Travel

BEAUTIFULNOW EVENTS 08.09.13

Globe Light 2013

8/2/13 - 8/31/13

Melbourne, Australia

A light festival! A brilliant idea! And now, for the first time, we have one! It’s the first annual Globelight Festival and it showcases local and international talents in lighting art and design. Celebrating the experimentation, resulting innovation, and art in lighting.

Photo: Courtesy of Globelight 2013

Curated by James Tapscott and Sam Mitchell-Fin, installation artists from Melbourne and Sydney respectively, the Festival include 17 artists/designers, including 2013 Vivid Sydney artist/designer Vincent Buret, 2011 FX International Interior Design Award Winner Kent Graton, and German installation artist Max Sudhues.

Housed in two separate spaces: the Anita Traverso Gallery (individual design pieces) and the Abbotsford Convent (site-specific works and large-scale installations).

Photo: Simon Collins

James Turrell

Guggenheim Museum

New York, New York

Now through 09.25.13

Museum of Fine Arts Houston, MFAH

Houston, Texas

Now through 09.22.13

Los Angeles County Museum of Art | LACMA

Los Angeles, California

Now through 04.06.14

If lighting art turns you on, and you haven’t already been, see James Turrell at the Guggenheim, its on until September 25, 2013, or his Retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art | LACMA, on until April 6, 2014, or The Light Inside, his exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, MFAH, on until September 22, 2013.

For over 50 years, Turrell has been creating monumental works, with pure light, projected onto walls, ceilings, and skies.

“I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some ways gather it, or seem to hold it… my work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing.” — James Turrell

Photo: Hagen Betzwieser

Kosmica Mexico

August 8 - August 10

Mexico City, Mexico

All true artists are aliens of a sort. They think and are capable of creating things differently from the rest of the human species. Scientists are similarly in an outer space. Bringing them together, as they are at KOSMICA Mexico, is creative genius! This event and exhibition is all about the cutting edge of the artistic side of space.

Photo: Courtesy of Kosmica Mexico

Programmed by artist Nahum Mantra, and The Arts Catalyst (UK) in partnership with the Laboratorio Arte Alameda, INBA (Mexico), KOSMICA Mexico welcomes 18 international participants, including artists, astronomers, performers, space explorers, and musicians from around the world.

Video: Courtesy of Kosmica Mexico

This year’s programme is divided in four sessions:

Artists in the Cosmos: Andy Gracie (UK), Marko Peljhan (Slovenia), Ariel Waldman (USA), Daniela de Paulis (Italy), Ale de la Puente (Mexico)

Space Programmes & Left-Behind Communities: Rob La Frenais (UK), Jareh Das (UK), Kerry Doyle (USA), Willoh S. Weiland (Australia), Mexican Space Collective (Mexico)

Peaceful & Open Space: Nicola Triscott (UK), Jill Stuart (USA), Roger Malina (USA)

Fantasy and Magic in Space: Julijonas Urbonas (Lithuania), Nick Campion (UK), Miguel Alcubierre Moya (Mexico), Nahum Mantra (Mexico), Anais Tondeur (France)

Photo: Magnus Hagdorn

Edinburgh International Festival

9 August–1 September 2013.

Edinburgh, Scotland

The Edinburgh Festival series continues this week as the 2013 Edinburgh International Festival opens today. With an always stellar line-up, this year Artistic director Jonathan Mills, has orchestrated a program of opera, theater, dance, visual art, and music, to reflect the interplay between art and technology.

Photo: Scott Barron

Spanning and bridging the 16th and 21st centuries, one exhibition, at the Queen’s Gallery, Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man features the maestro’s pioneering medical drawings alongside modern-day medical images -- a stunningly beautiful juxtaposition.

This Festival is all about "It's using art from a 600-year sweep of history, from as old as Leonardo da Vinci to world premieres being made as we speak, to think about how artists have responded to the circumstances in which they live and how their work is shaped by and shapes their epoch."

Video: Courtesy of Edinburgh International Festival, Youtube

Check out Opéra de Lyon and American video artist Gary Hill’s production of Beethoven's Fidelio set on a spaceship; Edinburgh's site-specific theatre company Grid Iron’s premiere of Leaving Planet Earth; and Beijing People's Art Theatre’s modern-day Tragedy of Coriolanus backed by two heavy metal bands.

Other highlights include Don Quichotte du Trocadéro, a high-tech comic dance piece, by choreographer José Montalvo; Histoire d'Amour, a theatre-film fusion by the Chilean company Teatro Cinema; and more from Philip Glass Ensemble, Patti Smith, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra , and others.

Photo: Byronv2

Edinburgh Book Festival

August 10 - August 26, 2013

Edinburgh, Scotland. Charlette Square Gardens

Another wonderful Edinburgh program on now is the Edinburgh Book Festival, the world’s longest running book festival (30th anniversary now). Featuring 700 readings, interviews, and debates, from both literary stars and newbies, festival director Nick Barley's program will be reflecting on how society has changed, with respect to science, politics, and the arts, over the past 30 years as well as looking forward to the next 30 years.

Photo: Wikipedia

The 2013 line-up includes appearances by Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Gavin Esler, Kate Mosse, Antonia Fraser, Edna O'Brien, Ian Rankin and Neil Gaiman. Here, you’ll also be the first to check out 42 debut novels, novellas and short story collections. And that’s just scratching the surface.

See our coverage of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, still on through 08.26.13.

Check out the rest of our posts this week in Arts/Design, Food/Drink, Mind/Body, Place/Time, Nature/Science, and Soul Impact. And enter this week's photo competition. The theme: Beautiful Wheels (Deadline, August 11th, 2013). And here is a list of ongoing events from our previous posts.