Ché Zara Blomfield

Siempre en el camino 🐚 hasta la próxima Mallorca

Ok I figured the hack for this review system. One beer, 1/2 limoncello with soda and a brilliant view with flowering wisteria… Milano a Venezia #basic

Our first feature in our first issue: Artists, lovers, outsiders Written by @chezarasera Photography by @jennifer_pattison “It was very high, so high indeed that nineteen English counties could be seen beneath, and on clear days thirty, or forty perhaps, if the weather was very fine. Sometimes one could see the English Channel, wave reiterating upon wave.” When Virginia Woolf, the early 20th century feminist author, wrote those lines in the opening chapter of Orlando, she was likely describing Firle Beacon, a hill in East Sussex that rises above Monk’s House, where she penned several of her most famous novels. Escaping the chaos of London for pleasure and respite, Woolf had been frequenting houses in the South Downs from the borough of Bloomsbury since at least 1911. It was around this time that a group of British artists and intellectuals were solidifying in Gordon Square. Woolf’s siblings, Vanessa Bell and Thoby Stephen, began hosting gatherings in their houses in 1905, which became the basis for the Bloomsbury Group… Full article available in the print issue of Orlando.

Plan your exit strategy, not your content strategy. 🩵 @priscilla_tea

LA ALEGRIA DE VIVIR (THE JOY OF LIVING) is an exhibition curated by artists Anuar Maauad and Roger Muñoz at their studio in San Rafael CDMX. Unlike many concurrent artist-as-curator presentations this exhibition has the slickness of an institutional presentation, albeit lacking overt contextualisation. Sinister and sincere works are presented in multiple rooms surrounding an interior courtyard that hosts a guillotine. Together the works call: Enough! Enough of the ghastly system of control and oppression. The grouping of artists stand together in opposition to silence and complicity during a week of pretence and distraction. It’s a reminder that solidarity persists despite adversity. Revolution is necessary, we are organising, and we are not alone. Raúl Rueda, Benjamin Orlow, Alan Alcántara, Darío Escobar, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Anuar Maauad, León Cociña, Berenice Olmedo, Daniel Aguilar Ramírez, John Wayne Gacy, Andrea Ferrero, Selva Aparicio, Lic. Sniffany, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Roger Muñoz, Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, Cremance, Jorge de León, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, June Crespo, Jason Yates, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paul McCarthy, Motero Tranquilo, Moris Teresa Margolles, Juan Sebastián Peláez, Miguel Ventura, Faustin Betbeder, Catherine Mulligan, Cristiano Di Martino, Cathy Abitbol, Banksy, Enrique López Llamas, Magdalena Petroni, Talia Pérez Gilbert Find more info @amaauad @medussa_hotbitch_withlove666

Casa Pedregal by Luis Barragán is rightly high on Georgina Pounds’ Guide to Mexico City for Art Guides World. So glad I was able to visit yesterday before @georginapoundsgallery grand opening! More soon at @artguides.world 🩵 @casa_pedregal @tetetlan On my way to @zonamaco now!

Wild horses a year ago… today: snow.

My first winter in Zürich has so far been soooo rewarding – in no minor way to the comedy and vision of @suns.works Booking is now open for Game Show nights within the current exhibition Mystery Box Incredible photos of the first event by @mauricehaasphoto incl. my welcome to Zürich headshot update. Sunny merci <3

Hew Locke's 2004 work Black Queen was one of my favortie curatorial contributions to the @shoreditchartsclub_ in 2023. Loaned from the neighbouring @halesgallery thanks to the fantastic director sasha_gomeniuk it was installed by a team of about eight art technicians. I often use the work as an example of how art in non-white cube spaces can spark unexpected conversations, recalling the many it spurred there. The sculpture, at over two meters tall was situated behind lounge seating at the dark corner of the club from which she peered out – from afar the resemblance to the Queen's bust as seen on a pound coin is clear. Up close one can see the composion of plastic toys including exotic plants and animals, toy guns and rosary beads, all purchased from London's Brixton market and made in China. It was one of the only works I failed to commission a decent article about for the club's website. Also, since returning to Europe I've been surprised to learn that the British Artist is less known here, despite his monumental works and installations including The Procession at @tate Britian in 2022. So here is an overdue honor to @hewdjlocke and the Black Queen, who I thought would make a curious Christmas tree... #hewlocke

10 years ago I was planning Thirsty Garten – the closing exhibition of The Composing Rooms in Berlin before moving to Palma and opening @jelatolove . Thirsty Garten was a special exhibition as taking influence from the beloved Thirsty Moon – a tea shop specialising in Chinese whole leaf teas – and Teri Garten – a gallery initiated by Paul Sochacki within the shop in Berlin Mitte. Together they created a space for friendship, exchange and community. In serendipity, The Composing Rooms opened in Berlin in April 2014 with Japanese tea ceremonies hosted by Mai Ueda. Being a space of, in Mai's words, “Internet Reflection” her Tea Ceremony focused on “the real spirit of tea by bringing together worldly life”. Through the artists and their works, the exhibition reflects on the early dreams for the space, an influence of East on the West and a concept of a sustainable, or highly constructed utopia. A huge garden installation by Michael Pybus from 2014, titled ‘In 3D the basil never wilts’ – a reference to IKEA's increasing use of CGI to save money – served as an environment for hosting tea ceremonies, meditation and a book launch within the exhibition from 26 November 2016 – 21 January 2017. Artists in the exhibition were: Lou Cantor, Ella Goerner, Yanyan Huang, Martin Kohout, Andrew Munks, Daragh Reeves, Paul Sochacki, Keith Allyn Spencer, Tanaz Modabber, Michael Pybus, Mai Ueda, Abdul Vas, and Rita Vitorelli with Harm van den Dorpel. I miss curating spaces and bringing people together in them. Anyone want me to curate something for them?

Swan

Jesse Darling (@jessedarling ), VANITAS, 2024 installation at the Petit Palais from last year… I’ve been meaning to share these images for some time. Recently they started haunting me again thinking about the difference between the image of art – their reproduction and the ‘original’. Then I recalled that one of the first interactions I had with Jesse was at the ICA in 2012 as I was on a panel about digital art and talking about the 1935 essay by Walter Benjamin The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Can flowers be reproduced? Many artists have tried. I really enjoyed the simplicity of this work – them being alive – yet in states of decay, fresh for the Paris+ crowds, dying for latecomers. I’ve been reflecting that the vatinas could be seen as a euphemism for the institution, smothering, controlling, keeping contained, in control, while the flowers could be seen as fragile human states, indeed being confined to those insitutions, sometimes looking pretty, but only while maintained.