México City Waltz de Nicolas Comment

Nicolás Comment pasó dos meses en una residencia artística en México y allí fue donde realizó esta serie fotográfica llamada México City Waltz. Este autor nació en Paris en 1973, actualmente todavía vive allí y trabaja para la agencia Vu.

Este trabajo es, ante todo, un poema hecho de imágenes con el fin de componer un equivalente visual de la “prosa espontánea” del México actual y rinde un homenaje a la belleza y a la sensualidad que encontramos en este país.
Un trabajo que bebe de la literatura, tres títulos son el punto de partida de esta serie: Tristessa de Jack Kerouac, Au-dessous du volcan de Malcolm Lowry y Voyage au pays des Tarahumaras d’Antonin Artaud.

To view Nicolás Comment 's photos click here

Robert Youds Malcolm Lowry's shack - 2012

Originally positioned as a painter, by the mid-nineties Victoria-based artist Robert Youds shifted his practice of translating light and colour to what he describes as “light paintings.” His large three-dimensional works, while maintaining a playful edge, absorb the viewer into meditative ruminations. Aglow with colour, they are assemblages on a human scale that take an initial attraction and hold it until it becomes an extended philosophic moment. The artist layers light and matter to create experiments in perception and transparency. Read more here

Under the Volcano Street Art Los Angeles

Some intricate dream like graffiti from unknown artist in downtown Los Angeles saying 'Under the Volcano'. See more here on Melrose and Fairfax blog

Robert Sears: October Ferry To Gabriola

Robert Sears: October Ferry To Gabriola -  painted as a tribute to the novel by Malcolm Lowry-  Allison on the ferry with Gabriola Island in the background - also a homage to Alex Colville who was an influence on my work.

Read more about Robert Sears's work here

Urban Renewal, Ghost Traps, Collage, Condos and Squats

In 1971, most of a squatter community on the Maplewood “intertidal” Mud Flats, near where Malcolm Lowry had written Under the Volcano, was burned to the ground by civic authorities, ostensibly to clear the way for private development. Squatting in the intertidal zone is as old as Vancouver and is an important part of the history of the city. (Finn Slough on the Fraser River is a squatting community still present in 2005; it was established in the 1890s.) Intertidal squats have been established and last largely due to the ambiguity of jurisdiction over the intertidal area. Urban Renewal, Ghost Traps, Collage, Condos and Squats by Scott Watson

Read the above about the 1960s and 1970s  Vancouver art scene

Malcolm Lowry by Michael Daye

Michael Daye is a video director and editor based in the south-west of England. Having graduated with first-class honours from University College of Falmouth in 2011, he is now working freelance and is currently in pre-production for an ambitious narrative project. As a music video director, he has worked with artists such as Charles Bradley, Nicola Benedetti and I Am Harlequin.

Aside from video production, Michael has had academic work published in Film Matters and Film International. He won the Excellence In Scholarship Award at Visions Film Festival & Conference 2012 for his presentation on the post-colonialist film Touki Bouki. He is also a keen artist and writes music on the side.

His influences include David Lynch, Chris Cunningham, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Andrei Tarkovsky, Béla Tarr and Björk. Michael Daye

Ken Lum: 'From shangri-la to shangri-la'

Back in 2010, I posted about Ken Lum's installation entitled 'From shangri-la to shangri-la'.

I have since discovered that the installation has a permanent location:

The District of North Vancouver and the North Vancouver Arts Office unveiled Ken Lum’s sculptural installation, “from shangri-la to shangri-la” at the Maplewood Flats Conservation Area (2645 Dollarton Highway). Lum’s work takes its form from the architecture of squatters’ cabins located at Maplewood Flats on the north shore of Burrard Inlet during the early to mid-twentieth century.

 By the 1940’s, an informal but cohesive community of squatters was living in the ramshackle cabins that lined the area’s intertidal zone. The most acclaimed resident was the English-born writer Malcolm Lowry, who completed his novel Under the Volcano while living there from 1940 to 1954.

 By the 1960’s, the area had attracted an assortment of hippies, artists and displaced loggers who sought out nature and self sufficiency as an alternative to the accelerating pace of development in Vancouver and its suburbs. The longstanding tension between the squatters and the residents of North Vancouver came to a head in December 1971 when most of the mudflat dwellings were burned down by civic authorities to make way for development.

