I never really thought about that I see colours for each letter of the alphabet and numbers, but the last couple of years I've come across syneasthesia in a few different places and that made me think more about it. So I made my coloured alphabet.
What is synaesthesia?
"In its simplest form it is best described as a “union of the senses” whereby two or more of the five senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily and automatically joined together" UK Synaesthesia Association explains.
The senses really interests me, and I would love to find out more about why some people have these joint experiences.
Luckily SEIZURE re-opened this July; last time around I found out about it the same day it closed so I didn't manage to go. And I REALLY wanted to see it, when I was a kid I was obsessed with this bright blue copper sulfate crystals and did endless attempts to make big ones. But without success, they never became bigger than a few mm.... So SEIZURE was my paradise (well almost) with a whole house covered in giant crystals. Go and see it, it is open until 3rd January 2010.
When I exhibited my project Music of the Spheres in Milan this year for some mysterious reason one of my boxes disappeared. I was devastated as some parts of the project were gone. GONE! So back in London I started to find people that would be able to make new pieces since I didn't have access to a workshop (oh I miss that workshop!), and I found Bela Pasztor, an extraordinary man making the most wonderful pieces in brass. He has had his workshop in Soho for 48 years, and he happily told me his life story when I came to pick up my things. Amazing to see that these kind of places still exists in the centre of London.
Even more mysteriously, the missing box returned after five months, and I got the pieces back in the end. But I'm so glad I found this treasure on the way!
I first came across his work in the fantastic bookshop at 10 Corso Como, Milan, and his photographs have been stuck in my mind ever since. His images are close to both playfulness and madness, and has a dark, ritualistic tone to them.
The news are filled with reports from the election and the following protests in Iran. The results were published on June 13 and the election has provoked Iran's biggest and most violent demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic revolution (Reuters).
I've recently come across a few different things that gives a bit of an insight and background to the state of Iran today, so I thought I'll post it here.
Drottningen och Jag aka The Queen and I is a documentary by Nahid Persson Sarvestani. She is an Iranian exile living in Sweden, as she had to flee Iran in the early 80's. In the film she meets Queen Farah Diba of Iran, the widow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah of Iran who was overthrown in 1979. When Nahid was young she fought on the left in the revolution against the Shah, so in making this film she is confronted with her old enemy but in completely different circumstances.
Watch the trailer:
Another Iranian woman who grew up during the Islamic Revolution is Marjane Satrapi, the author of Persepolis. This autobiographical graphic novel illustrates her childhood and youth in an unstable Iran. The fantastic book has also been made into an animated film.
Lastly, in their series of exhibitions about great rulers, the British Museum showed Shah 'Abbas: The Remaking of Iran. Shah 'Abbas reigned AD 1587–1629 and the exhibition explored the great importance he had for the country.
I instantly felt at home at the Stags Head on Orsman Road when I saw the clock on the wall (the white one). The top one is in my kitchen... It's not running on batteries, but on the main power supply through a hole in the wall. Old school!
At the moment I'm doing some work with YCN at their relatively new studio at 72 Rivington Street, just off Shoreditch High Street. The ground floor is open to the public and has a inspiring lending library as well as an exhibition space where the work of up and coming creatives will be on display. Please come and visit us!
TINT is pleased to present Passing Through, a group exhibition featuring the work of sixteen emerging artists and collaborators, creating works of art which are interactive, responsive, user aware and audience led.
The progression of Interactive art is not a recent phenomenon, originally explored in the 1960’s; it’s visibility in the art world has often been shrouded, seen as a fad created by artists whose principal concern is in producing works of technical trickery, rather than artworks that pursue an intellectual and referential meaning. However, in society and indeed culture we are forever forging stronger relationships with technology. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), GPS, iPhones and the Internet are all examples of the daily influences of digital media. This interaction has and is continuing to shape the way we live, how we perceive our environment, the way we communicate with each other, and importantly how we view our relationship with art.
‘Passing Through’ explores the movement of the spectator turned interactor on a personal journey, engaging in direct conversation with the artworks in order to realise and complete the work that would not exist without his/her actions.
“By putting the user into the controls interactive technology could be claimed to have a strong liberating potential, as well, making it an effective means to analyze and deconstruct preexisting ideological formations.” Erkki Huhtamo
Works such as Lottolab Studios Music to our eyes uses the audience’s presence to produce orchestral compositions from colour, contrast and brightness. Other artists create responsive installations from light, sound and kinetics, exploring notions of culture, media and memory. Artists include – Bulbcollective (Owen Bowden, Edward Holland & Suzi Tibbetts), captincaptin, Matthew Curtis, Stuart Dunbar, Jamie Elliott, Ben Faga, Peter Forde, Jon Garlick & Lawrence Abu-Hamdan, Richard Kendrick, Lottolab Studios (Ilias Bergstrom, Beau Lotto & Sam Walker), Parag Mital, Agelos Papadakis & Dave Murray-Rust, Artemis Papageorgiou, Tobias Revell, David Strang, Jamie Thompson.
