Always wondered how they do it in that ‘Talk, Talk, Talk’ ad where people sort of draw on the TV screen and it makes some sort light marks – ‘light painting’ that is. Continue reading Light painting
Light painting
Sweet Toof at ARCH402 gallery: have a mouthful of it!
Sweet Toof and the Burning Candy crew as a whole (Sweet Toof is part of it) are heavy-weight champions when it comes to street art in London. If you have ever wandered around East London, you must have come across these ‘bubble-gum’ faces with protuberant teeth characters always bursting with flashy colors but this is not what it is about here or not quite. Continue reading Sweet Toof at ARCH402 gallery: have a mouthful of it!
Conor Harrington in East Dulwich
Looks promising. Pic by @DownInAutumn
Edward Akrout ‘First Impression’ show at Hoxton hotel
Best known for his roles in high profile TV series and films including; Mr. Selfridge, Midsomer Murders and The Borgias, actor Edward Akrout has kept his talent as an artist hidden from the public eye.
This was until recently, when he presented his debut solo exhibition at Café Royal in March to an enthusiastic crowd of gallerists, collectors and VIPs.
A big step in the art world
Akrout admits that even though he is capable of handling the daily rejection and criticism he faces as an actor, the idea of showing his art to the world terrified him. This autumn Akrout will exhibit a suite of new drawings and paintings titled ‘First Impression’ at The Hoxton, Shoreditch, offering visitors an insight into the world of Edward Akrout.
Emotions and studies in France
There is an unmistakable connection between Akrout’s two chosen disciplines, for as an actor his job is to inhabit different emotional states, and as an artist he has an uncanny ability to capture in only a few strokes of the brush or pen, the fleeting emotions and personality traits of characters he comes across on his travels in London, Paris and New York.
Born to a Franco-British mother and Tunisian father, 32-year-old Akrout grew up in France, studying philosophy at The Sorbonne and theatre at Le Cours Florent in Paris, and then spending time at the National Institute in Bucharest. He left Paris for London when offered a place at the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Akrout’s philosophical and theatrical training is evident in his expressive, psychological studies of the eclectic characters he encounters.
WHAT – ‘First Impression’ by Edward Akrout
WHERE – The Hoxton, 81 Great Eastern Street, London EC2A 3HU | United Kingdom
WHEN – 2 Oct 2015 — 1 Jan 2016
First seen on WSIMAG
ROA, Hifione and Vanhee x Krank street art
Part of our 3 street art works series you should see today: ROA, Hifione and Vanhee x Krank
ROA – located in Stavanger (NUART festival)
Hifione
Vanhee x Krank
Meet Mr Unbound or living UNBOUND
Another shoutout to an artist out there. Today we meet Mr Unbound. Here are his words below. If you are an artist and want to feature on the site, tell me.
—————-
“Well, friends, where do we begin? I am you. You are me. We are Mr. Unbound. Excuse my vagueness, I will have to explain a little bit. This whole movement is about living unbound. No, not living as a Nietzsche-esque, morally unattached person, but living unbound as in the world is your canvas and you are biting at the bit to go out and paint it.
People like Shepard Fairey have used art to call you to question everything around you, and I whole-heartedly support that. This, however, is the next step. Now you have questioned everything. And you see it don’t you? All of the messed up, absolute carnage everywhere. You see how mediocre your life is and how screwed up the world is.
So what does this mean for you? You can take it as it is, suck it up, lock yourself in your minuscule office cubicle and never do anything great in your life. Or you can be Mr. Unbound. You can start actually living with your fellow human beings, speaking out against oppression, racism, violence, and standing up for those who can’t stand for themselves. You can face the obstacles and issues in your life. You can choose to live a life full of passion, love, grace, mercy, thought, gratitude, selflessness, action, and purpose.
Look for my art. Watch for the figure soaring through life. You’ll see it and him and you will be reminded to stop living like an unfulfilled zombie and start living like you’ve got nothing to lose, yet everything to gain. People say life is short, yet they do nothing about it. Its time to start squeezing every single ounce of life out of every second you get and
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-not some cliche little project. If it was, it wouldn’t have taken you to this site would it?
