What’s New on the Art Scene

Exploring Family dynamics

Sculptor JB Blunk’s Hand Build Family Home

“I consider this whole place - house, studio, fruit trees, vegetable garden, and chickens - one big sculpture”

JB Blunk (1926-2002) was an American sculptor who’s practice was primarily focused on wood and clay. Growing up in the United States he later left for Japan where he worked alongside Isamu Noguchi and did apprenticeships under artists such as Kitaoji Rosanjin and Kaneshige Toyo. In the last few years his worked has increasingly gained in recognition and appreciation.

In the 1950s, he returned to the US and found a beautiful piece of land in Inverness California where he decided to put down his roots and hand build this multigenerational home. Using found pieces of timber and stone as well as drawing inspirations from his years in Japan, this house became one of his most significant works. Today it’s still being celebrated and preserved by one of his three children, Mariah Nielson.

Nielson recently created a gallery fittingly named Blunk Space where she celebrates his life’s work. Highly inspired by her childhood and her father’s habits of rotating art in the house she keeps a constant flow of pieces in the gallery. This year, the gallery 

This house, featured in the July 2024 Family Style article titled “Inheritance” is a great testimony of the inestimable importance of craft, of heritage and of conservation.

Click on the image to read Family Style article.

Bye Bye Tiberias (Lina Soualem, 2023)

Bye Bye Tiberias is a French-Palestinian film directed by Lina Soualem. For her second long film that got multiple awards, such as the Best Documentary Film at London Film Festival 2024, this touching documentary portrays the current state of the filmmaker’s family as well as its history.

This documentary retraces and examines the transgenerational heritage of four female figures in the Soualem’s family. The film mainly focuses on Lina’s mother famous’ actress Hiam Abbass, who left her family behind to follow her dream of pursuing a career in acting.

Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter comes back to the village she was born in and where the rest of her family lives to present this beautiful bloodline portrait using different sources of materials, such as found footage and family archives. The film investigates what it is like to be an Arabic woman, whilst addressing the themes of exile, separation and family bonds. 

J.Mayer.H - FAMILIAR

JB Blunk (1926-2002) was an American sculptor who’s practice was primarily focused on wood and clay. Growing up in the United States he later left for Japan where he worked alongside Isamu Noguchi and did apprenticeships under artists such as Kitaoji Rosanjin and Kaneshige Toyo. In the last few years his worked has increasingly gained in recognition and appreciation.

In the 1950s, he returned to the US and found a beautiful piece of land in Inverness California where he decided to put down his roots and hand build this multigenerational home. Using found pieces of timber and stone as well as drawing inspirations from his years in Japan, this house became one of his most significant works. Today it’s still being celebrated and preserved by one of his three children, Mariah Nielson.

Nielson recently created a gallery fittingly named Blunk Space where she celebrates his life’s work. Highly inspired by her childhood and her father’s habits of rotating art in the house she keeps a constant flow of pieces in the gallery. This year, the gallery 

This house, featured in the July 2024 Family Style article titled “Inheritance” is a great testimony of the inestimable importance of craft, of heritage and of conservation.

Click on the image to read Family Style article.

Girls will be Girls, directed by Shuchi Talati, 2024

Girls Will be Girls is a fiction film and first ever long film produced by Indian director Shuchi Talati. The viewer is following Mira, a young girl embodied as the exemplary and ideal student, navigating through adolescence and the first experiences that comes with this universal experience. As she meets Sri, a young boy she fancies, her relationship with her mother Anila starts to complexify. As viewers, the mother’s behaviour becomes increasingly more ambiguous and intriguing, causing us to be unsure of where the film is going on some level. The latter is overprotective and cannot stress but projecting her own regrets and spoiled teenage years on her daughter Mira.

With its humouristic touch and raw authenticity, this drama/romance encapsulates the complexity that often comes when addressing mother-daughter relationships whilst echoing to a universal experience the audience can identify with.

Aftersun, Charlotte Wells, 2022

Disclaimer: With the famous actor Paul Mescal being en vogue and for this month’s theme, we decided it was more than relevant to mention this film, although this piece of art is not quite recent.

Aftersun is a fiction drama that follows the memories of 11 years old Sophie on a holiday with her father Calum through the lens of a mini camera bought for the occasion, emphasising the melancholic aspect of this reminiscing trip in Turkey. On one hand, this trip is, for Sophie, a self-discovery journey as a young teenager. On the other, Calum lives a whole other reality as he is struggling interiorly, contrasting with the composition of the shots that provide a calm and warm atmosphere. Alterity is portrayed in multiple means such as the choices of colours: the father is always surrounded by cold tones, predominantly blue, when Sophie is much more solar and yellow seems to suit her better as she is still in the innocence of childhood. 

This film is a masterpiece for its realistic dialogues and amazing performance from both main actors. Its ambiguity and undeniable tension characterises this film for being unique in its genre making it emotionally brilliant. Everything is well thought out: from the music chosen to the use of colours in costumes and decors, making the audience live a unique emotional experience that only intensifies at each viewing.