About Artworks
Welcome to Artworks!
Welcome to Artworks, showcasing contemporary and historical artworks on everything from world peace to the night sky, 100% created by RI: the Real Intelligence of exceptionally creative human beings.
Enrich your life with these inspiring artworks and 'be the change you wish to see in the world,' as Gandhi instructed. Just going about your day, you'll find yourself thinking more deeply about the issues, striking up random conversations, and discovering new ways to be impactful. We'll double your impact by donating 50% of profits to charities aligned with our mission.
Artworks is a project of Liberation Kilt Co, a registered Benefit Corporation whose mission is to fight 21st-century injustices with an unlikely weapon that once opened eyes, changed minds and won hearts: the soft power of culture.
The Collections
We're launching four exciting collections in '23:
Believe in Peace and Climate Kunst confront the two existential crises of our time: the scourge of war and climate change.
But as Suki Kim, the journalist who went underground in North Korea said, "you can only drive yourself crazy if you have no distance from the world."
Coming later this year, No Tardis Req'd and Primeval Fire create time and space to reflect, rethink and renew.
1. Believe in Peace
At a time of great conflict, tension and mistrust, it might seem audacious, even futile, to believe in peace. Yet the fact is, humans are not hardwired for war. While we have always had the capacity, according to recent research, the conditions for warlike cultures to emerge only became common during the last 10,000 years.
John Lennon believed that war and conflict were rooted in fear and a lack of empathy for others, and he spoke out against institutions and systems that create or exploit these traits for their own nefarious ends. As individuals, we have the power and the obligation to act: “Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away,” he said. His famous song, "Imagine," exemplifies this perfectly.
"Believe in Peace" is our response. Inspired by different ideas and events, the pieces in this collection are divergent, even contradictory, in terms of mood, style and message, yet bound by the same overarching goal: to explore the devastating effects of conflict on individuals and societies, while never giving up on peace. We hope this collection will encourage reflection and introspection, promote the sharing of ideas, perspectives and experiences, break down cultural barriers, and help people connect with like-minded others--spurring peace-building efforts.
The seed for Believe in Peace was planted on February 26, 2022—two days into Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine—when we reached out to the talented young Volodymyr Olshynetskyi with a proposal to work on a collection together. He received our message just as the first Russian tanks rumbled into Mykolaiv, the bombed-out city he once called home.
While Ukraine provided the impetus, the locus of this collection has since shifted to the global stage. By popular demand, we're in the process of creating an exciting series of street scenes from major cities around the world, each featuring a giant mural of Volodymyr’s spectacular composition of a flight of doves, metaphorically setting the world free of the scourge of war.
2. Climate Kunst – Launching summer ’23
“All the stuff of mainstream history—wars, revolutions, economies—is becoming a subset of the engulfing, elemental question: the fate of the earth; what humans have done to it; and what they may yet do to repair and redeem the damage,” says Simon Schama. “We are running out of time. But what we have not yet exhausted is what, in the end, makes us human: the great storehouse of visionary imagination.”
Several years in the making, Climate Kunst explores the existential climate crisis from multiple angles, through a series of capsule collections. As examples, one capsule imagines butterflies, ants, elephants, and monkeys sending out an SOS to the world. Another depicts the global economy powered by 100% clean energy. A third celebrates the pollinators of our planet, from hummingbirds to beetles. A fourth pays tribute to Dr. Charles Keeling, the eminent climate scientist after whom our Keeling tartan is named. A fifth imagines a world in which the Golden Age of Sail never ended because fossil fuels remained underground.
3. No Tardis Req’d* – Launching summer ’23
* The Tardis is how Dr. Who travels through time and space
William MacAskill, a professor at Oxford University, says we’re living through the global equivalent of the Hundred Schools of Thought, a golden age of philosophy in ancient China. “Different moral worldviews are competing, and no single worldview has yet won out,” he says. Society is like molten glass, which could be blown into many different shapes. “Whether it sets into a sculpture that is beautiful and crystalline or mangled and misshapen is, in significant part, up to us.”
What’s needed, argues MacAskill, is a “morally exploratory” world: one structured so that, over time, better norms and institutions are more likely to win out. That is, norms and institutions underpinned by liberal values, as opposed to illiberal ones championed by the world’s autocrats, despots and demagogues.
"This century will witness a struggle between two versions of humanity: open societies like our own versus closed, authoritarian societies using all forms of state power to oppress their own people and threaten others. It is a struggle that we have not wanted, but one that we cannot, and must not, lose." Bob Seely, MP
A morally exploratory world demands that we open our eyes and hearts to the diversity and beauty of the world, past and present. "No Tardis Req’d" is our small contribution to this effort. Crossing centuries and cultures, this remarkable collection of historical prints is made possible courtesy of the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University, and a portion of the proceeds will support the David Rumsey Map Collection.
4. Primeval Fire – Launching autumn ’23
Coming out of hiding in the early 21st century, Loftus McLeod, founder of the Liberation Kilt Company, was shocked at how humans had trapped themselves in such tight mental shackles that they could no longer even imagine the possibility of reinventing themselves—even in the face of catastrophe.
{Read all about Loftus McLeod, founder of Liberation Kilt Co here}
McLeod had seen firsthand how the European Enlightenment had grown out of a dialogue with Indigenous peoples of the New World, whose critiques of "civilised" society inspired new ideas on the meaning of freedom.
The answer, he realised, was to visit Indigenous peoples in far flung parts of the world, rekindle these vital discussions, and share this "survival knowledge" with as many people as possible. On January 1, 2021, he began his great journey...
Unfortunately we've all but lost touch with McLeod. It doesn't help that he doesn't own a phone, due to a rare cobalt allergy. Last we heard, he was traveling the Valley of the Winds with an Aboriginal group in central Australia. Primeval Fire captures his epic voyage of discovery for posterity.
We hope you enjoy the collections, and thank you for your support!