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Paolo Puck Imagines a World Called Fliffmellington and Its Uncanny Artifacts

by Aurelia Butler 8 October 2025, 14:39

All images courtesy of Paolo Puck, shared with permission

Paolo Puck Imagines a World Called Fliffmellington and Its Uncanny Artifacts

October 8, 2025

ArtDesign

Kate Mothes

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In Paolo Puck’s imaginary realm of Fliffmellington, surreal characters come to life through elaborate costumes. Often weathered and tumbled-looking, a series of handbags, purses, and helmets glimpse a wonderfully weird world.

“I’m in the long process of faithfully recreating various artefacts from the world of Fliffmellington,” Puck tells Colossal. “Long-term, I will be making a book and short film, as well as an anthropological exhibition of the artefacts.”

The artist aims to highlight the world of Fliffmellington through its material culture, which often features motifs of expressive or abstracted animals and absurdly large vegetables. The overall costumes reference personalities like the “Gherkin God” or an enigmatic, fantastical character named Celeste, who is associated with an organization called Jezilwik Grindlewax.

Puck’s approach to making detailed, wearable pieces is through the lens of archaeologist and conservator, as if the objects have been carefully excavated or recovered from a forgotten place, shedding light on an unknown culture.

Enter Puck’s uncanny world via the artist’s website and Instagram, and find tutorials and making-of insights via Substack. You might also enjoy Nikolas Bentel’s hyper-bespoke accessories.

