Filed under: Uncategorized
Walk by in the late evening and you will notice the groups of people that stop stare and act intrigued by the hypnotic INFINITY LED light installation in the mirrored disco window display. The collaged illustrations inside are also fantastic, cutting and pasting chinease restaurant menus, sticky dots, cardboard packaging to create interesting characters and narratives….
Posing at the private view next to the mirrored back wall of his revolving multi-coloured light installation ‘Disco-Nexxion’, while dressed head to toe in black-and-white striped latex and a pink pointy hat, Andrey Bartenev looks a lot like a youthful Leigh Bowery – minus the bulk. Working in graphics, fashion, costume design, performance and installation, it’s easy to imagine him hanging out in the glammed-up club scene of 1980s London, but it’s geography rather than age (Bartenev was born only eight years after Bowery) that places him slightly out of synch.
Growing up in the northern Siberian town of Norilsk, an industrial, monochrome landscape of white snow and black skies (no doubt even more grim than Thatcher’s London), is one reason Bartenev cites for his love of contrast and colour, and there’s certainly plenty of the latter at Riflemaker. Viewed from the street through the gallery window, ‘Disco-Nexion’ is a reworking of a piece shown in last year’s Venice Biennale. The titular text revolves in repeated circles of trippy LED lights in red, blue and green above a mirrored base. In Venice the text read ‘Lost Connection’, as a comment on the distant forms of human communication in the digital age, but here it’s purely visual – a kind of psychedelic, disconnected dancefloor experience. Inside the gallery, colourful collages of comic-strip astronauts, gay-porn playing cards and foodstuffs don’t add any depth. No more than colourful kitsch perhaps, but for a grey mid-January, maybe that’s enough.
PHOTOGRAPHY:
Filed under: 2. CURATION | Tags: albert, art, artist, bridge, cardboard box, fashion, graffiti, guerrilla, music, sculpture, sound, under
I curated and organised a one night only guerrilla gallery showcasing artist talent from a range of disciplines, including product design, illustration, 3D installation, styling, photography and poetry.
The event was inspired by street renegades and their innovative and quirky methods of communicating with the urban environment. The movement into fresh directions beyond street art and graffiti are subverting the 3D streetscape by using new materials and techniques to shock, educate and entertain the public, changing the way we experience city life.
Under the bridge exhibition makes the most of the public space that surrounds us, without destroying, vandalising and defacing it permanently. Using magnetic hooks and temporary methods to display the work of selected artists.
I hope to develop a platform on which artists who do not have the means or access to exhibit, a chance to shout out their message. A guerrilla gallery can do this and this is what “Under the Bridge” is about, claiming the streets back. Advertisers and large corporations don’t ask for the public’s permission to bombard us with their messages. So why should we ask permission to expose ours? We didn’t and it totally kicked ass!
Invite: designed by Macki*
The venue: Under Albert Bridge.
Manifesto: “Under the Bridge” by Macki*
Designer of Albert Bridge: Rowland Mason Ordish (Respect!)
Illustration by Macki* – “Trippy Tramp 1″
3 hand drawn illustrations combined with photography and psychedelic rainbow colours. The photograph is of a lonely weathered tramp I saw sitting hunched on a bench by Albert Bridge. Waterproof brown tape round his ankles to keep the cold out and a shredded backpack splattered with mud. The fluid doodles surround him, he is tripping out, and the doodles signify the trippy ambience that envelops him.
E-mail: macki@macki.co.uk
www.macki.co.uk
Illustration by Macki* – “Psychedelic Trippy Tramp 2″
Trippy self-portrait: Macki*
“Psychedelic Trippy Tramps” Emma Viner & Fern Catlin
I also wanted to portray this trippy ambience by asking 2 friends (Emma Viner & Fern Catlin) to dress as ‘psychedelic trippy tramps.’ Wearing all my colourful ghetto-clashing clothes! My illustrations come alive and become living, breathing installations that mingle with the crowds of the ‘Under the Bridge’ show, filming and begging for contributions for the mulled wine on tap!
Site-specific fashion: Combining my photographs of surrounding urban environments with clothing: M*
M*
M*
Matthew recording the sounds + vibrations of the bridge for his sculpture.
