Amelia’s Magazine | Tom Foulsham-The Table that can Tell Stories And Other Contraptions

Tom2Man Making Machine © Tom Foulsham

Minnie Weisz’s studio, online a one-storey alcove of delightfully quirky art concealed underneath Kings Cross’s railway arches, is currently harboring the perfect antidote to the last-minute Christmas shopping overdose. Artist, designer, engineer and inventor Tom Foulsham currently exhibits a series of machines that defy easy categorization since his work is a fine blend of sculpture, architecture and installation art. The perfect interaction between all the different parts constitutes the core of elaborate systems that dazzle by their sheer ingenious flair and complexity.

CIMG1402Tom Foulsham Wiggle Table Photograph © Valerie Pezeron

Ron Arad says of him: “ …Tom can actually solve most mechanical problems and realise them against all odds…all sorts of contraptions like a book page-turning device that is activated by the wasting burning candle, and lots of old leather suitcases stuffed with intricate devices that would make Heath Robinson proud.” The Armchair Balance illustrates this best. Especially commissioned for Minnie Weisz’s space, the seamlessly gravity-defying apparatus at times appears to swivel out of control yet remains astonishingly together. I am told it offered entertaining obstacles for visitors at the show’s opening who were forced to approach the laser lights-like tentacles without touching for fear of total structure collapse! The artist used Minnie Weisz’s books to balance his second-hand chair and the final result beggars belief.

CIMG1403Tom Foulsham Arcmhair Balance Photograph © Valerie Pezeron

Foulsham could be the poster boy for that old cliché of the visionary eccentric scientist left to his own device in an antiquated shop full of strange and exciting mechanisms and other contraptions. Born in 1981, Tom Foulsham studied Architecture at the Bartlett and was an architectural assistant at Arad Associates. He went on to study Design Products MA at the Royal College of Art, graduating this summer 2009, under the tutorledge of Ron Arad. He exhibited his ‘ Balancing Shelves’ at Pecha Kucha ICA in 2007. He showed his ‘Candle Balance’ as part of the V&A group exhibition ‘In Praise of Shadows’ in September 2009.

Breathing House Video © Valerie Pezeron

Tom Foulsham’s work is completely capturing the zeitgeist; the art world, like society, is beginning to go full-circle with technology. “ We’re going back to craft,” Minnie Weisz says. “It’s been the digital age where we press a button and we don’t really know how that happens. We’re going back to skill.” Foulsham masterfully manipulates raw, organic and fine materials in a quick and dynamic manner that arch back to older days; built in two weeks for this exhibition, the Man Making machine is reminiscent of the industrial revolution era in its use of soft and fragrant paraffin. The artist enjoys devising spidery contraptions with simple technologies where nothing is hidden. “It’s a fine balancing act,” I am told. “The sculptures are fragile and delicate yet still strong enough for the public to interact with.”

Candle Balance © Tom Foulsham on Vimeo.

“I was always taking things apart and then putting them back together again, making things”, Tom tells me about his boyhood. It all sounds so much better than today’s chair bound assisted computer fun. He must have had a wonderful childhood. Tom agrees, “I was making my own toys, playing around with cardboard boxes and toying with little models and knots and bolts. Once I had worked out how something worked, I knew I could make it 20 times bigger”.

CIMG1407Wiggle Sketch © Paul Benny

Foulsham is a man with great ambitions. The machines/sculptures are also conceived as small-scaled versions of what is to later become life-size or even more colossal. Some of it would work well in front of an industrial museum like the Pompidou centre, I tell him like the Breathing House that is not meant to remain miniature for long. Surprisingly, Foulsham claims Quentin Blake and his “scrappy” style as an influence as well as other balancing sculptures. “My references come from all over the place.” What’s more striking is the sense of play in it all; sculpture as toy from the burnt ephemera of the Man Making Machine to the Wiggle Table. “Tom has quite surreal ideas but packages them to create something that is tangible and that people can have different experiences of. It does not dictate one view of looking and understanding. Yes, it’s scientific. We’ve had many children here who think it’s magic!”

Wiggle Table Video © Valerie Pezeron

The Wiggle Machine is a crowd pleaser and the blockbuster of this exhibition. “Like the Frankenstein of itself”, Foulsham says. He created a new typeface and a new take on the classic machine blue for this multifaceted jiggling box that grabs the current news and blurts out very serious content in a twist. “The Prime Minister says the …” and the vibrations don’t make me take the news seriously at all…The enigma machine, Second World War cockpits and 1960’s computers all spring into mind. “We’ve had séances here” Minnie Weisz says.

Tom1© Tom Foulsham

This exhibition is worth the visit and it’s not everywhere that the artist himself introduces you to his artwork. That is why it’s by appointment only throughout 2010. It is best to call in advance for January, I am told. The gallery is currently in festive mode and has asked the surface designer Pippa Johnson to wrap the gallery arch with a specially commissioned illustration over the windows throughout the holiday period.

Minnie Weisz Studio, Under the Arches, 123 Pancras Road, London NW1 1UN. Tube: King’s Cross.

Categories ,Arad Associates, ,architecture, ,art, ,contemporary art, ,exhibition, ,Exhibition Review, ,Gallery, ,mechanisms, ,Minnie weisz, ,pippa johnson, ,Ron Arad, ,Royal academy of arts, ,science, ,scultpture, ,Tom Foulsham, ,workshops

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Amelia’s Magazine | Urs Fischer: Molding Objects to Imperfection

6All Photographs courtesy of New Museum, viagra buy except where otherwise stated

It is now time for the absurd to take center stage. Swiss-born “imperfectionist” Urs Ficher makes the gallery goer rethink his or her own reality and I am grateful to the New Museum for introducing me to this brilliant artist. Ficher is an artist renown for his non-traditional creations. Thinking the world as a populated center of objects that interact and create an artificial reality, his aim is to call the viewer’s attention to his singular inner realm; his interpretations of what this life is are conveyed through different types of installations. New productions and iconic works are aplenty and together compose a series of gigantic still life and walk-in tableaux choreographed entirely by the artist. I find myself exploring neither a traditional survey nor a retrospective but the culmination of four years of work. These new productions reveal the true scope of Fischer’s universe and I am enthralled by what I am discovering.

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IMG_6475

Above photograph courtesy of Vanesa Krongold

Fischer has taken over all the three floors of the museum. Illusion and reality are intertwined in the artist ‘s show thanks to a game of trading places and multiple reflections. Chrome boxes are arranged in a grid of monoliths that create a cityscape of mirrored cubes onto which the artist has silk screened a dizzying array of images. I think it’s perfect; It’s just how I’ve been feeling when walking about New York city – drunk from trying to take it all in! It is very interesting how the artist plays with bi dimensions; I am strangely attracted by some disregarded toys. Its all about combining the reality through dimensions, perspectives, and collage. The viewer is thrust into an uneasy place, trying to understand how to walk in this new world. The hyper real state of the objects are meant to represent your and my reality…

72009 Plaster, paint, bread 10 x 21 x 15 cm.

Urs Fischer presents an installation that turns the Museum’s architecture into an image of itself—a site-specific trompe l’oeil environment. In a maddening reproduction exercise, each square inch of the Museum architecture has been photographed and reprinted as a wallpaper that covers these very same walls and ceiling it is meant to portray. A piano occupies the room, appearing to melt under the pressure of some invisible force. Simultaneously solid and soft like a Salvador Dalí painting in three dimensions, this sculpture seems to succumb to a dramatic process of metamorphosis.

8Marguerite de Ponty.

On the fourth floor, Fischer presents five new aluminum sculptures cast from small clays and hand-molded by the artist. Hanging from the ceiling or balancing awkwardly in space, these massive abstractions resemble strange cocoons or a gathering of enigmatic monuments. Fischer is an engineer of imaginary worlds who has in the past created sculptures in a rich variety of materials, including unstable substances such as melting wax and rotting vegetables. In a continuous search for new plastic solutions, Fischer has built houses out of bread and given life to animated puppets; he has dissected objects or blown them out of proportion in order to reinvent our relationship to them.

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In 2007, in a now-legendary exhibition, he excavated the floor of his New York gallery, digging a crater within the exhibition space. Throughout his work, with ambitious gestures and irreverent panache, Fischer explores the secret mechanisms of perception, combining a Pop immediacy with a Neo-Baroque sense for the absurd. And I am glad a taste of it!

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The exhibition Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty is ending on February the 7th, 2010. The New Museum is a modern building located in 235 Bowery Street, New-York.

Categories ,Absurd, ,Aluminium, ,art, ,Art space, ,baroque, ,Clay, ,contemporary art, ,Exhibition Review, ,Hand molded, ,installation, ,Material, ,New Museum, ,new york, ,organic, ,review, ,Salvator Dali, ,sculpture, ,Still Life, ,surrealism, ,toy, ,Urs Fischer

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Amelia’s Magazine | Visible Invisible: Against the Security of the Real

DG2

Side-projects by band members can be hit and miss affairs- it’s either a radical departure from the “day job” or sounds so similar that you end up thinking, cialis 40mg “why did they bother?” Brooklyn trio the Depreciation Guild (who feature two members of indie-pop darlings the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart) luckily veer more towards the former.
Playing a string of UK dates before joining you-know-who on tour, remedy the Depreciation Guild fetched up at the Old Blue Last in front of an audience equally as curious to check them out.

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Despite having already released one album in the US, 2007’s In Her Gentle Jaws, and with single Dream About Me out at the moment, I think they were still a largely unknown quantity amongst the Shoreditch cognoscenti.
Kurt Feldman had swapped the drum-kit of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart for lead vocal and guitar duties, and was joined by fellow POBPAH wanderer Christoph Hochheim on guitar, with Anton Hochheim on drums. Backed by a lightshow not normally found in East London boozers, the Depreciation Guild treated us to a set of classic shoegaze. Whilst the influence of My Bloody Valentine is never far from the surface of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart’s sound, here the spectre of Kevin Shields looms large. From the overdriven guitars to Feldman’s indistinct vocal delivery (which, ironically, is spookily similar to POBPAH compadre Kip Berman’s) it could almost be 1991 again, save for some bonkers 8-bit electro backing which sounds suspiciously like a Nintendo Gameboy.

DG

Some of the poppier sensibilities of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart do occasionally creep in, with songs like Butterfly Kisses sounding not unlike Feldman’s “other” band. There was an emergency guitar change before an ear-searing finale, after which Kurt Feldman had to go and man the merchandise table. He’s certainly not afraid of multi-tasking!
I think the Depreciation Guild certainly made an impression tonight amongst those (like me) who weren’t quite sure what to expect. Musically, their heavier sound is not a million miles away from that of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, and it’ll be interesting to see how they go down with the latter’s fans when they share stages (as well as drummer and guitarist) in the next month or so.

