"Helios" by Luke Jerram

I would love to see this amazing art installation is person! This enormous representation of our star is a companion piece to one of the moon that artist Luke Jerram created in 2017, previously here.  Of this current creation, the artist's website says:

Helios is a touring artwork of the Sun by UK artist Luke Jerram.

Measuring seven metres in diameter, the artwork features 72dpi detailed imagery* of the Sun’s surface. At an approximate scale of 1:200 million, each centimetre of the internally lit spherical sculpture represents 2000km of the Sun’s surface.

It is very dangerous to look at the Sun directly as it can damage our eyesight, so Helios provides a safe opportunity for the public to get up close to, and inspect its extraordinarily detailed surface, including sunspots, spicules and filaments. The sculpture also features the source of the solar flares which caused the Northern lights to be visible from the UK in May 2024.

As well as highlighting the science of the Sun, the artwork allows us to consider its importance in all our lives; for light, warmth, energy for our planet and how our nearest star has inspired culture and religion throughout history, all around the world.

The installation is a fusion of solar imagery, animated lighting and a specially created surround sound composition by Duncan Speakman and Sarah Anderson.

Over its lifetime, Helios will be presented in a number of different locations worldwide, both indoors and outdoors, so altering the experience and interpretation of the artwork. As it travels from place to place, it will collect personal responses, stories and mythologies, as well as highlighting the latest solar science.

Helios also acts as a venue, enabling hosts to create their own programme of Sun inspired events and activities to take place beneath the artwork, including orchestral and choral performances; space science lectures by astronauts; environmental and wellbeing discussions with scientists and activists; yoga; poetry readings; dance and theatre performances.

Helios, in ancient Greek mythology, is the god who personifies the Sun. He drove a four-horse chariot across the sky each day, giving the earth its hours and seasons.

*The imagery for the artwork has been compiled using approximately 400,000 photographs of the Sun provided by Astrophotographer Dr Stuart Green (taken between May 2018 to June 2024) and NASA observations of the Sun, with guidance from solar scientist, Professor Lucie Green of University College London (UCL).

Photo by Bec Hughes

Detail of the surface of Helios

Photo by Hugh Mothersole

Photo by James Dobson

Helios in Bath Assembly Rooms, England, Photo by Thomas Greetham

Helios at the Old Royal Naval College, London

Dinner under Helios

Silent disco under Helios by Jolade Olusanya

For the touring schedule, check Luke Jerram's site below:
https://my-helios.org/

teamLab Biovortex Kyoto Museum

TeamLab (previously here), the international “ultra-technologist" artist collective, has created a permanent museum in Kyoto which opens today! Called the Biovortex Kyoto Museum, the nearly 110,000 square foot space holds 50 different art works which are total multi-sensory, immersive spaces. The magical works can be seen in the video below.

https://www.teamlab.art/e/kyoto/

Iwagumi - Urban Air Scape by Eness

The Australian multidisciplinary art and technology studio Eness has created a magical outdoor installation on display at Prahran Square in Melbourne.

The studio's statement about the installation:

"This artwork is a celebration of the Japanese reverence towards beautiful rock compositions as found in nature, known as Iwagumi.

By day, visitors can explore immense air-filled inflatables that appear to be thousands of tonnes of rock. As the sun sets, the artwork transforms with a vibrant display of colour and an interactive soundscape inspired by nature’s gentle inhabitants.

This artwork is designed to be placed in the middle of a city, sharply contrasting features of the wilderness with the urban environment. An open-air temporary art installation, Iwagumi Air Scape delivers a public realm statement about nature and harmony that is at once monumental and subtle."

https://www.eness.com/temporary/iwagumi-melbourne

It's Just A Matter Of Time

And I think we know what this could refer to at this point in history...

David Zwirner Gallery and the Félix González-Torres Foundation present a timely and purposeful remounting of the celebrated conceptual artist's 1992 piece:

“Untitled” (It’s Just a Matter of Time) (1992) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres is currently installed in various locations along the Hudson River in New York as part of Sky High Farm’s inaugural biennial, TREES NEVER END AND HOUSES NEVER END, through October 2025.

“It’s Just a Matter of Time,” a simple yet evocative phrase, appears on standard billboards in white Gothic typeface on a black background, disrupting the typical flow of commercial information. When the work was first installed in 1992 in Hamburg, the text was written in German: Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit. The work is ideally installed in 24 outdoor billboard locations, and must be installed in a minimum of six locations. Gonzalez-Torres intended for the billboards to be situated in diverse locations and/or contexts in order to reach a broad cross-section of the general public.

