We Made This

A Recent History of Writing and Drawing

Now this looks interesting.  

A Recent History of Writing and Drawing is the new show at the ICA, opening on Wednesday 9 July. It's curated by design historian Emily King (who's also design editor at Frieze magazine), and is a project by programmer/designer Jürg Lehni, and graphic designer Alex Rich.  

  

The exhibition will look at "the evolving relationship between technologies of communication and their users", which sounds a bit dry, but should be lots of fun. They've got a large wall-drawing machine, and another machine for hole-punching posters. They've also got a running programme of Thursday evening events which promise to be pretty groovy.  

  

We'll fill in some more detail once the show opens.  

  

Image: Dots on Demand, Jürg Lehni & Alex Rich, 2008

DHL viral hype

So, how do we feel about this one?  

  

It's called 'the biggest drawing in the world', and is the work of Erik Nordenankar. It was allegedly created by sending a GPS unit around the world (courtesy of DHL, with Erik, and a cameraman, along for the ride).  

  

It's spread across the web like wildfire, though nearly all the comments left by readers are saying it's a big old hoax. A lot of people are saying that either the GPS signal wouldn't transmit through the metal exterior of a plane, or that the flight plan would simply be too damned expensive, even if DHL are footing the bill. So did it actually happen, or is just a (rather finely crafted) viral? The site seems oddly free of the expected background to the genesis of the project, and Nordenankar seems to have very little web presence before doing it... though he did win a D&AD student award in an advertising category last year...  

  

Either way, both as a viral and an artistic project it's a neat concept, and it's certainly created a lot of web buzz. It'll be interesting to see which way this one goes. 
 
UPDATE: Erik Nordenankar has fessed up, (possibly a bit of gentle pressure from DHL?) admitting that the piece is a graduation project on his Advertising and Graphic Design course: "This is a fictional work. DHL did not transport the GPS at any time. DHL has kindly allowed me to film parts of their facilities and distribution. This is a personal graduation project." 
 
Give that boy a 1st. And a job. 
 
via Tantramar

Outsiders

The folks over at the achingly hip Lazarides Gallery have got a new permanent space opening on Charing Cross Road, and are kicking things off with a new show called Outsiders, featuring bits and pieces from the gallery's entire roster of artists, including Bast, 3D Del-Naja, Stanley Donwood (above), Faile, Conor Harrington and Paul Insect. The show launches on Friday 23 May, will be open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 to 7, and runs through to August 23.

Two shows, one (stolen) space

The folks at StolenSpace are keeping themselves mighty busy at the moment, consistently putting on some of the best shows in town.

Up next is the Draw show, which starts this Friday, 7 March, at their gallery at The Old Truman Brewery. The show originated at the Fuse Gallery in New York way back in October 2006 - you can check out a full gallery of the work over here. The exhibition features over 300 bits of pencil based goodness from the likes of D*Face, KAWS, HR Giger and EINE, and runs till 23 March.

Not content with that, StolenSpace is also putting on Lightness of Being, an exhibition of light based portraits by the wonderful Chris Levine, including some of the work created while working on his portrait of HRH (shown above).

(There's a good interview with him over on the Creative Review blog.)

It promises to be a great show, and kicks off on Friday 14 March, in an extra 13,000 sq feet StolenSpace have taken over at The Old Truman Brewery especially for this exhibition. It's only on until 23 March, so don't dawdle.

Rodchenko at the Hayward Gallery

We made our way over to the Southbank Centre on Saturday to check out the Alexander Rodchenko show that opened recently at the Hayward.

Rodchenko was both photographer and designer, and it's a really fantastic exhibition, with over 200 of his prints and photomontages, many of them co-created with his wife Varvara Stepanova.

Rodchenko was one of the first photographers to take advantage of the new light-weight Leica, and his compositions show an absolute passion for trying out new angles and viewpoints, freeing the camera from its previous permanent residence just above the photographer's bellybutton.