DG2

Side-projects by band members can be hit and miss affairs- it’s either a radical departure from the “day job” or sounds so similar that you end up thinking, troche “why did they bother?” Brooklyn trio the Depreciation Guild (who feature two members of indie-pop darlings the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart) luckily veer more towards the former.
Playing a string of UK dates before joining you-know-who on tour, the Depreciation Guild fetched up at the Old Blue Last in front of an audience equally as curious to check them out.

DG1

Despite having already released one album in the US, 2007’s In Her Gentle Jaws, and with single Dream About Me out at the moment, I think they were still a largely unknown quantity amongst the Shoreditch cognoscenti.
Kurt Feldman had swapped the drum-kit of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart for lead vocal and guitar duties, and was joined by fellow POBPAH wanderer Christoph Hochheim on guitar, with Anton Hochheim on drums. Backed by a lightshow not normally found in East London boozers, the Depreciation Guild treated us to a set of classic shoegaze. Whilst the influence of My Bloody Valentine is never far from the surface of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart’s sound, here the spectre of Kevin Shields looms large. From the overdriven guitars to Feldman’s indistinct vocal delivery (which, ironically, is spookily similar to POBPAH compadre Kip Berman’s) it could almost be 1991 again, save for some bonkers 8-bit electro backing which sounds suspiciously like a Nintendo Gameboy.

DG

Some of the poppier sensibilities of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart do occasionally creep in, with songs like Butterfly Kisses sounding not unlike Feldman’s “other” band. There was an emergency guitar change before an ear-searing finale, after which Kurt Feldman had to go and man the merchandise table. He’s certainly not afraid of multi-tasking!
I think the Depreciation Guild certainly made an impression tonight amongst those (like me) who weren’t quite sure what to expect. Musically, their heavier sound is not a million miles away from that of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, and it’ll be interesting to see how they go down with the latter’s fans when they share stages (as well as drummer and guitarist) in the next month or so.

DG2

Side-projects by band members can be hit and miss affairs- it’s either a radical departure from the “day job” or sounds so similar that you end up thinking, viagra 100mg “why did they bother?” Brooklyn trio the Depreciation Guild (who feature two members of indie-pop darlings the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart) luckily veer more towards the former.
Playing a string of UK dates before joining you-know-who on tour, sildenafil the Depreciation Guild fetched up at the Old Blue Last in front of an audience equally as curious to check them out.

DG1

Despite having already released one album in the US, 2007’s In Her Gentle Jaws, and with single Dream About Me out at the moment, I think they were still a largely unknown quantity amongst the Shoreditch cognoscenti.
Kurt Feldman had swapped the drum-kit of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart for lead vocal and guitar duties, and was joined by fellow POBPAH wanderer Christoph Hochheim on guitar, with Anton Hochheim on drums. Backed by a lightshow not normally found in East London boozers, the Depreciation Guild treated us to a set of classic shoegaze. Whilst the influence of My Bloody Valentine is never far from the surface of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart’s sound, here the spectre of Kevin Shields looms large. From the overdriven guitars to Feldman’s indistinct vocal delivery (which, ironically, is spookily similar to POBPAH compadre Kip Berman’s) it could almost be 1991 again, save for some bonkers 8-bit electro backing which sounds suspiciously like a Nintendo Gameboy.

DG

Some of the poppier sensibilities of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart do occasionally creep in, with songs like Butterfly Kisses sounding not unlike Feldman’s “other” band. There was an emergency guitar change before an ear-searing finale, after which Kurt Feldman had to go and man the merchandise table. He’s certainly not afraid of multi-tasking!
I think the Depreciation Guild certainly made an impression tonight amongst those (like me) who weren’t quite sure what to expect. Musically, their heavier sound is not a million miles away from that of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, and it’ll be interesting to see how they go down with the latter’s fans when they share stages (as well as drummer and guitarist) in the next month or so.

tat1

The ExtInked project dreamt up by the Ultimate Holding Company to mark Charles Darwin’s bicentennial birthday is no doubt one of the most unique and amazing projects I’ve heard about in a long time. Along with an exhibition illustrating 100 of the most endangered animals in the British Isles, viagra 40mg the event came to an astounding conclusion with the tattooing of 100 volunteers who then became ambassadors for their animal. So as the exhibition closed yesterday, what is to become of the ambassadors, now back in their natural habitats?

My friend Tom was lucky to be involved in the project and here he shares his experiences with me.

So why did you take part in the ExtInked Project?

Since getting involved with UHC sometime last winter, I’ve been a part of a number of really interesting projects with them. ExtInked was something they have been talking about for a long time and the idea always really appealed to me. I think it’s a really great thing to be a part of, people have learned so much about which animals are endangered and hopefully will think about why that is, and what can be done about it. For me, I try to make a lot of environmental decisions in my life and feel extremely passionate about the use of animals and our finite natural resources for human gain.

Wildlife conservation and the environment are extremely important, in our relatively short time on this earth we have managed to destroy so much. Positive and big things are happening from the ground up. There is a fast growing environmental movement, but the important decisions need to be made from the top, which, unfortunately is not happening nearly enough.

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It seems easier for leaders of governments and corporations to pretend they are doing something, rather than making an important change, that could make a really big difference.

Ext Inked was a great way to be involved in one of the most creative bottom-up environmental actions I know of, I now have a species permanently on my body, which throughout my life no doubt, hundreds of people will ask about, and I will be able to tell them the information I learned about that particular species, the project, the movement, and, in my case, the RSPB and other organisations helping to protect birds in the UK.

Which animal did you get? Tell me about the tattoo!

I went for the Black Grouse; I love birds, so for me it had to be a bird. The black grouse is found in the north of England, much of Wales and Scotland. I think to me, it was important to get something that I would be likely to come into contact with, I love golden eagles and leatherback turtles, but I’ve never seen either unfortunately! I don’t think it really matters too much which species I had tattooed though, as it’s more about the project and the issues as a whole than one particular species.

tat3
Photograph taken by Jai Redman

Tell me about the experience! What happened when you went to Manchester?

We went along on the last day around lunch time, which was bit quieter than when I visited on the Thursday night. I was quite pleased about that as all the tattooing happened much like a tattoo convention. There were barriers up at the front, and a stage with the three tattooists from Ink vs. Steel in Leeds, tattooing live in front of whoever was there to watch. As it was my first tattoo, and I didn’t know how much it would hurt, I was a bit nervous about being watched!

I thought I was being tattooed at 1 o clock, but somebody was running late, and I was early, so they switched our places, I didn’t really have any time to feel too nervous, before I knew it I was laid face down, being tattooed. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt, because it did, but the mix of the atmosphere, and the rush of adrenaline you get puts you in a really strange place. I just laid their trying to work out how much it hurt and which bit he was doing, it was actually a pretty good feeling! Having had the tattoo a couple of days now, the pain seems totally insignificant.

tat4

Your girlfriend was part of the project too wasn’t she?

My girlfriend Sally got involved too; she got the Rampion Bellflower on her inner arm. She has a lot of tattoos already, so I think she probably had a different experience to me, although she was still a bit nervous. She was really excited to be a part of the project and has already done some good work telling people about the project and spreading the word! Sally is a very creative person, but isn’t able to be too involved in art, so I think it’s great that she really connected with this project and was really receptive to the ideas artists had on conservation.

What about the future? How do you think you’ll feel about the tattoo in 20 years time?

In twenty years time I have no idea how I will feel about the tattoo, but the more I live, the more I learn, and the more I learn, the more passionate I become.

Climate change and human activity is affecting our wildlife, and that’s only going to get worse unless we act quickly and dramatically. If we act now, while we still have a bit of a chance, I will be able to look at my tattoo and think, I’m glad we did something, and If not, I don’t think anybody will see it because my leg will probably be under water!

Photography by Tom Bing www.tombing.co.uk
www.uhc.org.uk
www.inkvssteel.co.uk
nurse -2″ src=”http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Shaun-McDowell-Untitled-2.gif” alt=”Shaun-McDowell–Untitled, information pills -2″ />Untitled 2 by Shaun Mc Dowell

To examine artists on display in regards to their own sense of what is intangible; what is the unbeknownst? Cecily Brown (one of the five artists displaying), buy more about once elucidated of her method; ‘Often, I find it really hard to see what I’m doing when I’m in the thick of things (painting).’ This seemed a resonant befall to take into the exhibition, and one that permeated throughout; the artist’s blindness filtering down to the viewers’ perception.

steve-white-installation-shAll photographs by Stephen White, courtesy of Parasol unit

On entering the chic industrial space of the Parasol Unit, the viewer is introduced to Katy Moran’s installations of small, yet expressively fueled paintings. Ambiguous and ethereal spaces, you are inserted into a void of instability. She is emphatically a cannon for the abstract. Sometimes unsettling, occasionally frustrating (primarily by the evasive titles), but most of all, her paintings are enchanting. Staring into a framed space of colour and shape, for example Daniel, the warped style within the pieces allude to envisions of nothingness that are quite remarkable.

steve white installation shots 054

Shaun McDowell, renowned for his part in the Peckham art squats, uses colour and technique in a vast and expansive means. Glaringly bright and expansively detailed, what initially looks like a lot of fun swiftly augments to a somewhat dark and unnerving visage. Strolling slowly past his paintings, I became ever more hypnotised as the images took on a pseudo stereogram quality. In seeing what wasn’t there, McDowell emulates invisibility by somehow tricking his viewer into complacence, before revealing his true mien.

steve white installation shots 030

Spotted throughout the gallery, Hans Josephsohns sculptures have a weird (for want of a better word) presence. Remindful of Easter Island Moai, the veteran sculptor’s cast brass creations have a transcendent quality. Although clearly based upon the human form, they seem to capture their own timeless space with an omnipresent earthliness.

Cecily Brown and Maaike Schoorel probably make for the biggest contrast within the exhibition. Feasibly the crux of the collective display, Brown’s paintings are entirely mesmerising. Sensual and figurative, each image draws the viewer in. A lieu of strokes, the paintings seem to shift with every glance, yielding an ever more desire to look. Saturated with existentialist sensibilities, her works exude human instinct. Counter to this, Maaike Schoorel seems to take a much more apathetic stance. Her bleached canvases denote a controlled and methodical temperament. Her works certainly evoke the invisible, and after forcefully adjusting to her palate, figures and landscapes subtlety emerge.

Katy-Moran,-Salters-Ridge,-Salters Ridge by Katy Moran

Visible Invisible invites the viewer into an uncomfortable world where a desired truth is obsolete. Each artist takes their own stance on how to barrage their audience with a distinctive underlay. Irritating the senses, the exhibition leaves you wanting for something that evades, and, insofar, wanting more.

Visible Invisible: Against the Security of the Real is at the Parasol unit, Foundation for Contemporary Art, 14 Wharf Road, London, N1 7RW from 25.11.09 – 07.02.10. Gallery opens Tuesday to Saturday 10 am to 6 pm. Sunday is 12 to 5 pm. First Thursday of every month, open until 9 pm. Admission if free. Please note that from 6pm on Friday 18 December 2009 until Tuesday 5 January 2010 Parasol unit will be closed for the holidays.

