stop press! h&m are teaming up with tamara mellon’s fancy footware empire jimmy choo! prices will range from 30 pounds for ballet pumps, to 175 pounds for boots.
i don’t know if it will be any gooooood (stylisticly speaking- matthew williamson was thoroughly rubbish, but the ads looked great, which i suppose is job done. they just want us in the store and they know we will find something to buy to console ourselves over the disappointment that the designer range just looks weird on). but i have to applaud the big wigs at h&m HQs for their ability to pull in the big guns and marry populist, cheap chic trash with high-end, unnatainable rich-bitch snobbery for feet.
This project is the firstborn child conceived from a life-long love affair with photography and typography. The photo series was shot at an abandoned (and rumored to be haunted) ranch in central Oregon and the type was inspired by my early days as a screen-printer. These pieces complete the sentences that the pictures and the words could never quite say on their own.
txt + img via 20×200 where you can purchase this print. you could even purchase it for me.
2,559 of Wikipedia’s best articles are ‘featured articles’.
it’s these that rob matthews decided to press ‘cntrl + p’ on and print out (probably at work). the result is this weighty tome of some 5000 pages.
i believe his piece was to convey that it is only through computers that this amount of information becomes palatable, searchable and essentially useful.
The sheer volume of information stored on Wikipedia is massive. A text based archive of the English version takes up 2.5GB and if you include images, that number jumps to over 78GB.
If you were to print out the whole thing (not just the featured articles), this is what it would look like based on volumes 25cm high and 5cm thick (some 400 leaves), each page having two columns, each columns having 80 rows, and each row having 50 characters.
kerry roper is one cheeky chappy. just peruse his illustration/designs below and be amused (big laughs in particular for his “helvetica” piece which currently hangs on my boss’s wall). kerry lives and works in london and is one of the most amusing characters i have ever met. his sense of humour and playfulness shine through even in his more “serious” pieces.
enjoy!
this lil-beaut of a short film is directed by tomas mankovsky with music composed by keith kenniff. for the first few moments i was thinking ‘oh, that’s some cute animation, i wonder what program they used’. turns out they used a whole load of patience, persistence and imagination (possibly included in Adobe CS5).
watch to the very end to see a glimpse into how they did it. and if you’re as captivated as i am, check out more on their site:sorry-im-late.com
i haven’t had much time to blog since work has gone pretty mental of late. (man, how many bloggers have you heard say this!).
one thing that’s crossed my browser that really caught my eye are these amazing paintings by Jeremy Geddes, from my native Melbourne. frickin amazing.
i think when i return, i might have to look him up and shake his painted mitt.
so tonight, like a whole bunch of the UK public, i found myself having a few drinks and watching Britain’s Got Talent.
lady worthington was bemused by the drastic change in simon cowell’s nose, while I was deeply touched by little Hollie Steel when she cried on stage after forgetting the lyrics.
I think lll she wanted was a carrot to munch on. here you go Hollie, a nice carrot for you.
after researching jim lambie, it appears that his usual creative out-put centers around themes such as brightly coloured taping of floors, and installations of trash/treasure including the kitchen sink. however a recent collection of work has surfaced from mr lambie, which features old chinese oil paintings of floral arrangements, cut up and layered over pop-culture poster children from yesteryear. grace jones, jesus and the mary chain and stevie nicks all get the garden treatment.
in jim lambie’s words: “the found flower projects are in keeping with my usual practice of using found or thrift-shop objects and especially music memorabelia. i combine pop posters with cut-up flower paintings which is essentially a collage. i like the way the flowers seem to grow across the images of the icons of pop, but they are anchored in a number of observations of actual events in the real world: someone carrying a bunch of flowers in front of them as i passed them in the street; someone sitting behind a vase of flowers in a restaurant window…”
i think i say this nearly every post- it’s most often the simplest of things, or a simple re-imagining that makes the most incredible Images. we’ve all seen shots taken underwater, and syncronised swimmers on tv but this is a beautiful take on the subject.
alinka echeverría’s films and photography of synchronised swimmers constitues the series ‘lightness of being’.
a new angle that alters our perception of space, gravity and earthly existence.
lady worthington and i met fellow melbournite marcus keating at a friends house party a few weeks ago.
i was taken aback by these brilliant haphazard cast rocks that were hanging around his neck by a garish gold chain.
turns out he’d only just decided to cast & wear them about an hour before departing for the evening. also turns out he hasn’t stopped at rocks, but also cast sticks and twigs that he gathered from around fulham.
good stuff. no word on whether they’ll be popping up in selfridges anytime soon though.
the children’s world of make-believe has finally found the perfect outlet via jan von hollenberg’s sense of humour, some willing kids and his camera.
he brings the influences of his parents – a cinematographer and child therapist – to his work. his focus on the visual representation of childhood, ‘child-history’ and concepts of ‘playing’, come from his teacher training course and he combines these theories with his personal experience and childhood memories. inspired by classic childhood books as well as modern superheroes, he produces ‘dreams of flying’ since 2002 with children from his local neighbourhood in south west germany.
simply inspirational. i love, i love.
you can purchase these images in a book and calendar.
he also has tonnes of other wonderful on his website at jan von hollenberg
androgenous, yet with with ultra-long blonde hair, brit girl emma balfour was one of the more enigmatic of the models of the nineties. i always thought she looked like she didn’t care too much about keeping up with fashion, which was what i liked about her. that, and her unique concoction of powerful/fragile/cold/dark/blonde beauty.
i just thought i’d mention her. i sometimes wonder what she’s up to now… anyone?
