We wrote about artist-design duo Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann of firm Lang Baumann a few years ago with their incredible Everland Hotel which eventually found its home in Paris. Like the Everland project, their Comfort Series which experiments with inflatable objects placed in a variety of environments is eye-catching and unbelievable. In this series, giant bubble-like forms engulf rooms whilst long tubes of air wrap their way in and out of buildings.
Paul Alexander Thornton is a master of the ballpoint pen. Watch as he draws this incredible skull on camera - his skill is so superior, he almost makes it look easy...watch the video here.
I love this architectural photography by young American photographer Nicolas Alan Cope. Cope has photographed for some publishing heavy weights including Japanese Vogue and Surface Magazine. You can order prints of the above images or any others on his site. Check it out here.
Reminding us of a horror scene in the 1990s film The Gremlins 2, this huge spiderweb cocoon is made solely from packing tape by design collective for use/numen. Currently exhibiting at the DMY Berlin International Design Fair, it's strong enough to support adults sitting in the structure. Interestingly, the last installation of this kind took 117,000 feet and 100 pounds of tape to construct.
These life-sized sculptures are carved from wood and then splashed with vibrant colours. Made by Italian woodcarver Willy Verginer his works have been exhibited worldwide - the animals remind us slightly of a previous collection from Moooi.
The 17th Biennale of Sydney opened last week with the theme 'the beauty of distance: songs of survival in a precarious age.' Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto created an installation named Faraday Cage which was specifically conceived for the location of the event - cockatoo island - a former convict prison and dockyard for shipbuilding in Sydney harbour. Sugimoto photographs static electricity on film and then displays them in light boxes. The result is dramatic and reminds us of a common Japanese aesthetic we've seen before and liked.
'I fly like paper get high like planes' are not only the lyrics to a song by M.I.A but it's also the name of an incredible installation by young Singaporean designer Dawn Ng. Having spent eight years away from her home studying, she became obsessed with the notion of returning home. She explains her inspiration behind the project as, 'I'm particularly intrigued by the origin of the world nostalgia which comes from two Greek roots, nostos 'returning home' and algos 'pain'... the idea of my work is to recreate this great wave of emotion. Symbolic of travel, each paper plane carries this universal desire to leave or return home.'
These paintings on display at a recent exhibition we attended at Wunderkammer in Auckland, are stunning. Elam graduate New Zealand artist Kiri Gillespie, uses wood as her primary canvas for her works, in which she uses paints to enhance the natural quality of the wood whilst depicting her subject. Citing illusion, mockery, absence, disguise, romance, drama, memory and heritage as ideas behind her paintings - we suggest you wander down and take a look.
