Emily Kam Kngwarray A survey of this revered Australian painter who combined modern abstraction with maps of the Dreamtime. Tate Modern, London, 10 July until 11 January
Also showing
Lindsey Mendick: Wicked Game The flamboyant ceramicist takes a dive into the world of the Tudors with an installation in a castle once visited by Elizabeth I. Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire, 9 July until 31 October
Figure + Ground Martin Creed, Sonia Boyce, Paul McCarthy and more in a group show of film and video art. Hauser and Wirth, London, until 2 August
Movements for Staying Alive Yvonne Rainer, Ana Mendieta and Harold Offeh star in a participatory celebration of body art. Modern Art Oxford, until 7 September
Małgorzata Mirga-Tas This Roma-Polish artist portrays her community in bold and colourful textiles. Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until 7 September
It’s a marvellous night for a moondance – with the pink dolphins tripping the light fantastic with the local mermaids – in the Amazon. Peruvian artist Santiago Yahuarcani creates his works by applying paint prepared from pigments, seeds, leaves and roots, to large sheets of llanchama, a cloth made from the bark of the ojé tree. His works are often inspired by the hallucinations brought on by the ritual ingestion of tobacco, coca, ayahuasca and mushrooms – substances long used by the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon when in search of help, knowledge or revelation. His show, The Beginning of Knowledge is at the Whitworth, Manchester, as part of Manchester International festival. Read our interview with him here.
What we learned
Sam Cox AKA Mr Doodle is the million-dollar artist who almost lost himself to his alter ego
Not all statues of footballers are as terrible as the infamous Ronaldo bust
Jenny Saville’s raw, visceral portraits are inspiring a fresh generation of schoolkids
Indigenous art from around the world is sweeping galleries across the UK
A once derelict district of Medellín, Colombia has has been rebuilt as a green haven
Khaled Sabsabi will show at Venice Biennale after controversial sacking was rescinded
Masterpiece of the week
An Allegory, by an anonymous Florentine artist, about 1500
Photograph: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy
This painting celebrates childbirth and motherhood, but subversively. Mothers were often depicted as the Virgin Mary nursing Christ in medieval and Renaissance art. It was a form of religious manipulation, associating a typical female experience of the age with piety and love of Christ. This woman however lies powerfully and calmly in a meadow while her babies play around her. It is a pagan scene, shorn of Christian symbols. In a pose apparently inspired by Botticelli’s Venus and Mars, a strong, even divine maternal figure, who resembles Venus, holds sway over the onlooker. National Gallery
Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter
If you don’t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here.
Get in Touch
If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com
As someone who enjoys the women’s tennis at Wimbledon, so to speak, the tournament’s opening days are an annual joy and this week has been electric. Emma Raducanu leads the rise in British women powering up the world rankings, which makes the era of women’s tennis I grew up in – I have a lot of time for Jo Durie, but those were hard years – seem like the 19th century. Today, after two stunning opening-round matches, Raducanu will meet Aryna Sabalenka, the mighty Belarusian world No 1, which means tomorrow I will be on court one (in the park) knocking imaginary clay dust from my shoes and pretending to be in the final.
If the tennis is sublime, the crowd so far has been slightly under par – although it’s early days. Last year, the title of Wimbledon best dressed went, for my money, to Greta Gerwig, wearing a tan suit the provenance of which I still can’t track down, as well as Zendaya in Ralph Lauren and Julia Roberts in Gucci. This week in the royal box and around the grounds we’ve had Cate Blanchett, who is welcome in any setting, Olivia Rodrigo and Russell Crowe, who combed his hair and dug out a tie for Centre Court. (Esquire ran a story about the £65,000 Rolex he was wearing, which, if it was intended to set us against him, won’t work – I won’t hear a word against Rusty.)
There were also, as usual, a high turn out of what my teenage tennis partner and I used to refer to nastily as Midweek Ladies, a crowd who, off-court, wear floral, ankle length dresses in pale shades and on court, are always one double fault away from losing their nerve and reverting to an underhand serve.
Tuesday
Everyone should watch My Mom Jayne, the documentary about Jayne Mansfield made by her daughter Mariska Hargitay, released this week on HBO Max and a jaw-dropper of revelations and sadness. You may know Hargitay from her role as Detective Olivia Benson in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – I didn’t even know she was Mansfield’s daughter. She was three years old in 1967 when her 34-year-old mother was killed in a car crash outside New Orleans.
The film is heartbreaking, not least because Hargitay, who has no memories of her mother, was in the car with her siblings when it crashed. All three children survived and were raised by their father but, as Hargitay reports, she grew up feeling vaguely ashamed of her mother, a Hollywood sex bomb who spoke in a breathy voice that a generation later fell out of usage. As Hargitay digs into the history of the mother she never knew, she discovers Mansfield was an accomplished pianist and violinist, a brilliant, ambitious woman trapped by the only persona Hollywood allowed her – until now.
