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New wet-plate collodion photography by Nicol Vizioli.

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Amanda Charchian recently... "flew to Mexico City and drove eight hours through the winding mountain roads, arriving at this surrealist jungle paradise to make the photographs of my dreams for my upcoming book Pheromone Hotbox." We eagerly await more...

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Viriditas: An Anthology of Contemporary Women Artists

A new publication showcasing emerging talent from an international array of women whose work ranges from intimate self portraits to ritualistic group performances, experimental photography to intricate paintings drawn from dreams.

Featuring in-depth interviews with artists, each chapter explores the intrinsic themes weaving within their work: creating myths for the modern day, embracing the sensual, becoming both creator and muse, confronting the eternal circle of life and death, and exploring our relationship with the natural world and our own inner primal nature.

Springing from the pantheon of artists before them, the female Surrealists in the ‘20s to the Feminist artists in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the artists in this collection re-address earlier questions and present a fresh perspective on subjects that are still important today.

Buy your copy.

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"Images have their own independent life and we, the spectators, are only able to make suppositions. One woman has a lover made of blossoming flowers, another one is caressed by stems and petals; they just want to be seen like that, and to give the spectator the feeling there are no borders between all natural beings, flowers, trees, landscapes, animals, all of us breathing and being in the same elements. I love representing the peculiar places of the feminine body because for me they are like jewels, flesh made jewels, and they bring us the sentiment that we are precious and have to cherish it all." - Cendrine Rovini Extract from 'Viriditas: An Anthology of Contemporary Women Artists'.

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Lessons We Can Learn from Daisies - AnOther Mag

Věra Chytilová's 60s masterpiece Daisies is a brilliantly surreal trip into an aesthetic paradise, and a utopia where women are liberated from the conservative conventions of etiquette. The film stars two young girls who, upon realising that “Everything’s going bad in this world” decide "we’re going bad aswell” and spend the rest of the film in a psychedelic rebellion. A part of the 60s Czech New Wave (Nová Vina) movement, which aimed "to make the Czech people collectively aware that they were participants in a system of oppression and incompetence which had brutalized them all," it was filmed during a brief period of artistic liberalism following the homogeneity of Czech's Communist rule and before the Soviet invasion of 1968 which saw it banned for "depicting the wanton". Simultaneously a brilliant dissent against political conservatism and an endless source of fashion inspiration, here we look at the lessons we can learn from Chytilová and her protagonists: politically, culturally and sartorially...

Read more.

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“Everyone is born. That’s how you get here, and it’s also something that you have to keep on repeating over and over again to keep your life vital – to be like a phoenix, to make new, or renew, your life existence.” – Kiki Smith

Image by Misma Andrews.

Excerpt from 'Eternal Circles' chapter six of Viriditas. Order your copy here.

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"Sara", single from Diane Cluck's new album, "Boneset" CD / Vinyl / Download -- available now: http://dianecluck.info/boneset

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'Blue Spring' New work by brigette bloom

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'A Study in Red and Gold' by Nicol Vizioli 

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To celebrate a year since the release of our publication, all orders this week will receive a free art print!

☼ http://magpiemagazine.bigcartel.com ☼

Photo by Aëla Labbé Photographies

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FROM MYTH TO EARTH

In 2014 artists Gabriella Sonabend and Sol Bailey Barker travelled to Colombia to investigate it's landscapes, mythologies, folklore and its contemporary culture. Their investigation led to the creation of 'From Myth to Earth' a collaboration whereby Sol created a series of 15 sculptures in a variety of landscapes throughout Colombia and Gabriella wrote an accompanying narrative for each sculpture. Sol's sculptures were a response to the physical nature of the landscapes and the histories, which have inhabited them. His sculptures were made on location and were photographed and then left in various places throughout the country. The landscapes Sol made works for, varied from tropical rainforest, desert, coastal villages, mountain ranges to cities and each site sculptures were left in, were places where there had been a significant historical event, trauma or upheaval. In this way Sol's sculptures became echoes of or monuments to these events, they were left with the intention of being offerings, something positive to commemorate a fleeting forgotten event or to begin an act of healing.