Categories ,abstract, ,art, ,contemporary art, ,Exhibition Review, ,Gallery, ,painting, ,Parasol unit exhibition, ,sculpture, ,Visible Invisible

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Amelia’s Magazine | Peek-a-Boo! Boo Saville: Trolley Gallery

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All artworks courtesy of Boo Saville. Indefinate series, clinic Oil on canvas, no rx 2008

Boo Saville’s show at the Trolley Gallery on Redchurch Street isn’t the kind of thing that tomes and volumes can be written about. But I’ll see how far I get. This is certainly her most confident work yet.

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How do we feel?, Bleach on black cotton, 2010

The white backgrounds are gone, so has the ball-point pen. Instead we have richly dark spaces that exert magnetic and religious forces on the viewer. Where once we were separated from the subjects by a very stark distancing, we are now fully empathetic.

5Bog man, Biro on paper, 2006

Subject has become self for Saville. But there’s more than just one idea here. The imagery that might zip through your mind ranges from the intensity of being buried alive to the irreverent madcap guffaws of Noel Fielding. Sometimes it’s like finding a number and jet Francis Bacon in an archaeological dig. But that’s really about it for wordy analysis; this is simply work you have to look at (unlike most of Redchurch Street at the moment).

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Ghost, Monoprint, 2009

It’s great to see Saville’s CV getting better and better. Boo Saville studied at the Slade School of Art, London. From 2003 she formed part of the WOWOW! collective in south London with the artist Matthew Stone. In 2007 she was a nominee for the Sovereign Painting Prize, and in the summer of 2008 she worked on a residency in Paris at the Cite des Arts. Her first solo show was at Martin Summers Fine Art in 2008.

lr_boo_saville_3_1The Explorer, Bleach on black cotton, 2009

Her work has recently been acquired by the forthcoming Museum of New and Old Art, Tazmania. She was recently featured in Francesca Gavin’s book ‘Hell Bound: New Gothic Art’ and her forthcoming book on British artist under 35 years old. In January 2010 she was featured in Vogue’s ‘British talent’ special, ES Magazine, The Times and The Independent. After Trolley her next solo show will be at Studio Visconti, Milan in September 2010. She lives and works in London. Definitely tipped for the top. Three of these six canvases are stunning. Go see. For a virtual tour, visit here.

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Shi, Biro on paper, 2008

The Boo Saville exhibition runs from Fri 05 Feb 2010 – Sat 13 Mar 2010

The address is Trolley Books, 73a Redchurch Street, London E2 7DJ  tel +44(0)20 7729 6591   fax +44(0)20 7739 5948

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Categories ,Boo Saville, ,contemporary art, ,exhibition, ,Exhibition Review, ,Francis Bacon, ,london, ,Monoprint, ,painting, ,print, ,Saatchi Gallery, ,Slade School Of Fine Art, ,Trolley Gallery

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Amelia’s Magazine | Satoshi Date: London Fashion Week A/W 2012 Exhibition Review

Satoshi Date AW 2012 by Claire Kearns

Satoshi Date AW 2012 by Claire Kearns

Satoshi Date, an ethical fashion designer featured in Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration, returned to an archway space on Holyrood Street near London Bridge to exhibit his A/W 2012 Lines 1 and 2 during London Fashion Week. He presented his S/S 2011 collection in the same gallery and in quite a similar way, having his designs hung from the ceiling along with other fabric elements so that the whole formed an installation.

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

The exhibition had the fascinating subject of Alchemy woven into it. Satoshi Date had named it Alchemist’s Mind, Re-Fashioning Masterclass as in truth it was not just an exhibition, but also a drop-in workshop whith special areas and sewing machines at the ready where someone could bring old clothes and turn them into somehting special they would love to wear again. I liked the fact that upon entering the space I was given a ‘Menu’ with what I could do during my time there, which humorously included ‘Talk to Satoshi Date about: how to manipulate your vintage fabric, how to make redundant objects reborn again, how to heal your current problems, how to deal with your love relationships, how to modify the items you brought’. In the same vein, I also enjoyed that one of the films projected somehow suggested that this process of up-cycling material objects could help us look at past experiences, traumas or relationships in the same way and be creative with them rather than carry them as baggage – what great advice.

Satoshi Date AW 2012 by Love Amelia

Satoshi Date AW 2012 by Love Amelia

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

As in previous collections Satoshi Date included a lot of intricately woven found bits of fabric into his shawls, dresses or hats as well as recycled, felted and hand-dyed wool.

Satoshi Date AW 2012 by Kristina Vasiljeva

Satoshi Date AW 2012 by Kristina Vasiljeva

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

Some of my favorite pieces were white cotton shirts with little printed illustrations in unexpected places. It has to be noted here that Satoashi Date is an artist/designer who apart from making clothes, also draws, paints, makes films, music and photographs.

Satoshi Date AW 2012 by Jo Ley

Satoshi Date AW 2012 by Jo Ley

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

It also, and most definitely, has to be noted that Satoshi Date was a lovely young man with a friendly, welcoming, involved and funny attitude, which made him a pleasure to meet.

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

Satoshi Date AW 2012 photo by Maria Papadimitriou

All photography by Maria Papadimitriou

Categories ,Alchemist’s Mind, ,alchemy, ,Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration, ,Antique Wooden Buttons, ,Claire Kearns, ,Customise, ,Embroidered, ,embroidery, ,Exhibition Review, ,Fashion Film, ,Felted Wool, ,Felting, ,film, ,Hand-dyed, ,Hand-made, ,illustration, ,illustrator, ,installation, ,jersey, ,Jo Ley, ,Kristina Vasiljeva, ,London Bridge, ,London Fashion Week, ,Love Amelia, ,Maria Papadimitriou, ,Masterclass, ,musician, ,Organic Cotton, ,painting, ,photography, ,Re-Fashioning, ,Recycled Wool, ,Satoshi Date

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Amelia’s Magazine | Dreamboat Vs Inkygoodness Exhibition, Bristol


Illustration by Abigail Wright

I have always been fascinated with analogue photo booths. I have vivd memories as a child – the excitement and anticipation, hospital there pulling ridiculous faces, never really knowing what you’ll get until the old machines clunk and churn out your photographs. So, tadalafil on a recent trip to Berlin, I was desperate to get back involved, like so many others, with the analogue phenomenon.

A short while after my return, I discovered that the Photoautomat project that exists in Berlin had transferred to London – one of those brightly coloured, glorious booths had been on my own doorstep and I didn’t even realise. A bit of internet research, a blog and a Twitter account later, I met Alex – Photoautomat’s London representative. He’s on a mission to bring back the beauty and art of the old-fashioned photo booth. Me, Amelia and fashion writers Sally and Jemma paid Alex a visit on a crisp Saturday morning to get involved, and have a chat with the man himself…

How did the Photoautomat project start, and where did the booths come from?
Well, it really started about 5 years ago in Germany, where my friends bought one of the booths because they were fascinated with the old analogue machines and the photos they produce. Soon it took over Berlin and the rest of the country. I got interested in the booth when I was over visiting and followed my friends around to look after the booths. We all have our memories from when we were young and fooling around in those booths at the Mall, but seeing them again in Berlin really ignited my passion for them again.

What do you know about the history of the booths?
The photo booth was invented 1925 by a Russian immigrant in New York. He opened his Photomaton Studio on Broadway. For just 25 cents, everybody could get their photograph taken. That was quite a revolution back then as photography was just for the rich and famous; because of the booths, it became accessible to everybody. 
From then on they were used as props in movies such as Band Wagon with Fred Astaire, by artists like Andy Warhol and people from all backgrounds for fun or memories and obviously passport photos.

Where are the booths located now?
Our booths are all over Germany. Most of them are in Berlin, but also in Hamburg, Dresden and Cologne. We launched a booth a while ago in Vienna. Then there is my booth here in London. There are also booths in Paris and Italy. 

How did this one end up in Cargo?
I thought it would be much easier to get a good location for a photo booth in London, but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought – policies and regulations mean a seemingly straightforward thing as installing a photo booth quite a task. I approached Cargo and they gave me the space in their beer garden straight away; they just liked the idea and it was done.

Why do you think the booths are so popular?
Well, people always like old things: vintage, analogue. The rebirth of Polaroid showed there is still a demand for analogue photography.There is something precious about a photo booth strip. It’s one moment, one photo and it can’t be replicated. No negative, no back up, just like real life. The photos also have a better quality than digital ones. There are apps out there on smart-phones to imitate the effect and I understand that most people don’t want to go through the hassle of having a analogue camera. This is where the photo booths come in. For a few quid, you can take your photo booth strip with your friends and keep that moment forever.

How do you think the qualities of these booths compare to the modern booths we see in train stations/etc?
I guess I answered that question above, but there really is no comparison. The digital ones lack quality and depth and the spontaneity you have in the analogue booth. 

Are there any other London locations planned? Or elsewhere in Europe?
I am looking for more locations in London. I would love to get some booths on the Southbank.

Has the booth been used for anything other than people taking pictures with their mates?
I had a photo shoot last year with Mixmag in the booth. It was a fashion special with hats. There were also a few artists who used the booth for their projects. Fionna Banner used the booth for her work twice.

Have you seen/heard any funny experiences concerning the photo booth that you can share?
I had a guy calling me once – he was totally out of it. He took some photos with his girlfriend and they didn’t came out. She got naked and they were concerned that they might get into the wrong hands. I wasn’t in town at that time and couldn’t do anything about it, but he insisted for me to come around. I finally managed to calm him down and sort everything out. 

What are you favourite images that the booth has created?
That would have to be all the photos form the exhibition/project we had during Photomonth last year. They reflect what the whole photo booth thing is all about.

Who would be your ideal customer – who would you most like to see use the booth?
Everybody is ideal. Everybody is welcome, as long as they respect our work and leave the booth as they found it for the next to come! Most likely they are probably analogue enthusiasts, students and Cargo guests. I have families, a couple from Lisbon, artists form Nottingham and even Henry Holland taking their photo in the booth!

What does the Photoautomat project hope to achieve, long term?
Hopefully we’re here for years to come and give people from all backgrounds the opportunity to have their little moment. It’s really all up to the people who use our booths and what they make of it. That is the beauty about it – and always will be.


Illustration by Abigail Wright

I have always been fascinated with analogue photo booths. I have vivd memories as a child – the excitement and anticipation, illness pulling ridiculous faces, salve never really knowing what you’ll get until the old machines clunk and churn out your photographs. So, on a recent trip to Berlin, I was desperate to get back involved, like so many others, with the analogue phenomenon.