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Craig & Karl’s ‘Mateys’ Bring Vibrancy and Joy to Bridges in Brisbane and Beyond
by Aurelia Butler 1 October 2025, 17:00
Detail of “Converge.” Photo by Alex Chomicz
Craig & Karl’s ‘Mateys’ Bring Vibrancy and Joy to Bridges in Brisbane and Beyond
October 1, 2025
ArtDesign
Kate Mothes
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In vibrant colors, patterns, and shapes, the immersive works of Craig & Karl invite us to relish moments of joy and surprise. While Craig is based in New York, and Karl is based in London, the two collaborate across the pond—and around the world—to produce multimedia installations that revitalize urban spaces and celebrate the power of play.
As part of the 2025 Brisbane Festival, Craig & Karl created a pair of large-scale inflatable interventions on two of the city’s bridges, both riffing on the idea of the arch as passageway. Additionally, numerous illustrations, interactive sculptures, and inflatable “Mateys” — a series of quirky characters with expressive faces — pop up on buildings and sidewalks to enable joyful encounters as part of the expansive, city-wide exhibition titled Rear Vision.
“Walk This Way” (2025), Kangaroo Point Bridge, Brisbane. Photo by JD Lin
Collectively titled “Walk This Way,” the bridge installations encourage Brisbanites to see their city with fresh eyes. The expressive, flexible characters are also immanently relatable for viewers of all ages. “The Mateys serve as companions that help foster community and shared experiences, welcoming us into different corners of the city,” says a festival statement.
Craig & Karl are known for their vivid participatory projects, which range from mini-golf courses to playgrounds to murals. The artists initially met 30 years ago while studying at Griffith University in Brisbane, and since, their collaborative practice has included partnerships with global brands and publications like Adidas, Nike, Apple, Chanel, The New Yorker, Variety, and more.
While the bridge installations came to a close at the end of September, you can still stroll along the Public Art Trail through October 20 to spot Craig & Karl’s sculptures and installations in unexpected places. Then, drop by the exhibition Double Vision at the Griffith University Art Museum, which continues through January 7.
Plot your course on the Brisbane Festival website, and see more of the artists’ projects on their site and Instagram.
“Mateys” (2025), part of ‘Rear Vision’ Public Art Trail, Brisbane. Photo by Claudia Baxter
“Mateys” (2025), part of ‘Rear Vision’ Public Art Trail, Brisbane. Photo by Alex Chomicz
Detail of “Converge.” Photo by Alex Chomicz
“Converge” (2025), Neville Bonner Bridge, Brisbane. Photo by JD Lin
“Prismatic,” Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong
Detail of “Unfold,” Suzhou, China
“Cosmos,” Melbourne Central, Melbourne
Detail of “Cosmos”
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Cultural Narratives and Craft Converge in the 2025 World of WearableArt Competition
by Aurelia Butler 22 September 2025, 14:29
Faris Fairusham (Victoria University of Wellington, Malaysia), “Wau Bulan.” Photos by Stephen A’Court. All images courtesy of World of WearableArt, shared with permission
Cultural Narratives and Craft Converge in the 2025 World of WearableArt Competition
September 22, 2025
ArtDesign
Kate Mothes
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Wellington’s extravagant World of WearableArt is back for 2025, including pieces by 85 finalists that showcase today’s most elaborate and fanciful costumes. One hundred designers from 17 countries competed for a prize pool of more than $200,000 New Zealand dollars across 25 awards. The competition culminates in an elaborate performance, with this year’s top honor, known as the WOW Supreme Award, handed to design duo Dawn Mostow and Ben Gould.
The U.S.-based designers have been finalists several times since 2017, and this marks their first win. Mostow and Gould’s piece “Tsukumogami” draws on Mostow’s time living in Japan, nodding to the country’s folklore and craft traditions through a reference to mythological tools that can be imbued with a spirit, or a kami. Two figures completely covered in blue-and-white latex stand like elaborate classical vases, with ikebana flower arrangements on their heads.
This year’s runner-up is Fifi Colston’s “Meine Erste Liebe,” a title which means “my first love” in German. The wearer is transformed into a medusa, with an elaborate bodice and globular headdress, plus an elaborate, bell-like skirt embellished with detailed jellyfish.
2025 World of WearableArt Show: RISE performances continue through October 5 at TSB Arena in Wellington. Explore more, including an archive of pieces from earlier shows, on the contest’s website.
Dawn Mostow and Ben Gould (United States), “Tsukumogami”
Fifi Colston (New Zealand), “Meine Erste Liebe”
Evita Camilleri and Dan Draper (Australia), “Fractilians”
Catherine Anderton (New Zealand), “Autumn King”
Vanshika Jain (Indian Institute of Art and Design, India), “Stripy Mischief”
Katherine Bertram (New Zealand), “Drift”
Abhishek Chauhan (India), “Thaliora”
Xuan Jiang, Yuxin Zhou, and Yuhan Lin (Donghua University, China), “Ember”
Anna Hayes-Moeau (New Zealand), “Ko Au Ko Harakeke, Ko Harakeke Ko Au”
Tracey Murphy and Isabel Costley (New Zealand), “See Me in Tokyo”
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Descend into the Underworld via Anish Kapoor’s Sculptural Subway Station Entrances
by Aurelia Butler 17 September 2025, 15:01
All images courtesy of Anish Kapoor, shared with permission
Descend into the Underworld via Anish Kapoor’s Sculptural Subway Station Entrances
September 17, 2025
ArtDesign
Kate Mothes
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West of Naples, along the Tyrrhenian coast, sits the storied Lake Avernus. Situated in a volcanic crater, its Latin name is synonymous with hell or the underworld, and to the ancient Romans, it was considered the portal to Hades. Dante Alighieri echoed the belief in his seminal Inferno. More recently, Anish Kapoor set out to explore the notion in a striking new entrance to the Monte Sant’Angelo subway station in central Naples. “In the city of Mount Vesuvius and Dante’s mythical entrance to the Inferno, I found it important to try and deal with what it really means to go underground,” the artist says.
