Art Unbound: SPACE WALK

For some time now, the Limoncello Art Gallery has been the proud sponsor of Infinite Production's series of Pop up art galleries: Art Unbound. The idea behind the project is to take art out of its "palaces" – the conventional art galleries – and take it to the most unlikely places. We've had Art Unbound on the Mother Road, in a beach hut and in bombed-out buildings. Now we're taking it to Outer Space!

The pop up gallery is aboard the Limoncello Space Station, in orbit above the main location of the Limoncello Art Gallery in Nyunanga. Organiser and curator, Cate Infinity – the founder of Art Unbound said:

Art knows no bounds, and what better way to prove it than by showcasing it in the limitless expanse of space. A pop-up art show in a space station is not just a display of creativity, but a celebration of human ingenuity and the spirit of exploration.

The exhibition will feature works by Caly Applewhyte, Cherry Manga, Sina Souza, Fiona Parx Whiterose, Thus Yootz, Anja Neobookie, Kraven Klees, Treacle Darlandes, traci, Talloulah Warra and Bamboo Barnes (all on loan from our gallery) as well as new pieces by Gamma Infinity, Esta Republic, Fau Ferdinand, AmandaT Tamatzui and Cate Infinity herself. It will run from May 13th to June 3rd, 2023

The opening party will be on Saturday May 13th at 12 noon SLT. Space attire is optional as you never need venture out of the artificial gravity and life support of the space station (unless you want to). There'll be an after-party for our friends in the Officers' Mess of the space station. Dress code for that is lingerie. 

Music will be provided by DJs Suzen Juel and Frank Atisso. We hope to see you there!

An additional location for the Limoncello Art Gallery

Dave, the gallery owner, has become a citizen of the Confederation of Democratic Simulators in the Germanic region of Neufreistadt. His place on the Marktplatz (Market Square) near the Rathaus (town hall) is now the "Limoncello Kunstgalerie" – a representative office of our gallery, with teleports to all our locations, an information board and a mailing list subscriber kiosk. Feel free to stop by and take a look. 

The CDS is a group of private regions operated as a real democracy. As their website says; 

The CDS is a real, working democracy, not a roleplay estate. We have a Constitution, a Code of Laws and three branches of government.

It's a really interesting SL place comprising six regions that have loosely based Germanic, Tuscan, Alpine, and Mediterranean themes, representing different historical periods. It's well worth exploring. It also has its own public art gallery. 

A new special exhibition at the LG Tower

We are delighted to announce a new special exhibition at the Limoncello Gallery. New Zealand artist, Amanda Tomasoa (known in SL as AmandaT Tamatzui) is staging a retrospective on the 20th Floor of the LG Tower. Amanda's work is very popular in SL and can be seen at her own galleries in Camorro, Elven Falls and Avery Hills. Her work is noted for its joyful, colourful, exuberant nature.

This is the first special exhibition in the gallery's new private region of Nyunanga, which is named in tribute to our historic home since 2009 in the Nanga region of the Satori continent. We hope, if you haven't visited Nyunanga yet, this will provide you with a good reason to do so.

The exhibition will run from April 28th to July 31st, 2o23. The opening party will be on April 28th at 1pm SLT. Music will be provided by DJ Frank Atisso.

Edition 49: The first acquisitions of 2023

My friend Fau Ferdinand sent me a link to this blog post about a new exhibition called "Future Elite" by Seraphim Placebo at her Placebo Gallery. I have always loved Sci-Fi (as witness the Space Station above the LG Tower, accessible by rocket shuttle from the roof) and these are images from an imagined feudal, clannish and apparently matriarchal world of the future.

The striking images really appealed to me and I bought two of them "Future Elite" and "Future Elite 8" for my collection. They're to be found on Level 18 of the LG Tower at our new location. 

I hope you like them as much as I do. Please come check them out. Of course, while the exhibition at the Placebo Gallery lasts, you can see more of them there.

Edition 48: A whole new Nanga

There are big changes to our art gallery. Our "home gallery" (a small part of our collection but with inter-regional teleports to our other locations) will remain at Sirinial in Bellisseria. However, we are relocating our historic home – the Airship "Limoncello" – and the LG Tower. Our proprietor, Dave (Lord Junibalya) has taken up Linden Lab's offer to Premium+ members of acquiring a homestead without first buying a full region. 

