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To create these Sputnik-inspired photographs for The Kick-About No. 135, I ordered a large steel ball from one of those companies that provide fixtures and fittings for grand-looking railings and gates. I knew I was going to have some fun with sparklers to evoke the spines of this famous satellite and I needed something I…
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For the last edition of The Kick-About, we orbited the artworks of Lee Krasner. This week, we’re satelliting an actual satellite – humanity’s first! Launched on 4 October 1957, Sputnik wasn’t just a metal sphere in orbit – it signalled the beginning of the Space Age, a global pivot towards exploration, ingenuity, and the unknown.…
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So this Krasner-inspired ‘mosaic’ is about the size of a dinner plate and was made for The Kick-About No. 134 by bashing a bunch of chunky wax crayons with a rolling pin and then setting them within the confines of a rusty metal hoop I found behind our wheelie bins. I sited the hoop and…
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The last edition of The Kick-About was inspired by James Turrell’s immersive light installations. Lee Krasner, like Turrell, invites us to inhabit her work—but hers is no ethereal space. Instead, it’s a restless terrain of reinvention. Enjoy this latest collection of ‘new works made in a short time’ and why not browse all previous editions…
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These Turrell-inspired images, produced for The Kick-About No.133, were deceptively simple to make; the forms are 2D shapes imported, ‘clip-art style’, from boring old Powerpoint (Yawn!). The shapes themselves were given an internal ‘shadow’ effect to produce the illusion of volume. Then, in Premiere Pro (video editing software), a fake light source was installed behind…
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Last time, The Kick-About was inspired by Semper Augustus—a tulip prized for its beauty and mystery. This week, we turn to another master of allure: James Turrell, who works not with petals but with perception itself. His art of light and space invites us to pause, look longer, and notice the quiet drama of illumination.…
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These tulip-inspired photographs for The Kick-About No. 132 were produced by first applying thick acrylic paint mixed with PVA to sheets of acetate—which, appropriately enough, were then left in the greenhouse to dry. I drooled the paint mixture on the acetate, then used a fat, dry decorator’s brush to emulate the colour breaks of tulip…
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Our previous Kick-About was inspired by the alluring and lonely illuminations of lighthouses—beacons set against the vast and unpredictable sea. This time, we trade maritime mystery for botanical obsession, turning our gaze to Semper Augustus, the most coveted tulip of the Dutch Golden Age—a bloom as rare, storied, and strangely luminous in its own way.…
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There is something supremely narrative about the idea of a lighthouse and my interest in writing this story as my response to The Kick-About No.131 began with thinking about the role of the lighthouse keeper, and why a person might be in need of all that isolation and the routine that comes with the job.…
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Our last Kick-About was a celebratory compendium of five years of ‘kicking it about’—and speaking personally, I do look forward to these fortnightly opportunities to ‘think a thing, do a thing and share a thing’ as little lights on the horizon of often more humdrum vistas. Fittingly, this first prompt of the ‘new year’ is…
Red's Kingdom 