Stars in Stripes go bird crazy for road safety!

Stars in Stripes appear at Sheffield City Council event to produce artwork to promote safety on the roads for young people. We hope our toucans, pelicans and zebras did the job! 

The artwork will be shown elsewhere in Sheffield including the Winter Gardens too apparently...  

* Click here to find out more! *

Photographs by Geo Law

Brighton Photo Biennial heaven

Just look at these fabulous photographs and you'll understand why I found Brighton Photo Biennial so exciting last weekend...

The House of the Vernacular> 

This was without question one of the most interesting acts of curation I have ever experienced, having never visited Fabrica before I'm not sure how things normally look, but this was exquisite.
Images by amateur and professional photographers from all over the world. Entering each room is a remarkable experience and culturally enlightening.
These Brazilian family photographs have been hand coloured to improve constitution, render the subject in better clothes, or even to bring the dead back to life...

Brazilian family portraits

Brighton Museum and Art Gallery>

 In 'Three Views of Brighton' artist Steven Gill had the foresight to best photograph Brighton by physically putting bits of Brighton into his camera, and the results are so captivating they literally made me itch to take photographs myself...but to step outside of my own standard approach and realise that incorporating the 'alien' into the picture taking process can become in itself a familar yet thrilling routine. 

Alec Soth's work mostly employing his seven year old daughter as photographer is also well worth a look. He was banned from working in the UK so he continued his project for the biennial through his daughters' eyes, and lens.

Steven Gill - this was my favourite. Actual moth wing inside his camera.

Alec Soth

This year the BPB has also made obvious reference to the limited funding for production, and employed strategies to make sure photographs could be seen effectively, uncompromised by rudimentary and cheap display methods.

I emailed the BPB team about the hanging methods used, the festival manager responded to say they used a system you can buy from Magnet Expert and they cut metal plates for backings. I'll look into this and post if I have luck putting up pictures using a similar method. (Not that my current budget will stretch to such large photo prints!)

Currently I'm hanging photographs using string, akin to a washing line and a row of bulldog clips holding each picture. There is a fresh and exciting quality to display methods of a temporary nature, especially when you can disregard expectations and keep the display up there. Who needs frames these days? Well...the Brazilian photo/paintings in The House of the Vernacular show are framed, as they are traditionally meant to be, but the frames themselves are printed.

p.s. Martin Parr is a genius.

British Art Show and Sideshow in Nottingham!

Freshly uploaded piece on the Article Magazine website about the imminent British Art Show and Nottingham Sideshow...can't wait to jet over to Nottingham to take it all in.

“In the Days of Comet” is a science fiction novel by H.G.Wells, published in 1904, which tells of a society torn apart through poverty and corruption. A comet breaks through the ozone and enters the world’s atmosphere, gassing the entire population and sending all to sleep. Eventually people wake from the haze, but instead of all the depravity each person has a new found clarity and lust for life.

If only things were so easy! The next exhibition landing at Nottingham Contemporary this month bears the title ‘In the Days of Comet’, and it is The British Art Show, so we are naturally geared up for something apocalyptic. In reference to the comet as ‘harbinger of change’, will the show awaken us to the most crucial contemporary art of now?

Read more! Click here! 

Just got back from Frieze Art Fair and Brighton Photo Biennial, so much to say but so much to ponder over first so any remarks will come later.

Paintings by Amy Bennett

It's been a while since I've seen paintings that have made me do a little gasp! Amy Bennett's paintings seem to portray suburbia as I picture it in my head. I found her thanks to  It's Nice That magazine and their online blog which points out the nice things around us so we don't miss them.  Amy Bennett's work is certainly nice... and beautiful, and simple and captivating. 

Acutely aware that I'm gushing but this is oil painting just as I'd like to achieve it myself,  applying lighting and flat colour to build an atmosphere like that on film sets, of false and fiction and utopia. Bennett has literally painted from observation of miniature town models and scenery. They are clearly fabricated subjects but surely any painting of real life suburbia will be tweaked to some degree by the artist, even if unintentionally. Let's pretend these are real places and that one day we might relocate...

Stars in Stripes illustrative pursuits in Sheffield

The Wick at Both Ends, Sheffield asked the Stars to illustrate their cosy snug of a bar in a regal manner...which suited us all well, particularly Thomas Ball who has recently acquired an interest, and a few books, on crests and regal symbolism. Particluar highlights of the work are Alex Mac Peck's magnificent stag and Sarah Abbott's 'Notice the day' mural. Beautiful!

Click to see more of Stars in Stripes.

Louise Wheeler

Sarah Abbott

Thomas Ball

Castle and birdies - Jane Faram and Geo Law

Jane Faram

Hailey Evenett

Alex Mac Peck

Article Magazine and Manchester's Free for arts festival

Article is a magazine made in Sheffield (arguably the brightest, most useful and engaging zine/journal to have emerged from Sheffield in many years).  

Article Magazine says of itself; 'We like to present the stories of what’s around people, from architectural analysis to personal tales of strange subcultures to interviews with people who make things. Above all, we’re driven by the wish to make something fascinating and absorbing about the normal everyday'. 

Article is a guide which also wends its way to numerous distributors in Nottingham, Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester. I'm very pleased to have recently joined the Article team as their Arts Editor!

Photograph by Gareth Hacking

On the website you'll find my first piece, on Manchester's Free for arts festival which launched last Friday and closes this Friday 8th. 

My stand-out favourite element of the festival is Papergirl... 

'Out walking the streets of Manchester this week, there’s a chance you might get pelted with a cardboard tube thrown at you by a passing cyclist. This is nothing but a lucky occurance. If you’re good enough at catching you’ll be the recipient of a collection of artists’ drawings found rolled up inside, the initiative of PaperGirl which is an artist run ‘urban action, party and bicycle workshop’.

Check out http://www.articlemagazine.co.uk/ to read the rest and there's also an interview I did with two of the festival curators.

Definitely look out for some of the festival if you find yourself in Manc, it's a short one and as you can imagine there is a broad variety of art to see and no admission fees! Wahey.

Screen printed house by Laura Gee

Toy Shop exhibition at the Art Corner, Manchester

http://toyshop-exhibition.blogspot.com/