs, photocopies, drawings and objects on trestle tables, encouraging viewers to consider these elements and their claims to veracity; his installations are always site-specific, and take a nuanced approach to display. Situated in the Bpi, Rien ne nous y préparait – Tout nous y préparait is a meditation on knowledge, how it is organised, and where its limitations lie. 'I do trust my eyes, I want to trust observation, study, but for that it is very important that I sharpen my eyes to how I see, how we record, what we capture,' says Tillmans. The artist had been invited to show work from throughout his 40-year career, but this isn't a retrospective and it isn't arranged chronologically. Instead it's a response to the space, and it's a space with a big personality. The Pompidou's distinctive blue pipes snake across the ceiling and a bold carpet covers the floor, mostly grey, with some lime green stripes and squares, and the occasional stain. The carpet also features purple patches in seemingly abstract designs; this is an even older carpet, already there when the grey one was added in 2000. The fitters cut around bookshelves and partitions to lay the grey and so, when those fixtures were removed, a ghostly imprint of the library was revealed. For Tillmans the resulting palimpsest suggests a photographic negative, and it's something he was keen to keep; elsewhere he's retained shelving, library books, magazines, the photocopying room, tables, individual study booths and signage. The vacated BPI requires an exceptionally talented – and prolific artist – but Tillmans makes it look easy. Celebrated images such as Moon in Earthlight (2015) share wall space with the fire extinguishers; a long, thin corridor suggesting a rat run is home to a mid-1990s series on a street rodent. Some of the images are displayed at very large size, such as The State We're In, A (2015), a documentary shot of a paradoxically ever-changing sea, or Panorama, right (2006), and Panorama, left (2024), which each measure six metres long. These huge works are cheek-by-jowl with much smaller images, even postcard dimensions, creating a physical experience worlds away from same-size online viewing. Some prints are framed, some clipped up, some stuck to the wall, each suggesting questions about how photography isolates what it shows. Not that Tillmans is sniffy about mass-reproduction. Vinyl-printed versions of the Panorama images are also installed in Berlin's Berghain nightclub, the exhibition booklet informs, while tables towards the end of the space gather his work with magazines, including Arena Homme+ and Butt. There are also tables devoted to his photobooks, one displaying every spread of 1997 publication Concorde, a testament to 1960s techno-utopianism and cross-channel co-operation. At the end of the exhibition there's a BPI reading table, complete with reading lights, and his monographs free to flip through. In the Autoformation ['Self-education'] booths there are videos on demand, allowing visitors to explore as they choose. Elsewhere are reproductions of image and text pieces Tillmans circulated online and as posters, exhorting readers to vote Remain, or against Marine Le Pen or Donald Trump. Some of these images and texts made it on to T-shirts, and there are photographs of people wearing them. 'What is lost is lost forever,' reads a rallying cry about Brexit, a message the march of time has made forlorn. Nothing could have prepared us, though on the other hand Tillmans did try. Tillmans isn't anti-technology at all, speaking excitedly at the press view of the new possibilities afforded in the 2000s by ever-faster digital cameras. One of the intriguing aspects of this show is seeing how consistent his interest in technology has been, with very early works such as distorted black-and-white photocopies from 1988 sitting happily alongside contemporary prints. A final room is a sound installation, 2018's I want to make a film, in which Tillmans narrates a potential project looking at digital technologies, while another installation, Travelling Camera (2025), hovers across the back of a digital 4k screen, a usually hidden infrastructure he has dotted with found fragments such as seashells and postage stamps. It's not kit for the geeky sake of it, as evidenced by a large photograph of Russian troops in Moscow, shot in 2005. Tillmans is asking what we know, and how; what we notice, or are shown, and what remains obscure. At the Pompidou Centre, Paris, until 22 September
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
City taken over by week of Moomin celebrations
Characters from a series of beloved children's tales are set to be brought to life by a series of city events. The residents of Moomin valley were created by Finnish illustrator and writer Tove Jansson, with the first book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, published in 1945. A giant picnic and floating artworks are just two of the free family activities in Gloucester to celebrate 80 years of the iconic Moomin stories. Gloucester Guildhall has been picked as one of four UK arts organisations to run a programme of events marking the milestone, with installations across the city centre. Artist Dana Olărescu, who has spent a year working on floating artwork with a sail bearing a quote from the first Moomin story, said the project was "about connecting people". With the celebration also falling on Refugee Week many of the events also focus on themes of welcoming and belonging. "I always think a the city is so much richer when there's diversity in it," Ms Olărescu said. "We get to hear multiple perspectives and see things in a different light." From 14 to 22 June, a light and sound installation named 'Welcome Chorus' - featuring songs of welcome from across Gloucestershire playing as spectators move through a mass of glowing orbs - will be open to the public in the Guildhall. Ms Olărescu's artwork will also launch from Gloucester Docks on 14 June, and will star in two performances on 20 June accompanied by live music by local artist Zariq Rosita-Hanif. Families will also be able to get a closer look throughout the week by taking part in free paddle boarding workshops run by the National Waterways Museum. The programme of events will culminate in a Moomin-themed picnic in Kings Square on 21 June, with free dishes from around the globe for families to try. Councillor Caroline Courtney, cabinet member for culture and leisure at Gloucester City Council, said the week's themes of "family, belonging and community" were "perfect for our city that has throughout its history welcomed people from all over the world". Follow BBC Gloucestershire on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630. Venue to celebrate 80th anniversary of Moomins The Moomins in love and war Gloucester Guildhall Gloucester City Council
