Not *quite* like the real deal, but still. The cookbook is a pre-birthday present and a fab one at that; it has a very high ratio of cardomon-featuring recipes! Won’t stop me from visiting the Nordic Bakery cafe though…
Nordic Bakery – Cinnamon buns
Countercultural artwork presented by Maggs & Strange Attractor
‘Unstable’ is a collection of abstract artwork from Battle of the Eyes – Savage Pencil (Chris Long) & Eyeball (Edwin Pouncey), Joel Biroco, Julian House and Cathy Ward. All are visual artists, but they are also polymaths, working as illustrators, musicians and even occultists and many have been published in the Strange Attractor Journal. All the artwork was beautiful, but the idea and process behind Portal To The Anscestors I-V: A Seance in Painting by Battle Of The Eyes’ is fascinating. It came as a direct result of finishing the Requiem Ark series of paintings which dealt with parental loss; this series was about making contact with departed ancestors.
Using original photographs from their personal archive, the artists photocopied, enlarged, and collaged them, taping the result to their studio wall. Initial charcoal marks were made on paper from the shadows cast (by the collage, but perhaps too by the ancestors’ spirits?) and these were then worked on with acrylic and oil pastel, and finally transferred to canvas using acrylic & oil.
The gallery is in the old stables at the back of Maggs Bros. Georgian townhouse on Berkeley Sq. An antiquarian booksellers, Maggs Bros Ltd has been dealing in rare books and manuscripts since 1853. The exhibition runs until the 8th of June 2012.
Xiao Fei Dyson’s kinetic drawing machines
I’d been experimenting with movement in one of my sculpture projects, so I was happy to see a ‘Kinetic Drawing Workshop’ come up as part of Jotta’s 3rd birthday celebrations. I’d seen Xiao Fei Dyson’s work at Kinetica earlier in the year too, so I signed up straight away. It took place in Newburgh St, London and was a tiny class so we got a lot of attention! Xiao Fei was a great teacher; full of enthusiasm and eager to pass on that he’d discovered from his working practise.
We’d been asked to bring some battery powered toys to take apart and use but in fact this was probably too ambitious to do in the time given. What was more fun (and effective) was just wiring up a little motor, a battery and a pen to make *really* simple drawing machines. These would change their line and movement quite radically with even the tiniest of adjustments to weight and balance, ie. using matchsticks and tape or gluing extra bits & pieces to the machines.
I was reminded (again!) that it’s generally more constructive to keep things super simple and use the restrictions to push against instead over complicating things and getting in a tangle of frustration.
Xiao Fei exhibited at Kinetica Artfair 2012; check out his blog with videos of some of his kinetic creations
jotta.com launched in February 2009 in partnership with the University of the Arts London to explore and facilitate collaboration in contemporary art and design.
Sex shop’s inventive use of architectural detailing, Soho
Neon lights fitted into the window detail of this London sex shop. I wonder if they wink at night?
Camden Art Centre exhibition booklets
Beautiful and useful way of cataloguing Camden Arts Centre exhibitions in a consistent way. I don’t mind paying £1 for each one, and really like the idea that as you add them to the binder, you create a self-curated collection of shows. Something similar appealed to me about the presentation of OMA’s ‘what we are currently thinking about’ in the recent exhibition at The Barbican. The concepts were printed onto pads of paper fixed to the wall, and you were encouraged to tear sheets off from the ones that caught your interest. Maybe I’m just a bit of a magpie and like collecting the pretties :). Btw, the CAC bookshop is amazing.
Design by Dan Goggins (Practise) and Sara De Bondt
Wood & Harrison show: Things That Happen
Beautiful, simple & immaculately filmed video works at the Carroll / Fletcher gallery on Eastcastle St, W1W, until the end of March.
Laura Buckley’s walk-in kaleidescope
I managed to persuade a fellow visitor to pose his silhouette between the projected films and the screen of Laura Buckley‘s ‘Fata Morgana‘. He didn’t believe me that we were allowed to get inside it too, so long as we first removed our shoes. It was amazing; I could have stayed in there for hours :)