WE'RE SUPPORTING

Growing up during China’s Cultural Revolution and eventually immigrating to Canada in 1991, painter Lui Liu draws heavily from Chinese and Western themes to create his feverishly surreal images. Read more

WE'RE THINKING

I’m really thinking about highlighting the physical properties of paint and inks in my own work, and I’ve been looking to a lot more abstract stuff to inspire me. Stuart Elliot is a great example of someone who achieves really compelling non-representational images by masterfully exploiting untraditional combinations of different traditional painting materials. Read more

I spent the formative first six years of my life in Wellington, New Zealand, a beautiful windswept city framed by a magnificent harbour in one direction and a stunning collection of green, rolling hills in the other. It was here, on a return visit many years later and deep amongst the clipped accents and ruddy faces of the weather-beaten locals, that I stumbled upon the vast catalogue of the then Dunedin based record label Flying Nun. And what a roster of acts they housed — The Chills, The Bats, The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, The Verlaines, and my favourite guitar-pop band, Straitjacket Fits. Read more

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

The American South’s hippest city — Austin, Texas — got a little bit cooler last year with the opening of Uchiko, a contemporary Japanese restaurant that serves up innovative and sustainable food in a warm farmhouse setting. Read more

WE'RE READING

Let them sing it for you is a web widget that allows you to type in a sentence which is then played back using the same words culled from a library of popular songs. For instance if you type the word “I” it will play Chris Isaak singing that word in the song Wicked Games. If a word cannot be found, you can enter a song which contains the missing word and expand the library.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

There’s not much one can say about an artist who has recorded more than 400 albums — even if you manage to listen to a large portion them, there’s a good chance you’ve missed something. Good thing, as far as I know, R. Stevie Moore is the only person who has released that many records (Daniel Johnston may come close), many of which were cassette-only or printed in limited numbers. Virtually unknown for decades, the obsessive music geekdom that has reached a fever pitch as this generation of fans has allowed Moore to keep his relentless flow of Zappa-esque weirdness, power-chord pop, tongue-in-cheek ballads, satirical new wave, and whatever else we’ve most certainly missed, gushing out into the universe.

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WE'RE WEARING

Yestadt Millinery is a New York-based custom, handmade hat company that produces some pretty classy headware inspired by vintage looks but designed to suit modern styles. You can get a made-to-measure piece or make a wholesale order – their hats are also available at retailers around Manhattan such as Anthropologie and The Hat Shop.