 Lum created from shangri-la to shangri-la in 2010 for the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Offsite large scale art program. The work consists of scale replicas of three squatter shacks: the dwelling occupied by Malcolm Lowry, one built by artist Tom Burrows, and one inhabited by Dr. Paul Spong, who later led Greenpeace’s “Save the Whales” campaign.

 The artwork was situated on West Georgia Street in downtown Vancouver surrounded by high rise buildings, and adjacent to the City’s tallest building, the Shangri-La Hotel. Considered in relation to the surrounding urban environment, the squatter shacks represented an acute contrast of a rustic conception of the ideal life with contemporary visions of perfection embodied in present day architecture.

 Ken Lum gifted from shangri-la to shangri-la to the District of North Vancouver in 2010. Situating the squatter shacks in their original Maplewood Flats location allows viewers to travel back in time and reflect on a foreclosed moment in the history of the Lower Mainland.

 Ken Lum is a Vancouver artist whose work questions the relationship between modernism and everyday experience often blurring the boundaries that separate high art and popular culture. Over the past 25 years, Lum has exhibited widely throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

 Explore the District of North Vancouver's Public Art Collection online.

See a collection of photos of the installation at Teregraphic.com

Charles Arthur Wells, Jr: Malcolm Lowry

 Malcolm Lowry no date, before 1989dry point, 22/30

Pierre Alechinsky,: Pour Malcolm Lowry

Pour Malcolm Lowry. Farbradierung auf BFK Rives-Velin. 39,5 x 48,2 cm (Plattenrand); 49,5 x 64,2 cm (Blattgröße). Signiert. Auflage 150 num. Ex. (1969). Rivière 392.
Prachtvoller, farbfrischer Druck mit dem vollen Rand.

Andrzej Brakoniecki Eridanus 1998 - 2004

Consuls Vision

Andrzej Brakoniecki, painter and printmaker. He has made Vancouver, British Columbia his home for the past 30 years. He studied painting at the Collage of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Poland and classical animation at Vancouver Film School.His paintings and prints are in public and private collections in anada,USA,Mexico, Germany, France, England, Russia and Poland. Read more and see the series of paintings

Malcolm Lowry

Courtesy of Deliberacion

Luis López Loza Serie Ilustraciones a Poemas de Malcolm Lowry

Luis López Loza was born in Mexico City in 1939. He studied in the “Esmeralda” School of Painting and Sculpture, in the Center of Applied Arts, both in Mexico, and the Pratt Graphic Art Center in New York. In 1966 he received Honorary Mention in Casa de las Américas, in Havana, Cuba, and in 1969 in the Triennial of Woodcut in Modena, Italy. In 1973 he received the Biennial of Printmaking Award in Tokyo, Japan, and the National Printmaking Award in Mexico in 1977. In 1975 he was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Read more 

Mario Canali Under The Volcano

Born in Milan, Mario Canali began his artistic career in 1975, devoting the first ten years of his career to painting. Shortly thereafter he turned his attention to electronic and digital art and is considered one of the pioneers of that art form. Second to John Lasseter at Ars Electronica in Linz for two consecutive years and winner of numerous awards at the national level (Nastro d’Argento, Rome) as well as internationally (Imagina, Monte Carlo) in the field of  computer graphics and 3D animation, Mario Canali pioneered immersive virtual reality (Satori, 1992) and interactive installations, using body parameters to probe people’s emotional states. Canali’s studies and research in digital media, new paradigms of science, psychology and neurology earned him teaching credentials at Accademia di Brera in Milan "Virtual Reality and Paradigms of Complexity”  and NABA Academy of Arts and Design in Milan “Emotional Scenes and Cognitive Environments”. After twenty years of experience with new media, Canali returns to painting to create new and exciting spaces for expression, communication and research. Read more

François Righi Under The Volcano Volume 4 2009

François Righi Under The Volcano Volume 4 2009

Es habitual recurrir al libro como medio para transmitir un significado que se cree consolidado, bien sea mediante palabras o imágenes. En este caso, el arranque del libro parte de otra premisa. No se trata de consignar ninguna solución, pues el libro encierra un misterio de naturaleza inalcanzable, insoluble, que se mantiene intacto a fin de reavivarlo con cada lectura: aquello que nunca se consigue plenamente, y que es lo único que importa, es la razón de ser y la materia de estos libros […]. El juego que palpita en ellos nace de una imagen que representa lo que no es y que, en su ausencia, ocupa ese lugar.

