BLOG, FEATURE, INTRO

8 Famous Artists who Gained Appreciation After Death

BLOG, LATEST

Hollyweed not Hollywood, the prankster who hijacked the hills of California

BLOG, CONTEMPORARY ART, LATEST

Chen Wenling’s farting bull

Prince tribute on the Belfast Cathedral | Art-Pie

BLOG, GRAFFITI, LISTS, STREET ART

7 Prince street art, graffiti & urban tributes to Prince

BLOG, FEATURE, STREET ART

Spray cans sculptures

BLOG, FEATURE, STREET ART

An Old Spanish Church Transformed by Street Artist Okuda

REVIEWS

Will Barras ‘Bad Reception’ at Stolen Space

November 17, 2010 Pierrick Senelaer

I have always found that acrylic paint used in conjunction with spray paint is a definite winner and give you astonishing results. However, it is difficult to master both mediums for most of us unless you are Will Barras.

Bad Reception, his latest show at Stolen Space, brought to us a series of works never exhibited before which, for most of them, have been painted using acrylics and spray paint (oil and ink have also been used for some of the works).

I was walking towards the entrance of the gallery and could see some of Will Barras’ works and my first thought was ‘wow, it looks amazing from here’. I was eager to go in and check the show out.

The fact that most of the works are large scales pieces gives you the tone of the show – bold. A quick look around the gallery and it became obvious to me that the composition in his works is heavy and busy which, coupled with the large scale aspect make the whole experience very overwhelming. Add to this a varied and strong colour palette and often you get some sort of dramatic or epic feel to the painting, it is almost exhausting to look at his works as you need to look and look again to get the whole picture, to get the story behind it.

Indeed Will Barras intend to tell us a story, the story of Mr Benn – read more about iton the Stolen Space website

Will Barras’s technique is really remarkable, he manages to combine urban/graffiti techniques with more traditional mediums such as acrylics or oil and the result is breathtaking and definitely achieve to blur the line between abstract and reality – what is really going on these paintings?

“I want to maintain the natural flow and energy, the tension between abstract and figurative, while developing and elaborating on a narrative. To generate a multiple choice of possibilities of what could be happening Ideas usually develop from the everyday mundane, broken phone converations and awkward situations …” Will Barras

The show ran until the 14th November 2010.

NB: if you wonder whether the motorbike was part of the show, well not really. Will Barras decided to leave it there after the opening night. Random but it did fit well with the show!

ART-PIE

BLOG

The very evocative Victor Lundy’s sketchbook

March 8, 2017 Pierrick Senelaer

We were instantly moved when we looked at Victor Lundy’s sketchbook.

The quality of the drawings is impressive and the story behind them heart breaking : Victor Lundy’s documented his time in the army and fighting in the second world war.

We appreciate the soft yet very efficient touch in Lundy’s drawings. We feel that his drawings were done in one sitting, no erasing but a driving hand screen printing, if you like, what his eyes recorded.

_____

A ‘natural-born’ skilled individual

We learned that Victor Lundy was born in New York City in 1923 and very young, he showed some artistic skills which will lead him to attend New York University to study architecture, specialising in the Beaux Arts style.

A will to help post-war

Lundy did not have to be involved with war but the thought of doing his bit in rebuilding Europe once World War II was over was very strong, so much so that he voluntarily joined the Army and very quickly ended up at the very forefront of the action.

This is at that time where he would capture any faces, scenes or moments in his sketchbook.

We included a few drawings of the very evocative Victor Lundy’s sketchbook (all images below are courtesy of LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

INTERVIEWS, OPENINGS

WeLikeStatic tomorrow at Whisper Fine Art

April 25, 2012 Pierrick Senelaer

We met up earlier today with Tom and Craig, better known at WeLikeStatic to have a sneak peak at their solo show opening tomorrow at Whisper Fine Art on Eastcastle street, London.

The place was buzzing with still “loads to do” but the team was at it and the display was shaping up nicely; this show, I could tell, will be a good one. Portraiture is what this show will try to tackle and we all know that it is rather an hazardous path to take, it does not take long to get it wrong and bore your audience with lifeless portraits, emotionless figures.

WeLikeStatic has managed with this new set of works to actually put the actual character depictation at a second plan and rather draw your attention to the making process of their pieces of art, this is for sure what got me interested here anyway.