A short while after my return, I discovered that the Photoautomat project that exists in Berlin had transferred to London – one of those brightly coloured, glorious booths had been on my own doorstep and I didn’t even realise. A bit of internet research, a blog and a Twitter account later, I met Alex – Photoautomat’s London representative. He’s on a mission to bring back the beauty and art of the old-fashioned photo booth. Me, Amelia and fashion writers Sally and Jemma paid Alex a visit on a crisp Saturday morning to get involved, and have a chat with the man himself…

How did the Photoautomat project start, and where did the booths come from?
Well, it really started about 5 years ago in Germany, where my friends bought one of the booths because they were fascinated with the old analogue machines and the photos they produce. Soon it took over Berlin and the rest of the country. I got interested in the booth when I was over visiting and followed my friends around to look after the booths. We all have our memories from when we were young and fooling around in those booths at the Mall, but seeing them again in Berlin really ignited my passion for them again.

What do you know about the history of the booths?
The photo booth was invented 1925 by a Russian immigrant in New York. He opened his Photomaton Studio on Broadway. For just 25 cents, everybody could get their photograph taken. That was quite a revolution back then as photography was just for the rich and famous; because of the booths, it became accessible to everybody. 
From then on they were used as props in movies such as Band Wagon with Fred Astaire, by artists like Andy Warhol and people from all backgrounds for fun or memories and obviously passport photos.

Where are the booths located now?
Our booths are all over Germany. Most of them are in Berlin, but also in Hamburg, Dresden and Cologne. We launched a booth a while ago in Vienna. Then there is my booth here in London. There are also booths in Paris and Italy. 

How did this one end up in Cargo?
I thought it would be much easier to get a good location for a photo booth in London, but it turned out to be more difficult than I thought – policies and regulations mean a seemingly straightforward thing as installing a photo booth quite a task. I approached Cargo and they gave me the space in their beer garden straight away; they just liked the idea and it was done.

Why do you think the booths are so popular?
Well, people always like old things: vintage, analogue. The rebirth of Polaroid showed there is still a demand for analogue photography.There is something precious about a photo booth strip. It’s one moment, one photo and it can’t be replicated. No negative, no back up, just like real life. The photos also have a better quality than digital ones. There are apps out there on smart-phones to imitate the effect and I understand that most people don’t want to go through the hassle of having a analogue camera. This is where the photo booths come in. For a few quid, you can take your photo booth strip with your friends and keep that moment forever.

How do you think the qualities of these booths compare to the modern booths we see in train stations/etc?
I guess I answered that question above, but there really is no comparison. The digital ones lack quality and depth and the spontaneity you have in the analogue booth. 

Are there any other London locations planned? Or elsewhere in Europe?
I am looking for more locations in London. I would love to get some booths on the Southbank.

Has the booth been used for anything other than people taking pictures with their mates?
I had a photo shoot last year with Mixmag in the booth. It was a fashion special with hats. There were also a few artists who used the booth for their projects. Fionna Banner used the booth for her work twice.

Have you seen/heard any funny experiences concerning the photo booth that you can share?
I had a guy calling me once – he was totally out of it. He took some photos with his girlfriend and they didn’t came out. She got naked and they were concerned that they might get into the wrong hands. I wasn’t in town at that time and couldn’t do anything about it, but he insisted for me to come around. I finally managed to calm him down and sort everything out. 

What are you favourite images that the booth has created?
That would have to be all the photos form the exhibition/project we had during Photomonth last year. They reflect what the whole photo booth thing is all about.

Who would be your ideal customer – who would you most like to see use the booth?
Everybody is ideal. Everybody is welcome, as long as they respect our work and leave the booth as they found it for the next to come! Most likely they are probably analogue enthusiasts, students and Cargo guests. I have families, a couple from Lisbon, artists form Nottingham and even Henry Holland taking their photo in the booth!

What does the Photoautomat project hope to achieve, long term?
Hopefully we’re here for years to come and give people from all backgrounds the opportunity to have their little moment. It’s really all up to the people who use our booths and what they make of it. That is the beauty about it – and always will be.

Lisa_HassellDreamboat

Dreamboat by Lisa Hassell

Aviator and French writer of books such as ‘Night Flight’ and ‘Wind. Sand and Stars’, help Antoine de Saint-Exupery said: ‘If you want to build a ship, remedy don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, buy information pills but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.’ If you have a dream then realistically you would need something to transport you to where it rests. In this circumstance, why would you choose a vessel that was something you have seen a million times before? The Titanic never got anyone anywhere.

Dream

When you are using your imagination to get somewhere, you must get there in something spectacular and once you have built this ship, you must prepare yourself for the world that has opened up to you. Everyone has a dreamboat in them, because put quite simply, we all have imaginations and we all have dreams. Whether they are made of marshmallows, bananas or glitter particles stuck together, it is the yearning of our own dreams that will make other people’s, and our own ships a reality. Thus whilst at the Dreamboat Exhibition in Bristol, I was immersed in the pictures of dreamboats for as long as it took me to imagine drifting off with these characters on an adventure that would take me somewhere new. It all starts with a dream.

PicDream

Inkygoodness, set up in 2008 and run by illustrators Lisa Hassell and Michelle Turton, aims to provide a platform for new and emerging talent to showcase their work alongside more established artists. They have teamed up with Bristol record label, Dreamboat Records, who have the likes of This Is The Kit on their books, for their latest event, Dreamboat vs Inkygoodness. The event is running for three weeks and started last Friday December 10. Dreamboat have provided live music from their artist portfolio, including Wonderfully Courteous Gentlemen, This Is The Kit and Slaraffenland. This has been combined with the work of 28 illustrators, artists and image makers from Bristol and beyond, inspired by the theme: Dreamboat.

WindowSnow

I braved the cold and cycled to Start The Bus to check out the Dreamboat Exhibition, which can be found upstairs via a compact vintage shop. The small space is festooned with fairy lights, with white spoldges and clouds on the windows and a ship made from slices of bread in the middle of the room. As I first span around the gallery I found I was surrounded by suspended ships caught as they by the illustrator paparazzi on their dreamy voyages. The illustrators have formed mysterious existences and swept away the mundane reality with thoughtful interpretations of their own dreamboats and it’s marvellous. Highlights include Ben Steers space adventure characters and Dave Bain‘s gorgeously mysterious and vulnerable illustration.

DreamB

I caught up with Lisa Hassell from Inkygoodness, and asked her about the project, Inkygoodness and being an artist.

What are Inkygoodness’ objectives?
Inkygoodness aim to provide a platform for new and emerging talent – our focus is to showcase artwork by a diverse group of artists at different stages in their careers – be they professionals or recent graduates. By bringing artists together in this way we hope to nuture young talent and give them a unique opportunity to meet artists they admire, who can offer them advice and support as they enter the industry.

Where are you based?
We operate mainly out of Bristol, and many of the artists we work with also live here. We’ve held shows in Birmingham (our home town), Bristol, and most recently in London.

What is your background?
Michelle and I both studied illustration, graduating in 2005. We currently hold down full time positions in marketing & design, organising Inkygoodness events and exhibitions in our spare time.

Toy_Factory

Do you take on a particular style or are you very liberal with who you give platform to in the art world?
We’re primarily focused on showcasing illustration, but illustration as an art form can take on many different styles. We’ve exhibited screen prints, paintings, murals, hand made objects, plush toys, collage and sculpture – different working methods, but the artwork shares a distinctive, low brow – no brow aesthetic. We want our exhibitions to be accessible, and engaging – we tend to select work which is hand crafted rather than created digitally. At the heart of Inkygoodness is the essence of a collective – we create opportunities for artists to work together and explore the potential of cross-disciplinary collaboration. So we pick artists whose work compliments each other, leaning towards character design, strong ideas and visual style.

Success stories?
In terms of sheer numbers, our London exhibition has been our biggest success so far. We were absolutely overwhelmed with the reception we received at the opening night, and thrilled that so many of the artists were there in person to enjoy it. We had over 3000 visitors throughout the exhibition run, and sold almost two thirds of the artwork in the gallery – an incredible results for a debut show. Energetic, entertaining and very emotional – it’s one of the best experiences I have ever had.

DreamPano

Do you do a lot of events?
Over the last 12 months we have organised and participated in a number of events in Bristol and our home town of Birmingham, most recently organising our debut London exhibition on Brick Lane. We also participated in our first painting event – the Live Illustration Draw at the annual Urban Paint Festival in Bristol earlier this year, alongside other UK art collectives. Although our activity has mainly centred around collaborative artist-led events, we are keen to try our hand at other projects in the near future, such as publishing.

Anything like Dreamboat before?
This will be the first time we have collaborated with a record label, and the first time Dreamboat Records have done a live event, so it’s quite a new thing for both of us. The benefits of collaboration mean we are effectively widening our audience, and offering something a little different to a regular art exhibition. We’re very excited about this event – there’s always such a buzz around the opening night – we’re pulling out all the stops to ensure this one doesn’t disappoint!

dream3

How did this collaboration occur?
John (Dreamboat Records) and I met a while back, and we’ve always been on each other’s radar. John mentioned his plans to organise a ‘live’ music event later that year, and was keen to get a group of artists involved to do some live painting. He approached us, and at the time we were caught up in organising our London show and not really in a position to do it. A few months later, we booked Start the Bus for our Christmas show, and remembering this conversation, asked John if he was still interested in working together – he was!

How is art associated with music?
Many artists I know are also musicians, and the two go hand in hand for many creatives. Music inspires art, stimulating our subconcious with a flow of ideas that transfer onto the work we create.

How are you feeling about the event?
Its lovely to be back in Bristol, and we’re very excited about our new collaboration with Dreamboat Records. Following our recent success in London, we wanted to do something local and a little different for the next event, and offer an experience that tied music and art together. Our opening night is going to be really magical. There is still quite a bit of planning to do, but we’re looking forward to it!

DreamShoe

What advice would you give to creatives still plugging away with tea and self faith?
Keep creating. Stay focused and inspired, and work hard! Make an effort to get involved with your local creative community, and attend events and exhibitions when you can. Conferences and design festivals are brilliant opportunities to network with like-minded creatives. It can be wonderfully inspiring and supportive to your creative career – and it’s a lot of fun!

Do you enjoy your job? Why?
Michelle and I absolutely love working on Inkygoodness projects and engaging with illustrators and artists across the world. We’ve been lucky to meet some very talented people over the last 2 years, and feel very fortunate to have received such amazing support for what we do. Many of the artists we have met have become good friends, and that is easily the best part of the job.

What would your dreamboat look like?
It would be made of sweet things like marshmallow and meringue, with cherries for seats and liquorice for sails.

DreamB2

Sail away dreamboats! Where you end up will be a factor of your own dreams mixed with the worlds these splendid pictures create. Check out the Dreamboat Exhibition for yourself at Start Gallery, (via Top Deck vintage shop), Start The Bus Bristol . It is running until December 30 and is open daily from 11am to 4pm for you to have a gander.

