Wet Women

Nuzzled within Brick Lane's shopping district, adjacent to The Truman Brewery, sits No 6 Dray Walk; a trendy, urban clothes shop regularly visited by the young fashionistas of Shoreditch. Last night, and for one night only, the bright clothes, white walls and polished wooden floors housed an exhibition of American photographer Amanda Langford's 'Wet Women'.

...and not those kind of wet women before you ask. These glossy prints displayed various bikini-clad women posing underneath a simmering sunlight, each adorned with kitch 80's acccessories, large afros, bold coloured make-up and the last drips of water, which sit comfortably upon their oiled skin.

The electric-coloured photos were orginally exhibitied in the West Indies in 1988, and after their discovery in Langdon's attic years later, have been fully revived for a more contemporary audience. The exhibition iteself was curated by Reinform, a collective of creatives, thinkers and commentators. You can check out their website here, along with more photographs from the show.

New York Couture

Up and coming fashion label New York Couture revamps the 80's in an amalgamation of Lady Gaga: meets Hello Kitty: meets New York Diner.With it's burger skirts, studded coursets, tight red lycra stockings and glitter frosted leggings, it's certainly been nothing other than a catwalk showstopper.

I'd like to think they've taken an influence from the bright colours and bold images of Pop Art. Infact perhaps next in store we should expect a Campbell's soup mini-skirt? I can see Andy Warhole being smug with that one. Check out the rest of the arty collection here.

Diassembled Household Appliances

Art student Brittny Badger takes apart household appliances, placing their individual parts systematically and symmetrically onto a white sheet. Badger says her intention is to explore the 'brains' of each product, allowing us to view them from a very different perspective.

Jill Greenberg

I think I've just found my favorite photographer Jill Greenberg, who calls herself 'The Manipulator' which makes me like her even more.

Greenberg borrowed the name from the 80’s German large format magazine "The Manipulator", which covered art, culture and photography and was one of the many pop culture influences along with “The Face”, “Interview”, and “W”.

As you'll see from her website, Greenberg's chromatic, vibrant photographs capture striking portraits of anything from children, animals and music, to abstract locations, pop stars and CEO's. Her style is so attuned to detail that each subject appears like a waxwork; an effect obtained by the use of distinctive lighting and personally-executed post production.

Gum Walls

Check out this wall in Seattle covered in gum. It's hard to get the scale of it from this picture, but since it was begun in the early 1990's, thousands of pieces of gum have been stuck upon the brick, turning it into its very own tourist attraction. There's even a Wikipedia entry about it.

On the wall are messages within each piece- some people deciding to post their hometown or a few even moulding the gum so as to create words about hope and peace.

Since the 'Gum Wall' began there have been reports of other walls of gum created in various communities across the United States, but none to rival this one. Check out some more pictures here.

Taxidermy Is Back In Fashion

About a month ago I wrote a blog on Polly Morgan's taxidermy exhibition and it seems shes not the only artist cashing in on this bizarre artistic trend. Taxidermy is is the display of stuffed animals in innovative yet slightly twisted ways and low and behold the next artist to use such a technique is Julia deville (...now is it just me, or anyone else reminded of the infamous Dalmation slaughterer..?)

And as it happens this would be entirley appropriate. On her rather errie website- full of dark colours and Gothic writing- you can choose to flick through either Birds, Mice, Other Mammals and Skeletons; she even has pieces called 'Bird-Pin' and 'Bird Shoulder Piece' which admittedly look like roadkill simply scooped from the road, and attached to a necklace. 'Sparrow Brooch' is equally as alarming, once again appearing as if the small bird has been snatched from it's nest and strangled by a chain.

But wait for it. There's Kitten Rugs, which are equally as brash; both stretched cats look as if they've been peeled from underneath a tyre and simply stuck on someone's carpet.

Despite this supposedly being a serious art, I did happen to laugh uncontrollably at most of these pieces. Judge for yourselves......click here to see.

REFLECTIONS

Entitled 'Holiday on The Marina V', Danielle Eubank uses oil paints in this simple but effective painting to accuratley capture multicoloured relfections in water. Having spent months on the International Borobudur Ship Expedition as Exhibition Artist, Eubank is clearly used to these surroundings and has certainly aquired the eye for them.

More recently, Standard Chartered Bank recently commissioned Eubank to produce a portrait for its new headquarters in London, currently under construction. The painting will be part of an international traveling show before it is hung in the London office

Olympic Stamps

In anticipation of the 2012 Olympics, Royal Mail is issuing 30 artist designed stamps each depicting an olympic or paralympic sport. the stamps will be released in sets of tens (2009,2010, 2011) - one set each year leading up to the 30th olympiad. For a look at more designs, check out The DesignBoom website.

ARTISTIC GROUP: EN MASSE

EN MASSE is a non-profit organisation that brings together emerging Montreal artists to participate in an ongoing series of artistic projects. The group focuses on the creation of large-scale, highly spontaneous, collaborative black and white murals and public installations.

The picture above documents their revamp of Le Petit Hotel in Old Montreal, where they adorned a small awkward space with their black and white murial, transforming the interior.