Read more on Arts Libris

Peter Bies Into the West

“(…) he dreamed a moment of battles his soul survived to wander there.” Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano


this is how it works:

soft plastic phantoms of the past

assembling proleptic flashes of sub-poetry

& retrograde evidence & representations

of my edited emotional history:



your languid shape

backlit against the flat sky

your pregnant drawl

shallow & corporate

in scientific locution/

my memory of you

jells into fiction

blotting out over

& beyond the live flesh

& the cold shadow

of your hands

See more on ARTDOXA

Letter from Oaxaca

The above image is:Installation by Joel Gómez at Mupo (Museo de los pintores oaxaqueños) in Oaxaca, Mexico. Photo Emilie Chaix.

Roasted grasshoppers (chapulines), Malcolm Lowry’s beloved mezcal, the social unrest: Oaxaca, one of the most beautiful cities in Latin America, bases its fame on a series of clichés. The year of Mexico, to open soon in France – and which the arguments on the Cassez affair seem to have definitely buried -, could have shown that the country is not limited to being the conservatory of ancient civilizations. Oaxaca is one example among many others. It was the stronghold of the Zapotec culture, with the city of Monte Alban, later inhabited by the Mixteca goldsmiths, it is also a capital of modern and contemporary art. The city of Rufino Tamayo (who will be celebrated as of 29 September at the Petit-Palais in Paris) has undergone a remarkable transformation this last decade, under the impulse of Francisco Toledo, the most famous contemporary Mexican artist. It now hosts several museums of contemporary art with funny acronyms (Maco, Mupo, Iago, aside from the Alvarez-Bravo foundation), galleries, collective presentations by young artists and graffiti artists. Event the botanical garden is the work of contemporary creators, led by Luis Zarate. Oaxaca meets the challenge of showing another aspect of Mexico, far from the image limited to its folklore, its mariachis, its embroidered dresses, its colonial style. Now it has to be known… Read more

Andrzej Brakoniecki's Series 'Eridanus' and 'Malcolm Lowry'

Eridanus, the name given by Malcolm Lowry to his West Coast surroundings, refers to both the stellar constellation and mythical river to which Faeton was cast down by gods. Eridanus, in Brakoniecki`s works, becomes a place where a magnificent nature and idiosyncratic human existence meet. It is a place that inspires artistic vision....

...Brakoniecki constructs his visual world from elements that are close at hand. In contrast to some monothematic approaches, his art grows out of fascination, never obsession. Obsession is an imprisonment of one idea or emotion, while fascination always struggles for the fullness of artistic experience, often capricious and unexpected. His iconography grows slowly. The same elements undergo numerous compositional generations, with every new work bringing different emotional messages. The two-coloured side of a tanker becomes a loving leitmotif, painstakingly repeated in succeeding colouristic episodes. In one of the smaller works, the realistic forms of ships "explode". Placed vertically, they become a stretch of colour, holding together the internal tensions of the composition.... Read more

Andrzej Brakoniecki has worked for over twenty years as an painter and an printmaker.

He is an expressive artist, whose vivid work transforms the visible world, human emotions and historical references into a pictorial compositions.

Brakoniecki was born in 1955 in Olsztyn, Poland. Since 1981 he lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

He studied painting at College of Fine Arts in Gdansk, Poland and classical animation at Vancouver Film School. See website



Update 29 July 2011



Read North Shore News article

Malcolm Lowry on Camerabruyante

Check it out

Malcolm Lowry by Politoxicomaniaco

See Politoxicomaniaco at Deviant Art

Richard Merkin (416) Malcolm Lowry

Richard Merkin (1938 – September 5, 2009) was an American painter and illustrator.

Merkin was born in Brooklyn, New York,in 1938, and held degrees from Syracuse University and the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1962–63 he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in Painting and, in 1975, The Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from The National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Merkin began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1963 and remained there for nearly 40 years during which time he built his reputation in New York. He is represented in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian Institution and the Whitney Museum, among others. Merkin had been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair since 1986 and a regular contributor of illustrations to The New Yorker since 1988, as well as Harper's and The New York Times' Sunday Magazine. From 1988–1991, he wrote a monthly style column for Gentlemen's Quarterly. In 1995, he illustrated the book Leagues Apart: The Men and Times of the Negro Baseball Leagues, by Larry Ritter. He wrote the text and captions for The Tijuana Bibles (Simon & Schuster, 1997). He appeared on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, (back row, right of center). Read more on Wikipedia

See more of his work at Caddie Haddad Gallery