‘Perhaps this is why Westminster needs an HR department.’ Photograph: Jack Hill/PA
Wednesday
Finally, someone has greeted the release of a new Brad Pitt movie not with praise-be gratitude for America’s ageing sweetheart, but by looking at Pitt’s success in shrugging off an allegation of domestic abuse. While in most of the entertainment press, Pitt’s new film is treated to the customary chuckling puff piece, New York magazine runs the headline Brad Pitt is Fooling You and proceeds to get into it: the actor’s image preservation, the crisis management PR he retains (former client: Johnny Depp) and the details of Angelina Jolie’s allegation that he assaulted her and one of their children on a private plane.
As the piece concludes, nobody cares. There’s been a vibe shift since #MeToo, which, let’s not forget, Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, aligned itself with by co-producing the movie adaptation of She Said, about the exposing of Harvey Weinstein – a sterling piece of allyship from America’s most sensitive male feminist, or something else entirely. Either way, nothing sticks. In the last five years, the worst coverage Pitt has had is for Bullet Train.
Thursday
There was a story in the Sun mid-week about Pitt’s ex Jennifer Aniston, or rather, about a 43-year-old man from Southampton who believed himself to be in a Facebook relationship with the Hollywood star, who had reached out to him asking for a loan.
That might have been your first clue, Paul, that something about this – hard to put your finger on what exactly – didn’t smell right. It wasn’t the first time the unfortunate victim had been targeted over social media by scam accounts claiming to be Hollywood stars. But when “Jennifer Aniston” sent him a copy of her driving licence, along with the message “I love you”, it was enough to clinch things and convince the hapless Facebook user he was at the start of a beautiful relationship. As requested, he sent the former Friends star the £200 of Apple gift cards she was asking for and never heard from her again.
Friday
Oh, to have the confidence of the Dalai Lama that we’ll all get a second go-around. Before his 90th birthday this weekend, the Tibetan spiritual leader discussed arrangements for his successor, by which, per Buddhist beliefs, he means the body into which he will be reincarnated. This is as much a political as a spiritual consideration and in his address the Dalai Lama pushed back against the Chinese government’s insistence on pre-approving the reincarnation, remaining firm that when the time comes, he’ll be reincarnated in line with Tibetan tradition and without interference from Beijing.
He has also dangled some spoilers, suggesting, tantalisingly, that the new Dalai Lama may not be a baby, as he was, and – in what would represent a reboot more shocking than the new Doctor Who and Ghostbusters combined – may not even be male. Which goes to show that even spiritual leaders these days have a canny knack for PR.
‘This is one’s heatwave wardrobe, I believe it’s called ‘showing some skin’. Photograph: Jane Barlow/AFP/Getty Images
LAHORE – Pakistan cricket team’s fielding coach Mohammad Masroor has stepped down from his position, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) confirmed on Thursday.
In a statement, Masroor said, “My chapter with the national team has come to an end. I’m thankful to the players for their trust and to the staff for their support.” He added that he would always remain a part of Pakistan cricket and was leaving without any disappointment or regret.
According to sources, Masroor was working with the PCB on a series-to-series contract. The PCB is now planning to revamp the support staff by making new appointments.
Sources further revealed that Australian coach Shane McDermott is likely to be appointed as the new fielding coach, while South Africa’s Grant Luden is expected to take over as strength and conditioning coach.
It is also expected that former fast bowler Umar Gul will be assigned a role with the Pakistan Shaheens, the national ‘A’ team. A formal announcement regarding the new appointments is anticipated soon.
It is worth mentioning that the PCB had already advertised coaching roles for the national support staff.
The board is inclined towards hiring foreign coaches and has shortlisted several international candidates, including McDermott and Luden.
Chrome and Edge browser Windows security bypass uncovered.
getty
It is no secret that Google’s Chrome browser is beseiged by security vulnerabilities. The good news is that the vast majority of these vulnerabilities are discovered and disclosed by security researchers, including Google’s own Threat Analysis Group, well before any attacker can exploit them. However, that’s not always the case, as evidenced by numerous emergency browser security updates in response to confirmed zero-day vulnerabilities. What is less well known, especially amongst the large non-techie user base, is that Edge is built around the Chromium engine, so many of the same vulnerabilities impact it, and them. Given that another security issue has just emerged, and both Chrome and Edge users are at risk from it, in this case, a Windows security protection bypass, you might be asking if it is time to quit using both and find something else. Here’s what you need to know.
ForbesFBI 2FA Bypass Warning Issued — The Attacks Have StartedBy Davey Winder
The FileFix Windows Security Issue Putting Chrome And Edge Users At Risk
I first warned Forbes readers of the threat from something called a ClickFix attack in December 2024, and more recently reiterated that warning after Google issued a security alert in May.bNow, a new threat, called FileFix, has been discovered, and it’s coming for your Chrome and Edge browsers if you are a Windows user.
