August 28, 2009 | New Design | by Anna Sutton |
I get a lot of junk sent to me by email, but every once in a while I get a real beauty, something that makes me laugh out loud at how funny and absurd life can be. The phenomenon of creative canine grooming shows has its home in, you guessed it, the USA. Poodle owners dye, shave, clip and accessorise their pets so they resemble chickens, fairies, underwater sea themes, even American football players. As photographer Ren Netherland has discovered, the extremities of canine grooming have attained cult-like status. Read more
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July 11, 2009 | New Photography | by Anna Sutton |
All you photographers out there, a word up on one of the most prodigious emerging photographers in Australia. And if you’re nursing an inadequacy complex, seeing Nirrimi Hakanson’s folio might propel you to briefly flee your aspirations and think about getting a job at the local supermarket. Hopefully, it will inspire you. The self-taught sixteen-year-old Hakanson has been taking photos on a digital SLR since the age of thirteen, after starting out on a disposable camera. Her distinctive style is ethereal and reminiscent of photo albums filled with enchanted childhood memories. Read more
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May 26, 2009 | New Events | by Anna Sutton |
Piet Parra’s vividly coloured and voluptuous lemming-people get down to Italo Disco in the Amsterdam-based artist’s latest exhibition in Milan. Parra’s new works feature sensual and surreal figures busting raunchy poses to soundscapes from the electronic dance music movement that began in Italy and Europe in the late 1970s. Read more
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April 20, 2009 | New Art | by Anna Sutton |
Melbourne artist Joanna Mortreux’s oil painting, Looking Back Undoes Everything, is peopled with otherworldly anthropomorphic creatures in various states of flight. Inspired by illustrated encyclopedias of animals, these strange life forms possess a dynamic duality that captures the tension between evolution and de-evolution. Read more
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March 11, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Anna Sutton 
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What’s with Airport Hotels? Due to foolishly booking a 6am flight, I recently had the dubious honour of my first Airport Hotel experience, and it just so happened to be in an industrial suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. Or, more specifically, the Airpark Business Centre. When my friend and I pulled up in the taxi, we found that the ‘hotel swimming pool’ was not set amidst a verdant tropical garden, as suggested by the website photos, but was smack bang in the middle of a deliriously circular roundabout. It was a strange sight: a suburban swimming pool and spa surrounded by newly potted palm trees and a safety fence, looking out onto a vista of shiny Japanese cars, the industrial estate looming bleakly in the distance. Read more
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February 3, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Anna Sutton |
When I read Robinson Crusoe as an Australian child, I had no idea that New Zealand was a place harbouring secret beaches where real life castaways could hide from civilization beneath the shade of cool ferns and caves, on beaches overlooking mysterious islands out at sea. The main difference between Coromandel Peninsula’s New Chums beach and the shipwrecked settings depicted in Defoe’s novel is that the only things running riot here are the crimson blossoms of the native Pohutukawa trees. Instead of toothless mutineers, there are placid dotterel birds nesting beneath the sand. Read more
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January 15, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Anna Sutton |
As a child, gold mining towns were exemplified in my mind by boring theme parks populated by out of work actors in naff colonial costumes. My parents used to drag us along in our overheated datsun because they couldn’t afford to take the kids to Disneyland. As often happens, I now appreciate the destinations whose mentions used to prompt a whole lot of whingeing about seatbelt buckle burns and compensation payouts of McDonalds. Walhalla is one such beauty. Set in the misty foothills of Australia’s Baw Baw ranges, it was once a gold era boom-town, but is now home to less than 20 residents (not counting the ghosts). Read more
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January 8, 2009 | Cool Travel | by Anna Sutton |
It’s a Sunday morning and I’m cruising the long desolate stretch of road outside of Geelong that was featured in the Mad Max car chase scenes. Stated destination: Fairy Park, Anakie. I try and imagine Snow White coming to life in this desert wasteland where apocalyptic road warriors once roamed. Up ahead, a giant statue of Gulliver beckons from the base of an extinct volcano. Passing go, we cheer in helium tones as we ascend to a giant pink castle rising above the gum trees. Created by two Germans in the late 1950s, Fairy Park is Australia’s oldest theme park. While it’s easy to cynically dismiss the concept as a gaudy family hell hole rather than a fun spot, on arrival I am immediately reunited with my sense of childhood wonder. Read more
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December 11, 2008 | New Products | by Anna Sutton |
Where plastic roses everywhere remain a testament to the gifts of spring or the virtue of 80s romantic cliches, Astro Turf offers one of Kitsch’s more useful incarnations. It’s a grass is greener artificial nature strip that brings to mind Alice in Wonderland putting on a ’50s Miami golf course while making friends with the pink flamingos. Like flocking, Astro Turf can be used to cover all manner of surfaces: concrete verandahs, carports, handbags, kitchen cupboards, even the car dashboard (whence daisies and mushrooms spring). And considering the poor state of many inner-city gardens (resulting from neglect and water shortages), a piece of fake greenery adorning your balcony or living room gives a welcome respite from modern life. The best thing is it will remain a Soylent shade of green while the summer sun parches the surrounding landscape until it’s as thirsty and wilted as a party without beer.
