Friday, April 27

silo.


I recently made a trip to the brilliant So Far the Future gallery to see their current (and excellent) All About Hats exhibition - catching up with the work of these fab milliners.

But my visit also acquainted me with the work of the previous space holders: Silo design studio, whose Plastic Alchemy show I seem to have just missed.

"Hand made high tech" is how they describe themselves, and while their lofty design process intimidates (often involving intricate moulds and "growing" polystyrene building materials), the resultant bookshelves, tables, chairs and miscellany retain a playful un-pretension not often found in Designs of the Year nominated furniture. Joy of joys, I'd eat my ice cream Sundays off of these bad boys any day!

Silo's website here.

Thursday, April 26

susanna majuri.


Looking at the work of Sussana Majuri is like recalling childhood trips to a natural history museum, a place where falsified realities told marvelous tales. 

You walk into the grand museum hall. Transfixed as you are by the spectacle in front of you, you mustn’t believe it’s real. Elephants loom large amongst spindle legged African storks that do not fly, surrounded by tall grass that does not grow. In another corner a frosty bear tears shreds from a salmon by a mute woodland stream, and in yet another corner a big bald eagle spreads his haughty wings while stuffed sparrows look on. All these tableaus, frozen in time, set scenes for our pleasure behind a pane of glass. So much more than a parody of the natural world - better to call it a half told truth, a version of life whose soul is made up of imaginary actions. 

Majuri’s photos perform a similar trick on two-dimensional surfaces, making fantasy worlds from real images, placing the emphasis on narrative and fiction. 

What a strange and beautiful use of water and bodies, no? Taking my mind in all sorts of funny directions right now, that’s for sure.

Enjoy more of this Helsinki-born babe’s work here.

Wednesday, April 25

sam dugados.


Take to bed these hypnotic images from Sam Dugados, large-scale beach artist and rake wielding enthusiast of the ever changing, epherimal landscape that is the seashore.

Catch his work along with others at the annual Festival Photo de Mer in Vannes, France until May 6th. 

See the sea fest here. And Sam's website here.

Thursday, April 19

james nudd: love the lips.










We all have our obsessions. Some of us chose to keep them on the DL (down low) while others are a bit more forthcoming. James Nudd freely admits a childhood fascination with plump, lipstick-coated mouths as the starting point for a lifelong lust for something bigger, glossier, more impactful.

“I wanted fiberglass, automotive paint, and clear coats,” the artist declares. “I wanted big, bold, colorful, glistening, exciting, mysterious, sexy lips. I wanted to do sculpture.”

And sculpt he did.

Such single minded fantasizing could be a turn-off if his sculptures had not turned out as they did: visually pleasing parodies of pouts that provoke a reaction somewhere between allure and the distaste of excess.

Such wet, glistening articulations of the oral form are all the more pleasing for their exaggeration and uniformity, as if each pair were plucked from the same pulp-novel-reading, hair-curler-sporting, red-Chevy-driving blow up doll.

James Nudd's website here.  

Monday, April 16

zinkie aw.














A witty and eye-catching photo series from Singaporean artist Zinkie Aw. Capturing her subjects-come-dustbin-dandies with the contents of their respective waste receptacles, Zinkie aims to raise awareness for the island of Pulau Semakau which, as the site of the city-state's only offshore landfill, serves as literal wastebin for the variable contents of the average Singapore citizen's detritus, taking on 2,000 tones of incinerated rubbish and raw waste a day.

Cringe cringe, but still - she's made it look so darn cute. Clever stuff.

More Zinkie snaps here.


Thursday, April 12

fred langford edwards.












Magic, medicine, dried monkeys - it all comes under one roof in the work of Fred Langford Edwards, a talented photographer with a consumptive curiosity for relics of our natural historical past. These images came from his 2007 exhibition Alfred Russel Wallace: The Forgotten Evolutionist, an homage to the life of the 19th century collector and man who almost beat Darwin to it. Edwards spend 30 months traipsing Wallaces' old routes through the Malay Archipelago and the Amazon Basin, capturing antique specimens and the stunning natural environment with equal aplomb.

His current exhibition - Apothecaries, Archives, Icons at the Mostyn gallery in London - brings together a myriad of photographs taken during his four year stint working in an Ecuadorian museum of medical curiosities.


What strange and lovely little things these images are - part distasteful and part hypnotic, bubbly brewing butterflies and obsolete potions that makes us glad for Paracetamol. Always a joy to see an artist with a taste for adventure and a skillful lens, reminding us that the science world's puzzling visual intrigue proves an eternally tantalizing offering.

Fred Langford Edwards: Apothecaries, Archives, Icons runs 23 March - 03 June, 2012. Exhibition information here.

Fred's website here.