iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 30/03/2026

Nominative determinism of the week:

A photo of a text panel from the Bayon Temple in the Angkor complex, with this text highlighted in blue: “In 1933, the Jaya Buddha Mahanath statue pieces were discovered at the bottom of the well by French archaeologist, Georges TROUVÉ”

surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 25/03/2026

In other news regarding art world residences, the former director of the Louvre has exactly the kind of home you’d imagine

A photo of the former director of the Louvre at home, with a gallery wall of gilt-framed paintings behind him

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 02/04/2025

Today I'm looking at: Remedios Varo's "Simpatía (La rabia del gato)" aka Sympathy (the cat's rage).

A painting: Remedios Varo's "Simpatía (La rabia del gato)". A surrealist scene. A woman sits at a table, looking down at an orange cat with its hind legs held aloft in the air. A glass of water has spilled on the table; the water runs off, creating a river on the floor.

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 19/03/2025

In Waterstones. What’s the story here then

A pair of black shoes on the floor of a Waterstones. The shoes’ owner is nowhere to be found.

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 07/03/2025

Today I'm thinking about Ceal Floyer's Working Title (Digging), a stereo sound installation that aurally represents the act of shovelling dirt. freunde-der-nationalgalerie.de/en/blog/acqu...

Ceal Floyer's Working Title (Digging), a stereo sound installation that aurally represents the act of shovelling dirt. Two speakers lying face up on the floor, in opposite corners of an otherwise blank room in a gallery. A CD play, connected to both speakers by wires, sits in another corner.

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 05/03/2025

A sad day: RIP to the @britishlibrary.bsky.social's vaguely Italian-sounding, impressively laconic sign which greets visitors on the entrance piazza. Replaced with this much more conventionally grammared yellow sign. Interesting to note the continuing commitment to capitalising "piazza".

A (now outdated) sign outside the British Library in London which reads: Please take care, Piazza slippery. Please take care. Piazza can be slippery in wet/icy conditions. British Library Estates."

The new sign outside the British Library, which reads: "Please take care, the Piazza can be slippery in wet or icy conditions."

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 28/01/2025

To the tune of “we found love in a hopeless place”

A label from the British Museum exhibition “Silk Roads”. It reads: Byzantine connections in a desert palace -
Also from Jordan, this section of a vibrant mosaic once decorated the floor of Qusayr Amra, an Umayyad 'desert palace' built for royal entertainment. Mosaics in early Islamic architecture drew from Byzantine traditions, sometimes reusing tesserae (small blocks) taken from churches. Wall paintings at this site also reference Byzantine art in their figurative imagery. Qusayr Ama was one of the desert complexes that the Umayyad caliphs constructed. Many were built along major routes connecting the Silk Roads, and may have provided respite for travellers.

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 07/01/2025

Like just LOOK at this panopticon... Wonder what Foucault would have thought

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 03/01/2025

This handbag would EAT at Paris Fashion Week

The “VARSYREN” tea light lantern sold by IKEA, with me holding it

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 06/12/2024

The arrangement of this board makes it look like Rudiger is some omnipotent god looking down upon his subjects from heaven, and the hippo at bottom right is screaming out at him for the unfairness of god’s judgement ⚽️

An image of the board that is beside the enclosure for Toni the Pygmy hippo at Berlin Zoo, who is sponsored by the German footballer Antonio Rudiger

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 06/12/2024

I would like a return to this style of phone number please. Simple. Chic. Mysterious. (No this was not the number for a museum.) 📜

A cropped image from an issue of the magazine Pictorial Education, bearing the text, "Telephone: Museum 8521".

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 29/11/2024

One of the most perfectly executed "letters to the editor" I have ever seen. www.economist.com/letters/2024...

