When having CDs is becoming so nineties, everything getsstored online in the cloud as they call it, Meet Sean Avery, a talented artist, thought twice about discarding his CDs and have found a way of turning them into amazing and crafted animal sculptures.
Sean Avery has created a series of sculptures—from bears to peregrine falcons and even the Loch Ness monster thanks to a clever use of the reflective splinters of his CDs. There is no much more to say to appreciate the time, effort and above all talent in his artwork.
Andipa Contemporary is delighted to announce a new solo exhibition: Concrete Ocean, by renowned urban artist Slinkachu. Left floating in flimsy boats on puddles the size of lakes, or clinging onto seemingly giant paving stones, in danger of being trodden underfoot by the casual passer-by, the figures in Concrete Ocean address the artist’s trademark theme of loneliness and disillusionment engendered by the city environment. The dry wit of his observation and the deceptive sweetness of his scaled down figures make Slinkachu’s works absorbing, strong and engaging.
Named as one of the “100 Leading Figures in Urban Art” by Patrick Ngyuyen and Stuart Mackenzie in Beyond the Street (2010) Slinkachu creates (and then abandons) tiny installations around the city using reworked railway model figures that he then records photographically. The artist will, for the first time, bring seemingly uprooted street installations into the gallery where they will form islands in the concrete ocean.
Concrete Ocean follows the artist’s internationally acclaimed Little People Project started in 2006, and the publication of Little People in the City: The street art of Slinkachu, published by Boxtree (Pan MacMillan), with a foreword by author Will Self (2008), The Old Vic and Punchdrunk’s collaboration, Tunnel 228 in 2009 and in 2010 the highly successful exhibition Extraordinary Measures at Belsay Hall, Northumberland, alongside Ron Mueck, Matt Collishaw and Mariele Neudecker, in which the artist took a humorous look “at the obsession we have with the day trip, that English hobby which often provokes the full range of emotions” and saw 55,000 visitors, along with the Amsterdam launch of BIG BAD CITY by Lebowski Publishers.
Words from Andipa gallery
Where – Andipa gallery
When – 3rd March till 2nd April 2011 (preview on the 2/3)
Catlin Art Prize (www.artcatlin.com)
When: Wednesday 16 April 2012
Where: Londonnewcastle Project Space, London, E2 7DP
The winner of the 2012 Catlin Art Prize is Julia Vogl, a 2011 graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. She is the sixth winner of the annual Catlin Art Prize, a competition showcasing the work of recent graduates of UK art schools.
Julia Vogl won the 2012 Catlin Art Prize for her ‘social sculpture’titled ‘Let’s Hang Out’. The work invites visitors to create a communal area by selecting and affixing coloured carpet titles that colour-correspond with Julia’s suggestions of various pastimes (such as ‘call Mum’, ‘tweet’, etc.). The work will evolve throughout the duration of the Catlin Art Prize exhibition while encouraging visitors to interact – and hang out.”
The official comments on the Art Catlin website confirming the recipient of the £5,000 award, now it its 6th year.
The exhibition showcasing the finalists of the artists compiled in the Catlin Guide was hosted at the Londonnewcastle project space and in my opinion was laid out and staged to create an explorative feeling when entering.
Before hearing the winner I was one of the first people to interact with Julia’s “lets hang out” and felt that for me this was quite rightly a centre piece, seemingly the concensus as it turned out.
In addition to film and other mixed media work the next most enjoyable piece was marbles and sand staged in one of the corners of the show. A mystical and engaging feeling from starting at the work and felt very much similar to my own thoughts on moments in time.
The second piece which was a stuffed horse on its back clamping on to a made object. This was very striking but wasted on me.
The guide is fast becoming as much a tool for collectors as it is for the artworld in showcasing talent and clamouring for the prize.
Looking down as usual when I am on my way to the office, I must have heard them calling on me that day. I looked up that morning. One was proudly sat down on a wooden pillar while another little man and a woman had found refuge in small cavities of what looks like a very depraved wall. But they were all very glad, I spotted them as so many by-passers never do, they told me.
At first I loved them but was also eager to know what the hell these little characters were all about. After a what seemed to me a long chat, I did not know more than before I talked to them. What I knew for sure is that they were over the moon that someone took them out of their boredom by spotting them.
Slightly puzzled by this encounter, I was trying very hard to remember whether I had seen these guys elsewhere when right there in front me, was another little worker but this time amongst the display of some kitchen and bathroom furniture shop on Clerkenwell road. I was stunned and started to believe they were either following me or spreading all around.
I decided to step in the shop and find out once for all…
These little workers are actually part of an advertising campaign to increase awareness about the imminent opening of a new DOMUS shop on Great Sutton street. DOMUS is speacialising in tiles. Representatives have been around shops in Clerkenwell and gave away these little figurines to scatter around willing shopkeepers’ shop windows as well as right on the street nearby the new store.
Whatever this is, street art used in advertising, this is a genius idea and if the guys at DOMUS had in mind to get people to find out and talk about these guys, well they got it right. Look above, I mentioned three times their brand in this blog post and are about to insert a link about their new shop which is about to open. Clap, clap, clap.
Read more about the new DOMUS shop (might be of interest to you, huh?). Find out what they look like with photographs below.
It is such a shame that Nathan Sawaya’s new show is in New York and not in London as his art is truly fascinating and is using LEGOS bricks. I have a particular and secret love for those bricks which always take me back to sweet and happy childhood memories and playful moments. Continue reading Nathan Sawaya: the art of the LEGO brick→
Too late to go this year, the Hong Kong International Art Fair, opening this Thursday 17th, is something I should definitely pencil in for next year as when its popularity ever increasing, the quality of the art on display is becoming something.
