Sunday 26 February 2012

Saturday 25 February 2012

Roa's Heron

Spotted this heron by Belgian street artist ROA today in Brick Lane, while picking up some art supplies. More of ROA's work here.



Here's a great little video of ROA's work in Belgium.


PORTRAIT ROA en Belgique from THE MOUARF on Vimeo.

Tuesday 21 February 2012

Shrove Tuesday

As it's Shrove Tuesday, AKA 'Pancake Day', here's a timely Rembrandt etching from the British Museum:

Monday 20 February 2012

New Fourth Plinth Exhibit


The latest exhibit on Trafalgar Square's 'Fourth Plinth' goes public this week, reports The Telegraph.





Elmgreen and Dragsets 'Powerless Structures figure 101' will be unveiled on 23rd February.
More here, in an earlier post, including video clips of artist commentaries.

Sunday 19 February 2012

Fotografiska - Stockholm, Sweden

Fotografiska is a fantastic gallery, specialising in the exhibition of photography. It opened quite recently - May 2010.


The gallery itself is housed in an impressive renovation of an art nouveau customs building.

The all-but blacked out exhibition space for the display of work of Spaniard Aitor Ortiz suited his architectural studies perfectly.  Ortiz argues the aesthetic qualities of his photography transforms them from simple documentation of architecture, instead capturing anonymous spaces, and without including figures, giving a sense of narrative or habitation.




His images of beautifully lit spaces in marble quarries were particularly compelling I thought.

Stockholm

I'm just back from a few days in Stockholm - what a great city. Here's a few things which caught my eye...

Carl Stefan Bennet - View of the Royal Palace, Stockholm - at the Nationalmuseum
Carl Hellqvist, Valdemar Holding Visby to Ransom, in Nationalmuseum

Also at the Nationalmuseum, I discovered the superb winter paintings of Gustaf Fjaestad:

Winter Evening by a River

Paintings by Bruno Liljefors won't be to everyone's tastes, but I liked the concepts involved. He was fascinated by new theories of natural science at the time, particularly 'protective mimicry' - animals being drawn to surroundings where they are well camouflaged. This painting demonstrated his interest in the subject -




There was also a pretty good exhibition on the history of Swedish design; all the usual suspects were there, but I particularly enjoyed this little piece of presentation:


There were a few things of interest on show at Moderna, although I absolutely hated the video work by Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Perhaps most entertaining was the fake CCT - on your way into the toilets, visitors paused and looked rather concerned to see a monitor displaying apparently live footage of the urinals and cubicles... only to discover elaborate miniature setups once inside. Good fun.



I also visited the superb Fotografiska collection, but this probably merits its own post.


Many thanks to Barsby & Holst Productions too - for all your studio and event photography needs in Stockholm!

Saturday 18 February 2012

Silver Surfer

Astonishing scenes here - eerie and beautiful. Fashion photographer Jacob Sutton created a suit made up of thousands of LEDs, and filmed pro snowboarder William Hughes lighting up his own path on the slopes.



Filming in the suit was the most surreal thing I've done in 20 years of snowboarding," says Hughes of the charged salopettes. "Luckily there was plenty of vin rouge to keep me warm, and Jacob's enthusiasm kept everyone going through the cold nights."

Friday 10 February 2012

Wednesday 8 February 2012

Oddities

A couple of strangely morbid quasi-anatomical paintings, for no other reason than I stumbled across them and think they're worth sharing... enjoy...

From The Wellcome Collection. More info here


'Philippe Verheyen (1648-1711) Dissecting His Amputated Limb', Anonymous Dutch Artist

Sunday 5 February 2012