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November 10, 2008 | Cool Travel | by Anna Sutton |
The Atlanta has the kind of charm and character most tourists wouldn’t expect to find amidst the rambling chaos of modern Bangkok. In contrast with the debauchery of the nearby sex district, this secluded 1950s hotel harks back to more civilised times. As you sip your icy tropical libation at the check-in desk, the quiet grandeur of the art-deco-style foyer takes precedence over your fleeting obsession with passports and heatstroke. Before you know it, the porter is beckoning you to follow him as he carries the luggage to your laidback room. Read more
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The New York Times has just run an interesting article about artist Jorge Colombo, who created this week’s cover for The New Yorker magazine exclusively using the iPhone application Brushes: ‘Absolutely nobody can tell I am drawing’. Colombo told the Times. ‘In fact, once I was doing the drawing at some place, and my wife was around, and they asked her why did I have to work so hard? I seemed to be always on my iPhone sending messages’. Read more
The strategy based architectural firm Popular Architecture has created a scheme that takes on the spread of cities. Based on the estimation that London will need to provide housing for 100,000 new people each year up until 2016, this building houses 100,000 in one hit. Read more
The mining and refining that provides the world with precious metals is also extremely damaging to the environment – each ounce of gold mined generates 30 tons of waste, much of which is toxic. Philadelphia-based Rust Belt make unique, finely crafted earrings, necklaces, and bracelets entirely from re-purposed and recycled materials. The processes they use to make their pieces are also environmentally sound, and they are shipped in beautiful, re-purposed glass bottles.
Bats Langley. What a fantastic name! With some fantastic work, as well. I would love to see his detailed paintings or drawings grace the pages of a childrens’ book.
Square America is a photo blog that’s sort of like Found magazine, but with more rhyme and reason. The eerie, antique photos are organized by theme, subject matter, and even the ways in which time or lens imperfections distort the images. Read more
Run Wrake is an illustrator and animator based in London whose recent short animation Rabbit has turned him into an underground hero. Read more
Setting Sun’s cover of Tom Petty’s You Got Lucky was recently released as part of Buffet Libre DJ’s compilation CD, Rewind 2. Says frontman, Gary Levitt, of their version on the song: ‘We got back from our European tour on Christmas Eve with a December 27th deadline for the track looming. It was finally started on December 26th and then sent off completed the next day. It was a great exercise in having to let some things go. That’s twenty-four hours out the door complete, old school style. That’s how records used to be made. Motown, baby, MOTOWN!’ We have the song for free download in our Music Download section [psst, it's in the third column of the site]
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Trip out with Sparrow Vs Sparrow’s retro illustrations, I love their aesthetic, color use and sense of humor. Read more
With the recession still biting, it may be time to whip out the glue and the cardboard and make your next pair of cool kicks. Don’t know how they’d manage in the rain though? Read more
T-post: the world’s first wearable magazine
So here’s the scoop. Every six weeks, T-post subscribers get a new t shirt issue in the mail, with a news story on the inside and an artist interpretation of that story on the front. Yes, we agree. It’s clever, clever. Read more
Charlie Immer’s pastel-pallete sometimes obfuscates the gory violence in his surreal images. At other times, it heightens the gut-wrenching and visceral effect of his work. Read more
Forget battery powered vehicles. Cars made from ice are the future of transportation: no pollution, no honking horns, no painful rap music blasting out of souped up stereos. And if they melt, they melt. You just swim the rest of the way down the slipstream.
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
This cool black unisex t shirt by UK label Client is made in England, printed in Berlin, and beautifully packaged in East Berlin cartonage, especially designed for Client. Read more
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