Lying on his side on the surface of London’s iconic Millennium Bridge, artist Ben Wilson paints a piece of dried chewing gum trodden into the ground.
“The important thing is the gum is below the metal tread,” said 60-year-old Wilson, dressed in a paint-daubed orange jumpsuit. “The beauty of it is they’re all different shapes and sizes so there’s no conformity.”
What most people actively avoid or simply don’t see, Wilson views as an opportunity to turn a tiny piece of discarded rubbish into something beautiful. It’s also a way to delight passersby, enticing them to take a closer look underfoot.
Photo: Reuters
“By painting a picture which is so small, those that see it then discover a hidden world beneath their feet,” Wilson said.
“If they look then they see, so it’s about perception.”
Back in his north London studio, Wilson paints on the surface of a small mosaic tile which will be part of a collection that he sticks on the walls of London’s Underground train platforms, hidden in plain sight. The images are more personal than the chewing gum works, Wilson says, and represent
Photo: Reuters
an “intuitive visual diary.”
“The pictures are a celebration of my life and those that I care dearly about ... they are (also) a process of visual inquiry — trying to make sense of the world,” he said.
London-born Wilson was raised by artist parents and recalls working with clay from age three, with his first artist show at around 10 or 11 years old.
Photo: Reuters
His artwork developed into sculpture and large pieces in the natural environment before his interest turned to rubbish and discarded items from a consumerist world, like chewing gum, which he’s been painting for 19 years.
The top surface of the dried gum is not subject to local or national jurisdictions, creating a space where Wilson says he can paint without defacing public property.
“I found this little space where I could create a form of art where I could be spontaneous and do something which evolves out of the place in which it’s created,” Wilson said.
The artist has had much of his public street art removed by authorities — gum from the pavement or tiles from the Underground — but the hundreds of gum paintings on Millennium Bridge have been left untouched.
One of the biggest sore spots in Taiwan’s historical friendship with the US came in 1979 when US president Jimmy Carter broke off formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan’s Republic of China (ROC) government so that the US could establish relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan’s derecognition came purely at China’s insistence, and the US took the deal. Retired American diplomat John Tkacik, who for almost decade surrounding that schism, from 1974 to 1982, worked in embassies in Taipei and Beijing and at the Taiwan Desk in Washington DC, recently argued in the Taipei Times that “President Carter’s derecognition
JUNE 30 to JULY 6 After being routed by the Japanese in the bloody battle of Baguashan (八卦山), Hsu Hsiang (徐驤) and a handful of surviving Hakka fighters sped toward Tainan. There, he would meet with Liu Yung-fu (劉永福), leader of the Black Flag Army who had assumed control of the resisting Republic of Formosa after its president and vice-president fled to China. Hsu, who had been fighting non-stop for over two months from Taoyuan to Changhua, was reportedly injured and exhausted. As the story goes, Liu advised that Hsu take shelter in China to recover and regroup, but Hsu steadfastly
You can tell a lot about a generation from the contents of their cool box: nowadays the barbecue ice bucket is likely to be filled with hard seltzers, non-alcoholic beers and fluorescent BuzzBallz — a particular favorite among Gen Z. Two decades ago, it was WKD, Bacardi Breezers and the odd Smirnoff Ice bobbing in a puddle of melted ice. And while nostalgia may have brought back some alcopops, the new wave of ready-to-drink (RTD) options look and taste noticeably different. It is not just the drinks that have changed, but drinking habits too, driven in part by more health-conscious consumers and
On Sunday, President William Lai (賴清德) delivered a strategically brilliant speech. It was the first of his “Ten Lectures on National Unity,” (團結國家十講) focusing on the topic of “nation.” Though it has been eclipsed — much to the relief of the opposing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — by an ill-advised statement in the second speech of the series, the days following Lai’s first speech were illuminating on many fronts, both domestic and internationally, in highlighting the multi-layered success of Lai’s strategic move. “OF COURSE TAIWAN IS A COUNTRY” Never before has a Taiwanese president devoted an entire speech to
RSS