A screenshot of a letter to the editor that appeared in The Economist. It reads:
Spotting a trend
As an airship enthusiast, I am glad to see that the industry is on the verge of taking off ("The sky's the limit", November 2nd). I always get a lift out of this story when you run it, such as "Airships could be returning for commercial travel" (March 22nd 2016),
"Reviving airships" (March 8th 2014),
"Flying saucers" (December 11th 2010),
"Are they coming back?" (no, alas, July 12th
2008) and "Pushing the envelope" (May
29th 1999), just to name a few.
With soaring spirits I look forward to your next report about the sky-high future of airships.
JOHN ASTELL
Holden, Massachusetts

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 29/11/2024

This was the only logical thing to do actually

A screenshot of a headline from the Art Newspaper. The photo shows a man eating a banana that has tape attached to it; he is holding a microphone. The headline reads: Crypto investor eats
Cattelan banana he bought for $6.2m. The subheadline reads: Justin Sun, who purchased the work just last week, also pledged to buy 100,000 bananas from the vendor who originally sold the fruit for $0.25

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 26/11/2024

I know nothing about this type of trompe l'oeil — a curtain, painted over the main part of the composition. Can anyone enlighten me? I'm rather in love with it... www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 24/10/2023

In their guidance for the Weston Loan Programme grant, Art Fund gives an example list of artworks being sought for loan from national institutions for an exhibition at a regional museum. And it is an absolutely unhinged list. Can you imagine the exhibition these would make???

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 20/10/2023

Ananda Ranga Pillai (1709–1761), who worked as a translator for the French East India Company, and looked rather a lot like Robin Williams

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 19/10/2023

Looking for a good overview of French colonial activity across the world during the 17th century and up to the early 18th century — can anyone here help?

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 19/10/2023

Timothée Chalamet: “Be honest. Be honest! What car did your dad drive you to school in? What car was it? What car did you get your dad to drive you to school in? No no no no no. What car? Thank you.”

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 18/10/2023

On the chasm between curators and visitors: “Why is it here? How was it made? & why was it made? are three of the most popular questions overlooked by curators whose own key questions are: When was it made? What size and medium is it? & who owned it before us?” - 'Very Spaghetti'

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 17/10/2023

Auguste Rodin carrying his Gates of Hell as a heavy weight. Caricature by Ferdinand Paillet. 1884. Watercolour.

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 17/10/2023

Office for the day. Not a bad view

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 16/10/2023

Looking for good intro reading on C19 ethnographic portrayals of people where the person is anonymised / de-individualised to stand for a broader “type”. Particularly interested in British treatment of people of colour. Also particularly interested in drawings rather than photos.

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 16/10/2023

Just came across this portrait of Charles James Fox, 18th-century Whig politician. Why's man looking so worried? What does it say on that piece of paper??

Portrait of Charles James Fox by Karl Anton Hickel, 1794. Fox is smartly dressed, holding a bundle of papers, and looks worried.

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 13/10/2023

Who gets remembered, and who forgotten? PAPER CUTS: Art, Bureaucracy, and Silenced Histories in Colonial India An exhibition at Peltz Gallery, London 25 April - 12 July 2024 Launch event: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/remot... Image credit: Ravista Mehra, Kusmi Tea, English Breakfast, 2016

A collage. Fractured figures, objects, and patterns from South Asia, pasted onto a fuchsia background. Artist: Ravista Mehra. Artwork title: Kusmi Tea, English Breakfast. Date: 2016.

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 12/10/2023

"there has been in the past too often a resentment between the 'dull' curators and the 'populist' educators (both talk about the other with a sneering derision)." — from 'Very Spaghetti', a 1992 report on the uses of digital interactive multimedia in museums.

Front cover of 'Very Spaghetti', a 1992 report on the uses of digital interactive multimedia in museums.

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 11/10/2023

This — from 'Very Spaghetti', a 1992 report on the uses of digital interactive multimedia in museums — remains a great idea. Has anyone ever attempted it?

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surya bowyer @suryabowyer.com · 11/10/2023

Today I'm thinking about Marcel Duchamp's La Boîte-en-Valise (Box in a Suitcase) — containing a selection of his pre-1935 work like a portable museum, made for his move to New York in 1942.

This leather case contains sixty-nine miniature reproductions of Duchamp's works. This is number two of twenty-four de-luxe versions of the case. Each of these features a different, hand-coloured 'original' fixed to the inside of the lid. The box 'unpacks' in such a way that some sections slide out, with other folders and black-mounted prints inside. For Duchamp there was no clear distinction between the original and the reproduction, a concept cleverly embodied in this piece. The case is also reminiscent of a travelling salesman's display case, containing a selection of Duchamp's pre-1935 work like a portable museum, made for his move to New York in 1942.

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