Penetration tester and security researcher, mr.d0x, first discovered FileFix on June 23, but has now published details of a new variation that is of concern to all Windows browser users. This new attack threat exploits the way that both Chrome and Edge deal with saving web pages, and can bypass the Microsoft Windows security feature known as Mark of the Web. It does this by bringing together those browser web page saving methods and something known as HTML Application execution. In other words, FileFix can now bypass the Windows MotW security function by exploiting the way in which browsers save HTML pages.
The good news is that to pull off this latest FileFix exploit, an attacker would first need to persuade the victim into saving an HTML web page and then renaming it as an .HTA file in order to auto-execute the embedded JScript that does the actual damage. If that all sounds a little long-winded, that’s because it is. However, don’t be fooled, social engineering, or phishing if you prefer, can persuade normally sensible people into doing the most unlikely of things. The original ClickFix attacks, for example, asked users who were presented with a fake captcha test to open a Windows run dialog and enter commands to execute the exploit. That sounds unlikely, right? Yet enough people did just that for ClickFix to make the headlines and for the biggest of vendors to issue warnings to users.
ForbesMicrosoft’s Password Deadline — You Have 28 Days To DecideBy Davey Winder
Is It Time For Windows Users To Abandon Chrome And Edge?
The short answer to the question posed in the above sub-heading is: is it heck as like. For those of you not living in the Yorkshire countryside in England, that means no. The continuing deluge of vulnerabilities that impact Chrome and Edge and are disclosed month after month, sometimes week after week, is a good thing. How so? Because, for the most part, these vulnerabilities are being discovered before threat actors know about them, and browsers are updated to protect against them before they can attack. The odd few zero-days that emerge are dealt with as quickly as they can be. The point is, it’s better the devil you know when it comes to security vulnerabilities. There are plenty of other reasons why you might want to change, those based around privacy concerns or dislike of certain vendors, but security vulnerability exposure isn’t on my list.
I have reached out to Google and Microsoft regarding the latest FileFix exploit affecting Windows users.
ForbesThese PDFs Put Your Microsoft, PayPal And Geek Squad Accounts At RiskBy Davey Winder
Artist’s concept of exoplanet HIP 67522 b, a planet with a death wish. It triggers flares of radiation from its star. Image via Danielle Futselaar/ ESA. Used with permission.
Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s Cheops mission have found an exoplanet that seems to be triggering flares of radiation from the star it orbits.
These tremendous explosions are blasting away the planet’s wispy atmosphere, causing it to shrink every year.
This is the first-ever evidence for a ‘planet with a death wish.’ Though it was theorized to be possible since the ’90s, the flares here are around 100 times more energetic than expected.
ESA published this original story on June 2, 2025. Edits by EarthSky.
Planet with a death wish triggers its own doom
Astronomers have spotted an exoplanet that appears to be triggering flares on the star it orbits. The star, named HIP 67522, is just slightly larger and cooler than our own host star, the sun. But while the sun is middle-aged at 4.5-billion-years old, HIP 67522 is a fresh-faced 17-million-year-old. It bears two planets. The closer of the two – given the catchy name HIP 67522 b – takes just seven days to whip around its host star.
Because of its youth and size, scientists suspected that star HIP 67522 would churn and spin with lots of energy. This churning and spinning would turn the star into a powerful magnet.
Our much-older sun has its own smaller and more peaceful magnetic field. From studying the sun, we already knew that flares of energy can burst from magnetic stars when ‘twisted’ magnetic field lines are suddenly released. This energy can take the form of anything from gentle radio waves to visible light to aggressive gamma rays.
Taking a closer look
Ever since the first exoplanet was discovered in the 1990s, astronomers have pondered whether some of them might be orbiting close enough to disturb their host stars’ magnetic fields. If so, they could be triggering flares.
A team led by Ekaterina Ilin at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) figured that with our current space telescopes, it was time to investigate this question further. Ilin said:
We hadn’t seen any systems like HIP 67522 before; when the planet was found it was the youngest planet known to be orbiting its host star in less than 10 days.
The team was using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to do a broad sweep of stars that might be flaring because of an interaction with their planets. When TESS turned its eyes to HIP 67522, the team thought they could be on to something. To be sure, they called upon ESA’s sensitive CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite, Cheops.
Ilin said:
We quickly requested observing time with Cheops, which can target individual stars on demand, ultra precisely. With Cheops we saw more flares, taking the total count to 15, almost all coming in our direction as the planet transited in front of the star as seen from Earth.
Artist’s concept of Cheops in space. Cheops is ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite. Image via ESA/ ATG medialab.