Take some time to think on it. Maybe while you’re thinking you’ll give this a shot. Find your passion and live it. Rise up, live spoken, live unbound, and change the world. You’ve struck gold. You are Mr. Unbound.”
Mr. Unbound is the work and vision of American artist Michael Becker.
Visit Mr Unbound website
El-Seed paints the Jara mosque
Tunisia has been the stage lately of a surge of intolerability towards creativity and especially towards anything to do with a spray can. As a result, the French-born Tunisian graffiti artist El-Seed took action.
The result is Tunisia’s largest mural but what matters above all is the the location; he painted on the country’s tallest minaret, at the Jara Mosque, located in the industrial city of Gabes. Pictures after the fold.
Here is what El-seed says about the project “I decided to do the mural because it was close to my heart. It had been a while I had wanted to paint a wall in Gabes,” the artist told Ahram Online.
“The primary purpose was, and is, to inspire people to get together and build community around positive action,” El-Seed told Ahram Online via email. “
The mural, which has been embraced with open arms by the mosque’s Imam, was painted on the 57-metre high minaret, and is meant as a message of tolerance and mutual respect.
El-Seed got interestd in the art of graffiti back in 1998 in Paris, where he spent his childhood. Later, when he moved to North America, he started combining graffiti with his passion for Arabic calligraphy (usually associated with the Quran and religious scripture). The artist likes to mix traditional script and contemporary pop-culture, giving birth to a distinctive urban graffiti.
Tutorial: Acrylics on clothing by MWNYC (video)
Acrylics on clothing explains by MWNYC www.mileswickham.com Continue reading Tutorial: Acrylics on clothing by MWNYC (video)
London Art Fair – artists we enjoyed, Doyle & Mallinson
We strolled through the London Art Fair for the fourth consecutive year and as always stumbled upon remarkable artworks from ever so talented artists.
In this series, we will tell you why we liked a particular piece from these artists as well as posting more works. We hope you will also enjoy it as we did.
Feel free to comment too at the end of this article. Let’s get started….
________________
Shaun Doyle & Mally Mallinson
We stumbled upon the piece called “Sumo Ergo Sum(I shop therefore I am)” – cast bronze, edition of 9, H 42.5 x W 45 x D 56cm.
The skeleton sculpture, like any other ones to be honest, tickled our eyes right away.
Looking at the skull face expression, it was clear to us that it conveys a strong social message which was confirmed after reading up about the artists – keep on reading below.
About the artists
Our work deals with political and social thought. The forms we use to articulate our ideas often come from popular culture or are second hand, borrowed from another source. The way we put things together is witty, cheeky and aggressive; it mirrors the way we talk to each other. Context within our work is deliberately inconsistent. That inconsistency is our attempt to accommodate the messiness of the real world and allows different audiences different readings.
The lived-in, shabby aesthetic employed reflects the environments that excite us – the underfunded regional museum, the car boot sale, the dump; places where value systems are fluid, more confused or don’t exist at all. In these situations, forms and ideas have the potential to acquire alternate meanings and take on a new life. Through re-imagining objects and their identities we explore the processes of cultural transformation that take place after an object or idea has served its initial purpose. This re-cycling is a means of distilling useful agents; elements approaching redundancy are stripped down, re-formed and re-packaged. The results challenge the cleaner more commercial concerns of some other art forms and celebrate the possibilities of extreme behaviour and belief.
Other works from this artist
Click to enlarge
Remed at Pure Evil gallery: Picasso-esque
On my way again to Pure Evil gallery. This time I was there to see Remed and I felt particularly excited about this one as the artist was born right from where I am myself from – Lille (France).
The work I was looking at was quite different with the last show at Pure Evil – Busk Bleach Zadok (Read post here). Continue reading Remed at Pure Evil gallery: Picasso-esque