The EN MASSE Mandate is twofold; firstly to increase the visibility of new young artists, both collectively and as individuals, and secondly, to foster community-oriented art events and programming, built upon a specific form of collaborative interaction and immersion between the chosen artists.

My Favorite Website

This is my favorite website. Especially because I happen to be extremely nosey. The Selby gives you a sneek peak into the lives of the world's top creatives; their studios, homes and hang outs. You can even find out what their cat looks like, what colour their sofas are and more importantly what they hang on their walls. Created by brainchild Todd Selby, a portrait, interiors and fashion photographer, The Selby began in June 2008 as a website, www.theselby.com, where Todd posted photo shoots he did of his friends in their homes. Requests quickly began coming in daily from viewers all over the world who wanted their homes to be featured on the site. The Selby’s website became so popular—with up to 35,000 unique visitors daily—that within months, top companies from around the world began asking to collaborate. I recently purcahsed The Selby's first coffee book, and the photos are really captivating and quirky.

Interview With An Artist

I came across Becky Czaicka's work at grad show, and got in contact with her to find out what lies behind her colourful, dynamic portraits. Becky graduated from the University of Huddersfield with a BA in fine art, but has been painting since the age of just 14. Her influences range from Psychedelic Art from the 60's, particularly the work of Wes Wilson and the Coloured Coat to more contemporary influences such as Ben Tour, Tatiana Arocha and Erin Petson.

Steph: Do you mostly do portraits?

Becky: No, I like to draw objects and love just mark making with paint. Since I started painting like I do now, I haven't really had the chance to broaden my content, but I will so when I have the time

S: You paintings are based on pop stars- was this for one particular project or a subject you enjoy representing?

B: It's a mixture of both. We had a brief given to us last November, the idea was to create a campaign to promote the essence and richness of British Music for a museum in London. I chose the brief because I love the cleanliness seen in photographs of musicians and wanted to create a set of images of British Music Icons. It took me a long time to really get into it, and when I got to the last week, I had to start the whole project over again. This is when I developed the style you see now. I found by using the paint in such an expressive way, I could portray the emotion of the music produced by these musicians. I plan to continue doing portraits of Pop Stars and would definitely be interested in album covers and music promotion.

S: Your paintings have a great sense of energy and movement. What are your techniques?

B: I like to use a mixture of paint, ink, glue and anything that can be manipulated when shaking a canvas. Depending on the type of image I am creating, I use different coloured paint and ink onto a canvas and move it around to see how the colours integrate. I love how the glue dries clear and cuts through the colours. For my portraits, I tend to decide on the composition from the original image and then afterwards decide which parts of the image can be more interesting and expressive, like hair for example. Colour palettes are very important to me; it's all about intensity and excitement and I like bold colours as they bring an image to life.

S: What is your end goal? Would you like to have your own show?

B: At the moment, I'm starting to experiment with mark making on canvas and would like to expand my range of content within pictures. I've got lots of ideas in my head as to where my art is going and as long as it's a positive direction, then I don't get too worried about where I will end up. Having my own show would definitely be something I'd enjoy, but I've got a few more years of experimenting to do before I'd be really proud to have a show.

To check out her website, click here.

SepiaTown

Ever wondered what your city used to look like 100 years ago? Now you can with SepiaTown, a website that allows users to upload old photographs of each area. Described as an 'online time capsule' the website's Then/Now feature allows you to compare a historical image to the current Google Street View, or you can map historical events, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 or the 1928 UK Suffrage movement.

Body Beautiful

Bill Durgin's interesting photography capturing the flexibility and curvature of the human torso, has certainly made an impression. Hitting headlines in Time Out, Paper and Elle, Durgin takes inspiration from dancers and other performers, photographing the elasticity of human form without heads or limbs.

I'm unsure what exactly make of his works and some would argue that the human body is only beautiful in it's full form, but at the same time, I think it's a clever risk to eliminiate the 'beauty spots' of the body and instead focus on a part that is often overlooked. I also like the way his works are playful on the eye- forcing you to look several times before you can really gather what exactly is on show.

Check out Durgin's website for more figure studies.

What Dreams Look Like

Some mornings I wake up and spend at least 15 minutes trying to piece back together the jigsaw of an extremely puzzling dream; one that in concious observation definitely had a start, middle and end, but at the time was anything but sequential.

Leondro Lima's work reminds me of what it would be like to trace your dreams pictorially including every minutes worth of wonderful, wistful wierdness. Or at least mine anyway. They're embedded with that alluring Dali-esque mysteriousness, with one part linking lazily onto the next resembling that all too familiar dream-like sense of foreign thoughts or images connecting and seamlessly blending one into one-another.

Ironically enough, this piece was actually designed for a bank. Ok this doesn't exactly scream 'alternative', but still, good on the bank for trying to be different.

Paper Creations

Le Creative Sweatshop have developed a range of weird and wonderful designs made entirely of folded paper. Products include jewellery, window displays, handbags, shoes and installations for brands such as Nissan, Stella McCartney and high-class fashion magazines.

Le Creative Sweatshop is the result of the encounter between Ndeur and Make a Paper World in January 2009: a conceptual agency based of modern communication means and mediums, through the lens of the DIY culture, working on volume and space scenography.