P.S. Watch out for my next post featuring three artists: Dave Bain, Ben Steers and Sarah Dennis with pieces at the Dreamboat Records vs Inkygoodness Exhibition

Categories ,art, ,Dreamboat Records, ,Exhibition Review, ,inkygoodness, ,lisa hassell, ,michelle turton, ,Slaraffenland, ,start the bus, ,This Is The Kit, ,titanic, ,wonderfully courteous gentlemen

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Amelia’s Magazine | London Art Fair 2010

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Thomas Allen, view Unreachable, viagra 100mg 2009, adiposity Chromogenic Print, 20 x 24 inches, Courtesy of Foley Gallery

I always get rather excited about large art fairs or exhibitions as you have hours of perusing and inspiration ahead of you and the hum of conversation in the air adds to the buzz.  The annual London Art Fair features over 100 galleries promoting 20th Century British art and focuses predominantly on painting while also featuring photography, drawing, installations, video art and print editions.

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Photograph courtesy of Lil Wizz

Formally the Royal Agricultural Hall, The Business Design Centre was saved from demolition in 1981 and re-invented as an exhibition, trade and conference centre and is certainly a spectacular cavernous venue for a large gathering of galleries and art dealers.

att2304972.jpeg

Isabel Rock, Lord Foster, 2009, Pen ink and collage on print, Courtesy of Bearspace

One theme did catch my eye as being on-trend – paper-cut illustration.  It has taken the art world by storm.  You are probably familiar with Rob Ryans illustrations, currently being featured in every commercial format from magazines to packaging.  Well, it appears that the fine art world have a penchant for paper-cut art as well.

IMG_3330Photograph courtesy of Zanny Mellor

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Wild Waters 2009, courtesy of Georgia Russell, Cut 19th-century engraving in acrylic case, 28 x 30.75 x 2.5 inches

England & Co were showcasing the artists’ books of Georgia Russell, who has taken her scalpel for a walk in the library!  She transforms books, music scores, maps, newspapers and photographs, giving each a new lease of life.  Her three-dimensional book works are created by hand-shredding every page in a book and distilling them in bell jars or perspex boxes, allowing the viewer to take a different meaning from the original title. Evolution and Natural Selection reacts well to this method of presentation, dithering somewhere between museum artefact and artwork. Choosing such an eminent title obviously ensures collect-ability but Russell’s deconstruction of Charles Darwin’s famous publication is quite a find, seeming to have animal fur spilling it out of it.

IMG_3289Photograph courtesy of Zanny Mellor

The Sims Reed Gallery was exhibiting some exquisite screenprints by Eduardo Paolozzi, which had me dissecting and digesting their infinite layers, geometric patterns and cacophony of colours for some time.  His surrealist mish-mash of subject matter creates very interesting compositions that sometimes resemble plan views of cities or a diagram of the inner workings of machines.  So layered and complex are his prints that you could not get bored of having one of those on your wall.

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John Piper, Sea Buildings, 1938, Oil, pencil & ripolin on canvas laid on panel, 12 x 16 inches, Courtesy of Richard Green

Diagrams and maps are perhaps the perfect marriage of fact and interpretation, science and art.  As artists, we visually document the world around us and map-making appears to be one of those visual forms which encompasses our desire to find the truth but also to create with our hands.  Jason Wallis-Johnson, also represented by England & Co tirelessly produces mesmerisingly detailed maps based on a number of cities around the world.

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Jason Wallis-Johnson, Imaginary Cities 2002, Pencil and ink on paper

His drawings are not direct but transferred from carbon paper, giving them a soft elegance untouched by hand.  The 3-dimensional pieces are even more captivating.  They are created by pin-pricking black carbon paper and setting them on lightboxes, giving the drawings a glow that more than realistically depicts night-time aerial photographs of the cities which he obsesses over.  Such detailed work has led to him being collected by The British Musueum and the V&A to name a few.  It seems that his work, like Georgia Russell’s can’t make it’s mind up as to whether it is art or artefact, 2 or 3 dimensional.

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Photograph courtesy of Lil Wizz

Categories ,Art dealers, ,contemporary art, ,drawing, ,Eduardo Paolozzi, ,Exhibition Review, ,galleries, ,Georgia Russell, ,Highbury Islington, ,illustration, ,installations, ,Isabel Rock, ,Jason Wallis-Johnson, ,John Piper, ,london, ,London Art Fair, ,photography, ,rob ryan, ,The british Museum, ,The Business Design Centre, ,The Sims Reed Gallery, ,Thomas Allen, ,video art and print editions.

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Amelia’s Magazine | Earth at The Royal Academy of Art

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Mariele Neudecker, ailment ’400 Thousand Generations’, 2009. Steel, fiberglass, water, salt GAC100. 153 x 113 x 55 cm. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Thumm. Photo courtesy the artist

I love the Royal Academy of Art. It’s a venue that is always a delight to visit and their blockbuster exhibitions are in my view great value for money. It is more fun than job duty to go on behalf of work to visit such shows! Earth: Art of a Changing World ran from the 3rd of December 2009 to the 31 of January 2010 and as I made my way to the RAA, I must admit I was intrigued by the title and did not know what to expect. GSK Contemporary 2009, the second annual Contemporary art season at 6 Burlington gardens, featured new and recent work for 35 leading international contemporary artists, including commissions from up and coming artists.

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Mona Hatoum, ‘Hot Spot’, 2006. GSK3 Stainless steel and neon tube, 220 x 220 cm. David Roberts Collection, London. Photo Stephen White, courtesy White Cube

With all the recent debate about Climate Change and the world becoming increasingly concerned with the fate of our planet, I guess it’s only fitting that the art world would jump on the bandwagon. What was Tracey Emin doing there being interviewed in front of an embroidered calico she exclusively created for the occasion? Titled I loved you like the Sky, 2009, this was typical Emin’s fare but I couldn’t help but wonder what the artist was doing there; Tracy Emin is more renowned for her appropriation of traditional female crafts than her discourse on the earth’s stability.

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Edward Burtynsky, ‘Super Pit #4, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia’, 2007. Chromogenic Colour Print. © The artist, courtesy Flowers, London

With hindsight, it was a rather peculiar show with a jumble of many different medias, rather like an overview of how the various offshoots of the arts are currently dealing with issues of sustainability, ecology, the role of the artist in the cycle of human and cultural evolution and so on. Such shows have to try hard to tie it all into an overall visual and experiential aesthetic. Did it work? Yes and no, but I left feeling educated and marked by some of the artwork on displays.

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Emma Wieslander, ‘Derwentwater I’, 2006. c-type print, 30 x 30 cm. © Emma Wieslander

Call me naïve and it might sound corny to you but I believe art can change the world one little step at a time. I guess you wouldn’t be reading Amelia’s if you did not believe in that too just a little bit. The artists in the sections Destruction and Re-Reality unquestionably have faith in that axiom. In Tracey Moffatt’s mesmerising video collage Doomed, 2007, the viewer is bombarded with spliced-together Hollywood disaster scenes and forced to consider his /her fascination with disaster. The macho behaviour of the upper-middle class Israeli man who owns a 4×4 solely for “sport/play” becomes an exercise in futile nonsense highlighted by Yael Bartana in Kings of the Hill, 2003.

GSK1

Yao Lu, ‘Spring in the City’, 2009. C-Print, 120 x 120 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Red Mansion Foundation

Yao Lus Spring in the City, 2009 was my favourite piece; Lu’s photograph of mounds of rubbish, somewhere between classical ink painting and photography, is a seething critique of the radical upheavals China is experiencing right now. The chard remains of a forest fire form the basis of Cornelia Parker’s Heart of Darkness, 2004, a beautiful installation between 3D charcoal drawing and wood sculpture. She says: ‘this forest fire seemed to be a metaphor for the disastrous consequences of political tinkering. From the hanging chards in the US elections, to the cutting down of rainforests to grow bio fuels to power hummers.’

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Cornelia Parker, Heart of Darkness (detail), 2004. Charcoal from a Florida Wildfire (prescribed forest burn that got out of control). 3.23 x 3.96 x 3.23 m. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London

The problem with a show like this is that its honest message and best intentions are rather muddied by having a big corporate player like GlaxoSmithKline sponsor it. The irony of having this company, one of the leading pharmaceutical and healthcare giants attached to this particular show was not lost on me. The press release advertised them as being “committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer. GSK is one of the largest givers in the FTSE 100 and has a long history of supporting art initiatives that encourage creative thinking.” What I read between the lines is that this is a great PR coup for a sector that does not always wear pristine white gloves and dove’s wings…Shame, really.

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Antti Laitinen, ‘It’s My Island I’, 2007. Video. © the artist. Image courtesy the artist and Nettie Horn. Photo: Antti Laitinen

Categories ,art, ,contemporary, ,contemporary art, ,Cornelia Parker, ,Earth: Art of a Changing World, ,ecology, ,Edward Burtynsky, ,Emma Wieslander, ,Exhibition Review, ,film, ,GlaxoSmithKline, ,global warming, ,GSK Contemporary 2009, ,installation, ,Mariele Neudecker, ,photography, ,Royal academy of arts, ,sculpture, ,Tracey Moffatt, ,Tracy Emin, ,Yael Bartana, ,Yao Lu

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Amelia’s Magazine | From One Extreme to the Other at Idea Generation Gallery

Michael filming_01
Mikey filming in the beautiful Huancabamba valley.  All photos courtsey of Mikey Watts.

I’d first heard about Mikey’s film back in October. Perusing The Guardian, thumb I noticed a video and article about alleged torture in the province of Piura, erectile northern Peru, linked to a mining company called Monterrico Metals. It was a British company, and yet there was barely a whisper of news about it in the UK. In 2003 Monterrico had pressed ahead with a copper mine project that the local population had not agreed to. The mine was going to occupy vital agricultural land and would pollute the valley’s water sources. Monterrico had a legal requirement to obtain the consent of at least two thirds of the population. They didn’t, but were supported by the government nonetheless and so went ahead with the mine. In 2005, locals, including children and the elderly, made their way to the mining site in a last attempt to have their objections recognised. They were tear gassed, arrested and tortured by police and the mine’s security guards.

It was a photographer from Peru, a friend and old flatmate from Barcelona, who sent me the link to Mikey’s video on vimeo.   Laguna Negra is a 20-minute study of how mining has affected people in the Huancabamba valley, northern Peru. The film follows two people, Servando and Cleofé, as they describe their lives, land, protest, how they are perceived, and question the purpose of environmentally and socially destructive ‘development’.   The film will be screened at an event tomorrow (Thursday), along with a Q&A with the director.  Mikey is only recently out a Documentary Film MA, but his film has already won two awards: Best International Documentary (Festival Internacional de Cine de Lebu 2010), and the Rights in Action International Award (Bang! Short Film Festival 2009) and he has some great projects coming up. I caught up with Mikey last week to discuss how it all started, his stay in Huancabamba, the impact of and inspiration behind the film, and the projects he’s working on now.

Cleofe and family

You started filming in the region in 2004, following research for a dissertation. What first inspired you to focus on opposition to mining in Huancabamba?