“Look at it straight on and it will appear as one dimension work, but do two steps to left (or to the right) and a multi-layered artwork fades in front of your eyes”, giving a complete and unique take to the viewer’s eyes.

Spray paint, acrylic, screen printing, stenciling on layers of glass, Perspex and aluminum, you name it. A rather inpressive bunch of techniques and mediums got into that show which has been in preparation for months, we were told. And the result is something quite unique or in line with a trend I first had contact with when I encountered Adam Neate’s shows at the Elms Letters Painting Rooms: three dimensional art made of 21st century material – Perspex.

We also got a glimpse of the making of the front window display – the now recognizable space woman face. So far it looked like it will be ace. I cannot wait to see the end result tomorrow.

RSVP to Ruth at ruth@whisperfineart.co.uk, who will make you some lovely tea if you get there completely soaking wet, and lose your mind in the layered world of WeLikeStatic art

When – 27-28 Eastcastle Street, London W1W
Where – Private view on the 26/04/2012 | Show runs until 26/05/2012

PREVIEW

Unfair the Whisper gallery

November 14, 2011 Pierrick Senelaer

STREET ART

Lego Terracota Army comes to life

January 31, 2012 Pierrick Senelaer

Take two thing a large number of us have manipulated once in their lives: LEGO and chalk. Take it further and create something too amazing for not writing something up about it. Dutchman Peter Westerink and a few other helping hands must have astonished a few by-passers with their 100m2 3D creation depicting a army of LEGO men Terracotta style.

You will see below, pictures showing the steps these guys has to go through. Oh and did I mention that it took 6 full days to a crew of four artists (Leon Keer, who also came up with the design, Remko Van Schaik, Ruben Poncia and Peter Westerink) to get this leaped out if the concrete floor. No surprise that the Sarasota Chalk Festival in Florida was chosen, imagine doing that at Glastonbury festival where it is very likely to rain and wash out a pile of efforts.

A grid is first laid out using chalk, then painted over with white paint before being removed and a mammoth task begins: filling.

Peter and his crew (and many other artists) are part of Planet Streetpainting is a collaborative of international street painters

DIGITAL ART, FEATURE, LISTS

10 inspiring photo manipulation by Erik Johansson

June 6, 2015 Pierrick Senelaer

This is no the first time we write about Erik Johansson and his extraordinary ability to photo manipulate daily life scenes. Erik is a full time photographer and retoucher from Sweden.

Erik doesn’t capture moments, he capture ideas in the form of little pieces which he later turn into an imaginative photo manipulation.

We included 10 inspiring works from this digital artist as well as video from Erik who explains how he goes about to create such images. It is definitely worth a watch!

Find out how Erik does it!

CONTEMPORARY ART

Message in the Code

October 1, 2012 Jane Boyer

We are surrounded by coded communications. The artists of This ‘Me’ of Mine present an interesting insight into the difference gender makes to interacting with these coded communications. Curiously, I became aware of this difference by posting snippets, sometimes almost cryptic messages, from some of the artists’ bios on Twitter. A few weeks ago I made these four tweets:

11 Sept 2012

@HarrisonHayley“a lover of objects and stories, not necessarily…historical sense but the bits that are not said. ”

12 Sept 2012

‘a set of anecdotes where meaning is levelled by celebrating the beautiful and grotesque,’ Mel Titmuss on her work

13 Sept 2012

@Captainpye on her work, ‘…a complex mixture of scientific observation and a girlish enthusiasm…’ @ThisMeofMine

14 Sept 2012

‘fascination w/passage of time…contrast between permanence of objects & fragility of human existence’ @katemurdochart

At the time, I remarked that when read together they presented a compelling view of the female point of view in art. Arguably so, yes. But then I realised something more, each of the artists in This ‘Me’ of Mine are working with, perhaps struggling with, this coded communication and there is a fascinating difference between the way the women artists explore this and the way the male artists explore it. The women speak of emptying out of memories, permanence of objects, invisible stories of objects, things left unsaid, equalizing meaning through comparison of opposites, fascination, obsession, fictions and mythologies, voyeurism, vulnerability and body language. The men speak of the limits of communicating meaning, uniforms and meaning, surprise and fear, answers just out of reach, hiding complexities within and stimulus triggering a response.

Before I go further, I want to point out there are many commonalities in the female and male views, such as removing things from context to challenge meaning, the insecurities of home, the influence of space, experience and the passage of time. So while I am not trying to create a gender-biased argument here, I was struck by the differences nonetheless.