A flaring star and a planet with a death wish
Because we are seeing the flares as the planet passes in front of the star, it is very likely that the planet is triggering them.
A flaring star is nothing new. Our own sun regularly releases bursts of energy, which we experience on Earth as space weather that causes the auroras and can damage technology. But we’ve only ever seen this energy exchange as a one-way street from star to planet.
Knowing that HIP 67522 b orbits extremely close to its host star, and assuming that the star’s magnetic field is strong, Ilin’s team deduced that the clingy HIP 67522 b sits close enough to exert its own magnetic influence on its host star.
They think the planet gathers energy as it orbits, then redirects that energy as waves along the star’s magnetic field lines, as if whipping a rope. When the wave meets the end of the magnetic field line at the star’s surface, it triggers a massive flare.
It’s the first time we see a planet influencing its host star, overturning our previous assumption that stars behave independently.
And not only is HIP 67522 b triggering flares, but it is also triggering them in its own direction. As a result, the planet experiences six times more radiation than it otherwise would.
This chart shows how planets orbiting close to their host stars can cause their own downfall by triggering flares. Image via ESA.
Self-imposed doom
Unsurprisingly, being bombarded with so much high-energy radiation does not bode well for HIP 67522 b. The planet is similar in size to Jupiter but has the density of cotton candy, making it one of the wispiest exoplanets ever found.
Over time, the radiation is eroding away the planet’s feathery atmosphere, meaning it is losing mass much faster than expected. In the next 100 million years, it could go from an almost Jupiter-sized planet to a much smaller Neptune-sized planet. Ilin said:
The planet seems to be triggering particularly energetic flares. The waves it sends along the star’s magnetic field lines kick off flares at specific moments. But the energy of the flares is much higher than the energy of the waves. We think that the waves are setting off explosions that are waiting to happen.
Ekaterina Ilin at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) led the new study. Image via Ekaterina Ilin.
More questions than answers
When astronomers found HIP 67522, it was the youngest-known planet orbiting so close to its host star. Since then, astronomers have spotted a couple of similar systems. And there are probably dozens more in the nearby universe. Ilin and her team are keen to take a closer look at these unique systems with TESS, Cheops and other exoplanet missions. She said:
I have a million questions because this is a completely new phenomenon, so the details are still not clear.
There are two things that I think are most important to do now. The first is to follow up in different wavelengths (Cheops covers visible to near-infrared wavelengths) to find out what kind of energy is being released in these flares. For example, ultraviolet and X-rays are especially bad news for the exoplanet.
The second is to find and study other similar star-planet systems. By moving from a single case to a group of 10–100 systems, theoretical astronomers will have something to work with.
Cheops and exoplanet hunter Plato
Maximilian Günther, Cheops project scientist at ESA, is excited to see the mission contributing to research in a way that he never thought possible:
Cheops was designed to characterize the sizes and atmospheres of exoplanets, not to look for flares. It’s really beautiful to see the mission contributing to this and other results that go so far beyond what it was envisioned to do.
Looking further ahead, ESA’s future exoplanet hunter Plato will also study sunlike stars like HIP 67522. Plato will be able to capture much smaller flares to really give us the detail that we need to better understand what is going on.
Bottom line: Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s Cheops mission have spotted a planet with a death wish. The exoplanet seems to be triggering flares of radiation from the star it orbits.
Source: Close-in planet induces flares on its host star
MAARS, an AI tool for heart risk prediction, offers improved accuracy in detecting arrhythmia-related deaths in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy cases.
A new AI tool developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University has shown promise in predicting sudden cardiac death among people with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), outperforming existing clinical tools.
The model, known as MAARS (Multimodal AI for ventricular Arrhythmia Risk Stratification), uses a combination of medical records, cardiac MRI scans, and imaging reports to assess individual patient risk more accurately.
In early trials, MAARS achieved an AUC (area under the curve) score of 0.89 internally and 0.81 in external validation — both significantly higher than traditional risk calculators recommended by American and European guidelines.
The improvement is attributed to its ability to interpret raw cardiac MRI data, particularly scans enhanced with gadolinium, which are often overlooked in standard assessments.
While the tool has the potential to personalise care and reduce unnecessary defibrillator implants, researchers caution that the study was limited to small cohorts from Johns Hopkins and North Carolina’s Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute.
They also acknowledged that MAARS’s reliance on large and complex datasets may pose challenges for widespread clinical use.
Nevertheless, the research team believes MAARS could mark a shift in managing HCM, the most common inherited heart condition.
By identifying hidden patterns in imaging and medical histories, the AI model may protect patients more effectively, especially younger individuals who remain at risk yet receive no benefit from current interventions.
Would you like to learn more aboutAI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
Vestas Wind Systems A/S, Aarhus, 4 July 2025 Company Announcement No. 19/2025
Pursuant to Section 30 of the Danish Capital Markets Act, Vestas Wind Systems A/S hereby discloses a notification received on 3 July 2025 from BlackRock, Inc., Wilmington, Denver, USA, cf. attachment.