We are fans of mainland SL and sentimentally attached to our historic home, Nanga. Our founder's first SL home was there and at one point he owned the whole region and neighbouring Pumori. When Dave returned to SL in 2020 after a bereavement break, he embraced Bellisseria; the biggest innovation in his absence. Mainland still has its place though and it was not long before he returned to Nanga, relaunched the old airship and dusted off our huge art collection. It just wouldn't all fit in a skybox over his houseboat in Bellisseria, however frugal he was with his ground-level prims!

Satori was originally meant to be "the Japanese Continent." SL'ers never really took to division on national or cultural lines so all that remains of the idea are the Japanese region names. We decided our new island region should be called Nyunanga (New Nanga). We will be keeping 1,024 square metres of Nanga for sentimental reasons, but all the public art will be found in Sirinial and Nyunanga.

The SLURLs in the sidebar to Limoncello News have been updated to the new locations.

There are 20 storeys of art space in the rebuilt LG Tower and – one of our favourite things about the move - the old airship is now moored to a pylon on the tower roof! As we don't have to hide from Nanga's cluttered skies behind a scenery dome any more, we thought we'd bring these two parts of our collection back together! There is nothing but art on the island at ground level. The rolling scenery is now our sculpture park.

The new galleries are already open and you are most welcome to visit. We are very excited by the move and we hope you will enjoy Nyunanga as much as we do. The LG Tower is here and the Airship Limoncello is now here.

Stay arty, Limoncello Friends, and we hope to see you soon.

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Edition 47: Reorganisation | Dave interview | New acquisitions

REORGANISING THE ART IN OUR COLLECTION

Our gallery has evolved naturally over the years since we hung our first artwork in 2007. It's a private collection, not a series of exhibitions, so we don't constantly update and rearrange. Many pieces have hung in the same position for years. The whole process was unplanned and organic. There is neither logic nor theme to the display of the collection, which makes for strange bedfellows sometimes!

If you like that  junk shop vibe, you may even have enjoyed it but on our visits to other galleries we noticed others present their art better. We felt embarrassed so have made an effort to improve. 

The main problem was aboard the Airship Limoncello. The old girl was the original Limoncello Gallery and – enormous though she is at 120 metres long – her decks are narrow and confined. We'd fitted in far too many display boards over the years. She was hard to move about in, let alone to find a good viewpoint for some of the art. So we have "thinned out" the collection considerably; moving many pieces down to the LG Tower. We've filled almost four floors there with art from the airship, together with a few new acquisitions (see below).

We tried to keep historic items on the airship, while moving newer items down to the tower, but there's still no theme to any of the displays. It's just art we have liked and bought over the last 15 years – hung a bit more neatly. We hope you approve and enjoy.

It was a lot of work, but we are pleased with the result. As you can see in the pictures, there's a lot more space to move around. There's also more "white space" around each artwork. We think that helps in appreciating the quieter works, which are no longer lost in the clutter. The art no longer on the airship can be found on the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th floors of the LG Tower. We've been able to make many of the pieces bigger (where artist permissions allowed) and think they look better for it. We'd love to hear what you think in the comments. 

In SL the physical rearrangement of the art was not the hard part. it was re-doing our comprehensive catalogue. Pick up a copy from the Welcome Boards in any of our locations and let us know if you detect any errors please.

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DAVE'S INTERVIEW IN THE GAZETTE

Many of you will know that our owner, Dave, works for the Bellisserian Bureau of Bureaucracy and the Continental Passport Control Board. Specifically he is the editor of their official publication, The Gazette. Back in the day The Gazette was actually a joint weekly periodical with the Limoncello News until it all became too much so that two publications were needed. 

Being editor allows him to control how much is said about his work for the BBB/CPCB, which suits his reticent English nature. However journalist Teresa Firelight has been interviewing all the BBB staff in turn. This week, the moment could no longer be put off when Dave had to submit himself to scrutiny. If you're interested, you can read the interview here. 