It could be said the struggle to self-identify is the struggle to decipher coded communication. The way we go about that as males and females is indicative in the topics of importance to each group of artists. What does this say about us? Little girls are taught to believe in fairy-tales, romance and dream-come-true scenarios, encouraged to believe in the perfection of a future life, whether that is with Mr Right or more recently that we can do and have it all. Little boys are taught to believe in the importance of belonging to groups and the status which comes with that belonging, hiding their emotions, fears and all visible signs of weakness, encouraged to become providers and bread-winners. Both sexes have been taught to be competitive, in ways suitable to their sex. But if these things are to be challenged, is it really through gender wars? Wouldn’t it be more productive to realize the truth that living is hard no matter what your personal circumstances, there are no guaranteed outcomes and all you can do is the best you can in any given situation. Would prejudice and utopias disappear if we taught those simple realities to our children?

Would the message in the code change?

CONTEMPORARY ART, INTERVIEWS

The Universal Struggle to Self-Identify: This 'Me' of Mine

July 29, 2012 Jane Boyer 1 Comment

Peripheral Vision (c)2010 David Minton — Peripheral Vision, (c)2010 David Minton, oil on canvas

But it may be that without meaning there is only space, so in a sense I make my paintings by accident, but knowingly so. The central space created by painting ‘at the periphery’ has a tension that is constantly pregnant with possibility. In order to remain so, the tensions of space are never resolved, but continue and it is this continued lack of resolution that forms the overall content of the picture.[1] Perhaps what’s missing is what’s outside that loop or the fear of its ceasing to be a loop and become something that runs forward in time. All those fears and hopes, everything the intimacy within the home brings, begins to open up to a greater loss and eventually time will bring the loss of things because of the infinite nature of time; everything outside of time is infinite.[2]

At art college we were encouraged to self-analyse our output and I found myself not fully understanding how I travelled from initial concept to final outcome. So, now I find it useful to think of myself as a black box where every new line of enquiry has the potential to reveal more of my inner (often hidden) self and my motivations for doing what I do.[3] Initially it was very important to move away from outward observation, it came out of necessity for me, and I had to close myself off from the real world for a while although outward observation is creeping back into the work acting as little anchors.[4] All that is visible is a barely responsive exterior… This indifference, characteristic to the figures in my paintings, suggests the social is almost taken away. You wonder what is revealed in this state of consciousness, just mindless projections on to others perhaps.[5]

Woman with Cardigan (c)2010 Melanie Titmuss — Woman with Cardigan, (c)2010 Melanie Titmuss, oil on canvas

This play on words, mixing up sentences from each artist interviewed so far for This ‘Me’ of Mine, is not intended as a clever ploy at meaning-making, but rather a look at the interconnectedness of the issues of the self and identity. Each of these artists is concerned in their own way with issues of self in their work. It is fascinating for me as curator to see how their concerns link together in the universal struggle to self-identify; something which I hope will become evident through these interviews.

Join us in the on-going discussions. Go to INTERVIEWS at the This ‘Me’ of Mine blogsite to read more from David Minton, Anthony Boswell, David Riley, Aly Helyer and Melanie Titmuss, the artists interviewed and quoted above (see credits below for links to the individual interviews).

Interviews coming up: Sarah Hervey, Shireen Qureshi and Sandra Crisp. Waiting in the wings: Kate Murdoch, Annabel Dover, Edd Pearman, Cathy Lomax, Hayley Harrison, and Darren Nixon. Art Historian and critic, Becky Huff Hunter, is kindly interviewing me and that will be coming up too.

[1] The Temporary Suspension of Tension; an interview with David Minton, 2012 Jane Boyer for This ‘Me’ of Mine, found at: http://thismeofmine.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/the-temporary-suspension-of-tension/

[2] Living in the Constant; an interview with AnthonyBoswell, ibid, found at: http://thismeofmine.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/living-in-the-constant/

[3] I Am a Black Box; an interview with David Riley, ibid, found at: http://thismeofmine.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/i-am-a-black-box/

[4] Anchors of Observation; an interview with Aly Helyer, ibid, found at: http://thismeofmine.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/anchors-of-observation/

[5] A Barely Responsive Exterior; an interview with Melanie Titmuss, ibid, found at: http://thismeofmine.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/a-barely-responsive-exterior/