3 d. ago Maga is funding murals of a slain Ukrainian refugee. Are they weaponizing her memory?

More than $1m has been raised by Elon Musk and others to commission ‘sterile’ street art of Iryna Zarutska – whose death has become a rightwing flashpointLike most blocks in Bushwick, New York, Evergreen Street is blanketed in street art and graffiti. But this month, an incongruous new mural appeared, towering over the street corner. Painted on the side of Formosa, a popular Taiwanese dumpling joint, the image of a blond woman stretches across two stories and an entire apartment block, her right eyebrow fractured by bedroom windows.The mural is one of a number that have been painted across the US depicting Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was killed last year while riding the light rail in Charlotte, North Carolina. Zarutska was traveling home from her job at a local pizzeria when she was stabbed from behind three times. Continue reading...

Events

3 d. ago Plant trees, bushes and evergreens now to give your garden structure

In a less flowery garden, you can spot the gaps more easily – and fill them with bare-root plants at this time of yearThis time last year we were about to put our old flat on the market – the first proper garden I had as a gardening adult. The one that taught me so much, where I made compost for the first time and cut peonies from the bare roots I’d ordered as soon as we exchanged contracts on the place. Where I painted the back wall pink and strung up lights and held parties and watered the ground with cheap prosecco; where I planted a tree for my newborn son, and lay beneath it with him in languid, too-long summer afternoons, trying to make sense of motherhood.Anyway, every time I’d show estate agents around our two-bed flat, they’d conjure unconvincing compliments about our airing cupboard, before sticking their head cursorily out the back door and saying: “Oh, it’s winter, no gardens look good in winter, no buyers will be expecting it to look nice,” and I’d seethe. Continue read...

Politics

1 week ago Joseph Beuys review – the grotesque bathtub containing all the horrors of modern history

Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, LondonThere’s no escape from the torments of the past in this show, which celebrates the German artist at his most Wagnerian, enchanting and sickening you simultaneouslyBorn in 1921, Joseph Beuys was the “perfect” age to fight for Hitler and he did, with the wounds to prove it. The Andy Warhol portraits that complement this exhibition, without actually being part of it, brutally catch his gaunt, ravaged face in the glare of a photo flash under the hat he wore to hide burns sustained in a plane crash while serving in the Luftwaffe. The most haunting portrait turns Beuys into a spectral negative image, all darkness and shadow, his eyes wounded, guilty, lost. This was in the 1970s when Beuys was a charismatic one-man artistic revolution, inspiring young Germans to plant trees, lecturing about flows of ecological and human energy – and, in breathtaking performances, speaking to a dead hare or spending a week locked in a cage with a coyote.All that remains today ...

Events

2 w. ago Alan Titchmarsh issues major warning to 'impatient' gardeners about vital winter job

Gardening expert and Love Your Weekend presenter Alan Titchmarsh has shared the pitfalls of bare-root planting, while revealing the best time to plant trees and shrubs

Events

2 w. ago Get fruit in your garden 'every year' by planting 1 small tree this winter

Gardening expert, Bex Edwards has identified the perfect compact tree to plant in your garden now that can yield up to 5kg of fruit every summer once established

Politics

2 w. ago North Korea leader Kim Jong Un drives pallet truck to plant tree at memorial service

Kim Jong Un paid a visit to a memorial for fallen North Korean soldiers, where he delivered a tree for planting via a pallet truck.

Politics