Well, June’s been a funny old month. Wimbledon’s about to roll out the strawberries. We’re on our second heat wave of the year, the World Cup’s in full swing over in the States, with everyone arguing about VAR and water breaks (or should that be advertising breaks). Meanwhile, I’ve been sitting here a full year late on my own version of a tournament: getting this column back on the pitch. Twelve months on the bench is far too long, no excuses, no extra time, just straight back into it.
So lace up, here are five creative things that got me gingered up this June.
No.1 | HALOS | Hundreds of discs, one big optical trick
Spanish urban artist SpY has filled a former railway factory in Florence with a grid of suspended gold and silver photography light reflector discs, all rotating and catching the light differently depending on where you stand. It’s the kind of installation photos genuinely cannot do justice, you’ve got to imagine walking through three storeys of shifting reflections that change with every step you take. Public art at its most quietly spectacular.
No.2 | Ulysses Design Co | Brand identity, the hand-drawn way
In a world of templated logo generators, there’s something properly refreshing about a studio that still draws everything by hand. Ulysses Design Co, run by Paul Lilley, builds full brand identities from scratch, logo, colour, type, the lot, with packages ranging from a quick two-week express identity right up to an eight-week full brand ecosystem. The hand-drawn element gives every mark a bit of soul that’s hard to fake digitally. As someone who runs a design business myself, I have a lot of time for anyone still doing it the proper way.
No.3 | Kirsty Elson | Driftwood, rusty nails and a lot of imagination
Kirsty works out of a studio in Cornwall, scouring local beaches for driftwood and scraps of metal, then turning them into the most charming little animal sculptures you’ve ever seen. A sleepy goat from old nails, a donkey from rusty rods and brush bristles, that sort of thing. What gets me is the restraint; she lets the material suggest the animal rather than forcing it, so every piece feels found rather than made. It’s incredible just how much character she can create out of old pieces of driftwood Her new “Creatures” collection is full of them.
No.4 | GENER8ION – STORM | A seven-minute fever dream you can’t look away from
I’ll be honest, I went in expecting a music video and came out feeling like I’d watched a short film. Directed by Romain Gavras, set in a British boarding school in 2034, with Yung Lean as the menacing ringleader, it builds from chaos and bravado into one of the most jaw-dropping choreographed dance sequences I’ve seen committed to camera. No real dialogue, no real plot, just mood, tension and movement that gets under your skin. If you only watch one thing from this list, watch this.
No.5 | Jakob Grosse-Ophoff | Kinetic sculptures with a sense of humour
This is mechanical art with a wink. Jakob builds kinetic sculptures, motorised, moving pieces that do everything from blow a kiss to ring a doorbell to set a field of roses swaying in the wind. There’s real engineering under the surface, but it never feels cold or clever-clever, it feels playful. Watching one of his pieces “perform” is like watching a tiny robot with a personality you didn’t know it needed. Worth a scroll through his site just to watch the videos loop.
The Shortbread Shed 