His work journeys through various different styles, from very formal images that play with shape and pattern, through photomontage pieces that show a bravura graphic style, to later photojournalistic work.

There's a great short film at the start of the show from the BBC's Genius of Photography series (unfortunately not available on the iPlayer), with Martin Parr taking a look at the work Rodchenko did on the wonderful USSR in Construction magazine.

The show runs till 27 April, and is well worth a look. (You'll get to see the Laughing in a Foreign Language show that's running there at the same time, though it left us a bit cold.)

In the beginning, there was the word

We've just been taking a look at artist & cultural activitst Martin Firrell's website, and it's rather lovely.

He works principally with projected text, and has created site specific pieces for the National Gallery, the Tate Britain and the Royal Opera House. He also created the Complete Hero project, which has been screened at Curzon cinemas.

His next project The Question Mark Inside will be a series of projections onto St Paul's Cathedral in November 2008, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the topping out of Christopher Wren's masterpiece. The projections will go onto the Cathedral Dome, the Ludgate Hill elevation and inside on the wall of the Whispering Gallery.

If you fancy getting involved, you can participate by adding your own thoughts on the meaning of life, and the meaning of St Paul's, at the project blog.

Eyes wide shut

We made our way over to the Tate Modern on Saturday to check out the new retrospective of work by Spanish artist Juan Muñoz.

Muñoz's last big exhibition at the Tate was his installation Double Bind in the turbine hall, shortly before his tragically early death in 2001.

The show is really quite brilliant. His work plays with the human figure, often at a distorted scale, and often in monochrome. It's a quiet show, but one that draws you in, allowing you to hang out in a very different world for an hour or so.

There were a couple of standout pieces for us. Many Times (above, 1999, image © The estate of Juan Muñoz) is an installation of one hundred cloned figures (based on an Art Nouveau ceramic bust that Muñoz discovered in a hotel). This crowd of smiling Asian men, all of them about 4' 6" tall, are clustered in groups, smiling and laughing. As you walk amongst them, you can't help but invent stories about them. What are they discussing? Why are they so happy? Why do they all look identical? It reminded us of the scene from Being John Malkovich (made in the same year) when John Malkovich enters his own mind and finds himself in a world populated just by John Malkovich clones. (Interestingly, Malkovich collaborated with Muñoz on a radio piece in 2001.)

You can't help wanting to join these men in their world, but there's also a feeling that you're not invited. (Muñoz said of his work: "It's always been said that statues are blind. They are looking inwards, and that looking inwards automatically excludes the receiver, the person in front.")

Stuttering Piece (1993) in the next room is small enough to almost be missed, but is a fantastic little installation of two doll-like figures engaged in a constantly looping (recorded) conversation. It's enormously reminiscent of Beckett and Pinter at their best, and reflects the theatricality present in much of Muñoz's work.

You should also make sure you check out the extra bit of the show, down on level 3, collectively called Conversation Piece.

Do try to get along, it's a great show.

As a footnote, we were gutted not to be able to take pictures at the show - we were very sternly told off when we tried, even though we were just using a camera-phone. The Tate has a rather draconian photographic policy, which we suspect might be in place to make sure that they sell lots of postcards. It's a real shame - visitors instinctively want to take pictures, and doing so brings them into a much stronger relationship with the work. You're allowed to photograph the work in the Turbine Hall, so it seems a shame not to allow it in the exhibitions.

Bic talent. Huge.

You've probably got a Bic biro. It's probably somewhere in your desk drawer, maybe hidden under some old post-its and a mess of elastic bands. You've probably had it sitting there for years, while you lavish your designer love on the showier stylings of a Gel Ink Rollerball Softgrip™ 0.5 tip Tecpoint Fineliner (only £6.50 each). Well shame on you sir or madam! Shame on you.

For just look at what your humble Bic can do if you truly have the skill to make it sing. This is the work of young Andalusian-born artist Juan Francisco Casas, who's currently got a show on at the Galeria Fernando Pradilla in Madrid.