Gabriella's stories contextualise the sculptures, although they are works of fiction they often reference or re-write events that coincide with the placing of the sculptures. They are stories of local superstitions, indigenous belief systems, personal accounts of bravery, loss, hope, magic, love and violence - which seek to grapple with Colombia's history of incredible violence, in a sensitive way, whilst also seeking to identify moments of great positivity and change. In order to write these stories Gabriella spoke to people of all ages and backgrounds: people who were born in the countryside of San Agustin, which had become a centre for the manufacture of cocaine; people from Bogota who recalled years of fear being locked within their own city (they spoke of kidnaps and car bombs); people from the Pacific coast from ex-slave communities; indigenous people from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta who spoke of being restricted within their own land by the paramilitary (who ran drug trade through the region surrounding the Lost City) and many more.

There were so many stories that could have been told and so many monuments that could have been created to various events but in the end Gabriella and Sol chose to make 15 of each, choosing narratives and landscapes, which create a varied tapestry of the country, whilst trying to stay true to people's beliefs and ways of expressing themselves.

'From Myth To Earth' is a trail of stories and objects throughout a very real and a simultaneously fictional world.

www.gabriellasonabend.com

www.solbaileybarker.co.uk

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"Look at the pattern this seashell makes. The dappled whorl, curving inward to infinity. That's the shape of the universe itself. There's constant pressure, pushing towards pattern. A tendency in matter to evolve into ever more complex forms. It's a kind of pattern gravity, a holy greening power we call 'Viriditas' and it is the driving force in the cosmos. Life, you see." - Kim Stanley Robinson

'Viriditas: an anthology of contemporary women artists' Order your copy: http://magpiemagazine.bigcartel.com

Image by Eden Nova.

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‘Sacrifice’ by Anouska Beckwith

Featured in 'Viriditas: An anthology of contemporary women artists'. Order your copy here: http://magpiemagazine.bigcartel.com/product/viriditas

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"I find the body in its natural state to be the most beautiful expression. We've all been given these incredible instruments with which to experience the world! I want to express that joy through my photos, because it makes me feel alive! For me, the female form expresses the freedom, celebration, and connection I feel to everything. I think it's one of the most beautiful things to be comfortable in your own skin." - brigette bloom

Extract from interview in 'Viriditas: An Anthology of Contemporary Women Artists'

Order your copy here.

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Amanda Charchian speaks of her views on photographing women nude:

"We live in a world where the internet cannot make a distinction between nudity and pornography, and for me that is a problem. I don't find sacredness is secrecy where depravation and shame is involved."

"For years, I have been preoccupied by the idea of pheromones and the emissions of our bodies as extrasensory devices of communication. Clothes distract from that. I am interested in photographing the part of a person that cannot be expressed solely with speech or a look from the eye. One's nude body cannot convey a character it does not actually, for lack of a better word, 'embody.'"

"While the Venus Pudica or 'Modest Venus' in Greek sculpture covers herself up, I am interested in showing the liberated body."

Read more on The Huffington Post.

Image: 'Simple Syrup' by Amanda Charchian.

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"I agree with Judith Butler, amongst others, who argue that gender is largely constructed and that it should be seen as fluid. Nevertheless, in my experience as a woman living on the planet now, I would describe myself partly as an eco-feminist - meaning I see a direct link between the health of women and the well-being of the planet, spiritually, politically and psychologically. I am interested in the reciprocity between the cycles in women’s bodies and those of the Earth - birth, menstruation, the moon cycles and the seasons." - Excerpt of interview with artist Shana Robbins. Detail of 'Pajara'.

Featured in 'Viriditas: an Anthology of Contemporary Women Artists.'

Order your copy here.