BlackRock informs that the reason for the notification is a change to BlackRock’s group structure, resulting from the acquisition of HPS Investment Partners.
Furthermore, BlackRock informs that it is still a major shareholder, and that in its new group structure, its holding of voting rights and share capital as per 1 July 2025 corresponded to a position of 8.61 percent of the total share capital in Vestas Wind Systems A/S (holding in previous notification, cf. Company Announcement No. 15/2024 of 9 October 2024: 7.59 percent).
Number
Percent
Shares according to section 38 of the Danish Capital Markets Act
Voting rights attached to shares
1,655,659,451
8.19
Share capital attached to shares
82,782,973
8.19
Financial instruments – according to section 39(2)(1) of the Danish Capital Markets Act
Voting rights attached to financial instruments
25,556,740
0.12
Share capital attached to financial instruments
1,277,837
0.12
Financial instruments with similar economic effect – according to section 39(2)(2) of the Danish Capital Markets Act
Voting rights attached to financial instruments with similar economic effect
58,836,300
0.29
Share capital attached to financial instruments with similar economic effect
2,941,815
0.29
The shares and financial instruments are held through BlackRock Japan Co., Ltd.; BlackRock Investment Management, LLC; BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Limited; BlackRock Investment Management (Australia) Limited; BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, National Association; BlackRock Fund Advisors; BlackRock Financial Management, Inc.; BlackRock Asset Management North Asia Limited; BlackRock Asset Management Deutschland AG; BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited; BlackRock Advisors, LLC; BlackRock Advisors (UK) Limited; BlackRock (Singapore) Limited; BlackRock (Netherlands) B.V.; and Aperio Group, LLC; each controlled through chains of BlackRock entities, ultimately controlled by BlackRock, Inc.
Contact details Vestas Wind Systems A/S, Denmark
Daniel Patterson, Vice President Investor Relations Tel: +45 2669 2725
At a moment when all online images are flowing into one machine-learning algorithm or another, it is easy to foresee the convergence of old canons of painting, photography, and film into an undifferentiated field of digital “slop”. Notwithstanding the implications for the precarious life of the cultural producer, this state of artificial intelligence (AI) affairs also augurs a world in which humans lack oversight over the production of images, which increasingly emerge from the latent space of accumulated data in AI models.
A number of artists have sought to halt the onset of consequent cultural blindness by calling attention to the ways technical systems shape social realities. The new machine-assisted paintings by Simon Denny, who was recently appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, address the “illegibility” of image generation in the age of AI, when history is all “jumbled up”. the artist’s two new series, presented with the gallery Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler at the JW Marriott Hotel Berlin, overlooking a hub for the German Ministry of Defence, play on the militarised rhetoric of Italian Futurism as well as cubism’s attempt to capture multiple perspectives simultaneously.
“There is no such thing as offline and online, we’re always both.” The artist Simon Denny working in his studio with a plotter painting machine, 2025 Courtesy of the artist, Petzel Gallery, and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler. Photograph: Nick Ash
For Denny, “there is no such thing as offline and online, we’re always both,” which heightens the relevance of the historical avant-garde to a world of multi-channel experience as well as to a moment of rearmament in Europe. By using mechanical plotters to execute his paintings, Denny not only highlights generative AI as a machine for manufacturing history, he also aligns the canon of painting with that of computational art. In the process, he embraces the hybrid reality of an art world where both analogue and digital media live together, one that is crying out for work that embraces plurality without being nebulous.
Denny is not alone in treating painting as one strand of a wider transmedia strategy. The California-born artist Sara Ludy has built a career engineering porousness between media: from sculpture to video to virtual reality. Her recent exhibition of paintings at Smart Objects, Los Angeles, expressed the lingering effects of screen-based experience on life lived in the New Mexico desert. In a recent interview, she acknowledged painting through a “postdigital” lens: “The way I perceive light, space, and surface is shaped by years spent working in that [screen-centred] realm. Even if I’m not actively engaging with digital tools, that lens is embedded in how I see and make.”
Installation view, Chris Dorland, Clone Repo (server ruin) (2025), Nicoletti Contemporary, London. The show relocated glitch aesthetics from the monolith screen to a new series of paintings Photo by Lewis Ronald. Courtesy the artist and Nicoletti Contemporary.