I started off studying Latin American studies at Liverpool and in my third year (2004), I went to do research for my dissertation in Peru. While I was in Lima, I started hearing about the anti-mining movement that was going on in Tambogrande. The mine got cancelled in the end, so it was big news over there. It was then that I decided to research the effect of mining on traditional farming societies. A journalist, Nelson Penaherrera, helped me a lot in planning who to interview and where to go. It was when I went up to meet him for the first time that Remberto Racho, one of the farmers opposed to the mine in Huancabamba, was killed by police (my first film ‘Rio Blanco: the story of the farmer and the mine’ was about this) so I decided to include the Rio Blanco conflict in my dissertation. My friend, David McNulty, came to visit me in June 2004, and since he had a camera with him we gathered footage for what eventually became that first documentary, Rio Blanco.

Your film centres on the experiences of two farmers, Servando and Cleofé. You break away from standard documentary style, forgoing a voiceover and talking heads, and devote the film to your protagonists’ accounts. What was the thinking behind that?

I wanted as much as possible to tell the story through the words and experiences of the people directly affected by the mining project. Although through the editing I, as the storyteller, choose what to include and what not to include (and so Servando and Cleofé’s words become the narration) I still feel that by removing myself almost entirely from the action the audience feels more directly involved with the place and its people. A voice-over narrative I think would take the story away from the people it is about. Also, in a practical sense, Servando and Cleofe sum the issues up in a far truer and personal way than I ever could – after all, they are the people who live day to day the problems the mine has brought – I was only there for three weeks.

Cleber _preferred choice_

The film opens with the scene of a boy sitting with a radio, with a broadcast about how selfish and ignorant the farmers are in not wanting the mine. The scene is a powerful contrast to what we hear later, yet also so simple and clear, and the boy is a true natural on camera! How did you come up with the idea?

The use of the boy with the radio happened through a chance encounter – I met him as we were walking the countryside around Huancabamba one day, he followed us for the day and we became friends. At the end of the day I asked him if he would mind being filmed with his radio and he did the rest! The reason I wanted to use the boy with the radio was to put across the mining company’s opinions through the local population’s experience of them. I could have tried to get an interview with Monterrico Metals, but really this would only have served to get the company’s PR responses to a Western student’s questions. By showing the day in day out propaganda machine the mining company uses to grind down any opposition to the project, the film can start to allow its audience to understand how the community experiences the mine. I was lucky to find the boy with the radio and his disinterested but commanding expression.

Tambogrande seemed like a real success story. Is there any similar hope for Huancabamba?

Tambogrande was a success story in the end, but the reasons for the cancellation of the mine really point towards what the Peruvian government’s plans for Piura are. It wasn’t officially cancelled because of the opposition to the project; it was cancelled because Monterrico lacked the necessary funds for the government to approve it. I am sure the huge protests and international campaign helped a lot, but officially this wasn’t why the mine was cancelled. So really this means that the Peruvian government isn’t conceding it was wrong over the project, and it continues to push on all fronts to make Piura into a mining department (like it’s done with nearby Cajamarca). I wish I could believe that the community in Huancabamba will be able to stop the Rio Blanco mine, but deep down I don’t have much hope. The mine is now owned by a Chinese company and the Peruvian government has just signed a whole load of trade agreements with China. The only real hope I think is for Tierra y Libertad, a new political party led by Marco Arana, to do well in the next elections. Marco Arana has been heavily involved with the anti-mining movement in the north of Peru and seems dedicated to the cause and the people who are having their lives destroyed by these mining projects.

Huancabamba landscape_01

So what specifically has changed around Huancabamba since you made the film?

Well, the government is still pushing the project forward, and is now militarising their presence in the region because of an attack in November on the mine site, which ended with the deaths of 2 security guys. The next month the police killed 2 farmers in a village near Huancabamba. The police had gone down to the village to arrest villagers they said were connected with the November deaths, the villagers formed a barricade to stop the police entering, and the police attacked them, killing two villagers – post mortem reports show that they were shot in the back as they were running away. So there’s still a lot of tension, the government is still refusing to re-engage through dialogue and simply insist the mining project is of national necessity and will not be abandoned.  

Were you involved in any way in the court hearing that went on in London recently?

I’ve carried on filming here in the UK so went to the court hearing, but I wasn’t involved in any way, just documenting it really. The court hearing at the end of the day won’t stop the mining project though – it will mean the victims of torture that took place in 2005 will get compensation, but the new Chinese owners of the mine (Zijin) will just say it took place when they weren’t owners so it isn’t their responsibility.

So there’s no hope the mine will be dropped?

In all honesty I don’t have much faith the government will see reason, Zijin will push ahead with the project, cause huge friction and destruction to the rural communities of the area, and possibly destroy the agricultural potential of the region as a whole. The really sad thing is that the government has now sold off nearly 30% of the land area of Piura to mining interests – they are all waiting for Rio Blanco to start operations and will then do the same themselves. The mind boggles really, just doesn’t seem to make any sense, but then again the draw to short term financial gain seems to always win against smaller interests such as the small scale farming practised around Huancabamba.

No to mining

How strong is the stereotype of the ignorant or violent campesino in Peru, and to what extent is it used to undermine the importance of agriculture?

The stereotype is definitely a prevalent view in the cities and mainstream media. Campesinos are often portrayed as backward and as not knowing what is best for them. Development is always in the context of growth rates, GDP, money – small scale farming practised by campesinos is not really given the appreciation it deserves considering it provides city dwellers with their food. Rhetoric of backwards looking violent terrorist campesinos is often used in the media to give justification to mining.

And how unified is the opposition to mining among the rural population?

What interested me was that most of the campesinos I talked to didn’t lambast mining in the way the government accuse them of doing. They understand the potential of mining to create jobs, and funds – they just are asking the government to think about where these mines are being built. If they are high up in the mountains, away from important water sources, and not in areas of agriculture then they can have a positive impact for the country.

Was the mainstream national media broadly for or against the farmers?

Broadly speaking the national media and the government give huge support to the mining industry – mainly because the mining lobby in Peru has huge power. There is however a large part of the Peruvian population who are campaigning for a different Peru which prioritises its people over its resources.

Servando and Dorila

How do you see the role of the documentary filmmaker and what do you hope to achieve?

Yes, I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot.  Sometimes I wonder what good it does, whether it goes any way to actually changing the situation.  I guess it is a hard one to gauge but all you can do is try to document what is happening in a creative and original way.  I think film is a great medium to tell the story of what is happening in these communities as images often speak louder than words.  I would be very happy if the films I make help to inform Peru’s urban population of the abuses suffered by the rural population.  I guess documentaries are one part of the general campaign to make things better and fairer for these communities. 

I guess on the role of the filmmaker I think it is important to go into a project with an open mind, a good deal of background research and the humility to listen to and give people a platform to speak about the issues that affect them.  I also think it is important to make a film that stands on its own as a good story, and as a beautiful film.  Campaiging films sometimes lose sight of this need and just focus on the issues.  I think the danger here is that the films will only preach to the converted – a film that keeps the attention of someone who doesn’t know about the issues, or actively supports what the campaign is against, is what I think the goal should be. 

Any plans to carry on documenting this issue?

Yes, definitely – this is kind of turning into a niche issue for me, and I definitely want to carry on making films about it. I really now want to make a feature documentary that connects the experiences of different communities around Latin America that are seeing their communities torn apart and their environment destroyed by large scale mining. These communities suffer very similar abuses at the hands of both their governments and the mining companies – I want to make a film that reveals this trend; that multinational companies based in countries like our own go to developing nations and do not respect the same laws they would have to here. So that is what I’m trying to do at the moment with my friend and co-director David McNulty. We are going to Guatemala and El Salvador to firstly document a conference that the Latin American Mining Monitoring Program is organising entitled, “WOMEN, MINING AND HUMAN RIGHTS: Beyond the Challenge.” We will then be going on to film research footage for our feature idea as well as producing two short documentaries about two communities affected by mining in Guatemala and El Salvador.

I think it’s a really interesting and important issue to focus on as it in many ways reflects the question of our time – do we continue taking all the resources we can from the earth or do we start thinking and acting in a more sustainable way to ensure our future generations have a decent earth to live from?

Neoliberal economics I think only prioritizes monetary growth, and doesn’t take into account other considerations such as environment, culture and worldview. I think the social conflict and environmental problems caused by mining really reflect the general question of how humanity chooses to act in the years to come – do we continue exploiting the earth without thought to the consequences, or do we start living more within our means?
Michael filming_01
Mikey filming in the beautiful Huancabamba valley.  All photos courtsey of Mikey Watts.

I’d first heard about Mikey’s film back in October. Perusing The Guardian, health I noticed a video and article about alleged torture in the province of Piura, northern Peru, linked to a mining company called Monterrico Metals. It was a British company, and yet there was barely a whisper of news about it in the UK. In 2003 Monterrico had pressed ahead with a copper mine project that the local population had not agreed to. The mine was going to occupy vital agricultural land and would pollute the valley’s water sources. Monterrico had a legal requirement to obtain the consent of at least two thirds of the population. They didn’t, but were supported by the government nonetheless and so went ahead with the mine. In 2005, locals, including children and the elderly, made their way to the mining site in a last attempt to have their objections recognised. They were tear gassed, arrested and tortured by police and the mine’s security guards.

It was a photographer from Peru, a friend and old flatmate from Barcelona, who sent me the link to Mikey’s video on vimeo.   Laguna Negra is a 20-minute study of how mining has affected people in the Huancabamba valley, northern Peru. The film follows two people, Servando and Cleofé, as they describe their lives, land, protest, how they are perceived, and question the purpose of environmentally and socially destructive ‘development’.   The film will be screened at an event tomorrow (Thursday), along with a Q&A with the director.  Mikey is only recently out a Documentary Film MA, but his film has already won two awards: Best International Documentary (Festival Internacional de Cine de Lebu 2010), and the Rights in Action International Award (Bang! Short Film Festival 2009) and he has some great projects coming up. I caught up with Mikey last week to discuss how it all started, his stay in Huancabamba, the impact of and inspiration behind the film, and the projects he’s working on now.

Cleofe and family

You started filming in the region in 2004, following research for a dissertation. What first inspired you to focus on opposition to mining in Huancabamba?

I started off studying Latin American studies at Liverpool and in my third year (2004), I went to do research for my dissertation in Peru. While I was in Lima, I started hearing about the anti-mining movement that was going on in Tambogrande. The mine got cancelled in the end, so it was big news over there. It was then that I decided to research the effect of mining on traditional farming societies. A journalist, Nelson Penaherrera, helped me a lot in planning who to interview and where to go. It was when I went up to meet him for the first time that Remberto Racho, one of the farmers opposed to the mine in Huancabamba, was killed by police (my first film ‘Rio Blanco: the story of the farmer and the mine’ was about this) so I decided to include the Rio Blanco conflict in my dissertation. My friend, David McNulty, came to visit me in June 2004, and since he had a camera with him we gathered footage for what eventually became that first documentary, Rio Blanco.

Your film centres on the experiences of two farmers, Servando and Cleofé. You break away from standard documentary style, forgoing a voiceover and talking heads, and devote the film to your protagonists’ accounts. What was the thinking behind that?