Kapoor is renowned for large-scale sculptures and installations that tap into visceral psychological experiences, from a perpetually swirling whirlpool of black water in “Descension” to a meat-like slab of wax being wedged through a doorway in “Svayambhu,” which references a Sanskrit word meaning “self-born.” And, of course, there’s the iconically mirrored “Cloud Gate,” known fondly as “The Bean,” in downtown Chicago.
University entrance
“At Monte Sant’Angelo station, three integral themes of Kapoor’s practice have coalesced in more potent form than ever: the mythological object, the body, and the void,” a statement says. The artist’s design for two separate entrances, initiated more than two decades ago, tap into his interest in dualistic relationships like internal and external experiences or lightness and darkness.
Kapoor’s two entrances exist in dialogue with one another, as one is made from weathered steel with a rusty patina that suggests an amorphous bodily form. The other is conceived as something of the inverse, where a tubular steel form is presented more smoothly and “cleanly” while likewise hovering over travelers like a mysterious system or gigantic conduit.
“The station is a remarkable symbiosis of sculpture and architecture, a dynamic that has always been a central force in Kapoor’s work,” a statement says. “Kapoor’s work both holds and creates the new space in which it is experienced.”
Explore dozens of works on Kapoor’s website, and discover even more artistic subway stations around the world.
Looking up from within the Traiano entrance
A side view of the university entrance
Looking down into the university entrance
Traiano entrance
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Cheng-Tsung Feng’s “Sailing Castle” Cruises Through 400 Years of Taiwanese History
by Aurelia Butler 9 September 2025, 14:33
All images courtesy of Cheng-Tsung Feng, shared with permission
Cheng-Tsung Feng’s “Sailing Castle” Cruises Through 400 Years of Taiwanese History
September 9, 2025
ArtCraftDesign
Kate Mothes
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Through the study of time-honored craft techniques, Taiwanese artist Cheng-Tsung Feng envisions contemporary installations that connect us not only to the past but also to nature and our present surroundings.
Working across sculpture, installation, craft, and design, the artist draws on what he describes as “ancient and gradually forgotten oriental culture,” translating traditional motifs and methods into new works that nod to the continuum of East Asian art and ingenuity. One might even position his practice within the realm of storytelling, tapping into collective cultural memories and overlapping histories.
In his installation “Sailing Castle” in Tainan, Feng evokes the sails of wooden ships as a visual metaphor for the urban landscape, “where clusters of buildings resemble vessels gathered in harbor,” he says. Symbolizing movement, discovery, and societal progress and expansion, he creates a dialogue between architecture and advancement, along with memory and the present moment.
The beams and sails are inspired by a number of actual buildings in Tainan like the Confucius Temple, Fort Zeelandia—built by the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century—and Chihkan Tower, another Dutch outpost also known as Fort Provintia.
Called Formosa in the mid-1600s, Taiwan was under colonial rule by the Dutch, whose trade interests centered predominantly around Chinese silks imported to Europe, where they were prized for their luxury and highly sought after. Situated at the Anping Shipyard historical site, amid the canals of the West Central District, Feng wraps the area’s maritime heritage and four-centuries-long legacy of shipping into “Sailing Castle.”
“The overlapping sails evoke both the gathering of ships along the waterfront and the simultaneous anticipation of departure and the arrival of returning voyagers,” he says.
Using primarily wood and canvas, Feng’s pavilion is a cross between artistic intervention and functional meeting space, complete with small surfaces jutting out of the posts on which visitors can sit. Cruising, as it were, through a green park and illuminated at night, “Sailing Castle” sparks a sense of awe at the same time as it encourages us to slow down for a moment or two of contemplation and rest.
Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
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An Inflatable Building Recreates the Iconic Mecca Flats at the Heart of Chicago’s Black Renaissance
by Aurelia Butler 12 August 2025, 12:17
All images courtesy of Floating Museum, shared with permission
An Inflatable Building Recreates the Iconic Mecca Flats at the Heart of Chicago’s Black Renaissance
August 12, 2025
ArtDesignHistory
Grace Ebert
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As the World’s Fair loomed on Chicago’s horizon, architects Willoughby J. Edbrooke and Franklin Pierce Burnham built a 98-unit hotel to house visitors. After the exposition was finished, the Romanesque Revival building with a large central courtyard was converted into apartments and became known as Mecca Flats.
Chicago adhered to strict segregation codes in the 19th century, and Mecca Flats, located in the Bronzeville neighborhood at 3360 S. State Street, wasn’t immune. The complex originally only allowed white residents, before allowing Black residents in 1911. Quickly, the building became a site for creatives well-known in the Black Renaissance. Gwendolyn Brooks famously titled a book after the tenement, and luminaries Muddy Waters and Katherine Dunham called Mecca Flats home.
View of the indoor atrium at the Mecca Flats, East 34th and South State Street, Chicago, Illinois.
Although a historical beacon of Black creativity, the Illinois Institute of Technology razed the building in 1952. It was replaced by the Mies van der Rohe-designed S.R. Crown Hall.
While Mecca Flats are long gone, its memory lives on throughout Chicago, and thanks to the collective known as Floating Museum, a new artwork revives the cultural hub. “for Mecca” is a large-scale inflatable structure recreating the once-thriving complex in grayscale polyester. Scaled down, this iteration stretches 41 feet long, with a U-shaped passageway for viewers to walk through.