Of course, that lens is also financialised, politicised, and militarised, which has prompted the German media artist and film-maker Hito Steyerl to ask, with the release of her new book Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat(2025): “In an age where most images have become operational, […] what can an inoperative image be?” With machine learning now being used to enhance the precision and autonomy of drone operations, artists are helping to maintain public focus on the opaque domain of nonhuman vision. For the Montreal-born New York-based artist Chris Dorland, “Art can’t necessarily stop the machinery, but it can expose its limits […] Technical error becomes a rupture in the smooth interface — a break in the fantasy.” The title of his recent exhibition at Nicoletti Contemporary, Clone Repo (server ruin), refers to the practice of downloading files stored online to a local hard drive. Bathed in the glow of its central LED monolith displaying degraded screen grabs from Tik Tok and Instagram against a “dead server sound bath” by Leon Louder, the show appeals to the urge to evade systems of surveillance. It also relocates glitch aesthetics from the screen to a new series of paintings, subverting one form of seduction after another while validating multimedia practice.
Even a painter’s painter such as the Canadian-American Tim Kent has absorbed digital modes of visualisation, building compositions out of vector graphics that stress the Cartesian roots of military viewfinders. Kent was part of Fever Dream, a group show in May at Studio Underground, New York, curated by Julianna Vezzetti and Xandra Beverlin, whose works register as postdigital aftershocks. A case in point is the California-born Petra Cortright, whose contributions to the show included a painting on anodized aluminium titled Athos adress Internet communication_bank foreclosures banjo-kazooie stratagy(2021) that turns a greyscale grid into an emergent field of indeterminate flora and fauna.
If such works exemplify painting from a digital place, the London-based Diana Taylor’s forthcoming show of paintings at Don’t Look Projects, Los Angeles, comes from the opposite direction. Layering the graphical matrix of Gustave Doré’s engravings together with a surfeit of other patterns over a pixellated bitmap, the artist makes legible the collapse of analogue and digital organising principles that AI obscures.
Sara Ludy, On Days (2024), acrylic on canvas Courtesy of the artist and Smart Objects
If canonical histories of linear progress are no longer wholly credible, it is still possible to identify fertile zones at the borders of art, technology, and design. The decision of Jenna Basso Pietrobon to step away from the New York art scene has fuelled a practice that evades categorisation. Having returned to the town of Nove, in the Veneto, northeast Italy, where her grandparents produced ceramic lamps, she has developed a practice that unsettles the slip-casting process by removing clay from its mould prematurely and stacking the unhardened geometrical forms. Cohering through chance and manual craft, the illuminated outcomes sit uneasily between sculpture and design.
Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby anticipated this world of hybrid objects by uncoupling product design from function and reframing it as a forum in which to speculate on possible futures. Following the corporate conversion of speculative design into a vehicle for fetishising the future, the duo’s new book Not Here, Not Now: Speculative Thought, Impossibility, and the Design Imagination (2025) asks “[w]hat it means to design at a time when, for many people, the future seems to have become an impossibility.”
Jenna Basso Pietrobon, ceramic lamp sculptures from the series Breaking the Mold (2024-25) Courtesy of the artist
The answer, it seems, is a form of reworlding that uses all forms of media to envision sustainable alternatives. One of Dunne and Raby’s former students, Deborah Tchoudjinoff, was part of a recent exhibition at Hypha Studios in London, titled The Geological Unconscious. Curated by Julie F Hill and Susan Eyre, the show entangled multiple media to explore worlds of more-than-human experience. Tchoudjinoff’s work The City of Gold (2022) speculates on the Anthropocene, incorporating the physical fragments of a fictional supercontinent visualised in a nearby virtual world. While Eyre’s installation Lithos Panoptes (2025) refracts a video of human activity through a series of lenses, capturing the molecular structure of magnetite while revealing the mineral’s view of the world.
Palmer Gallery, in London, attempted something similar through its recent show Handful of Dust which considered sand as a mnemonic material and shapeshifting archive, slowing the spectator’s journey by situating them in a space of primordial experience. In this context, Li Li Ren stood out for her use of 3D-modelling software to develop a series of sculptures — from dismembered arms to desiccated topographies — that expressed the distribution of the body across physical and digital, and human and nonhuman domains.
At a moment when art’s legacy structures are giving way to a new border economy, work like Ren’s can help to ensure that AI and generative media do not create a state of unresolvable impasse but instead engineer a place where analogue and digital media live together in a rich field of hybrid creativity.
A 34-year-old woman of childbearing age came to the local hospital for her annual well-woman visit, and an ultrasound revealed a cystic solid pelvic mass. The patient was subsequently admitted to our hospital. The patient exhibited no symptoms indicative of abdominal discomfort, vaginal bleeding, change in bowel habits, or change in urination. The absence of clinical manifestations precluded determination of its onset time or progression timeline. Moreover, she had undergone one cesarean section and had no history of uterine fibroids. Furthermore, the patient reported no prior use of hormonal treatments or oral contraceptive pills. Additionally, she had no significant history or family history of hypertension or diabetes mellitus, and no history of smoking or alcohol consumption. Her vital signs were within normal limits. A specialized gynecological examination was conducted, during which the uterus was found to be anteriorly positioned, of normal size and shape, and free of tenderness. Additionally, no palpable mass was identified in the left adnexal region, and no tenderness was observed. On the right side, a mass of approximately 5.0 × 6.0 cm was detected in the adnexal region, exhibiting distinct boundaries, a smooth surface, and no evidence of pressure pain.
