Shelter House of Cards Exhibition
I haven’t been able to go to all of the London Design Festival events that I wanted to this week, there was just too many and not enough time, but the Shelter House of Cards exhibition launch is one non-London Design Festival event I have had on the ‘cards’ for a while now, so I was really looking forward to checking it out at the Haunch of Venison Gallery. In short, Shelter asked 53 designers and creatives (including a ‘joker’) to create a deck of cards inspired by Shelter’s recent House of Cards campaign and to be silently auctioned off to raise money for the work Shelter does. Participating artists included: Nick Park, Sir Terence Conran, Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Damien Hirst, Amelia’s Magazine, NB Studio, Neville Brody, Jon Burgerman, D*Face, Henry Holland, Experimental Jetset and Mauricio Ortiz, who was the winner of a public competition that Shelter also ran as part of the campaign and exhibition.
My favourites were Ortiz’s 8 of clubs, Burgerman’s 9 of clubs, D*Face’s Queen of clubs, Ella Doran’s three of diamonds ‘cushion’, Experimental Jetset’s 9 of diamonds, Park’s 6 of spades, McQueen’s King of spades ‘sculpture‘, Amelia’s Magazine’s 2 of hearts, Amanda Levete Architects 3 of hearts, M/M Pari’s 4 of hearts, Polly Morgan’s 10 of hearts, Gerald Scarfe’s Jack of hearts, Antoni and Alison’s ace of clubs, NB Studio’s 2 of clubs and Lacey’s 5 of clubs. Check out a full set of exhibition photos on my Flickr page here.
www.shelterhouseofcards.org.uk
Banksy vs. Bristol Museum Exhibition
With the hype surrounding the new Banksy vs. Bristol Museum Exhibition since it opened its doors in mid June, it was time to pay Bristol a visit to check it out with UK Street Art. My mouth has been watering since I heard about it and saw that video from the BBC whilst in Tokyo. We queued for about 3 hours and I never thought I’d queue that long for a single exhibition exhibition, but it was 1000% worth it, and I urge you to stick it out in the queue and go see what I’m thinking will be Banksy’s best ever exhibition.
There were three mains rooms in the museum dedicated to the UK’s most notorious and identity hidden street artist containing new and old work, canvases, sculptures, installations, stencils and everything else in-between. Something I’ve never seen of Banksy before was a space dedicated to all the artist’s workings, sketches, old stencils and all the stuff you don’t see, set behind chicken wire and in a realistic workspace of what could be Banksy’s studio. The next main room included the highly anticipated animatronic chicken nuggets, fish fingers and sausages as well as a bunny rabbit putting on make up as a provocative comment to animal testing. We spotted a postcard high up on one of the wall ledges, but couldn’t see what was on it, something which I wish I could. Then in the other main room, an abandoned and tagged ice cream truck took centre stage alongside a riot policeman riding a kids electric rocking horse and modified human sculptures.
As well as the three mains rooms, Banksy had placed his pieces of work amongst the rest of the Bristol Museum’s permanent collection. I don’t think I’ve ever paid so much attention to every piece on display in a museum, but we spotted a bong amongst antique china cups and saucers, a reduced sign on a terracotta army figure and a dildo amongst some other similar looking rocks in the geology section. There was plenty of Banksy amongst the permanent collection.
Hopefully we spotted everything, but probably not, with visitors looking out for the unexpected. Maybe there were things on the floor and ceilings and windows we didn’t see, but the postcard was the only real obvious which we saw, but couldn’t see what was on it. All in all, make sure you go visit if you can, we heard people from as far as Australia have flown to the UK especially for the exhibition, as this is the best street art exhibition I’ve ever been to and well worth the wait outside. I’ll let all the photographs do the talking instead so check them all out on the specially created UK Street Art x Banksy microsite here. Alternatively, you can see them all individually on my Flickr here. Go visit, go visit now!
Tunnel 228
On Saturday at 4.20pm I visited Tunnel 228 in Waterloo. Tunnel 228 is a collaboration between Kevin Spacey, artistic director of the Old Vic theatre and Punchdrunk.
“I’ve always been interested in the bringing the art world and theatre a little closer together” said Spacey.
It is a sensory experience lurking behind the doors of the Leake Street tunnel where the ongoing Cans Festival is taking place. I was one of the lucky ones to get tickets to it as the 15,000 places made available went in a flash, however there are plans to bring it back in Autumn time for everyone who didn’t get to see it this time round. The photos here are from media websites as no photography was allowed inside.
It was probably one the more weirdest things I’ve been to and most of the time you couldn’t see more than a metre ahead of yourself. Visitors were given face masks and this immediately started to block out your senses. The space where everything was set up was huge and featured street artists included Mark Jenkins and Slinkachu, famous for his miniature installations as show in the image below, which we dotted about the space as well; featuring Gala Bingo, Aldi and a Shell garage. Mark Jenkins had worked on most of the mannequin installations in the space, my favourite one being a man face down on the banks of a man-made river in the space and attached to him was a group of colourful balloons.
Other parts to the experience included bouncers dressed with balaclavas, a human running on a hamster wheel, a booth where you looked inside and a woman went under water to what looked like she was drowing, but when you looked through the second eye hole she was kissing a man under water. There was also two men using pulleys on a train track walking on the tunnel’s ceiling, a forest made out of paper and what looked like a New York subway toilet in pitch black. It felt like that if you switched on the light, there would be a person and blood everywhere. A light bulb filled room with a Jesus sculpture and upstairs rooms of a dining scene and a sculpture made of feathers were also great pieces on site. There was one room right at the back of the space, where you honestly couldn’t see anything ahead of you and it felt like you were going to fall at any moment.
Tickets are now all sold out but you can see the website of Tunnel 228 here, with the option to keep a track of things; and you see what the Guardian thought to it here. Punchdrunk can be found here.
First week at THIS IS Studio
Onto internship no. 4 this week with the guys at THIS IS Studio; Barney, Richard and Dougal. They’ve recently moved studios from Camberwell to Rivington Street in Shoreditch to what is a very swish space. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I was helping design some flyers to go along with some posters the guys had already done for the Watchmen film event that was held at SeOne last night. Some classic themed posters were flyposted by myself, Barney, Dougal and roped in helpers Anna and Jamie inside and outside on some specially made boards. A massive poster of a horned Nixon finished off my work for the event. A great few days and the entire event looked amazing. Check out the whole set of photos I took on my Flickr gallery here.
I was back in the studio on Friday helping out with the new address stationary and archiving some work and just beginning on a new brief and side project continuing next week so I’m looking forward to it!
Berliner Strasse Exhibiton
I went to my first exhibition in Berlin yesterday, the ‘Berliner Strasse Exhibition‘ of street art in Alexanderplatz with the likes of Jaybo, Marok and Alex Flach on display. A varied body of work including photography, sculpture, installations, paintings, graffiti, drawings and even children’s superhero drawings. A huge space was taken up by all the work, so definitely worth the €4 I paid to get in.
Enjoy some more photos of the exhibition and an ongoing collection of Berlin photos here.
Digesting Design 
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