I wanted as much as possible to tell the story through the words and experiences of the people directly affected by the mining project. Although through the editing I, as the storyteller, choose what to include and what not to include (and so Servando and Cleofé’s words become the narration) I still feel that by removing myself almost entirely from the action the audience feels more directly involved with the place and its people. A voice-over narrative I think would take the story away from the people it is about. Also, in a practical sense, Servando and Cleofe sum the issues up in a far truer and personal way than I ever could – after all, they are the people who live day to day the problems the mine has brought – I was only there for three weeks.

Cleber _preferred choice_

The film opens with the scene of a boy sitting with a radio, with a broadcast about how selfish and ignorant the farmers are in not wanting the mine. The scene is a powerful contrast to what we hear later, yet also so simple and clear, and the boy is a true natural on camera! How did you come up with the idea?

The use of the boy with the radio happened through a chance encounter – I met him as we were walking the countryside around Huancabamba one day, he followed us for the day and we became friends. At the end of the day I asked him if he would mind being filmed with his radio and he did the rest! The reason I wanted to use the boy with the radio was to put across the mining company’s opinions through the local population’s experience of them. I could have tried to get an interview with Monterrico Metals, but really this would only have served to get the company’s PR responses to a Western student’s questions. By showing the day in day out propaganda machine the mining company uses to grind down any opposition to the project, the film can start to allow its audience to understand how the community experiences the mine. I was lucky to find the boy with the radio and his disinterested but commanding expression.

Tambogrande seemed like a real success story. Is there any similar hope for Huancabamba?

Tambogrande was a success story in the end, but the reasons for the cancellation of the mine really point towards what the Peruvian government’s plans for Piura are. It wasn’t officially cancelled because of the opposition to the project; it was cancelled because Monterrico lacked the necessary funds for the government to approve it. I am sure the huge protests and international campaign helped a lot, but officially this wasn’t why the mine was cancelled. So really this means that the Peruvian government isn’t conceding it was wrong over the project, and it continues to push on all fronts to make Piura into a mining department (like it’s done with nearby Cajamarca). I wish I could believe that the community in Huancabamba will be able to stop the Rio Blanco mine, but deep down I don’t have much hope. The mine is now owned by a Chinese company and the Peruvian government has just signed a whole load of trade agreements with China. The only real hope I think is for Tierra y Libertad, a new political party led by Marco Arana, to do well in the next elections. Marco Arana has been heavily involved with the anti-mining movement in the north of Peru and seems dedicated to the cause and the people who are having their lives destroyed by these mining projects.

Huancabamba landscape_01

So what specifically has changed around Huancabamba since you made the film?

Well, the government is still pushing the project forward, and is now militarising their presence in the region because of an attack in November on the mine site, which ended with the deaths of 2 security guys. The next month the police killed 2 farmers in a village near Huancabamba. The police had gone down to the village to arrest villagers they said were connected with the November deaths, the villagers formed a barricade to stop the police entering, and the police attacked them, killing two villagers – post mortem reports show that they were shot in the back as they were running away. So there’s still a lot of tension, the government is still refusing to re-engage through dialogue and simply insist the mining project is of national necessity and will not be abandoned.  

Were you involved in any way in the court hearing that went on in London recently?

I’ve carried on filming here in the UK so went to the court hearing, but I wasn’t involved in any way, just documenting it really. The court hearing at the end of the day won’t stop the mining project though – it will mean the victims of torture that took place in 2005 will get compensation, but the new Chinese owners of the mine (Zijin) will just say it took place when they weren’t owners so it isn’t their responsibility.

So there’s no hope the mine will be dropped?

In all honesty I don’t have much faith the government will see reason, Zijin will push ahead with the project, cause huge friction and destruction to the rural communities of the area, and possibly destroy the agricultural potential of the region as a whole. The really sad thing is that the government has now sold off nearly 30% of the land area of Piura to mining interests – they are all waiting for Rio Blanco to start operations and will then do the same themselves. The mind boggles really, just doesn’t seem to make any sense, but then again the draw to short term financial gain seems to always win against smaller interests such as the small scale farming practised around Huancabamba.

No to mining

How strong is the stereotype of the ignorant or violent campesino in Peru, and to what extent is it used to undermine the importance of agriculture?

The stereotype is definitely a prevalent view in the cities and mainstream media. Campesinos are often portrayed as backward and as not knowing what is best for them. Development is always in the context of growth rates, GDP, money – small scale farming practised by campesinos is not really given the appreciation it deserves considering it provides city dwellers with their food. Rhetoric of backwards looking violent terrorist campesinos is often used in the media to give justification to mining.

And how unified is the opposition to mining among the rural population?

What interested me was that most of the campesinos I talked to didn’t lambast mining in the way the government accuse them of doing. They understand the potential of mining to create jobs, and funds – they just are asking the government to think about where these mines are being built. If they are high up in the mountains, away from important water sources, and not in areas of agriculture then they can have a positive impact for the country.

Was the mainstream national media broadly for or against the farmers?

Broadly speaking the national media and the government give huge support to the mining industry – mainly because the mining lobby in Peru has huge power. There is however a large part of the Peruvian population who are campaigning for a different Peru which prioritises its people over its resources.

Servando and Dorila

How do you see the role of the documentary filmmaker and what do you hope to achieve?

Yes, I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot.  Sometimes I wonder what good it does, whether it goes any way to actually changing the situation.  I guess it is a hard one to gauge but all you can do is try to document what is happening in a creative and original way.  I think film is a great medium to tell the story of what is happening in these communities as images often speak louder than words.  I would be very happy if the films I make help to inform Peru’s urban population of the abuses suffered by the rural population.  I guess documentaries are one part of the general campaign to make things better and fairer for these communities. 

I guess on the role of the filmmaker I think it is important to go into a project with an open mind, a good deal of background research and the humility to listen to and give people a platform to speak about the issues that affect them.  I also think it is important to make a film that stands on its own as a good story, and as a beautiful film.  Campaiging films sometimes lose sight of this need and just focus on the issues.  I think the danger here is that the films will only preach to the converted – a film that keeps the attention of someone who doesn’t know about the issues, or actively supports what the campaign is against, is what I think the goal should be. 

Any plans to carry on documenting this issue?

Yes, definitely – this is kind of turning into a niche issue for me, and I definitely want to carry on making films about it. I really now want to make a feature documentary that connects the experiences of different communities around Latin America that are seeing their communities torn apart and their environment destroyed by large scale mining. These communities suffer very similar abuses at the hands of both their governments and the mining companies – I want to make a film that reveals this trend; that multinational companies based in countries like our own go to developing nations and do not respect the same laws they would have to here. So that is what I’m trying to do at the moment with my friend and co-director David McNulty. We are going to Guatemala and El Salvador to firstly document a conference that the Latin American Mining Monitoring Program is organising entitled, “WOMEN, MINING AND HUMAN RIGHTS: Beyond the Challenge.” We will then be going on to film research footage for our feature idea as well as producing two short documentaries about two communities affected by mining in Guatemala and El Salvador.

I think it’s a really interesting and important issue to focus on as it in many ways reflects the question of our time – do we continue taking all the resources we can from the earth or do we start thinking and acting in a more sustainable way to ensure our future generations have a decent earth to live from?

Neoliberal economics I think only prioritizes monetary growth, and doesn’t take into account other considerations such as environment, culture and worldview. I think the social conflict and environmental problems caused by mining really reflect the general question of how humanity chooses to act in the years to come – do we continue exploiting the earth without thought to the consequences, or do we start living more within our means?
MEN-promo-pic.aspx1

We’re completely entranced by the art/performance band that is MEN. How can you not go weak at the knees for a diverse musical stew that fuses dance and electro beats with rock music and combines this with a dose of political and social activism that takes in complex subject matters such as gender roles, sickness wartime economies and sexual politics? Oh, ed and their live shows are pretty wild too.

For the uninitiated, a little backround info: MEN are made up of JD Samson, best known for her involvement with Le Tigre and a 2006/2007 playmate of Peaches in her backing band The Herms, Michael O’Neill (Ladybug Transistor) and Ginger Brooks Takahashi (LTTR) as well as fellow Le Tigre member Johanna Fateman who remains in the backround alongside artist Emily Roysdon and contributes as writers, consultants, and producers; as you can see, MEN have a pretty stellar pedigree.

silence

A short while back, we managed to catch them in their fly by night visit to the UK, where they briefly rocked up in Brighton, Soho’s legendary Madam Jo-Jo’s and the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen (where Amelia’s Magazine squeezed our way to the front of the room). The crowd were made up of a mix of music label A&Rs (MEN are very much the hot ones to watch for 2010, don’t you know) and devoted fans of JD from her Le Tigre days.

JD, the charismatic little devil that she is, had the crowd wrapped around her little finger and calling out for more, as witnessed in the rapturous reception she received as she bodypopped her way through ‘Simultaneously‘. As MEN’s guitar riffs joined forces with a deep electro beat, friends of the band stood at the back of the stage holding banners high, as you can see from the photos.

fuck youred shot

A couple of days later, we had an email chat with JD and asked her to tell us a little more about what makes MEN tick……

We loved your live show, it was electric! Combining the elements of art and performance seems like an integral part of a MEN gig, can you share with us why this is important to you?

Being on stage is an opportunity to explore that space of performer, musician, and artist with an audience and bringing together elements of agit-prop theater, dance music, and the live rock band is a project we’re totally invested in.

What messages do you want your audience to leave a MEN gig with?

Questions about who we are in the world, where our money comes from, and how powerful it can be for people to gather together and share our space and time.

MEN don’t shy away from including hard hitting subjects such as sexual politics and war-time economics in the lyrics, unlike many other bands and singers. Is it safe to say that there isn’t enough activism in music right now?

I don’t want to judge other artists about what they want to talk about in their own art. We make music that talks about our lives and what we think about and where we exist as humans on this planet. Not many people talk about war time economies and gender fluidity but we do. and we are happy to be a queer activist band.
JD, Is your involvement with MEN different from your part in Le Tigre and if so, how?

Of course this experience is different for me. I am working with two new musicians whose collaborative efforts bring totally new elements to my music. I am still me, so a lot of my music and aesthetics are similar, but I have grown since writing with Le Tigre and I think its clear that we are doing something different and have new discussions with a new audience.

Celeste-Dupuy-Spencer.aspxIllustration by Celeste Dupuy-Spencer

What are the plans for MEN in the next year? And what subject matters would you like to tackle next in your songs?

In 2010 we will be working on our album, finishing our album and then sharing it with the world on tour. We’re excited to be making a new performance in Mexico City this summer with live hand drummers and our painter friend Celeste Dupuy-Spencer. We’ll also be performing at the 35th Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival!

MEN-promo-pic.aspx1

We’re completely entranced by the art/performance band that is MEN. How can you not go weak at the knees for a diverse musical stew that fuses dance and electro beats with rock music and combines this with a dose of political and social activism that takes in complex subject matters such as gender roles, buy wartime economies and sexual politics? Oh, cheap and their live shows are pretty wild too.