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NEW ACQUISITIONS

Changes in our owner, Dave's, private life in RL have prevented him spending as much time on the Limoncello News as he would wish. He has still been buying art though. Our reorganisation of the gallery finally prompted him to rez his most recent new acquisitions out of the "to hang" folder in his inventory onto the walls of the LG Tower.

Here's a list of the new items and a SLURL to the 16th Floor of the LG Tower. To visit the other two floors use the lift/elevator or just fly up in the atrium. The Tower is perfect for a Second Life® gallery because you can fly up the atrium to see each of the floors in turn!

TITLE	ARTIST	ACQUIRED	LOCATION
"Worn out"	Xia Chieng	Purchase, June 2022	LG Tower, Floor 16
"Bland"	Xia Chieng	Purchase, June 2022	LG Tower, Floor 16
"Body Studies"	Xia Chieng	Gift of the artist, June 2022	LG Tower, Floor 16
"Eyethings"	Myrdin Sommer	Gift of the artist	LG Tower, Floor 17
"Lady with flower"	Kraven Klees	Purchase from artist @ Elven Falls 2022	LG Tower, Floor 17
"Before the dream"	Kraven Klees	Purchase from artist @ Elven Falls 2022	LG Tower, Floor 17
"Row houses"	Kraven Klees	Purchase from artist @ Elven Falls 2022	LG Tower, Floor 17
"worm transparant" (sic)	Myrdin Sommer	Gift of the artist	LG Tower, Floor 17 (graffito)
"Images from the Coffin: Delain (Retail)"	Traci (traci.ultsch)	Purchase, 2022	LG Tower, Floor 18
"Sea Mermaid"	Suzen JueL (juel.resistance)	Purchase 2022	LG Tower, Floor 18
"Blue Scale"	Suzen JueL (juel.resistance)	Purchase 2022	LG Tower, Floor 18
"GEISHA in the Soul - 10"	Caly Applewhyte	Purchase 2022	LG Tower, Floor 18
"Delicatessen 2"	Anibrm Jung	Purchase from artist @ Elven Falls June 2022	LG Tower, Floor 18

 

Edition 46: Art Unbound – Limbo @ LynchLand

It's time for another Art Unbound popup gallery. This one is called Limbo and is at LynchLand – a recently-opened region that's a tribute to U.S. film director David Lynch. It will take place in (would you believe it?!) a police station. There's art behind the sergeant's desk. There's art in the cells. There's art in the interrogation room. Everywhere in fact (in the spirit of Art Unbound) you would not expect art to be!

The exhibition will feature works by Eyelinea Seabird, LashVV and Sanspareil London (all on loan from the Limoncello Art Gallery) as well as pieces by Firewitchcoco (aka DJ Creme), Esta Republic, Autumnblitz Xenobuilder, AmandaT Tamatzui, Myrdin Sommer and Art Unbound's founder Cate Infinity herself. 

Myrdin Sommer, the owner of LynchLand, said;

the idea about Lynchland to me is, an homage to David Lynch, a great artist! It is wonderful to dive into his world and create scenery that feels 'Lynchian' to me.

Cate, the exhibition's curator quoted Lynch as saying;

When this kind of fire starts, it is very hard to put out. The tender boughs of innocence burn first, and the wind rises, and then all goodness is in jeopardy. Some ideas are destructive, some are constructive. Some ideas can arrive in the form of a dream. Hope I dream tonight. 

 Cate added that this quote haunts her in a good way and added;

Art Unbound Limbo is perfect for LynchLand because it embraces oddities. Art inside a prison cell with a toilet is not necessarily normal. LynchLand is special because it is not normal.

The opening party is on 28th May at 4pm SLT outside the police station. The Art Unbound opening parties are always great fun and this will be no exception. Music will be provided by DJ H, DJ Creme and DJ Nat the Cat. 

Art Unbound is a project organised by Infinite Art Gallery in association with the Limoncello Art Gallery. This will be the fourth popup in the series. The aim is to take art out of its usual temples and into grittier places. Previous popups have been in a desert shack, a beach cabin and a bombed-out building.

Watch out for your invitations in-world. One of them was attached to our subscriber's notice of this special edition. If you're not a subscriber, they'll be sent out to the principal art groups in Second Life®. We hope to see you at the party and at the exhibition. 

Edition 44: The Limoncello News is back!

