Craig Alan started his artistic life as a street artist making portraits. As time went on he began to push the boundaries of his work leading him to make these portraits using people as pixels, a sort of human pixelation of famous people – people as an amalgam of other people.
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Artist Zilvinas Kempinas uses VHS tape in much of his art and with his work, ‘Tube’, first installed in 2008 and later shown at the Venice Biennale in 2009 he made the most incredible installation with the material. To make it Kempinas strung tape parallel to the ground creating a large translucent tube that viewers could walk through. It was his intention for the participant to have a physical and optical experience while walking through the tube addressing as it does the passage of time and the perception of the body and architecture. As he says himself:
I am attracted to things that are capable of transcending their own banality and materiality to become something else, something more. I like the way that videotape is simultaneously delicate and durable, since it’s meant to last. I can rip it easily with my hands because it’s so thin, but I can also stretch it. Videotape is made to present the world in color, but it appears purely black. It’s supposed to be this safe container of the past, but it is destined to vanish like a dinosaur, to become obsolete, pushed away by new technologies. It’s a familiar mass-produced commodity, but it can be surprisingly sensual and can look almost alive if set in motion. It can be seen as a solid, thick, black line, but it can also disappear right in front of your eyes if it’s turned on its side
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Jim Morrison died 41 years ago yesterday so I thought I’d post up this documentary about The Doors, ‘When You’re Strange’ by Tom DiCillo and narrated by Johnny Depp. Whether you are or not a Doors fan they are, and always will be a permanent fixture in the firmanent of rock and cultural history. Continue reading »
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Hottea, also known as Eric Rieger, has recently completed this installation, titled ‘Letting Go’ at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Mostly known for his smaller street art works using yarn this project took 84 miles of coloured string to realise his interpretation of the sun. Here’s what he has to say about it:
At least once in our lives we have all had to let go of something we truly love. Whether it be a pet, personal object or in some cases, loved ones. This piece is my interpretation of the sun. The sun brings life and also represents happiness, warmth and energy. When letting go of something or someone we truly love, sometimes it is okay to celebrate their lives along with mourning. This piece represents the warmth and love I have received from those I have had to let go of.
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Escif is quite unlike many street artists. There is something more to the work, something going on underneath the clever images, its not all there for you to simply digest. You need to think, you need to make connections between the image and the concept behind the image. Continue reading »
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‘La Queue de la Souris’ by Benjamin Renner is a beautiful graphic animation film based on Aesop’s fable of The Lion and the Mouse. However, in this version Renner gives the story a bit of a twist imagining how the story might have ended had the mouse been a little more cunning, machiavelian. Continue reading »
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Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen have drawn on the histories of conceptual art, activism and advertising to produce this collection of 100 black and white posterworks. Each is created with a standard composition and handpainted sign and all were made to encourage and participate in public dialogue.
Through the poster work the two artists hope to address philosophical questions, political and artistic issues as well as quote, complain, poke fun and indirectly document our lives. Continue reading »
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Chinese artist Li Wei creates work that is a mixture of performance art and photography. His projects are generally centred around creating illusions of dangerous realities such as flying and falling. What’s hard to believe is that his photographs are not computer generated. Continue reading »
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Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has created a series ‘Oil’ in which he travelled the world documenting the effect of oil on all our lives from its extraction to its use, his images revealing the rarely seen mechanics of its production. The series is divided into four parts; extraction, Detroit, transportaton and the end of oil.
Here’s what he says about his work:
Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.
These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.
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In February 1977, an unhappy fan, Stephen Gard, wrote a letter to comedian Spike Milligan with a number of complaints about his recently published account of World War II, ‘Monty’. Spike, who had been wounded in action as a lance bombardier during the Battle of Monte Cassino, wrote the following letter back to Gard. And in true Milligan style its very funny and damning in equal measure. A splendid put down.
28th February, 1977
Dear Stephen,
Questions, questions, questions. If you are disappointed in my book ‘MONTY’, so am I. I must be more disappointed than you because I spent a year collecting material for it, and it was a choice of having it made into a suit or a book.
There are lots of one liners in the book, but then when the German Army are throwing bloody great lumps of hot iron at you, one only has time for one liners. In fact, the book should really consist of the following:
“Oh fuck”
“Look out”
“Christ here’s another”
“Where did that fall?”
“My lorry’s on fire”
“Oh Christ, the cook is dead”You realise a book just consisting of those would just be the end, so my one liners are extensions of these brevities.
Then you are worried because as yet I have not mentioned my meeting with Secombe and later Sellers. Well by the end of the Monty book I had as yet not met either Secombe or Sellers. I met Secombe in Italy, which will be in vol 4, and I am arranging to meet Peter Sellers on page 78 of vol 5 in London. I’m sorry I can’t put back the clock to meet Secombe in 1941, to alleviate your disappointment — hope springs anew with the information I have given you.
Another thing that bothers you is “cowardice in the face of the enemy”. Well, the point is I suffered from cowardice in the face of the enemy throughout the war — in the face of the enemy, also in the legs, the elbows, and the wrists; in fact, after two years in the front line a mortar bomb exploded by my head (or was it my head exploded by a mortar bomb), and it so frightened me, I put on a tremendous act of stammering, stuttering, and shivering. This mixed with cries of “mother” and a free flow of dysentery enabled me to be taken out of the line and down-graded to B2. But for that brilliant performance, this letter would be coming to you from a grave in Italy.
Any more questions from you and our friendship is at an end.
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Australian artist Lisa Rodden has made these beautiful hand cut paper artworks. Usually its not my thing but these are so precise, almost peaceful and and are wonderfully designed – each piece cut, folded and layered over different coloured paper. Much of her work relates to the beauty of the world around us that as she says herself:
How much do we miss out on because we don’t take the time to learn or to listen or to look? But beauty is always there lying dormant, waiting to be discovered
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Jack Kerouac is one of my heroes. I know. Cliche. But there you have it. I love his writing, his prose and, over the years, have devoured most of his books. So on that note I thought I’d give you his 30 tips on writing which he called ‘Belief and Technique for Modern Prose’.” They’re not what you think they might be infact some of it barely makes sense:
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I thought ‘Les Pasayges’, an animation film by Jerónimo Rocha, would be the perfect summer post seeing as everyone I know is either on holiday, planning on going on holiday or has just been on holiday. It tells the story of a group of friends who head off on holiday in a caravan of vintage vehicles. The destination? Rocha’s office. It’s light, well made and just the thing for summer.
I’ve also included the ‘making of’ video if you’re interested.
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Here we get to watch the wonderful Wassily Kandinsky – one of the 20th Centurys most influential painters, a pinoeer of abstract art – painting in an early film clip. Continue reading »
The film was made in 1926 by Hans Cürlis, one of the earliest art documentary filmmakers, at the Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf in Berlin. At that time Kandinsky was teaching at the Bauhaus, the same year he published his second major treatise, On Point and Line to Plane. The work in this film is typical of Kandinskys method of contrasting straight lines and curves. It was an method of abstraction that Kandinsky believed could lead an artist to deeper truths by dispensing with the depiction of external objects and by looking within.
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Alain Delorme has shot this series of beautiful photographs called ‘Totems’. And yes they are photographs. Look closely. The work focusses on the material excess of globalized societies, inspired by that ubiquitous figure – the man on the bike carrying, balancing, an impossible amount of objects.
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