I’ve been a long time fan of Akay’s work, but this outdoor installation is one of the best I’ve seen in a long time.

The Machine from mudlevel on Vimeo.

September already, which mean other than London Fashion Week, the London Design Festival is set to run from the 13th until Tuesday the 23rd of September.

For the occasion, the Financial Times has interviewed Sir John Sorrell CBE, chairman of the London Design Festival, which he devised and founded in 2003.

Here are some of the Must-Sees 

Double Dutch - a feast of flowers is an installation created by the Flower Council of Holland

Featuring designs from Dutch designers and curated by Jane Withers,the installation at 29 Thurloe Place shows how flowers can give design a new dimension.

London Design Festival and The Financial Times

The Financial Times hosts breakfast talks at the Southbank Centre with themes such as Creative Cities, Creative Brands and Sustainability. 15 - 19 September, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank

A spectacular visual biography of the life and career of one of the most colourful and innovative artists of the 20th centuryreleased by Phaidon deals with the extraordinary life of the Pop Art movement’s founder, his career and his inheritance in huge format. Therefore the book, with its 1400 colour and 600 monochrome illustrations, fits perfectly to Warhol’s definition of meaning: “what is written about you is not important, but how much.” More on www.phaidon.com

JR is 25 and he owns the biggest art gallery in the world. He exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not the museum visitors.

His work mixes Art and Act, talks about commitment, beauty, freedom, identity and limit. He is an artivist, extract of artist and activist.

After a tour of European Street Art (Carnet de Rue, 2005, Free Press ed.), he did in 2005 Portrait of a generation, portraits of the suburban “freaks” in the Bosquets (Montfermeil) and la Forestière (Clichy-sous-Bois) ghettos that he posted in the bourgeois districts of Paris (Portrait d’une génération, 2006, Alternatives ed.).

With a 28 millimetres lens, the photos are taken very close to the person. He uses black and white to differentiate from the advertising colour aggression.

In March 2007, together with Marco, he did Face 2 Face, the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever: eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and the Security fence / Separation wall on both sides. They posted the huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face. Through this project, we showed that he can break the limits of possible (Face 2 Face, 2007, Aletrantives ed.).

With a 28 millimetre lens, portraits of people doing faces, huge posters and anonymity, JR changes some basic rules. The photographer is hidden, does not give interpretations and leaves the space empty for an encounter. As people are asked not to smile but to make faces for the portrait, they are not subjects, but actors. As the portrait is not seen in a place where people go to see Art, the passer-by is required for an interpretation. By the surprise and the question it raises, man can revisit his thinking habits and free himself from stereotypes and prejudice. This is what JR is working on. Raising questions…

The 3rd stage of the 28 millimeters project - Women Are Heroes - has already led him to Africa in post-conflicting zones to shoot the women with who he wishes to share painful stories and to testify of their desire to live. Their portraits were already pasted in Sierra-leone and in Liberia. In 2008-2009, JR will develop this project in India and in Asia.

www.jr-art.net 

(Image: Joseph Addison )

Bizarre concept website dedicated to a bunch of contemporary UK photographers. Weird snapshots, surreal sceneries. We like.

(image : Callum Hill)

They’re having an exhibition of polaroids at the “Old Peanut Factory” in Hackney, East London.

preview, May 22, 8PM.
22 smeed road
hackney wick E3 2NG

Check out their website : GREYVEGAS.NET

I wish I were in NYC.



Cai Guo-Qiang is internationally acclaimed as an artist whose creative transgressions and cultural provocations have literally exploded the accepted parameters of art making in our time.
This is especially true of Inopportune: Stage One, Cai’s largest installation to date, which presents nine real cars in a cinematic progression that simulates a car bombing, occupying the central atrium of the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda.

First shown in 2004, the exhibition copy installed at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008, from February 22 until May 28.

edit: I could have read coco’s post, who is talking about the same

GetConfused is proud to present two pieces of interactive poetry designed for the launch of the new Wellcome Collection gallery at the Wellcome Trust.

For those of you who don’t know it, here is a bit of propaganda on one of London’s venerable institutions which happens to stage really cool shows.

“The Wellcome Trust’s mission is ‘to foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health’.

Reflecting the profound impact that today’s research will have on society, the Wellcome
Trust seeks to address the social, cultural, ethical and historical aspects of biomedical
research and progress. To achieve this it supports, through its Medicine, Society and History
division, a programme of research, a major library in the History of Medicine and public
engagement activities.

Part gallery, part museum, an extraordinary library, events, conference centre and more,
the Wellcome Collection will take a thoughtful and experimental look at medicine, life and art,
rooting science in the broad context of health and wellbeing.”

Armed with the best intentions and barely as much time as the lifespan of a dragonfly, GetConfused came up with two interactive Flash pieces which celebrate health and disease in a kalleidoscope of typography, graphics and molecular mutations.

“Mutation Babe”
(Concept by Coco and House of Coma ; Graphics by Coco ; Animation by GetConfused)

This piece stages a series of 5 tableaux in which a seductive image of feminity is submitted to a series of distortions and viral interventions culminating in rather sulfurous final montages. Forget the bugs, we had one day to design it.

click here to view “Mutation Babe”

* * *

“Invisible Inspiration”
(Concept by House of Coma ; Animation by GetConfused)

The second piece is a cut-up text that can be played either in its normal sequential order or following a randomized keyboard pattern. Half surreal poetry, half S&M psychedelia, this piece was shortlisted by the Wellcome Trust Jury for the competition’s final run and came out third of all entries.

Click here to view Invisible Inspiration

Click here for the complete text