The blood routine, blood coagulation, liver and kidney function, electrolytes, and glucose levels were within the normal limits. The tumor marker alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) was elevated at 10.90ng/ml. The remaining tumor markers, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), carcinoma antigen (CA) 15 − 3, CA 19 − 9, and CA 12 − 5, were within the normal range.
Transvaginal ultrasound demonstrated a cystic solid echogenic mass of approximately 5.2 × 4.5 × 5.7 cm in the right adnexal region with well-defined borders and peripheral blood flow signal in the form of punctate streaks. The bilateral ovaries were visible, and the uterus appeared normal. Given concerns for ovarian malignancy, contrast-enhanced pelvic CT was performed, demonstrating an irregular cystic solid hypodense shadow of about 6.2 × 5.3 cm in the right adnexal area, with a slightly unclear border. Figure 1(A) displays the arterial phase, while Fig. 1(B) indicates that the mass has sufficient blood supply. Contrast enhancement revealed mild, uniform enhancement of the cystic wall and inner solid components, without nodular hyperenhancement. The intracystic fluid region was not of homogeneous density. Rectal walls were normal, with no pelvic lymphadenopathy. Chest CT prior to surgery was unremarkable.
Fig. 1
Computed tomography (CT): Shows a cystic solid hypodense shadow of about 6.2 × 5.3 cm in diameter with a slightly poorly defined border. (A) CT image after contrast injection; (B) Rich blood supply to the mass
The patient was a 34-year-old female of childbearing age with a well-defined cystic solid pelvic mass of unknown nature, indications for surgery, and the patient’s desire for surgery. There were no contraindications to surgery, adequate preoperative preparation, and laparoscopic exploration was performed. Intraoperatively, a small amount of yellowish fluid was visible in the pelvis. The anterior position, morphology, and size of the uterus were normal, and no masses were seen in the bilateral adnexa. The peritoneum was intact, and a retroperitoneal mass of about 5.0 × 6.0 cm in size with irregular morphology and a smooth surface was observed on the surface of the right retroperitoneal iliac vessels and ureter. Additionally, anomalous vessels were identified (Fig. 2(A)). A thorough examination of the pelvic, abdominal, and bowel walls did not reveal any evidence of abnormal nodules. The tumor is located on the surface of the ureter and iliac vessels, necessitating meticulous separation to avoid damage. Therefore, we opened the peritoneum close to the root of the tumor, and the tumor margins were clear. The specimen was then removed in a specimen bag (Fig. 2(B)). Intraoperative cytopathology suggested that the tumor was a spindle cell tumor, which was a smooth muscle tumor with cystic degeneration. Macroscopically, the tumor was a 5.0 × 6.0 cm cystic-solid mass with swirling structures visible in profile. In addition, a cystic cavity with clear fluid was observed (Fig. 2(C)). Microscopically, the lesion consisted of spindle-shaped smooth muscle cells with bluntly rounded nuclei at both ends, uniformly fine chromatin, and no apparent anisotropy or nuclear division. Some areas showed cystic degeneration and the tumor cells’ fascicular arrangement. This finding confirmed the intraoperative frozen section diagnosis of a spindle cell tumor, a smooth muscle tumor with cystic changes(Fig. 3(A)). Moreover, the excised margins of the mass were free of tumor cells. Immunohistochemical staining showed tumor cells positive for desmin (Fig. 3(B)), smooth muscle actin, estrogen receptor (ER), and progesterone receptor(PR). However, they were negative for the cluster of differentiation (CD) 34 and CD117, findings consistent with a diagnosis of pelvic retroperitoneal leiomyoma. Notably, we also observed the occurrence of cystic degeneration in tumor cells(Fig. 3(C)).
Fig. 2
(A) Intraoperative picture showing blood-rich round mass with a smooth surface. (B) The mass traveled on the surface of the right iliac vessels and the right ureter, as seen after complete excision of the mass. (C) The tumor contains a cystic cavity filled with clear fluid, and the cut surface reveals a swirling structure
Fig. 3
(A) Microscopic examination. Hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining showed spindle-shaped tumor cells growing in loose bundles against a background of abundant vitreous stroma, cystic degeneration were observed, and no mitoses. (HE,40X). (B) Microscopic examination. The tumor revealed strong positive staining for desmin (100X). (C) Microscopic examination. The tumor showed signs of cystic degeneration (100x)
The patient recovered uneventfully and was discharged on postoperative day 4. Therefore, the patient is required to undergo gynaecological ultrasound examinations at the outpatient clinic on a 3 to 6-month basis post-surgery. No evidence of tumor recurrence was observed on the ultrasound six months after surgery. However, it is important to note that regular follow-up is still necessary.
EU gas and electricity markets from January to March 2025 proved their continued resilience as they ensured stable and secure energy supplies with important milestones on both markets. For electricity, while the wind sector and hydropower faced unfavourable conditions, solar power generation reached 45 TWh, a record level for the first quarter – some 30% higher than the same period last year. On the gas market, the end to the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine from 1 January led to a 45% drop in Russian pipeline gas relative to the previous quarter, and 39% down on the same period in 2024. This means that the U.S. has now overtaken Russia to become the EU’s second largest gas supplier (behind Norway). The colder than usual heating season saw higher gas demand for the quarter than in recent years, but prices were broadly kept in check thanks to the significant EU storage levels at the beginning of the quarter. The combination of higher gas prices and a higher share of gas power generation led to higher electricity prices compared with the first quarter of 2024. However, this was only short-lived and still lower than in 2023.
The gas market report confirms that further progress was achieved in the diversification of EU gas supply away from Russia and the structural change in imports. The end to Russian pipeline gas transit through Ukraine, meant that total Russian gas imports (including LNG) declined by 28% year-on-year and 27% quarter-on quarter. The volumes of Russian LNG imports remained stable compared to the previous quarter and declined 11% year-on-year. This change also further accentuated the shift towards more LNG imports (45% – relative to 38% in the previous quarter), while pipeline gas imports were reduced (55%, from 62% in Q4-2024).
The drop in temperatures in the first 3 months of the year – much lower than in the past 2 years, although still above the historical average – drove a 15% increase in EU gas consumption (to 119 bcm) compared to the previous quarter. Consumption grew by 8% year-on-year, indicating a possible halt in the structural decline of EU gas demand observed since 2021. Imports declined by 2% both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year, while domestic gas production increased by 3% both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year.
Norway remained the EU’s largest gas supplier with a share of 31% in total EU gas imports and provided 55% of the EU’s pipeline gas. The United States became the second largest EU gas supplier with a 24% share in EU imports and surpassed Russia, whose share dropped to 14% from 19% in Q4-2024 and Q1-2024. The U.S. provided more than half (53%) of EU LNG in the quarter. North-Africa (Algeria) increased its pipeline gas supply share to 21% from 19% in the previous quarter and 17% in Q1-2024 – the second biggest pipeline gas suppler after Norway, relegating Russia to third with 12%. Qatar remained an important LNG supplier (10%) to the EU and occupied the third largest position after Russia (16%) in EU LNG supply.
The upward price movement in wholesale gas price (observed already in Q4-2024) continued, driven by rapidly drawn-down gas storage levels combined with lower renewable production and geopolitical tensions. European wholesale prices averaged 47 €/MWh in the first quarter of 2025, an increase of 9% compared to the previous quarter and a 71% increase year-on-year. The monthly average price reached 48 €/MWh in January and 50 €/MWh in February, before falling back to 42 €/MWh in March 2025. Retail gas prices increased by 6% both in quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year comparison. The EU quarterly average retail price was 112 €/MWh.
The electricity market report highlights the contrast between the record solar power generation (45 TWh) and the exceptionally low wind generation for the first quarter due to the poor wind speeds. Wind generation declined year-on-year, with onshore wind dropping by 17% (-22 TWh) and offshore wind by 22% (-4 TWh). Hydropower also saw a 15% decrease (-16 TWh), albeit from very high levels in Q1 2024. This unusual combination – and the rise in gas demand because of the cold weather – meant that the renewable share of power generation decreased to 41% in the first quarter of 2025. This compares with 46% in the first quarter of 2024. A closer look at the figures shows that, after atypically weak generation in January and February, renewable output started to pick up again in March, indicating a positive trajectory for the upcoming months.
In contrast, fossil fuel generation rose by 17% (+33 TWh), compensating for the atypically low renewable output and a moderate rise in electricity demand. This was largely driven by less CO2-intensive gas generation which increased 23% (+21 TWh), alongside a 15% rise (+11 TWh) in coal-fired generation. Nuclear output also experienced an increase of 4% (+6 TWh).
Electricity prices exhibited volatility, with the European Power Benchmark averaging 100 €/MWh due to higher gas prices and more gas power generation. This marks a 49% increase from Q1 2024, but a 38% decrease from Q1 2023. Retail electricity prices for households in EU capital cities saw a marginal increase of 3% to 255 €/MWh, driven by higher energy taxes and network charges.
More than 620 000 new electric vehicles (EVs) were sold in Q1 2025 in the passenger car segment in the EU – a record high for the first quarter and 15% higher than the same quarter last year. This translates into a 21% EV share in the EU passenger car market.