“Sound Tag: Albert” sculpture By Matthew Plummer Fernandez, a product designer studying at the Royal College of Art.
Sound tagging is a new activity for documenting the sounds of our city. Most large buildings have distinct auditory signatures as a result of vibrations generated by traffic, underground, and wind that resonate through the solid structures. In simpler terms: buildings have voices.
The sound is recorded professionally capturing the otherwise unnoticed sound of the structure and graphed 3-dimensionally on a volume/frequency/time graph. The graph is turned into a 3-D sculpture by laser-cutting acrylic.
“Worn” illustration also by Matthew Plummer Fernandez www.plummerfernandez.com
Illustrations by: Hans Lo
Hans replicated the mental state of a tramp by getting stoned and seeing what creative output could come from it by drawing under these tramp like circumstances! His three hand drawn fluid illustrations are attractively framed, strong in their simplicity and void of conceptual pretentiousness that mirrors the freestyle life of tramps.
“Faces” by Ed Wood (Woody)
These howling tramp like faces are emerging from the walls representing characters from a narrative he wrote. This piece is dramatic and juxtaposes many other pieces in the show. For it is a painting on canvas that has been taken out of context, from a four walled gallery to the street.
Illustrations: “A Man about town” by Louise Pashley (University College for the Creative Arts, Epsom)
5 mysterious unknown men appear in Louise’s stunning mixed media collages.
Illustrations: “A man about town” by Louise Pashley
“Who Lives In A House Like This?” By Thomas Webber
“One of the doors under the bridge had ‘pussy’ graffitied onto it;
probably this was just mindless graffiti or an unoriginal tag; i didn’t
know where the door led to, but I imagined what it would be like if it
was a pussy cat that lived behind this door. I drew the cat as if they
were coming out of their home just to check what was going on under the
bridge, to see what all this noise was about.”
www.thomaswebber.com
Poloroids taken from both sides, under the bridge by Thomas Webber.
“The Affordable Housing Project” installation by Holly Steidl, George Ellison & Lily Arnold: “GollyGosh”
‘The Affordable Housing Project’ By ‘Gollygosh’ is an on-going project creating quick, on the spot, installations in and around London. Inspired by the living spaces of the homeless and they found by creating a small shelter out of cardboard boxes and objects found locally to a specific site and putting an installation inside, was a cost effective and environmentally friendly way of exhibiting work in London.
GollyGosh are all theatre design trained and see these pieces as being more performance based as it is more about how people interact with the installation rather than the piece itself. They hope to develop and expand the idea further to venture more towards larger public performances.
Each Installation will be branded with the GollyGosh name so if you ever see one please take time to venture inside! To contact you can find GollyGosh on Facebook or email at gollygoshevents@hotmail.com
Photography: “Pig Activites” by Amelia Karlsen
“Pig activities is a test-shoot exploring the concept of ‘life and death’ as well as an experimentation of my own boundaries relating to the disturbing depiction that is macabre. The idea originally developed from the still life shots by Irving Penn, and are continually developing.”
The contents in the photos consist of : a dead pig’s head that cost a bargain price of £2.50 from Tooting butchers!
The heads were styled with various items including: fake hair extensions (Tooting market), angel advent calender (Stylist’s own), napkins and christmas lights (IKEA)
Poem: “Beneath the Bridge” Anonymous
Scuttled up, suited down
Bright eyed yet bruised in this
Half-lit part of town.
Hemmed in by a city stream
Held up by a half-wit dream
We bear anxious weights together
And wonder when the floods will come.
Under this bridge I foresaw the flow
A hung-up hobo telling Where the river will go.
Clicking my tongue in time with the swirl
Wishing awhile for the warmth of the world.
I stop. Meditate on the white lights of Albert Bridge.
