Latest news with #TheLady
The Star
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Malaysian artist breathes new 'blue' life into broken shipwreck porcelain
Bathed in a serene indigo glow, artist-sculptor Alice Chang's Me, Then Blue solo exhibition at Lai Lai Art Gallery and Studio in Kuala Ampang, Selangor feels like being gently immersed in the deep blue sea. Running until July 29, this is Chang's fifth solo show – a tribute to memory, imperfection, and transformation, brought to life through 11 sculptural works and 20 oil paintings. Stepping into the gallery, you'll find her new exhibition deeply anchored in maritime history. Chang's works draw inspiration from the Wanli shipwreck, a 17th-century Portuguese trading vessel that sank off Terengganu's coast in 1625. The ship carried delicate blue-and-white porcelain from Jingdezhen, China's famed porcelain capital. Named after Ming Dynasty's Emperor Wanli (1573–1620), its remnants were first discovered by local fishermen in 1998, with more of the wreck found in 2004. While intact porcelain pieces ended up in museums and private collections, the broken fragments were mostly discarded as 2019, Chang came across a social media post asking if anyone wanted the broken pieces salvaged from the wreck. 'Wave 8' (2024), an installation by Chang, crafted from Wanli shipwreck porcelain fragments and organic cement. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong 'If nobody wanted them, these pieces would simply be discarded, which felt like such a waste. Just because they're broken doesn't mean they've lost their value – they still carry the same story and history as the intact ones," says Chang, 56, who is known for her sculptural works using porcelain shards. 'So I reached out, because I felt I could create something meaningful from these fragments and give them a second life,' she adds. For most people, Chang is best known for her mosaic sculpture The Lady, which is still on display in one of Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown tourist areas. With Me, Then Blue, Chang finds a broader 'canvas' to express and expand her artistic vision. Looking below, from above After arranging for the fragments to be transported to her studio at Lai Lai Art Gallery and carefully cleaned, Chang found herself surrounded by nearly 50kg of weathered porcelain shards – each bearing traces of the sea and centuries of history. 'To be honest, I wasn't sure what to do with the pieces at first, so I just sat on them – figuratively, of course – for about five years. Then last year, I realised that the 400th anniversary of the ship's sinking would be in 2025 and thought it would be nice to do a show to commemorate it, so I started working on the sculptures," says Chang. Flashlights are available for visitors to explore the artworks in detail. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong For the sculptures, Chang used eco-friendly organic cement, carefully piecing the fragments together in their original form out of respect for their history. Some of these sculptures are displayed suspended above a mirror, adding another layer of reflection and depth. 'I designed them like this so that when you look at the pieces through the mirror, it's as though you're looking at it from above the sea's surface, down into the depths of the ocean,' she explains. While working on the sculptures, Chang became curious about the motifs she saw on the shards. "Many of them reflected everyday life in ancient China during the Ming Dynasty. There's a lot of flora and fauna too, like peaches and deer. I wanted to put myself in their shoes, but with a contemporary twist, so this led to me creating the oil paintings,' she says. During a recent gallery tour, Chang pointed to a box filled with sand and scattered porcelain shards. Apart from the porcelain works, Chang has also created a new painting series for her new solo exhibition 'Me, Then Blue'. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong 'Even after spending hundreds of years under the sea, the porcelain is still in very good condition, thanks to the quality of the clay used. Jingdezhen is one of the few places you can find large deposits of high-quality Kaolin clay, which is why the city is so well-known for its porcelain," says Chang. 'The blue comes from cobalt. Back then, the people who painted these pieces weren't professionally trained. They just drew from the heart, naturally creating something so beautiful,' she adds, turning a piece around in her hand. A tribute to history Chang emphasises that this is more than just an art exhibition for her. 'I wanted to share the story of the Wanli shipwreck because I feel that not many Malaysians know about it. Some 400 years ago, before Malaysia became the Malaysia that we know today, it was part of the Maritime Silk Road, a thriving trading hub within a global network of commerce. This is part of our history," she says. 'Who knows what other shipwrecks still lie on the ocean floor in Malaysian waters, quietly waiting to be discovered." Visitors are free to pick up and examine the loose porcelain pieces that fill the sandbox set in the middle of the exhibition. Photo: The Star/Yap Chee Hong Next to the sandbox filled with porcelain fragments is Chang's copy of The Wanli Shipwreck And Its Ceramic Cargo (2007), a 360-page tome published by marine archaeologist Sten Sjostrand and Sharipah Lok Lok Syed Idrus, assistant curator of Malaysia's Department of Museums, Conservation Division. To date, it's the most comprehensive book on the Wanli shipwreck and its treasures. Though its pages are worn from her frequent use, Chang still encourages visitors to leaf through the book to learn more about the Wanli. 'I hope this exhibition will encourage everyone who visits to look deeper beyond the surface and find beauty in the broken,' she concludes. Me, Then Blue is showing at Lai Lai Art Gallery and Studio in Kuala Ampang, Selangor until July 29. Open: 10am-5pm, closed on Monday and Thursday.