Floating Museum is co-directed by avery r. young, Andrew Schachman, Faheem Majeed, and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, who share that the project offers a “tangible artifact” of Chicago’s lost history. They say:
“for Mecca” represents our collective interest in Bronzeville’s complex history. We can no longer view nostalgic images of Mies van der Rohe—enjoying a cigar in the emptiness of S.R. Crown Hall—without also imagining Mecca Flats, collapsed under his feet, and recalling the slow strategic displacement of the African American community signified by the presence of its absence.
The project also includes several nods to former South Side institutions, including the jazz dancehall Savoy Ballroom and the Regal Theatre, a popular night club and performance venue.
Debuting this past weekend at the original site, the project will travel around the city’s parks through the summer of 2026. “for Mecca” is the latest project in the collective’s Floating Monuments series, which seeks to uncover critical cultural and historical legacies within Chicago through public installations.
Find more from Floating Museum on its website.
The Stroll, Regal Theater, and the Savoy Ballroom, Chicago, 1941. Photo by Russell Lee. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.
Savoy Ballroom, 47th Street and South Parkway, Chicago, 1929. Curt Teich Postcard Archives Digital Collection, Newberry Library.
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Experimenting with Color and Reflection, Kenny Harris Brews Beautiful Still Lifes
by Aurelia Butler 8 August 2025, 16:39
All images © Kenny Harris, shared with permission
Experimenting with Color and Reflection, Kenny Harris Brews Beautiful Still Lifes
August 8, 2025
ArtDesignFood
Kate Mothes
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In 1933, Alfonso Bialetti and his son Renato began to market an aluminum contraption for brewing coffee that would make an indelible mark on Italian culinary culture and beyond. Called a moka pot after the Yemeni city of Mokha, the appliance is still manufactured today by the coffee equipment company Bialetti under the name Moka Express, providing a steam-powered, filterless way to make a rich brew on the stovetop.
For Venice, California-based artist Kenny Harris, the metallic, faceted surface of the iconic maker inspires an ongoing series of lovely still-life oil paintings. Exploring color and form, the artist focuses on reflections and their effects. Delicate gradients and patterns are mirrored across the pot’s surface, sometimes blurring the boundary between the object and its surroundings.
“I find delight in searching for harmonies, lost edges, and texture variation,” the artist says. “In the end, these are color experimentations in the tradition of Joseph Albers or Albert Moore: reiteration of the same forms with different color combinations. Also, I love coffee.”
A solo show of Harris’s work titled Passage opens on September 6 at Galerie Mokum in Amsterdam, and he’s currently working toward another show in early 2026 at Billis Williams Gallery in Los Angeles. Explore more work on the artist’s website and Instagram.
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Zim&Zou’s ’80s-Inspired Paper Cassettes and Boombox Radiate with Color
by Aurelia Butler 28 July 2025, 13:40
All images courtesy of Zim&Zou, shared with permission
Zim&Zou’s ’80s-Inspired Paper Cassettes and Boombox Radiate with Color
July 28, 2025
ArtCraftDesign
Kate Mothes
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From layered pieces of paper, Zim&Zou recently created a series of patterned cassette tapes and a vibrant portable stereo. Known for their elaborate, large-scale installations, the artists scaled down in size—but not color—for this playful throwback.
Zim&Zou have recently collaborated with the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris to design an interactive family play area, and a workshop invites visitors to compose a water lily out of paper in reference to Claude Monet’s expansive Water Lilies paintings, which feature in the museum’s collection. See more on Zim&Zou’s website, Behance, and Instagram.
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Among Andalusian Vineyards, a Vivid Carpet Creates a Space for Gathering
by Aurelia Butler 25 July 2025, 19:27
All images courtesy of Javier de Riba, shared with permission
Among Andalusian Vineyards, a Vivid Carpet Creates a Space for Gathering
July 25, 2025
ArtDesign
Grace Ebert
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Nestled among the vineyards of Andalusia, a bold intervention creates a space for gathering in the small village of Montemayor. “Pasera” is the latest addition to Javier de Riba’s ongoing Floors series, a project focused on reclaiming small plots of land as communal sites.
“Pasera” refers to the fields where grapes shrivel up into raisins, producing the exceptionally sweet Pedro Ximénez-style dessert sherry typical throughout the region. Mimicking a patterned carpet, de Riba’s mural is a vibrant motif of burgundy and soft yellow, a nod to the fruits that surround it.
The local community held a breakfast to inaugurate the new work, which the artist notes is an important part of instilling pride and ownership over the space. “As the feeling of home is a feeling that is created, and it fades if not taken care of, now it depends on its use and care to ensure that this meeting place remains alive,” he adds.
De Riba offers prints and picnic blankets featuring his unique motifs in his shop. Find much more on his website and Instagram.
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Design

Latest story

Paolo Puck Imagines a World Called Fliffmellington and Its Uncanny Artifacts

More stories

Craig & Karl’s ‘Mateys’ Bring Vibrancy and Joy to Bridges in Brisbane and Beyond

Cultural Narratives and Craft Converge in the 2025 World of WearableArt Competition

Descend into the Underworld via Anish Kapoor’s Sculptural Subway Station Entrances

Cheng-Tsung Feng’s “Sailing Castle” Cruises Through 400 Years of Taiwanese History

An Inflatable Building Recreates the Iconic Mecca Flats at the Heart of Chicago’s Black Renaissance

Experimenting with Color and Reflection, Kenny Harris Brews Beautiful Still Lifes

Zim&Zou’s ’80s-Inspired Paper Cassettes and Boombox Radiate with Color

Among Andalusian Vineyards, a Vivid Carpet Creates a Space for Gathering

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