Private View: Thursday 14th May 6:30 – 9:30 Open: 12 – 6, Tuesday – Sunday Curated by captincaptin artists Gareth Goodison and Jonathan Hall James Taylor Gallery, Collent Street (off Wells Street), Hackney, London, E9 6SQ
This exhibition at the Wellcome Collection takes us back to Vienna when the new ideas of the self and psychiatry flourished. It shows the plans and thoughts around newly constructed institutions and explains the life in these hospitals. It also compares the work of some of the artist that embraced these ideas about the mind, and the competitiveness amongst them of whom created the greatest 'psychological portraits' (unfortunately, the people who commissioned the portraits were not always too happy with this movement, since they were portrayed as mentally ill even if they were not). Egon Schiele (1890-1918) explored this art-form by making self-portrait, an critical examination of his face and body where he pictured himself grimacing, gesticulating, masturbating and shouting. One of his influences was the photograph as a diagnostic tool for the study of mental illness, images showed the supposed signs of mental illness, from enlarged digits to spinal deformity. Images like this was in circulation in Vienna during this period and was marketed as a source-book for artists searching for new iconographies of the body.
Bobby Baker's Diary Drawings: Mental illness and me, 1997-2008
The second show is a diary in form of drawings made by Bobby Baker during her journey to recovery. The diary starts in 1997 when she was told she had a borderline personality disorder, and continues for over 10 years. It is a very moving and personal exhibition where she lets us in to see her deepest fears and tough struggle, but also gives us insight in what helped her through the days.
Madness & Modernity is on show until 28 June, and Bobby Baker's Diary Drawings until 2 August. Both are free.
He is probably the hottest Italian designer at the moment and his exhibition at the Triennale, Milan's design museum, presents his pieces in a truly Italian way! First one walked into a dark room and one could only see a beautiful theater stage in form of a rose. The light and the music created a magical atmosphere and it was definitely a great moment just to sit down and watch the scenery. Fabio's pieces were placed in the coulisse, so they only revealed themselves once you walked to the side of the stage to look between the walls that constructed the rose. Each section had its own theme, presented with video-clips of old Italian(?) films, mixed with visuals of the projects in their original context. It was very clever and beautiful done and was the exhibition with the strongest visual impact I saw during the week.
(I apologize for the poor image quality, my camera didn't work so had to use my mobile...)
This was my absolute favourite exhibition in Milan, excellent curated with very intriguing pieces! Each project was based around a material, such as carbon fibre, non-woven fabrics, textiles, 3D spring structure, ultra-microfibre, plastic optical fibre, conductive fibre and nano-fibre, given to an artist or designer to translate the material into an object. Along with each project was a presentation of the technical and functional aspects of the material, the manufacturing process and the thoughts of the designer. A perfect blend of technicalities and the often very poetic design response, it was extremely inspiring to see what different creative people will come up with when given an often quite industrial material to work with.
Fabrica, Benetton's communication research centre, is a creativity laboratory where young designers and artists from all over the world come together to work on various innovative projects that will provide a window into the world of tomorrow. The studio cover a range of areas like design, photography, visual communication, music film and publishing, and are through this diversity crossing traditional borders within the different art-forms.
At the exhibition Chez Fabrica, the focus is on the lives and work of the young designers at Fabrica. The objects explore the needs and desires that emerges from this multi-cultural and temporary way of living. A range of notebooks are developed in order to keep recipes from all over the world, to remember the new phrases in different languages, and one to keep photos and memories. New ideas for bags came up that specifically met the needs when getting around, and shopping in their new hometown Treviso. Other pieces are dealing with clever solutions for compact living and flat-sharing, as well as for their work spaces. In short, the show gives the visitor an insight into the daily life at Fabrica, where the young talents spend a year to explore their creativity.
Photographer Jenny Wicks have in her project Root Ginger done a deep-dive into both the genetic and social aspects of being red-headed. She has through meeting and photographing 62 people with red hair made a book, exhibition and film to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. The photographs were shown at the Idea Generation Gallery (17th February - 8th March 2009) as beautiful large prints together with short comments by the subjects with their thoughts of red hair. "I remember being at primary school and forming a ginger club...it wasn't the biggest club in the world." Root Ginger explores how society treats a minority group and how people acts and react towards others that look different. An interesting aspect of the exhibition was that in putting all the large photographs together the concept of minority group dissolved and the visitor became instead the different-looking one, as the red haired formed a strong, united group.
This amazing exhibition puts together artists working in a range of different mediums that all share the ideas of reaching a heightened, or altered state of mind in order to create their work. The Riflemaker gallery is a great space in Soho with a fantastic "old London" feel that enhances the mystical ambience of the pieces. Videos, paintings, wax sculptures and dolls are mixed in the space divided on three floors, bringing us to the traditional voodoo rites of Haiti and through to the work of contemporary artists from across the world that implements these traditional thoughts in their art and the processes behind it. I higly recommend the exhibition, if you don't have chance to see it at the Riflemaker, look at the excellent website with images and texts about the artists and their work.
The 2009 show was the 57th year in a row for Stockholm furniture Fair and Northern Light Fair. The Guest of Honour for the show was Dutch designer Ineke Hans who created a relaxation lounge in the entrance area. The show itself consisted of two major parts, one for more established designers and companies, and one for up-and-coming talents and design schools; Greenhouse, that presented a lot of inspiring ideas. But what I liked the most was the seminars held during the show, in particular the one by Alexander Lervik where he talked about illegal downloading in the furniture industry and how 3D printing are changing the industry, presenting the designer with problems seen in the music industry. Just hope the weather will be better next year, making the whole Stockholm experience a bit more pleasant!