Time Business News
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Business News
Little Nightmares: A Terrifyingly Beautiful Horror Adventure You Must Play
Little Nightmares is a unique horror adventure game that takes you into a dark, dreamlike world. The game is known for its exceptional graphics, deep story, and terrifying atmosphere. It's not just a game, but a psychological tale of childhood fears, hunger, and the abuse of power. 🎮 Game Information: Developer: Tarsier Studios (Sweden) Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment Release Date: Originally released in 2017 for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. Later, it was also released on platforms like Nintendo Switch, Mobile (Android, iOS), etc. Genre: Puzzle-platform, horror adventure ⬇ Download:You can buy the game from the Play Store for 450 Taka. Play Store: Click here Or you can search on Google to download it for free. 📖 Story: Although this game is story-based, it doesn't contain a single line of dialogue, which makes it completely unique compared to others. The story takes place on a massive, underwater, mysterious iron ship called The Maw , where various deformed and terrifying creatures live and imprison children to eat them. Six roams different parts of the ship trying to escape, where she faces terrifying enemies like Leeches, Janitor, Twin Chefs, and The Lady. With each chapter, Six's hunger increases, and at times she ends up doing bizarre and dark things — for example, at one point she eats a living rat, and later, a Nome. Towards the end, Six defeats the ship's owner, The Lady, and gains some of her sinister powers. 🕹️ Gameplay:This is a puzzle-platformer and stealth horror game. Players must avoid the monsters' eyes — sometimes by hiding, sometimes by running, or sometimes by using the environment to escape. You have to solve small puzzles to enter different rooms or open paths — such as pulling levers, moving boxes, finding keys, etc. You can pull, push, or throw nearby objects. In some places, you must run away, while in others you have to hide at the right time. Six has no weapons — there's no way to defend or attack, only intelligence and caution are your tools. The game is divided into five chapters: The Prison , The Lair , The Kitchen , The Guest Area , and The Lady's Quarters . Using a lighter in the dark, observing enemy behavior, avoiding jumping from high places, and making quick decisions — all these are vital to survival. 🖼️ Visual: The game's graphics are like Claymation — cute and colorful in appearance but designed to create a disturbing and twisted feeling in both the environment and characters. The entire game is in 3D, so the movement of the environment and characters feels very detailed and lively. The use of light and shadow is exceptional — sometimes light is a symbol of hope, and sometimes it means danger is present. The environments are usually dim, grey, and distorted, which enhances the horror even more. The design of characters and environments is such that you feel cuteness and horror side by side. 🔊 Sound Design: The game's sound design is extremely precise. Every step, floor creak, breath, and object falling is clearly heard, which adds tension for the player. The background music is usually very subtle or completely silent, giving more importance to ambient sounds. When danger approaches, intense music plays to build tension and create a sense of urgency. In the soundtrack, you can hear distorted nursery rhymes, ominous drone sounds, and occasionally unsettling screams or shouting, which makes the whole experience even more terrifying. Little Nightmares is not just a scary game — it's a deep psychological experience that shakes the player's thoughts. Its unique style, story, and gameplay have given it a special place in the gaming world. If you enjoy different kinds of horror games, then Little Nightmares is definitely worth a try! Bonus Tips: For Bangladeshi people here is a website which is selling PUBG Mobile UC at cheapest price. Shop name is AroraShop That's all for today. Stay well, stay healthy. Thank you. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Lady: The decline and fall of the bible of female gentility