Danish are mokkelbost is the man behind the collage insanity that is ION.
i initially thought that he was yet another photoshop wizard, but further investigation on his site b-o-r-g.org lead me to realize that he spends a whole lot of time with scissors and glue.
these pieces took over three years to produce. the result is truly incredible. awe inspiring beauty, through terrifying imagery.
i don’t know much about your acting, but what i saw in about a boy was good stuff as far as i could tell… i’m sure you’re great on film. you do, however, turn out to be a real head-turner on the red carpet. for all the right reasons. you are a consistently elegant dresser and you never, ever look cheap. and i love green. it’s my favourite colour. can we be friends? i’ll let you borrow my clothes if you let me borrow yours. deal?
parisian graphic designer/illustrator sandrine pagnoux illustrates that there is a darker side to the world of glamour pusses and beauty queens. her work has been seen in all sorts of magazines and press, but check out her website for more… especially the collaborative work with photographer sophie etchart; another frenchie who i have previously blogged about. girlies, épris de votre travail!
manual pandalis doesn’t just shoot black and white portraits. (i think he is actually more of a fashion and beauty photographer, judging from his body of work.) however these contrasting portraits are so striking and well juxtaposed i just had to write about these instead. i originally found manuel’s work when his agent came by with some portfolios for a breakfast book view. i chomped on croissant and stared, mesmirised at his huge collection of colourful, ultra-chic fashiony spreads.
anyway, this work below hopefully reminds us that we are all beautiful. beauty can’t be found in just one face; we all have a little piece of it in one way or another.
do you ever have that feeling you’re not alone? commuting in london, i wrestle daily with knowledge that i am sharing my personal space with folks i’m definitely not on personal terms with. they brush past me like i was never there and trip over my feet like it’s crime to have legs. why don’t people wait until you have alighted the tube before trying to board it? can’t they see me???…
i digress. but sometimes, according to 12 foot 6, the company of those sharing our space is neither seen nor heard… until now.
12 foot 6, a london illustrator shows us who we’re REALLY sharing the platform with. these guys actually look a little friendly! say hello next time, please. we have a lot in common.
graeme is scottish, but it looks like he managed to find his way down to london, via going to art college in birmingham. and what a worthwhile journey it was! i used to live right near where these shots were taken- hampstead heath. and i can tell you the light you can soak up on the peak of the heath is truly a blessing.
high above the hustle and bustle below shines the life giving sun on to parliment hill.
i like ami clarke’s modular disjointed pieces.
a common thread in her work seems to be the hiding of certain elements of a preexisting images. it’s all fairly understated very subtly alluding to the world beyond the frame or a deeper element that’s been hidden or removed.
i guess to the viewer at least, they’re the unknown unknowns.
i’d love to know how this piece evolved over the few weeks it was exhibited earlier this year. i imagine after a while the strawberrys themselves would have suffered a similar fate as the crow, plopping on the ground as their flesh weakened and they lost the ability to stay afloat.
the piece is called ‘fluid’ and it’s by UK artist claire morgan.
i think it speaks for itself. i love the sense of movement, the scale, the creation of a plane of strawberries just to have it shattered by a fallen crow.
I’m enjoying delving into katya ford’s flickr set. she takes regular fashion photography shots, then photoshops the shit out of them, often removing the fashion element - sometimes removing the human element.
not sure if she’s trying to make some artsy ‘juxtapositional statement’ or just blazingly pretty pictures. she definitely succeeds in the latter.
in case you haven’t read about this fascinating project in the london papers, you read it here first!
rankin live is a photographic project by fashion and celebrity photographer, rankin. he put out a call for “eccentric and enthusiastic londoners” who would be happy having a portrait sitting with him and donate £50 to oxfam. i yelped with glee and sent him my pic, with a note promising to blog about it if i was chosen. 2 days later i was face to face with the (curiously small, but enigmatic) man himself, requesting that i talk to him with my eyes. his words, not mine.
whatever he thought i was saying, we seemed to have a conversation of sorts as he clicked with his huge lens that was staring right back.
together, we chose one image to be used in his exhibition which will be blown up extra-large. i liked the one we chose because it showed the gaps in my teeth (which i used to hate). even rankin can make a flaw feel special! the man is good!
if you want to come along to the exhibition, it will be in august 2009 on brick lane somewhere. from what i saw at the shoot, there is a large variety of faces to be shown. stay tuned for details.
below is the chosen image and a small selection of the many happy snaps from the day.
Gotz Fusser is an artist that hails from Munich but is currently kicking around the local arts scene.
a few weeks ago, lady worthington and i were traipsing around east london galleries when after a noonday pint we stumbled across Gotz’s studio on vyner st.
his abstract photographs are taken using a really old mobile phone. he moves and plays with the lens before taking each shot to blur and overexpose each image. the results are low-rez images blown up larger than life. the compression software on the camera adds an extra layer of fuzz, a strange pixelation and sense of the technology taking over the image.
the piece below is now in pride of place on my wall. i love it.
getting it hung was a strange process. i was given a handwritten receipt to tide me over as i waited a few week for the exhibition to finish. when i returned, i was passed a roll of packing tape, a few reams of bubble wrap before buzzing it on out of there, canvas tucked under my arm.
it was once a stream:
this is another of his pieces, a lonely woman traveling:
