Last week ART-PIE went to see Arth Daniel’s first solo show – ‘Itsa Bitsa, Face and Bone’ at Stolen Space ( read the post here) and was impressed and excited by Arth’s new works and his completely new and fresh approach to portraiture.
ART-PIE had the chance to get Arth to answer a few questions about his work and his current show. Continue reading Interview with Arth Daniels
Shepard Fairey’s Sound and Vision show has been the hot topic in town for the last few weeks. The artist and his crew has hit hard for this show since not only the Stolen Space gallery is hosting the show but another much bigger one a few yards away has also been necessary to give a roof to the impressive amount of pieces the artist has produced.
Since the Hope portrait of Obama back in 2008, Shepard Fairey and his brand OBEY has become something people recognize and like. You see a Shepard Fairey and you know it is one – the typography, colors and subject will give it away. OBEY is a brand here to stay.
Held at the Royal Academy of Arts, the London Original Print Fair offers an opportunity to view works from all periods of printmaking, from the earliest woodcuts of Dürer, to the latest editions by contemporary masters.
The intimate, boutique Fair provides a friendly atmosphere for both budding collectors and seasoned print enthusiasts to engage with dealers and artists.
The London Original Print Fair brings together 50 print specialists from across the globe in London’s favourite boutique art fair. Works of art for sale span 500 years of printmaking: from old and modern master prints to the latest editions by today’s leading artists.
The London Original Print Fair’s dealers, galleries and studios offer a wealth of expertise and knowledge to engage with collectors both just starting out, and those building on established collections. This year is the Fair’s most international yet: alongside the UK’s very best dealers and print publishers are galleries and studios from three continents.
Artists represented at the Fair include Rembrandt, Goya, Whistler, Picasso and Warhol, alongside the latest work by Michael Craig-Martin RA, Bridget Riley, Sir Peter Blake and more.
Slinkachu takes figures from miniature train sets and painstakingly modifies them so that they can be used as part of his almost invisible world.
He creates comical, satirical and sometimes slightly dark scenes with these figures, places them all over the world, shoots them with spectacular quality and then leaves them to become part of the scenery.
The first of this series was “the little people project” the photos were formed into a lovely little hard cover book produced in 2008. I purchased a copy of it and was suitably impressed with the content and quality of print.
This left us very excited for the new show “Concrete ocean”, hosted by the Andipa Gallery in South Kensington. It had been two years since Slinkachu hosted a show in London and when it comes to most artists after such a period of time you would expect to see significant progression in their body of work. This however was not the case with the Slinkachu show, but it really didn’t matter. The gallery was laid out with huge high quality prints showing the detail of the characters and the photographs almost bring them to life. The large prints were accompanied by very small location shots to show you just how much they disappear into their surroundings.
Andipa Gallery is a large space located in a very upper class area, totally different to the Hackney / Shoreditch spaces we are used to attending, yet it seem more than suitable for this body of work, it was extremely well organised and the 3d installations were well spaced so you could appreciate the minute detail.
It would come as a surprise to us if this show did not make you smile, laugh and sometimes feel just that little bit sad.
Check out our huge collection of shots from the evening here:
In 2007 the global population living in urban environments passed the halfway mark, and that trend is accelerating. As cities become bigger and denser, and within the rigid structures of a mass-market society, truly meaningful personal interactions become increasingly elusive. The anonymising effects of scale and excess on the actor in the postmodern city can lead to a shared sense of social isolation.
In Four Cities Black Rat Projects will take a look at the four artists whose experience of urbanity propelled them to create within their environment in similar ways. With new works by represented artist Swoon, and secondary market works sourced from Os Gemeos, Banksy and Shepard Fairey, BRP will map the parameters of the street art movement across continents through the voices that emerged simultaneously as the strongest of their respective city scenes.
Artists featured: Swoon, Os Gemeos, Banksy, Shepard Fairey
Where –
Black Rat Projects
When –
20th May – 23rd June 2011 (Preview – 19th May – 6-9pm)
This November 2010 London Miles gallery presents a themed group exhibition featuring a bold selection from the International Contemporary art movement.
Where contemporary artists hark back to the masters of past movements paying homage to what was not only inspirational to forming how they paint today, but to what has formed the whole epoch of creative output as we now know it. Â Continue reading The idol hours: group exhibition at London Miles
Foley Gallery is very pleased to present Thomas Allen’s solo exhibition Paint by Numbers.
Inspired by a View-Master and “pop-up” books as a child, Allen became interested in recreating these three-dimensional experiences by using old books and pulp fiction paperbacks as still life subjects.
In producing his new series of photographs, Paint by Numbers, Allen has gone to the hardware store and has selected standard paint swatches to use as his primary generative medium. As announced at Allen’s 2009 solo show Epilogue at Foley, Allen has parted ways with his signature use of cutting from book illustrations.
Utilizing wit to illustrate titles such as Birthday Cake, Carnival Candy, and Sweet Tea, Allen playfully employs the idea of color with historical and cultural associations. Titles offered in the paint swatches are implicative: his deftly cut figures reference popular subjects, each of which are enlisted by the name of the paint sample they are carved into.
Allen selects figures such as Donald Trump or Gene Wilder, subjects able to perform the lexicon of narrative titles like Blowfish and Golden Ticket. In the process of assemblage, Allen is able to create narratives that reveal the constructed nature of images and incorporative aspects of collage, photography, and montage.
What – “Paint numbers” by Thomas Allen
Where – Foley gallery 59 Orchard Street, New York, NY 10002
When – Until 24/01/15
A document filming and following the entire Burning Candy crew is being shot right now. Their Street Art is a familiar visual encounter on the walls of London and especially in East London and on Brick Lane.
This movie is still being shot but the preview material is now ready to be shown to lucky people. Indeed, only a couple of sessions for about 12 guests each time will take place at 7pm on Tuesday May 4th and Thursday May 6th at Black Rat Projects so to get the chance to assist RSVP yourself now at and hope to be one of the randomly selected. Continue reading Dots : a Burning Candy film
Light Painting WiFi is the creation of Timo Arnall, Jorn Knutsen, Einar Sneve Martinussen. Their work explores the invisible terrain of WiFi networks in Oslo urban spaces.
They put together a four-meter tall measuring rod with 80 points of light reveals cross-sections through WiFi networks using a photographic technique called light-painting. By the simple action of walking down streets, they are able to pick up the thousands of WiFi signals and with the help of a long exposure camera, transform them into wall, barriers of lights.
Beyond the art aspect of this work, this technique has also a research purpose as the data collected is used to evaluate the quality of the Oslo wireless networks.
Immaterials: Light painting WiFi from Timo on Vimeo.
Related links
> Flickr set
Once again I was on my way to the Elms Lesters Painting rooms to go and check out the latest dimensional paintings from Adam Neate. I still had so many good memories from Adam Neate’s last year’s show, also held at this venue, that I could not wait to see what this new show had to offer.
The layout and feel of the Elms Lesters painting rooms is as I remembered it – high ceilings, wooden floors and a relative darkness only interrupted by spots of lights giving the artist’s pieces all the shine and attention they deserve. But Adam Neate’s works would not even need all that for the visitor to quickly realise that what they are looking at is something quite special, something you also need to look at for a little moment to get what it actually is.
Acrylic, perspex, metal and aerosol on board : there you have what makes up Adam Neate’s works. But these mediums need some solid imagination as well as some advanced manual dexterity to transform and assemble some elaborate and intricate pieces of dimensional art – Adam Neate has just done that.
The palette used is flamboyant with a preference for red, the shapes are rounded, the end result is astonishing. Adam Neate’s art is very evocative, his job is to put shapes and colors together, your job is to see through these and come back out with a vision of the piece, your own vision of what you are actually looking at. I found his series of “Red Dimnesional Portraits” very powerful, I could almost hear them shouting at me as I walk past them. The flamboyant colors and defaced visages have certainly something to do with it.
This review will not be complete without mentioning his “Canvas Crucifix”. The Elms Lesters Painting rooms have been accommodated to give even more emphasis to this amazing piece of art. A wall was especially made so the piece could be hang on and with a clever setting of light and shadow, isolate the piece from everything else and draw people’s attention. I found myself very intrigued, slightly apprehensive and thinking “What the hell is that? Adam Neate torn the whole canvas, while still attached the frame, in a such way that he managed to produce what looks like a character on a crucifix. No painting here just a very original use of the canvas as such – a dimensional approach again.
The show at Elms Lesters Painting Rooms is now over. You will find more pictures of the show by scrolling down.