The Lady, Britain's longest running women's magazine, has formally announced that it has ceased publication. The magazine is famed for its etiquette advice and adverts for butlers, nannies and discreet liaisons with well-heeled 60-somethings. In a statement, the publishers confirmed recent media reports that the April edition of the magazine will be the last, but added the website with its jobs board and recruitment agency will continue. Here's a look back at its place in, and impact on, British culture over 140 years. The Lady was established in 1885 by Thomas Gibson Bowles, as a magazine for gentlewomen, a weekly guide to navigating the social minefield of well-to-do British life. Its very distinctive character was affectionately lampooned by PG Wodehouse. In his Jeeves stories, Bertie Wooster is briefly employed by a magazine called Milady's Boudoir, which was housed "in one of those rummy streets in the Covent Garden neighbourhood". The real Lady Magazine just happened to be in Bedford Street in Covent Garden. The Lady's fame owed much to its advice to women on the mysteries of the British class system. In 1936, for instance, its readers were given an update on the acceptability of novels. "The reading of fiction, not long ago thought deplorable by nearly all social workers, is now becoming almost a virtue," it noted. It's first edition began with an explanation that its objective was to cover "the whole field of womanly action". Almost all of it was written by a man, Thomas Bowles, using various aliases. It was not a huge success. Fortunes changed in 1894 when Thomas Bowles appointed his children's governess, Rita Shell, to be editor. Under Rita Shell's control, it became a successful weekly guide to women who found themselves in charge of both a household and a budget to outsource the daily drudgery to the lower classes. In December 1927, it cautioned young women "to become a good cook before you marry, darling. Then you will be competent to rebuke a staff of domestics or to dispense with one". Eighty years later, those concerns remained central. Editor Rachel Johnson was a firm believer in not being too familiar with staff, writing: "Never sit in the kitchen chatting to your nanny, it'll end in tears before bedtime." And even today there are still pages of classified adverts for livery workers and other assorted varieties of domestic help but the demand now is more for live-in carers for the elderly than butlers or nannies. That age profile has long been a concern. In 2009, Johnson was taken on to give the magazine a more youthful rebrand. She was asked to halve the average of the reader, which was, when she started, 78. A Channel 4 documentary revealed it was not universally welcomed, and Johnson's diaries later catalogued all the difficulties of aiming articles at younger readers amongst adverts for walk-in baths and absorbent underwear along with products to remove their associated odours. It was an eventful three years that made more than a few headlines. Nevertheless, while the readership did briefly increase, like most print magazines, sales have been in sharp decline in recent years. Once a weekly, it went from fortnightly to monthly. The last published figures in 2023 revealed it sold just under 18,000 copies an issue. And while the website will continue, it is the end of the line for a very distinctive bit of British culture. The current owner of the Lady, the great grandson of the founder, Thomas Bowles, Ben Budworth has spent 17 years trying to keep it afloat. He took over the running of the magazine in 2008 and over saw the controversial rebrand. His decision to sell off the Covent Garden offices and move production to a business park in Borehamwood in Hertfordshire was met with protest. The premises on Bedford Street were a seen by many of the staff as more than just another office, they helped define The Lady's character. No one had a direct phone line. Instead, calls all went through a telephonist. One former editor said work would stop at 2pm to listen to the Archers, and again at 3:30pm for tea. Johnson said the wall safe was where the tins of custard creams were stored. One particular perk was her own peach-coloured WC. Each day she would be handed two freshly laundered towels. The building was a reminder of its long history and the magazine's many contributors, among them Lewis Carroll, Nancy Mitford and Stella Gibbons, who while giving the impression of being hard at work wrote Cold Comfort Farm in the magazine's offices. However, heritage does not pay bills. Problems with a tax demand made headlines in 2024 and suggested the move to Hertfordshire had not solved the financial woes. The problem of the shrinking and ageing readership was never going away. Even the word lady has shifted over the years from being an aspiration to a term widely regarded as demeaning and disparaging. And while there are older magazines, such as The People's Friend (which did not begin as a magazine aimed specifically at women) and the American Harper's Bazaar which absorbed the even older British stalwart Queen, the Lady has a good claim on being the UK's oldest surviving women's magazine. However, 140 years on, a magazine that once billed itself as an indispensable guide to society has found that society has moved on.
