Niqui Toldi’s Unbeing exhibition at Junky Comics: girls and anxiety

Words: Saskia Edwards

Images: Jonathan Rae

In Niqui Toldi’s illustrations there’re lots of girls - short hair, long hair, smoking, angry, pierced, bound.

But really, all these girls are Niqui. They’re like a self-portrait - a manifestation of how she feels and is. And they’re a way of grappling with her own life and self-identity. 

She says: “it’s just sort of a way for me to deal with how I’m feeling internally because I’m not always good at externalising how I feel to other people.

“It’s sort of a way for me to separate myself from being too vulnerable at the same time. It’s being vulnerable but without being completely vulnerable.

“Because it’s not always necessarily completely obvious that they are almost me.”

The girls seem sad at times, self-destructive, lost, with hands anxiously clasping at the ground or onto a cigarette or a match or a scalpel. And they do really display anxiety quite well - where nothing bad is happening immediately but you’re trapped sitting there half naked smoking and feeling helpless with a whirlwind in your brain.

This ‘Unbeing’ series looks at the last year of Niqui’s life. 

“A lot of things happened - a relationship I had of four years had just ended, my grandmother who lives alone and I’m her only blood relative... had a stroke so I’m her main contact.

“Then I was getting more responsibilities at work and it was the first year I’d been medicated and properly diagnosed for my anxiety.

“So it was a huge collection of all these things happening in the one year.

“I just started to deal with it - started drawing it.”

But it’s not that easy. Putting on a solo exhibition was a big deal for Niqui. 

“Because of my anxious nature and shyness I’ve always been really reluctant and I almost hold myself back.

“So this is the first time that I’ve really let myself put myself out there.

“Even last night at the launch, it was exciting and I was nervous and people had started coming in.

“And maybe five people had come in that I didn’t know and I just started crying up the back, which is really ridiculous because this is a really good thing, this is a fun time.”

Of course it went really well. People sardined themselves into Junky Comics, admiring what I guess they thought were imaginary sirens. 

If you really think about it, Niqui’s works remind you of the true purpose of art. They show that out of anxiety, self-doubt and heart ache you can make something. And it can be beautiful.

London: A Look at "40" – A Kate Moss Retrospective

 Words: Matt Willms

Images: Matt Willms

 

40 – A Kate Moss Retrospective opened at the Imitate Modern Gallery in Marylebone this month, and Londoners weren’t apprehensive to pay for a print of the supermodel, fully clothed.

Journalist turned artist Russell Marshall selected 10 images in 10 neon or black and white colourways, limiting the prints to one of each.

If you’re prepared to fork out up to $16 000 and not eat for the next five years, and undoubtedly cover the added postage to Australia, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” has never been so achievable.

Moss was discovered in 1998 at JFK airport in New York; multiple high-profile relationships, infamous drug scandals, pole dancing for The White Stripes and 32 Vogue covers later, those cheekbones still fetch a hefty sum.

The heroin-chic look catapulted Moss to stardom in the early 90s and as the latest Playboy spread in the magazines 60^th anniversary edition reveals, the British icon has never been shy of a little nudity.

But, after all of this, Moss keeps her private life as secret as one of the world’s most widely recognised faces can.

For the fans who just can’t get enough there are numerous fake Kate Moss twitter accounts, which have surprisingly duped thousands of followers.

But as the supermodel and mother learned from Johnny Depp, “never complain, never explain”.