Take this event for example – KAWS, or Brian Donnelly at Galerie Perotin. First solo show in Asia for KAWS and debut event for the latter, you know it is going to be good, don’t you. This Hong Kong branch of Galerie Perrotin is the newest outpost of the Paris based gallery.
This show focuses on KAWS’ latest paintings and CHUM, the Michelin Man-inspired caricature is well represented again, as it has been in loads of his past shows but this time CHUM looks ominous almost threatening. About 50 vertical paintings, 7 feet tall and 1 feet wide, definitely give a sense of grandeur to the show
The Nature of Need by KAWS
Galerie Perrotin Hong Kong
50 Connaught Road Central |Floor 17| Hong Kong
Exhibition Dates: Now – June 30th, 2012 (Saturday)
Jota Leal was born in a humble little town in eastern Venezuela, in the mid-eighties. He began drawing and painting at a very young age, and never studied fine art. He attempted to sit in class as a child of six, but ran away after being forced to paint plastic fruit and empty bottles.
Jota’s style results in a synergy of remarkable painting skill and a probing sense of the subject’s soul, and often tweaked with a remarkable sense of humor. Leal works with pencil on paper, acrylic on board, and acrylic on canvas to achieve his amazing images.
Jota Leal from Venezuela probes the subconscious, showing that depth can be shown with humor and whimsy. — Juxtapoz Magazine
BOBA FETT Jota captures Star Wars villian, Boba Fett in a classic pose, with exceptional coloring. This dramatic acrylic on canvas painting measures 20″ x 28″.MARRIED WITH CHILDREN Imagine Mathew Brady, the famous Civil War photographer having taking a familiy portrait from Star Wars. Jota creates a wonderfully bizarre and funny grouping of iconic Star Wars characters, all posed in some classic 19th Century scene. Expertly painted. 24′ x 30″ Acrylic on stretched canvas. Ready to hang.CHEWIE Chewbacca with some robotic enhancement. What could be the story here? Maybe in the next, next episode in a galaxy far, far away. Beautiful landscape coloration by Jota. 36″ x 24″ Acrylic on canvas.THE VANISHING OF OBI-WAN Wonderfully surreal painting from the Star Wars universe by Jota, in a beautifully illuminated, Dali-esque style. Fine art comes to a galaxy far, far away. 36″ x 24″ acrylic painting on canvas.
The Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago. I remember it like yesterday, although at the time I did not understand the full meaning of what was unfolding in front of my eyes.
Looking back at it now as an adult, I can see the importance of what this event meant – the cold war was on its way out. Tyranny and freedom denials were starting to become something the West Berliners could dream of getting rid of.
Berliners at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall
Such dark times and oppression naturally led to various acts of rebellion, from President Kennedy standing by the Wall in 1963 and declaring: “Ich bin ein Berliner.”, to artists braving the Grepos (or border police) to express their disapproval of the tyranny that was in place in West Germany.
And it is the latter that I want to talk about here. I want to pay tribute to all these artists who defied the ‘death strip’ as it was called, a no man’s land between the two walls, the border of East and West Berlin, and Thierry Noir, a French artist, knows it all too well.
Thierry Noir is thought to be the first street artist to paint the Berlin Wall. Born in 1958 in Lyon, France, he moved to Berlin in January 1982 with two small suitcases, and lived in a squat at Mariannenplatz, near the Berlin Wall.
His first attraction to the city was the fact that David Bowie and Iggy Pop lived there at the time, and Thierry Noir was a big fan on their music.
“Nothing really happened at the Berlin Wall. There were no cars, no shops, no noises. I never saw any ‘actions’ with the Grepos, never saw any soldiers shooting at anybody.” – Thierry Noir
One of the first things he painted on the Wall was this elephant (see photo below). “I started painting outside because I wanted to say that it’s good to put art in the streets and not solely in museums and galleries.”
This painting symbolises the key to success – heavy work every day. In other words, get your ass out there and grasp opportunity, do not stay at home waiting for something to happen – that is what the artist’s message was all about.
Thierry Noir in 86 painting the Berlin Wall
“We used to collect leftover paint and materials from the renovation of houses in Kreuzberg. We made do with whatever we could find. We had no money to buy materials.” Thierry Noir
Thierry Noir’s cartoon-like profiles
Thierry Noir’s style quickly changed to become what he is famous for – brightly coloured paintings depicting cartoon-like profiles (see below). The artist called this transformation – his Fast Form Manfesto, which is in fact the result of a need to adapt his style. It was in an effort to cope with the hundreds of people who approached him to talk while he was painting, at risk for being caught by the German authorities.
One famous incident is when Keith Haring was invited to come and paint the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie in October 1986. Thierry Noir, with the help of Christophe Bouchet, an artist he’d met a few years earlier, painted a series of 2-meter Statues of Liberty at this precise location. Unfortunately the wall got painted over in yellow, in preparation for Keith Haring. Haring however was not aware of this, so after apologies and embarrassment from Keith and annoyance from Thierry Noir, both artists were fine in the end.
What else to say about Thierry Noir? A great artist with a great story, his brightly coloured paintings are now seen as iconic and are still visible on the wall’s East Side Gallery.
At first I loved them but was also eager to know what the hell these little characters were all about. After a what seemed to me a long chat, I did not know more than before I talked to them. What I knew for sure is that they were over the moon that someone took them out of their boredom by spotting them.
Too late to go this year, the 