BBC News
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
The Lady: The decline and fall of the bible of female gentility
The Lady, Britain's longest running women's magazine, has formally announced that it has ceased magazine is famed for its etiquette advice and adverts for butlers, nannies and discreet liaisons with well-heeled a statement, the publishers confirmed recent media reports that the April edition of the magazine will be the last, but added the website with its jobs board and recruitment agency will a look back at its place in, and impact on, British culture over 140 years. The 'whole field of womanly action' The Lady was established in 1885 by Thomas Gibson Bowles, as a magazine for gentlewomen, a weekly guide to navigating the social minefield of well-to-do British life. Its very distinctive character was affectionately lampooned by PG Wodehouse. In his Jeeves stories, Bertie Wooster is briefly employed by a magazine called Milady's Boudoir, which was housed "in one of those rummy streets in the Covent Garden neighbourhood".The real Lady Magazine just happened to be in Bedford Street in Covent Lady's fame owed much to its advice to women on the mysteries of the British class system. In 1936, for instance, its readers were given an update on the acceptability of novels."The reading of fiction, not long ago thought deplorable by nearly all social workers, is now becoming almost a virtue," it first edition began with an explanation that its objective was to cover "the whole field of womanly action".Almost all of it was written by a man, Thomas Bowles, using various aliases. It was not a huge success. Fortunes changed in 1894 when Thomas Bowles appointed his children's governess, Rita Shell, to be editor. 'How to sack a servant' Under Rita Shell's control, it became a successful weekly guide to women who found themselves in charge of both a household and a budget to outsource the daily drudgery to the lower classes. In December 1927, it cautioned young women "to become a good cook before you marry, darling. Then you will be competent to rebuke a staff of domestics or to dispense with one".Eighty years later, those concerns remained central. Editor Rachel Johnson was a firm believer in not being too familiar with staff, writing: "Never sit in the kitchen chatting to your nanny, it'll end in tears before bedtime."And even today there are still pages of classified adverts for livery workers and other assorted varieties of domestic help but the demand now is more for live-in carers for the elderly than butlers or nannies. Rebranding The Lady That age profile has long been a concern. In 2009, Johnson was taken on to give the magazine a more youthful rebrand. She was asked to halve the average of the reader, which was, when she started, 78.A Channel 4 documentary revealed it was not universally welcomed, and Johnson's diaries later catalogued all the difficulties of aiming articles at younger readers amongst adverts for walk-in baths and absorbent underwear along with products to remove their associated odours. It was an eventful three years that made more than a few while the readership did briefly increase, like most print magazines, sales have been in sharp decline in recent years. Once a weekly, it went from fortnightly to monthly. The last published figures in 2023 revealed it sold just under 18,000 copies an issue. Custard creams in the safe And while the website will continue, it is the end of the line for a very distinctive bit of British culture. The current owner of the Lady, the great grandson of the founder, Thomas Bowles, Ben Budworth has spent 17 years trying to keep it afloat. He took over the running of the magazine in 2008 and over saw the controversial rebrand. His decision to sell off the Covent Garden offices and move production to a business park in Borehamwood in Hertfordshire was met with protest. The premises on Bedford Street were a seen by many of the staff as more than just another office, they helped define The Lady's character. No one had a direct phone line. Instead, calls all went through a telephonist. One former editor said work would stop at 2pm to listen to the Archers, and again at 3:30pm for tea. Johnson said the wall safe was where the tins of custard creams were stored. One particular perk was her own peach-coloured WC. Each day she would be handed two freshly laundered towels. The building was a reminder of its long history and the magazine's many contributors, among them Lewis Carroll, Nancy Mitford and Stella Gibbons, who while giving the impression of being hard at work wrote Cold Comfort Farm in the magazine's offices. The L word However, heritage does not pay bills. Problems with a tax demand made headlines in 2024 and suggested the move to Hertfordshire had not solved the financial woes. The problem of the shrinking and ageing readership was never going away. Even the word lady has shifted over the years from being an aspiration to a term widely regarded as demeaning and disparaging. And while there are older magazines, such as The People's Friend (which did not begin as a magazine aimed specifically at women) and the American Harper's Bazaar which absorbed the even older British stalwart Queen, the Lady has a good claim on being the UK's oldest surviving women's magazine. However, 140 years on, a magazine that once billed itself as an indispensable guide to society has found that society has moved on.
