A worryingly bright room with the stench of fresh white paint known as the Nog Gallery was illustrator Marcus Oakley‘s chosen venue for the launch of his new book.
Framed art and canvases, order website like this none much larger than A4, were hung tightly together in a line around the room. This was a collection of work that made the book that we were there to drink our beers to.
A colourful collection of trendy, childlike illustrations were bought to life by Oakley and his fat marker pen, HB pencil and a selection of coloured papers and paints. His work involved a mixture of typography, pattern making, still-lifes, houses and numerous quirky characters and animals such as the creepy bear (above).
Oakley’s work also involved portraits of more familiar (yet still rather creepy looking) characters including Fleetwood Mac, Simon and Garfunkel and Neil young. There was definitely a 1970′s air around the exhibition: bygone architecture, retro pot plants and large collared fashion. Oakley appears to be influenced by the aesthetic beauty of the decade’s architecture, fashion, graphics and typography. The subject matter and his taste in music may be a little old but his style of illustration is definitely contemporary.
The Glasgow School of Art undergraduate fashion show has been an annual affair since the 1940s, viagra approved so it’s no surprise it has established a reputation for being dynamic and innovative. This year proved to be no different, more about with 40 students from second and third year showing 108 outfits.
The theme for this year’s show was ‘Avant-Garde’ and the students aimed to challenge mass-produced fashion to create exciting and daring one-off pieces.
The show opened with work from the second students, salve who showed one garment each, followed by the third year students who specialise in one of four areas of textile design – knit, weave, embroidery and print – to create a three garment collection.
Featuring fluorescent colours on neutral backgrounds, jewel bright colours from opposing ends of the colour wheel, layered tones and rich hues, this was a show saturated in colour. The voluminous shapes and intricate folding, tucking, draping and pleating showed guest lecturer Julian Roberts influence.
The designers cite inspiration from architecture, industrialism, Optical art and the glamour of 1940s screen sirens. One minute cubic shapes in knits and print evoked city skylines, and the next Surrealism and Romanticism took over as the models were transformed into Cottingley-esque fairies in light chiffons and appliquéd flowers.
Using a toned down palate of coffee tones in gold and cream, Natalie Graham created a collection of juxtapositions. Masculine tailoring challenged ideas of femininity while her choice of tough woven tweeds patterned with mechanical shapes was classic and sophisticated.
Stephanie Parr drew inspiration from dilapidated buildings, and used thermals with laser cut fluorescent fabrics. The layered train of one dress, lifted and lowered by the model like fabulous neon parrots tail, created endless shapes and movements.
Nautical stripes were toughened up in Ian Porters capes in which striped panels and red rubber panels seemed more like an apocalyptic day by the sea.
This was a bold and self-assured show that once again cemented Glasgow School of Arts reputation as the place to look for new talent.
You can tell Armen Eloyan lives in Zurich. With claustrophobic cabin interiors, health sparse, snowy landscapes and a cast of animal – human hybrids: wolves, dogs and black cats, his paintings seem like stills from a half-remembered Mitteleuropean fairytale. Take ‘Man Dressed as Wolf’: a figure in a stove-pipe hat and a vulpine smile stalks amid the fir trees, on the way, you can only imagine, to eating someone’s grandma.
Eloyan inhabits much the same territory as the notoriously grim Chapman Brothers, but while their demented cartoon characters are drawn with a twee neatness that underlines their menace, Eloyan’s visions are smeared onto the canvas with splenetic vigour. Cartoon imagery is removed from the flat safety of the printed page; in ‘Bear and Dog’ a speech bubble emerges, filled with frenzied, illegible writing, while in ‘(Bunch of a Story) Tea Table’, the viscous substance oozing from the pot doesn’t look much like tea. Random details surface from the swirling depths of the paint: although you can’t quite work out what infests the outer reaches of the canvas, you can bet your life it’s nothing friendly.
It’s well known that modern anxieties about childhood and the American film industry have excised the darker content from children’s stories and folklore. In Eloyan’s nightmare-world, these dark and haunting subtexts burst through to the surface, creating queasy juxtapositions between the painterly, expressionist backdrops and the goofy-eyed figures therein. In short, Bookstore Cure celebrates the triumph of the macabre.
After a guestlist mix-up that had me convinced I’d be attempting to review this gig from outside the venue, seek we finally get the green light and find the perfect perching spot for first support act Youthmovies as a heaving throng of expectant early arrivees go wild for this Oxford fivesome’s thrillingly complex riff attacks. They are also very keen on next act Esser and rightfully so, as the pint-sized ex-Ladyfuzz drummer kicks off an energetic and compelling performance by dramatically thrashing at a cymbal and snare. Along with frYars and Micachu, the quirky chap is currently one of the capital’s most innovative young songwriters as he caters in everything from dark, off-kilter pop to shimmering electronics, stripped-down hip-hop and frantic thrash, throwing in maracas, creepy piano samples, strings and cowbells along the way. ‘I Love You’ and ‘Headlock’ sound like hits in the making and as Esser tumbles off at the end of a thundering finale, kicking over drums and microphone stands in his path, he leaves us gagging for more.
However, it’s headliners Foals that really bring the house down tonight, rather unsurprisingly as before they are even on stage a real party atmosphere pervades the Astoria with pissed-up punters chanting the band’s name and excitedly lobbing glowsticks into the air. The extremely talented quintet commence an intense and perfectly executed set of tracks from debut ‘Antidotes’ with a brief warm-up as smoke fills the stage, blinding us with red and blue flashing lights before ‘The French Open’ surges into action, all discordant horns, juddering guitars and clattering percussion. Gone is the tight circle formation of old, replaced by an increasingly confident live outfit unafraid to own all of the space they are entitled to – Jimmy Smith manically thrashes at his guitar while Yannis Philippakis pirouettes, hops and skips around the stage gesticulating wildly from behind his microphone and even launching himself into the front row at one point to dance with the crowd.
‘Cassius’, ‘Balloons’, ‘Heavy Water’, ‘Hummer’, ‘Two Steps, Twice’ and ‘Electric Bloom’ all incite screams and hysterical flailing from audience members, however, it is nothing compared to the encore of ‘Mathletics’ which sees people grabbing at the frontman and guitarist, pulling them into the pit and hugging them, as growling basslines, twittering riffs and rhythms at breakneck speed erupt around the venue. Anyone worried that a move to stages of this size would detract from the power of the Foals live show should leave tonight feeling appeased. The band are now more adept at putting on awe-inspiring performances than they ever were…
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