THE LIMONCELLO NEWS IS BACK

We won't dwell on the personal issues that caused us to suspend publication. Let's just say 2021 was a very tough year for your editor in terms of his marriage and the health of his family.

The Limoncello Gallery is his main reason to be in Second Life® but he'd also taken on other commitments here. When he had to scale back his time on the grid those third party obligations had to be met, so time spent on the gallery suffered.

It's time to return to SL Art, with apologies to any friends in that world who may have felt neglected. However as the COVID era draws to an end, there will be less time to spend here. So from now on, this will not be a weekly publication but a quarterly one. The next edition will be in April.

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SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS

The excellent exhibitions by Xia Chieng and I am Free ended during our publication hiatus. The installation In my Mood, by Eylinea Seabird continues indefinitely and you can see the wonderful Unseen Beauty, by Guille at the LG Tower until the end of this month.

We staged more special exhibitions than usual in 2021. We built the LG Tower as space to expand our own collection but it will take years to fill it. In the meantime, there is space to stage such exhibitions as Xia's – for which in the past we would never have had the capacity. Our gallery is essentially a private art collection that is open to the public for free. We don't exist to sell art (though we're happy if you contact "our" artists directly to buy from them) and we're not in the business of promotion. So while it has been fun to stage big exhibitions alongside the galleries that exist for that purpose – especially during the COVID times when our activities in real life have been restricted – we will now return to our usual mode of operation.

Don't expect more than four special exhibitions a year (probably fewer) and don't expect them to be on the scale you saw last year. They will usually take place in the Jishnu Room at our home gallery in Bellisseria, where the limited LI allowance will keep them modest. Each will last for a maximum of three months.

If you are interested in exhibiting (or if you have suggestions as to artists we should exhibit) please let us know but be prepared to wait for a slot to be available. 

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NEW ACQUISITIONS

In the months since publication of the Limoncello News was suspended, we have purchased only one piece; Future Shock 3, by Karma Weymann. The few other acquisitions have been gifts. Queen of Merth Exclusive #11, for example was a personal gift to your editor from the artist – his good friend, The Ghost.

Mystery Art 6 and 18 were not personal gifts. The Ghost has an unusual gallery called The Found Art Gallery, which is in the form of a dumpster. Touch it and (not more than once a day) it will give you a piece of her art at random. Knowing The Ghost as we do, there's no doubt a witty commentary on the nature of the art market in Second Life® here; perhaps tinted with her characteristic self-deprecation. We enjoy her art, however, so couldn't resist taking a couple. You can too, so head over there and take a look. If you hold a Bellisseria Passport, you can get a visa stamp there too. 

TITLE	ARTIST	ACQUIRED BY	LOCATION
Queen of Merth Exclusive #11	The Ghost	Gift from the Artist	LG Tower, Floor 13
Mystery Art 6	The Ghost	Gift from the Artist	LG Tower, Floor 13
Mystery Art 18	The Ghost	Gift from the Artist	LG Tower, Floor 13
Future Shock 3	Karma Weymann	Purchase	LG Tower, Floor 13

Publication suspended

Real Life® has intervened for gallery-owner and Limoncello News editor, Dave. Publication of Limoncello News is suspended until further notice. 

The gallery is still open and you are welcome to visit our three locations: 

• Home Gallery – Sirinial, Bellisseria
• Airship Limoncello – Nanga, Satori
• The LG Tower – Nanga, Satori

The Directory Boards are teleports. Just click on the name of any destination to go there, including our special exhibitions in progress and the collections on loan from other collectors.

We will return with the Limoncello News each week as soon as we possibly can. 

Until then, Limoncello Friends, stay arty!

Edition 43: Unseen Beauty Opening Party

UNSEEN BEAUTY OPENING PARTY
Due to family health issues in RL there is no full edition of the Limoncello News this week. This is just to remind you that the opening party for Unseen Beauty – our special exhibition of photographs by Guille – will be at 3pm SLT on November 4th at the LG Tower. Music will be provided by DJ Suzen Juel. Our friend – artist AmandaT Tamatzui – has kindly agreed to  be your hostess in Dave's absence.

We hope you will join us for that.

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Until next week, Limoncello Friends, stay arty!