Week in Review: December 1st, 2024
This week's Contemporary NFT Daily is guest curated by Lowbie, a mixed media artist, archivist and writer. His horse-themed selections include works from Parker Ito, Toji A, Squishy Drifters, 'Studs', Sotce, Jacob Horne and Tojiba Brand Manager's 'Horses'.
There was a shop in my hometown where you could buy those old film slides, the colour positive ones. Me and my ex girlfriend discovered them one day, and spent the next few hours looking through them all. The shop as a whole was basically a glorified junk shop, as most faux-antique places are, but there was something very special about all these photos. We can assume each box once held masses of sentimental value, and are now haphazardly discarded and exclusively bought/used by the various art school kids in town.
For my 18th birthday, she collected a bunch of these slides and wrote about why she chose each one for me. The most poignant for me was the final one she gave me, an image of 4 horses standing idly by a road. She captioned it 'My favourite. I cannot explain it. The only life worth leading is one of a cowboy. Free.'
Horses have some mythic beauty, something I think I'm especially drawn to due to my 'English Heritage' (images of medieval knights on horseback seen on every school trip, in every history lesson, on every coat of arms, on all the best pub signs). My Grandfather lived for part of his life in the New Forest while I was growing up, and you knew you were near his home when similar scenes as the one on that old slide from 50 years ago appeared out the side of the window. A couple of years ago I was doing a project about a cowboy who leaves the ranch to Paris. He, of course, gets Paris syndrome. He left out of fear of Love and returned understanding that Love was all he had. While working on that I got two horses tattooed on me, both from a leaflet about the New Forest ponies that surrounded my late Grandfathers home.
As a symbol, they seem to be constantly re-appearing in my life. I texted a friend out of the blue a few months ago to ask about a medieval board game I'd played with his Father, to which he responded with '…you just text me as I encountered these beautiful horses. You have the spirit of the horse in more ways than you know'
I rode a horse for the first time this summer. Up a mountain, it took about an hour to reach a spot where you could see over the whole city. My horse was immeasurably sweet and calm. The girl I was with told me horses can feel stress, so I had to just keep it chill and keep talking to the horse, telling it how good it was and how thankful I was. I did it all that day, I walked, I trotted, I cantered. We had a beer half way down the mountain, and hazily trotted back on horseback towards the ranch. As we went I thought to myself 'The only life worth leading is one of a cowboy. Free.'
|
Lowbie is a mixed media artist, archivist and writer. He is a founder of the Snoot Brut collective. He runs the weekly interview series 'WORLD RECEIVER' for Galerie Yeche Lange & Snoot Brut. |
Jacob Horne, ↑. 2024. Base. Time-restricted open edition, edition of 3,392.
Studs, Sports Stud. 2024. Solana. Private collection of 2xu9…BZoD.
Toji A #1, Toji A #629. 2024. Solana. Private collection of HCaNnM...ZkWb.
Lowbie, POSTCARD – #17, 2024. Solana. Private collection of @terrorism_.
Squishy Drifters, Squishy Drifter 2044. 2024. Solana. Private collection of @cfuscovirens.
sweet release, wish u were here to tell me what to do. 2024. Zora. Private collection of 0x2E5F...c212.
ParkerIto.net, ParkerIto.net #410. 2024. Ethereum. Private collection of Lowbie.
Horses, Horses #613. 2023. Solana. Private collection of Lowbie.
See all
If you have any questions, submissions, or feedback, please let us know by replying to this email. You can also view our curatorial efforts, updated daily, on the website, X (Twitter), or through our RSS Feed.