For the uninitiated, this site a little backround info: MEN are made up of JD Samson, best known for her involvement with Le Tigre and a 2006/2007 playmate of Peaches in her backing band The Herms, Michael O’Neill (Ladybug Transistor) and Ginger Brooks Takahashi (LTTR) as well as fellow Le Tigre member Johanna Fateman who remains in the backround alongside artist Emily Roysdon and contributes as writers, consultants, and producers; as you can see, MEN have a pretty stellar pedigree.

silence

A short while back, we managed to catch them in their fly by night visit to the UK, where they briefly rocked up in Brighton, Soho’s legendary Madam Jo-Jo’s and the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen (where Amelia’s Magazine squeezed our way to the front of the room). The crowd were made up of a mix of music label A&Rs (MEN are very much the hot ones to watch for 2010, don’t you know) and devoted fans of JD from her Le Tigre days.

JD, the charismatic little devil that she is, had the crowd wrapped around her little finger and calling out for more, as witnessed in the rapturous reception she received as she bodypopped her way through ‘Simultaneously‘. As MEN’s guitar riffs joined forces with a deep electro beat, friends of the band stood at the back of the stage holding banners high, as you can see from the photos.

fuck youred shot

A couple of days later, we had an email chat with JD and asked her to tell us a little more about what makes MEN tick……

We loved your live show, it was electric! Combining the elements of art and performance seems like an integral part of a MEN gig, can you share with us why this is important to you?

Being on stage is an opportunity to explore that space of performer, musician, and artist with an audience and bringing together elements of agit-prop theater, dance music, and the live rock band is a project we’re totally invested in.

What messages do you want your audience to leave a MEN gig with?

Questions about who we are in the world, where our money comes from, and how powerful it can be for people to gather together and share our space and time.

MEN don’t shy away from including hard hitting subjects such as sexual politics and war-time economics in the lyrics, unlike many other bands and singers. Is it safe to say that there isn’t enough activism in music right now?

I don’t want to judge other artists about what they want to talk about in their own art. We make music that talks about our lives and what we think about and where we exist as humans on this planet. Not many people talk about war time economies and gender fluidity but we do. and we are happy to be a queer activist band.
JD, Is your involvement with MEN different from your part in Le Tigre and if so, how?

Of course this experience is different for me. I am working with two new musicians whose collaborative efforts bring totally new elements to my music. I am still me, so a lot of my music and aesthetics are similar, but I have grown since writing with Le Tigre and I think its clear that we are doing something different and have new discussions with a new audience.

Celeste-Dupuy-Spencer.aspxIllustration by Celeste Dupuy-Spencer

What are the plans for MEN in the next year? And what subject matters would you like to tackle next in your songs?

In 2010 we will be working on our album, finishing our album and then sharing it with the world on tour. We’re excited to be making a new performance in Mexico City this summer with live hand drummers and our painter friend Celeste Dupuy-Spencer. We’ll also be performing at the 35th Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival!

dyWarhol-and-Edi-with-scarfAll photographs courtesy of Idea Generation

The Warhol connection is a looming one, ambulance overshadowing many of the artistic talents tied to it, viagra their skills and achievements gobbled up by all that The Factory and the surrounding pop culture of 1960s New York has come to represent. But had it all been down to a single blonde-bobbed man – brutally brilliant as he may have been – it’s doubtful that the events of those days would continue to resonate so deeply through modern-day music, film and fashion. While aided by their associates, ultimately these individuals made themselves, be that via their romantic trials and intoxicated tribulations – or their undeniable creative talents.

dykhmer-6

Photojournalist Nat Finkelstein was ‘there’ – that is, perched on the couch in the Velvet Underground practice room watching Nico catch up on the headlines mid rehearsal; trailing Bob Dylan as Andy Warhol led him on a guided tour around The Factory; snapping a dreaming Edie Sedgwick absentmindedly sucking on her necklace chain, all oil-slick eyes and innocence. But he was also under the tutelage of the legendary Harper’s Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch; a star member of the PIX and Black Star photo agencies’ teams; in the thick of the civil rights movement as a documentary photographer and activist; and, as a result of these provocative actions, traveling the Silk Road through the Middle East from 1969 after a warrant was issued for his arrest in the United States.

dyassata

The ‘From One Extreme to the Other’ exhibition – now in its final week – that celebrates the work of Finkelstein is a broad and deep retrospective of a photojournalist whose visual documentation provided rare unguarded insights into the US subcultures and political movements of the latter 20th century. ‘From One Extreme to the Other’ spans Finkelstein’s life works, five decades of photographs through which he brought not just The Factory’s wild innards but the searing political heat of America’s mid-‘60s anti-war protests and the heady thrills and debauched spills of the New York rave scene of the ‘90s to his viewers.

dyduchamp

‘From One Extreme to the Other’ runs until 14th February and is an essential date for anybody interested in the power of the camera to capture more than its subjects consciously choose to expose. The exhibition, which took over the Idea Generation Gallery just weeks after Finkelstein’s death in October of last year, is a fitting tribute to the man whose shutter clicks drew the world’s attention to US unrest and underground tribes. Here – as the likes of Warhol knew – was a maker of icons; a man who had the ability to propel their image around the world.

dylanwarhol

Categories ,Andy Warhol, ,Bob Dylan, ,celebrities, ,Exhibition Review, ,Gallery, ,Harper’s Bazaar, ,Idea Generation, ,music, ,musician, ,Nat Finkelstein, ,Nico, ,photography, ,Pop Art, ,The Factory, ,Velvet Underground

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Ramon Gurillo by Katie Harnett
Ramon Gurillo by Katie Harnett

In this blog I’m going to kill two fashionable birds with one stone. Mainly because they were designers I’ve never heard of before and also because I didn’t go too crazy for them.

Over in Victoria House I bumped into ex intern Sarah Barnes at Ramon Gurillo: turns out that she’s interning now with Fashion156 (who you will remember that I met in the front row over at Charlie Le Mindu), malady small world that it is. Apparently they’ve got money from the Fashion Council over yonder so it’s all straight reportage, ambulance as quick as possible. NOT SO HERE FOLKS. You’ll hear my views exactly as they are, look undiluted – some of the time – even by good common sense. And complete with rambling interludes aplenty. That’s just how we roll I’m afraid. Ain’t no one giving us money.

Ramon Gurillo by Katie Harnett
Ramon Gurillo by Katie Harnett

Ramon was all about the yarn and I found myself wondering (not for the first time it has to be said) if, finally, knitwear has come of age. Maybe I should resurrect my knitwear business after all. Yes, I designed a range of 80s influenced handknits made from mohair and vegetable dyed British rare sheep wool at about the same time as I launched Amelia’s Magazine, fact fans. It was called avb (a nickname from my parents). But I just couldn’t do both. Madness it was. In fact big bags of unused wool are at this very moment languishing in my parent’s attic, no doubt being decimated by moths as we speak.

Ramon had some very sexy metallic glittery lips but I’m afraid the same glamourous intent had not been applied to his collection – which was far too tasteful for me. I did very much like the bold concertina (metallic, again) necklaces. Sorry, back to the knitwear. There were lots of lacy knit tights and leggings (possibly belonging to the stylist) which I quite liked, although I have to say that at the rate I put holes in my own leggings choosing to buy ones with pre-made holes would seem foolhardy at best. The best piece was a wonderful holey sweater dress, and I liked all the dangly bulbous bits and ruched details that appeared on other items.

Ramon Gurillo by Katie Harnett
Ramon Gurillo by Katie Harnett

After the show Sarah and I went to the tiny press room in the On/Off building, where I proceeded to stylishly tip nuts all over the bottom of my bag and then all over the blow-up sofa whilst Sarah attempted to upload a hasty blog. When she failed to make an internet connection we headed off to the Bodyamr show over at the gorgeous Freemasons’ Hall. We were herded into yet another staggeringly beautiful hall – featuring heavily ornate ceilings and shuttered wooden divisions between two antechambers. I sat tapping my feet and wondering how likely it was that I would make it to the next show (Bora Aksu), as rumours began to circulate on twitter that Nicola Roberts of Girls Aloud was in the front row. Well, not where I was she weren’t, but she could have been the other side of the division. Dammit. I do find it ever so amusing that Nicola, once the most pitied and derided member of the band, is now the coolest fashionista of the lot. Oh how those tangerine days of yore must haunt her now!

Bodyamr by Saroj Patel
Bodyamr by Saroj Patel

In the end I decided to lurk at the back so I could make a hasty exit, and only got to see the first few looks of the Bodyamr collection. Usually enough to make a thorough and precise analysis of a show I find. The show was opened by a model of staggering non-beauty and I registered with amusement a few confused smirks in the front row opposite me. A very odd choice indeed. It was then straight into “sports luxe” of the type we’ve seen many times before. Looking back at the catwalk pictures of the outfits I missed my favourites were definitely the ruche print dresses. But then you can always win me over with a bit of splashy coloured print.

Fortunately I managed to make it over to Bora Aksu in time….
DPP07D80C10103A15All photographs courtesy of Gavin Bond. The Killers

The latest retrospective exhibition by acclaimed photographer Gavin Bond celebrates the best of his music work. Acting as a visual encyclopaedia of 21st Century rock icons, click the exhibition features magazine front covers and live shots of U2, ampoule The Killers, nurse Kings of Leon, Katy Perry, Green Day and Grace Jones amongst others.
Bond is not unaccustomed to staging intricately and strategically arranged shoots and one of the most difficult shots to capture was the image of kings of Leon bursting through shards of glass.
Kings-of-LeonKings of Leon

“We blew up sheets of glass with explosives in a warehouse and had to build a hide for me and the camera as thousands of pieces of exploded glass flew across the room,” says Bond. “It took a few attempts to get the explosion right, I’m sure we were heard right across London.”

Untitled-1U2
Bond doesn’t just shoot musical artists; he is also a renowned portrait and fashion photographer. One common theme, which runs throughout his work, is his skill for capturing not only beautiful images but also tangible characters.
Katy

Katy Perry

“I love shooting people; I don’t see them as musical artists but as characters. I love to tell stories and capture moments whether it’s with an actor, model or musician. The approach is the same and there are many different approaches. I like shooting a variety of subjects.”
Razorlight

Razorlight

Curator Camilla Jones says that this show is important because, “Gavin has been the lead photographer for Q magazine for some time, with 11 of the last 12 covers being his work. All the photographs in the exhibition have been taken over a very short period of time. As a body of work they exemplify the output a leading photographer can amass from an extremely busy schedule”.

The exhibition opens at The Idea Generation Gallery on February 23rd and runs until March 21st.

Categories ,exhibition, ,Exhibition Review, ,Gallery, ,Grace Jones, ,Idea Generation, ,Katy Perry, ,Kings of Leon, ,music, ,musician, ,photography, ,portrait, ,Razorlight, ,restrospective, ,The Killers, ,U2

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