From the depths of my dark lungs and soul I bellow
“ELLLAAAAA” in Apollean tones,
cracking my brothel bootheels together feet from the floor in this
twisted night-light I giggle and mutter like Knut Hamsun with
my spirit sprinting to the stairs and onto smack house Soho
dreaming of the countryside, Tolstoy and Guinness –
Ah! Youth! And this side-alley street’s bitten again,
so I’ll charge and curse like Odysseus, eye-brows raised,
murderous eyes and heart ablaze, lips tender;
two second hand sofas with God in between,
my tongue will caress this city and tell tales of yesteryear,
embracing strangers whilst rasping about
realms beyond the mountains…
Lotte Jarlset: ‘Kalediafox’ illustration
Aplenty full amount of hot sausage rolls for the guests!
M* & Will Lion sipping on home brewed mulled wine on tap!
Incase the ‘popo’ came down I brought my bobby hat and some festive lights..why not!?
Instant feedback from guests….
Sebastien & M*
Press Article by “Don’t panic” online publication! whooohooo! Written by Phoebe Hartigan 
N.B: An edited film of the evening is to follow. Filming and interviewing by the one and only Vinemista ! (Sexy Trippy tramp)
Filed under: 8. INSPIRATION
Perhaps I could create narratives on models….a whole story on naked skin….
RossieOddie and the Odd Squad…Pop punk/Funk/Indie
Filed under: 1. ILLUSTRATION
I submitted an illustration titled: “I Smack Art” to ‘Daydream Network’ a representation of the talent of tommorrow and the core of creative culture…..Below is my illustration – and you can see my image peeping up on the middle page in the black book below. Also featured is the worlds best product designer and innovator…Matthew Scrummy Fernandez….
www.daydreamnetwork.com
“I smack Art” – Collage: my studded jean jacket layered on top of illustrated portrait + photography.
To buy one of these bogus bibles of creativity go to this link:
http://www.addict.co.uk/products/sku/books__publications/daydream_third_edition_black/
Filed under: 8. INSPIRATION
Inspired by Keith Haring and Mickey Mouse: Jean-Charles de Castelbajac autumn/winter 2002/3
One display case is taken up with a sofa and a coat made from hundreds of teddy bears. Another features a transparent duvet-jacket stuffed with feathers. Dresses are printed with the faces of Karl Lagerfeld, Tom Ford and Jimi Hendrix. Others are emblazoned with logos for Shell, Lucky Strike and Campbell’s soup.
Born into one of the oldest families in France – he can trace his ancestry back to the year 829 and the first king of Navarro – de Castelbajac was originally, like the male heirs before him, destined to be a soldier.
From the ages of five to 17, he was sent to a military boarding school in France, an experience that made him determined ”never to wear a helmet” and subsequently gave rise to his famous “teddy bear” coat which was, he explains, an attempt ”to exorcise dark moments from my childhood, deprived of toys”.
Fascinated by fashion, he rebelled against tradition. When an aunt attempted to discourage him following his heart by reminding him, “We won our title with the tip of the sword,” he told her, “I’ll win mine with the tip of the pen.”
One of his earliest design jobs was with the Italian firm MaxMara. Although staying true to its traditional tailoring, he chose graffiti artist Keith Haring to design invitations for the catwalk shows, while Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, produced the music.
He established his own label in Paris in 1978, and a year later became a member of the prestigious Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, later expanding his designs to include cars, lighting and interiors.
“My goal was not so much to start a trend, but to start a revolution,” he says. “Colour, fun, art, cartoons, famous people – everything can be used. I have always worked the same way – when I see something, I take it out of context and re-invent it. I create by energy, by observation – fashion is a tool of expression. But there must always be a form of function.”
His inflatable plastic poncho is a perfect example. Cut from a simple rectangle of fabric, it can be blown up and used as a life-raft, and one of his favourite designs remains the “double poncho” for couples in love, later updated with a zip “so, if they divorce, they can split it in two”.
Although often ignored in the 1990s, de Castelbajac has recently begun enjoying a resurgence of acclaim. He began designing for the French sportswear group Rossignol four years ago and has now expanded the collections for snow-boarding. His cartoon knits and T-shirts have become a cult among hip-hop enthusiasts in London’s East End.
His label, bought by the London-based Marchpole group in 2004, which also has the licences for Yves Saint Laurent and Ungaro menswear, is undergoing major expansion into de luxe hi-tech sportswear and accessories for tennis, golf, swimming and skiing, and there are plans for homewares and lifestyle.