Visit the link in bio to see a map of all billboards, which are installed as of August 1 at the following locations*:

Ravena, NY | US 9W, south of Old Ravena Rd.
Albany, NY | 18 Second Ave (Second Ave and Clinton St.)
East Greenbush, NY | NY 9J, 2500’ south of Hays Road
Troy, NY | King St., 200’ north of River St.
Troy, NY | 4th St., opposite Polk St.
Palenville, NY | Route 32, 100’ south of Route 32A

*Note that over the course of the exhibition, the billboard locations will shift.

https://www.felixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org/
https://www.davidzwirner.com/

The Grace of the Sun

Grace of the Sun was a lighted installation by artist Robert Montgomery (previously here) shown at COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, 2021.

https://www.robertmontgomery.org/

BEAUTY: Installation--Ian Strange

Ian Strange uses light to interrupt reality. His most recent iteration of Light Intersection just closed in Sydney, Australia. The artist says:

Commissioned by the City of Sydney, LIGHT INTERSECTIONS II inserts beams of light through the facade of a late 19th century Victorian terrace home. Appearing to puncture the building across two perspective planes, the lines of light are drawn from the building's perspective lines, abstracted and inserted back into the architecture. The series explores the hand-drawn line in the landscape. In particular, perspective lines and their relationship to art and architecture as a way of understanding, interpreting and affecting landscape.

https://ianstrange.com/

BEAUTY: Fabric Art--Megan Constance Altieri

The basis for Megan Constance Altieri's fabric/clothing art project Sonder is powerful in its simplicity.

Sonder illustrates the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as our own. In our awareness of even a single other person we begin to grasp the magnitude of the 7.6 billion coexisting realities all as specific and important as one another.

Over the past four years, Altieri has gathered fragments of overheard conversations and hand-stamped them on articles of clothing matching those of the speaker. Displaying these garments on a series of clotheslines illustrates nakedness and openness, encouraging viewers to embrace vulnerability.

Viewing these articles collectively challenges our capacity for empathy, curiosity, and awareness of others. Sonder seeks to help us grasp the beautiful complexities of humanity by allowing a momentary escape from our own lens. In exchange for our perspective, we are offered a truer understanding of our identity as a dot among a sea of dots. It recognizes that any hope of a richer perspective of humanity begins with acute awareness of others.

I love this idea as it mirrors an on-going project of my own. For the past thirty years, I too have kept a running journal of snippets of overheard public conversations, just like Altieri. I'll share some highlights at the end of this post, but first, let's take a look at a 2018 installation of Sonder mounted at the Grand Rapids Public Museum, Michigan.

Altieri's Sonder project is ongoing and its most recent installation was at the Saugatuk Center for the Arts in Michigan which closed just this month, September 2020. Here is a wonderful video made for the installation that features an interview with Altieri.

For more info, visit Altieri's site:
https://www.meganconstancealtieri.com/
And purchase a 392-page book chronicling the project:
https://www.meganconstancealtieri.com/product-page/sonder-the-art-of-empathy-through-eavesdropping

And as promised, here is my selected list of fascinating, odd, funny, or moving phrases and sentences I have overheard from conversations in public. I have heard these walking behind or passing someone on the street, or from a booth behind me in a restaurant...

“Yeah, it’s true... they all have that hair that sticks up in the back...”
“Joe always says he’d shoot the tires but no, I’d aim right at the driver and shoot his f***ing head off.”
“...and that’s somethin’ you’re s’posed to be proud of?”
“That boy can sing.”
“…and he goes, ‘You must have a real low opinion of me’…”
“…he’s coming later but for now it’s nailed shut.”
“It goes loop, loop then like this, and you’re all…”
“Well, ya hafta identify the issues…”
“He calls this kid over and says, ‘Go up to Uncle Isadore’…”
“Was my father thrown completely out of the car in the accident?”
“She was standing right next to the phone so there was no excuse.”
“Will you help me find a waffle iron?”
“He’s a dock worker in San Francisco but in his spare time he’s a philosopher and he writes these books.”
“He said, ‘I’ve got something for your nerves…’”
“I wasn’t flirting consciously…”
“The things that people think they can self-help themselves into…”
“My husband’s was approved, signed and stamped.”
“I HAVE THINGS TO DO! I’M A MAN!!!”
“All the Ken dolls were Dr. Kildare.”
“It makes me mad and I gotta get outta there before I have a melt down.”
“You’re an old drunk and you don’t know shit.”
“You know this. Your husband is a rabbit.”
“The pathologist is a really nice guy.”
“I put on this skirt and I went out and I took it off and I, like, swung it around…”
“That woman says it when she’s dying.”
“Imagine what you would wear if you were safe.”
“The universe is no big deal.”
“Remember how it used to be shiny?”
”Did John seem more relaxed to you?”
“Just a white dress, no jacket, no nothing.”
“…standing up in a hammock…”
“I’ll show you my nipple!”
“Gosh, it’s been fifteen years since I started an I.V.!”
“Wake up, eat, f**k…”
“I have two who are really good with math, and one who is…‘creative.’ But that’s a good thing!”
“Didn’t you go to jail?”
“…but the funniest thing in the world is me eating dinner with a girl and me farting…”
“I don’t hate you, I’m just saying that I don’t NOT like you.”
“The last champagne I had made me sick to my stomach.”
“I feel like a murderer, like there are severed heads everywhere…”
“Me, I spend every waking minute worrying about American Express.”
“That was the day I called you from the driveway when my mom was in that knife fight.”
“When did you go to Vegas and is that where your friend had the heart attack?”