He creates photorealist ballpen drawings and oil canvases, reproducing in incredible detail snaps of fleeting moments that he takes on his camera.

Check out more on him at his MySpace page. And if you fancy seeing what else people are doing with their Bics, check out this article about Reinventing the Bic Pen from Designboom.

(If Bic had half a brain, they'd be using this guy to showcase their pen. Instead, their current marketing involves this hideous flash site about pen-spinning. Watch out - loud irritating music alert. Duh.)

via The Guardian

The Fourth Plinth

In the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square there is a plinth. From 1841 until 1999 it stood empty, but more recently it's become a location for high-profile contemporary art, commissioned from leading artists, with each work being housed on the plinth for a year or two. This is mainly thanks to the RSA who initiated a programme of new commissions for the plinth in 1998.

The first piece that went up was by recent Turner prize winner Mark Wallinger. He created Ecce Homo, the rather elegant life size Christ figure, in 1999. Then Bill Woodrow had a go with Regardless of History, the book and tree sculpture, in 2000. Rachel Whiteread created Untitled Monument in 2001, an inverted resin cast of the plinth, which if you looked at it upside down, looked a bit like the entire planet had been put on a plinth.

In June 2002, a David Beckham waxwork model had an unauthorised appearance, but the GLA didn't let that last too long.

Marc Quinn's fantastic sculpture Alison Lapper Pregnant was next, from September 2005 to last October, neatly referencing the nearby one-armed Nelson. It was the first commission from the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Programme (after responsiblity for Trafalgar Square was transferred to the Mayor and the Greater London Authority).

The second in that series is Thomas Schütte’s sculpture Model for a Hotel, which was unveiled in November. It's made of a specially engineered glass (in yellow, red and blue) which collects light and reflects it through its edges. We think it looks a lot more 1987 than 2007, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether you experienced the 80s or not.

The six proposals for the next piece to go up have just been unveiled, and are on show at the National Gallery from now until 30 March. The lucky winner will be announced by the Mayor later in the year.

We really like the Fourth Plinth project, so we've decided to show all the proposals here, together with the explanations for each piece.


The Spoils of War (Memorial for an unknown civilian) Jeremy Deller

"‘The presentation of the spoils of war to a curious public dates back at least to the Roman Empire. My idea for the fourth plinth performs a similar role’, says Jeremy Deller, ‘It is not an artwork, but the remains of a vehicle that has been destroyed in an attack on civilians in Iraq’."


Something for the Future Tracey Emin

"For some years Tracey Emin has been interested in the social behaviour of meerkats, small mammals that live together in an egalitarian order in the Kalahari Desert, southern Africa. She has noticed that ‘whenever Britain is in crisis or, as a nation, is experiencing sadness and loss (for example, after Princess Diana’s funeral), the next programme on television is Meerkats United’. Emin proposes to place a sculpture of a small group of meerkats on the empty plinth as a symbol of unity and safety."


One and Other Antony Gormley

"Antony Gormley proposes that the fourth plinth is occupied 24 hours a day by members of the public who have volunteered to stand on it for an hour at a time. Over a period of 12 months, 8,760 people would take part. ‘Through elevation onto the plinth and removal from common ground’, explains Gormley, ‘the subjective living body becomes both representation and representative, encouraging consideration of diversity, vulnerability and the individual in contemporary society’. This is particularly pertinent in the context of Trafalgar Square with its military statues honouring specific individuals."


Sky Plinth Anish Kapoor

"Sky Plinth literally brings the clouds down to the ground ‘displaying’ the changing sky-scape as a ‘monument’ on Trafalgar Square. The five concave mirrors cantilever off the plinth treating all its faces as supports. The plinth is thought of as an object which is dematerialised by the mirrors. They turn the world upside down and in so doing bring the sky down to the ground."


Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle Yinka Shonibare

"Turner nominated Yinka Shonibare proposes to make a scale replica of Nelson’s ship, HMS Victory, in a giant glass bottle. The ship’s magnificent sails will be produced in richly coloured and patterned textiles, which Shonibare buys from Brixton market in London. They are assumed to be African but in fact the fabric was inspired by Indonesian batik design, mass produced by the Dutch and sold to the colonies in West Africa. By the 1960s the material was popularly assimilated in Africa and became symbolic of African identity and independence. Shonibare says his piece will reflect the story of multiculturalism in London today, which began as a result of Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar: ‘For me it’s a celebration of London’s immense ethnic wealth, giving expression to and honouring the many cultures and ethnicities that are still breathing precious wind into the sails of the UK.’"


Faîtes L’Art, pas La Guerre (Make Art, Not War)
Bob & Roberta Smith (aka artist Patrick Brill)

"This illuminated peace sign – powered by the sun and the wind – questions our ideas about history and monuments on the one hand, and art and war on the other. The work, which is a collaboration between renewable energy specialists, structuralengineers and an architect, seeks to rebrand Trafalgar Square as a beacon of our cultural future rather than a memorial to England’s military past. Bob & Roberta Smith believe in ‘the power of art to act as a social force as great and necessary to our lives as the police, the military and the judiciary’; their proposal is meant as a ‘gentle provocation to the overwhelming “Hogarthian” stature of Trafalgar Square as the centre of celebration of Britain’s military achievements over the French’."


We like Deller's piece, though we can't see the GLA going for it; Emin's is funny (which is no bad thing - art doesn't have to be serious, though it should make you think); Gormley's has the whiff of homework done on the bus on the way to school; Kapoor's is interesting, but not as elegantly simple as his best work; Shonibare's is great, but the pigeons would make a right old mess of it; and Bob and Roberta Smith's is a nice idea, but a bit cluttered for our tastes.

We're voting for Deller.

If you fancy telling the commission what you think, there's an online public consultation form here.

(Photos of models by James O Jenkins; photo of Alison Lapper Pregnant by Trois Tetes)

A design guide to Paris

Just before Christmas we made our way over to Paris for a spot of culture and shopping. We didn't get around to half the stuff we had planned, but we thought we'd offer up some highlights here, as well as a few links to other places to check out for inspiration if you're planning a trip.

We took the Eurostar from the recently re-opened London St Pancras. We weren't actually all that impressed with the new station - the boarding procedure forces you to wait in a cramped area under the platforms rather than up in the station itself, which feels like a really missed opportunity. But at least the train is greener than taking the plane.

Before heading over, we checked out Go Go Paris, A New City Guide and Studio Touristique's fantastic guide to Paris in 48 Hours.

Our favourite shop was Le Petit Atelier de Paris, which is an utterly wonderful combination of shop and workshop, featuring a fine collection of ceramics and other products. We picked up a ceramic alphabet, and were deeply tempted by a post-modern interpretation of a dog kennel.

We also shopped at Les Archives de la Presse, a bonkers shop stacked to the rafters with old magazines and journals, as well as the odd poster or two; at Colette, a high-concept design and fashion store, which veered a little too close to achingly-hip for our tastes; and at the brilliant I love my blender, a warm and friendly bookstore in Le Marais.

After all that, we stopped off for a bite too eat at the lovely Le Loir dans Le Theiere, a charmingly boho cafe with a speciality in huge and gorgeous desserts.

We then moved on to a spot of art.

First we headed over to the Palais de Tokyo , which houses an exhibition space, a product design store, and a great bookshop. Just next door we checked out the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, which has a remarkably good modern art collection, though it feels slightly eclipsed by the groovier one at the Centre Pompidou, where we saw a fantastic Richard Rogers exhibition. More on that later.

Things we noticed about Paris:
The Parisians just love to smoke while they eat and drink. But as of yesterday, they're not allowed to.
It's really quite expensive.
A croque monsieur is one of the finest dishes known to man.

You can see more of Alistair's pics in this Flickr set, and see the places listed above, as well as a few more, on the Google Map we prepared for the trip.