The Guardian
06-04-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Women's magazines still thriving despite closure of The Lady, the ‘journal for gentlewomen'
It launched in 1885 as a 'journal for gentlewomen', a place where classified advertisements always attracted the right calibre of domestic staff: one who was savvy enough to buy and read The Lady. Today, the classified ads for housekeepers and butlers remain, accompanied in the April edition by horoscopes, puzzles, a column praising nightingales, a recipe for grapefruit creams and an article on how to help dogs enjoy road trips. But not for much longer. Despite claiming to have a 'robust' readership of 11,000 'affluent' subscribers, The Lady – one of Britain's longest-running magazines – is expected to close imminently after the Times and Daily Mail reported that it was going into liquidation. Far from heralding the end of women's magazines, however, publishing experts believe the demise of The Lady after 140 years actually highlights the remarkable success of print titles that continue to attract female readers in a digital age. 'In today's world, you need to address your niche – and the problem for The Lady is that their niche evaporated,' said Jeremy Leslie, founder of magCulture, which stocks more than 700 magazines at its London shop. 'We have plenty of examples here which are specialist, have a loyal readership and encourage the belief that there's a very bright future for magazines.' During its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th century, The Lady was a classic example of a beautiful magazine with a clear-cut community of readers, he said – rather like the women's magazine The Gentlewoman today. 'The Gentlewoman is the perfect foil to a magazine like The Lady,' he said. 'The name implies that it's perhaps part of the same milieu as The Lady once was. But it couldn't be more different. Their readers are younger, self-motivated, successful women who enjoy fashion while also having a serious career.' Penny Martin, editor in chief of The Gentlewoman, said: 'I'm sorry to see any women's title go. At the same time, I don't know any woman who would want to be addressed as a 'lady'.' The Gentlewoman, which has a circulation of 90,000 copies per issue, does not see its readers as consumers who fall into a particular lifestyle category or class, Martin said, but as people who share a 'mutual interest in the same subjects and a love of quality journalism and print culture'. She added: 'I think publications that continue to deliver that magazine craft will continue to thrive.' The first periodicals marketed at female readers were published in the 1690s, but it wasn't until the 1770s that they began to resemble modern women's magazines, according to University of York professor of English Jennie Batchelor. 'That's when you can have a high-calorie recipe on one page and an article on how to keep yourself looking gorgeous on the next.' The readership of women's magazines, which has always included men, greatly expanded during the 18th and 19th centuries as women became more literate, she said. 'Magazines played a hugely important role in giving women access to information and knowledge they couldn't get in other forms.' Female writers managed to make a name for themselves in women's magazines, before journalism was considered a viable profession for women. By the 1880s, editors were vying for readers in an 'incredibly overpopulated, really competitive' marketplace. 'One of the ways they succeed is by specialising and finding their readers – and that could be by special interest, like gardening or literary fiction, or it could be along class lines,' Batchelor said. Just as The Lady once did, new women's magazines thrive today when they can speak to a 'really quite specific' target market about their interests and ideas in a 'very authentic way that nobody else can', said Steven Watson, director of Stack, a magazine subscription service that surprises readers with a different independent title each month. The best magazines make readers feel part of a community of people who share the same worldview, enabling their publishers to charge higher prices and still retain a loyal subscriber base, said Watson. Mother Tongue, a biannual print magazine which interrogates and celebrates modern motherhood, charges £20 per issue. Worms, a female-led literary magazine dedicated to amplifying marginalised voices, charges £17.50. By contrast, a subscription to the monthly Stylist magazine, the second most popular women's magazine in the UK after Good Housekeeping, costs £5.75 a month. 'When your audience can see that you care about the things she cares about, and you're using your platform to do something about that, it really makes sense why you exist in her life,' said Stylist editor-at-large Alix Walker. The title recently ran a campaign to improve support for women who suffer miscarriage and baby loss. 'There's so much content coming at all of us today, you've got to fight for your bit of her attention.' Walker said that knowing your reader is crucial to a magazine's survival. 'As soon as you lose sight of who she is, you lose her.' The journalist and author Rachel Johnson, a former editor of The Lady from 2009 to the end of 2011, said last week that she had tried – and failed – to halve the average age of the magazine's readers, which was 78 when she started her tenure. 'It's very hard to keep reinventing something, endlessly, to adapt,' Leslie said. 'In the case of The Lady, perhaps the surprise is that it's managed to last this long.'
