Australian artist Danie Mellor uses printmaking, drawing and sculpture to explore the shared history of Australia’s intersections and the relationships between Indigenous and Western cultures. (Via)
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The puzzling relation between need and want has been the focus of my art practice. Choices come to us everyday, and the meaning of our necessity shifts, depending on the moment. Want becomes need, or need becomes want. It is super fascinating.
“Time and Coffee?” is based on a Starbucks experience in West-End London. The efficiency in coffeehouse chain made coffee always strike me. Using minimal yet efficient communication between staff, my order arrived within matter of seconds . While enjoying my refreshing coffee in a comfortable seat, a question came in my mind: Who’s the one that really need the coffee?
“The best bit” is the first painting of tooth brush series. We must brush our teeth. I think the mundane quality in this activity is amazing because it is both the contrast and the foundation of the fantasies you have the rest of the day.
See more paintings by James Ng
25 September – 12 October 2013
Ilona Szalay’s ‘Lesson’ (shown above) which was featured as an Art Circus Spotlight in May, has been shortlisted for the £30,000 Threadneedle prize.
The Threadneedle Prize now in its sixth year, showcases figurative and representational painting and sculpture for artists working in the UK and Continental Europe. All works in the competition are sourced through an open submission. The Prize exists to encourage debate about the role of figurative art in the contemporary art scene. This years exhibition will include 111 paintings, sculptures and installations by 95 artist. See some of the highlights. Continue reading “Ilona Szalay’s ‘Lesson’ Shortlisted for the Threadneedle Prize”
Japanese architecture firm Tetsuo Kondo Architects in collaboration with environmental engineering firm Transsolar have created an installation called Cloudscapes, located in the Sunken Garden of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. Cloudscapes gives visitors the experience of walking up a staircase, through a cloud. As the project states: ‘The temperature and humidity inside the container are controlled to keep the clouds at their designed height. The air inside the container forms three distinct strata, one cool and dry, at the bottom, a warm and humid middle stratum, and a hot and dry stratum at the top. The warm, humid layer is where the clouds form.’ (Via)
Nicholas Dedics graduated from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2012 with an MA in Fine Art. His paintings have been shown in the ‘New Sensations’ at the Saatchi Gallery and recently in the ‘Hot One Hundred’ at the Schwartz Gallery.
How important is the medium you use to the subject matter/message?
I feel painting as a medium freely allows me to express my messages in the ways I want. In the painting process I let my imagination take over, acting out the roles of the fictional people from where I source my images and thoughts from. Only painting lets me approach a piece in this ‘interchanging personality’ way – putting marks on the canvas as if made by different people, but ultimately it’s all done by my hand, it’s all me and I find that interesting. Continue reading “Q&A with Nicholas Dedics”
Chloe Rosser’s will be showing her photographs ‘Form 1’ in Cream 13, an exhibition featuring a selection of some of the most interesting and diverse photographic talents to emerge from 2013.
The exhibition includes BA graduates from some of the most prestigious Photography Courses at Universities and Colleges the length and breadth of the country from Westminster to Glasgow; London to Newport and Brighton to Ulster. Curated by Crane Kalman Brighton Gallery, Cream 14: A Showcase of Graduate Photography Talent 2013 at the University of Brighton.
Cream 14 will be on show at the University of Brighton Gallery from 15th – 30th August 14th and at Brighton Dome from 14th September – 27th October 2013.
‘Staring at the Sea’ is an image based on loneliness. The solitary figure of a lone man standing on an empty beach with thoughts in his head. It was an idea i got from visiting a stretch of coastline by were i live.after seeing the Anthony Gormley creation called “another place”– where 100 iron statues of iron men are spread out along the beach, i wanted to create my own version of this. The image had to have mood and atmosphere to make this a tranquil scene. Its a sad story of a man fighting to clear the demons in his head.
See more photographs from Philip Mckay
I live in Cleethorpes – a seaside town in North East Lincolnshire, UK, which holds a population of around 30,000 people. The best summary I can give you of my feelings towards my neighbourhood is this: I’m nearly 30, I live with my parents and I want to shoot my next door neighbours 11 noisy children with a pellet gun.
A short while ago, I decided that making spreadsheets and answering phone calls probably wasn’t going to aid my career as a painter, so I moved away from London and in with my parents to save money and time: the dreaded yet common plight of the ‘Y generation’. Cleethorpes is a ramshackled, run-down sort of place. It’s not where I’d have chosen to live, nor where I grew up; but it is, for now, my corner of the world.
The paintings I am working on currently are about this ‘corner’ I occupy. I paint/draw/make obsessively, therefore, my work often reflects what is happening in my life at that particular moment in time. My overwhelming sense of Cleethorpes is that it is poor but in a way where it’s more successful history is still very evident. Our house sits directly in-between docklands and seaside resort – both not what they were in their respective heydays. As the economic and technological climate of the UK changed over past decades, this small part of the country became a neglected space.
However, whilst Cleethorpes tells a sad story in part, there is also a sense of nostalgia and frivolity imbued into the aesthetic of the still existing amusement arcades, rock shops and theme park. The portrayal of life in Cleethorpes encapsulates part of UK heritage in a way that incorpoartes sadness, complexity and commercialism but also nostalgia, colour and fun in to one picture. In essence, I am just telling a story from part of my life but what my story, or experience might mean on a larger scale correlates to the state of the UK in general, if not the world.
In terms of aesthetics, I have been interested for a while in finding out whether there is a movement currently afoot that follows on from the Super Flat method of painting: using heightened colour and merging elements of graphic design, consumerism and infantile imagery into one piece of work; though differing from Super Flat art in terms of painterly technique and content. In my own work I use this same method of distracting from a serious, banal, sinister or sad (in other words, sober) subject matter by beautifying the work. I have always loved finding the colour in life, so this is also a part of what I do.
See more paintings by Jennifer Maidment
French illustrator Moebius created a series of nine illustrations for fashion brand Hermes just before his death, in 2012. As part of their campaign titled ‘VOYAGE D’HERMES’ for a new perfume which was released at the time. No one is quite sure where the works ended up but based on these illustrations, it would have been quite the visual treat. (Via)
My work is based on historical references and my curiosity surrounding them – I imagine how it would have been to be there. The two works shown here are based on family photographs that a distant West-German family member has collected. He showed them to us with the aim of completing our family tree. This has proven difficult due to the forced-upon lack of communication between family members in a divided Germany.
These two paintings portrait each a young girl wearing formal dress and hair style. Their gestures are rigid, inward-looking but at the same time alert. I am fascinated by how our perceptions about discipline and hierarchies have changed, and how gestures of people can illustrate this.
I use historical photographs as documents that help me to establish content for my work. I do not create sketches in preparation for my work. Instead I analytically research sources that signalise an instinctive meaning and aesthetic transferability to me. The imagination process is highly important at this stage and even more so in the painting process. I enjoy precision as much as I enjoy openness in a painting – this can be expressed through a good sense of drawing, perspective and a consistency of style i.e. being committed to paint spaces flat, while at the same time looking for the right moment to stop or to disrupt style.
I believe that the process of imagining, interpreting and analysing somehow connects me with the people and situations that I portrait – however romantic this may sound in an art world that is increasingly concerned with looks, quantitative values and impersonal concepts.
See more paintings by Silvie Jacobi