Showing Out: Grad Shows #1
It’s Graduate Show season in London. A series of events that demands more and more attention each year. I’m going to attempt to pop into as many shows as possible this year and report back on this here on boicozine. The first batter up is the RCA (Royal College of Art)’s SHOW 2008 (you know it’s called ‘SHOW‘ cause they’ve stuck massive letters out the front of the RCA Galleries spelling it out [show2008.rca.ac.uk]. I was kindly invited along to the RCA PARTY launch event by the fine folk at Dazed & Confused [dazeddigital.com] where visitors battled it out with the grads to see who could guzzle up the most Vodka & Russians and Vitamin Water. RCA is unique in that it offers predominantly post-graduate courses and they break their annual show up into several events.
Show One launches the events and features painters, designer-makers, photographers and print-makers. Worth having a gawk at (from a graphic point of view at least) are Alastair Levy’s ‘Proposals for everyday living’, Richard Healy’s wall of geometric work [richard-healy.co.uk], George Charman’s flat-effect 3D assemblages (the internet doesn’t do them justice) [george-charman.co.uk], Edward Austin’s ceramics and Kathryn Hinton’s inter-locking cutlery [kathrynhinton.com].
Ever since working at The Future Laboratory [thefuturelaboratory.com], particularly with the awesome Ms Caroline Till, I’ve been hooked on colour palettes and there were some lush examples of palettes well used in the show this year in painted pieces such as those by Ross Ruislip Taylor and Ellen Stanford [ellenstanford.com]. I have to admit I stood and started at Ellen’s large scale painters for an inordinately long time hoping I’d be able to remember every little shade of colour she had employed and how they worked together. Once you start seeing palettes everywhere, it’s addictive, I tell you. Again the intrenet does not do them justice but I’ve included a coupe of her pieces in this here post. It’s worth mentioning the work of Clare Maunsell too just cause she injected a joyful burst of humour into the proceedings with tombstones that tell you when you’re running out of stuff and loads of crazy bits and pieces.
BTW If you’re feeding a colour palette addiction too you probably already know about Adobe’s Kuler website thingy. If not you should go there now. Honest, it’s dead fun. You can choose palettes from your Flickr photos now too [kuler.adobe.com].
What’s Up #27: Annie Collinge
Annie Collinge [anniecollinge.com] is ace… and unusual. Unusual in that it is rare to find a photographer as comfortable swapping between snapping still lifes and portraiture. Having cut her teeth as an assistant working in world of über slick product shots for luxury brands, she then set up on here own building an intelligent and witty portfolio of images for magazines like Sleaze, Good for Nothing [supermundane.com] and Amelia’s magazine [ameliasmagazine.com]. She is now a regular contributor to The Independent and seemingly always on the look out for crazy stuff to shoot (which is why she was the perfect choice to contribute to recent YCN publications, Ideas Illustrated and YCN Book 0708 [ycnonline.com/shop]).
Ordinarily Overpowered
Scott King [scottking.co.uk] has contributed his creative prowess to the latest Róisín Murphy [roisinmurphy.com] campaign, commissioning Jonathan De Villiers to photograph the cool priestess of pop. Between the three of them, they has effortlessly managed to create a unique mixture of the mundane and the fantastic by dressing Róisín up in some, sort of, outlandish creations by designers such as Gareth Pugh [garethpugh.net] and Victor & Rolf [viktor-rolf.com], then photographing her in some typically ordinary London settings. Boicozine declares it to be the campaign of the season. There’s some copy floating around on the internet highway (I’m guessing it’s from the press release) where Róisín talks about working with Scott and the ideas behind the images and it goes a little something like this…
“I have worked with him (Scott) once before. First thing he showed me was footage of David Bowie walking down a London high street in the video for ‘DJ’. Scott’s idea of me is like a kind of street-diva, ready for my close up in off-the-wall couture, even when getting my fill of beans and sausage down my local greasy spoon. Or like the Queen of the Tinkers photographed in resplendent garb, going for maximum impact whilst out shopping and/or shoplifting on the Cricklewood Broadway. For the ‘Overpowered’ single sleeve I was dressed in a Viktor & Rolf frock that comes with its own lighting rig attached to the body on a full back brace. The rig is very heavy scaffolding, like the stuff they use in music venues; the dress is hooked up on the rig so as to become rather like the sail of a big boat (great for shoplifting). It was very windy on the high street and I couldn’t move my feet in the clogs, with the bits of wood nailed on, to make them into high heels! A stray gust of wind almost carried me over a couple of times. Luckily a burly Grip was put on hand, just out of shot, to catch me.”
What’s Up #16: Grégoire Alexandre
Grégoire Alexandre [gregoirealexandre.com] has just completed some photography for a new artist on Source Etc [source-etc.com] records called Yelle [myspace.com/iloveyelle] and rather fab they are too. Of particular interest to fans of jumbo 3D sized typography.
What’s Up #9: Antje Peters
Antje Peters is a Dutch photographer that has recently created a muse in the shape of a white garden [antjepeters.com/garden]. Her use of white reflects a nature that is central to the photographic medium – you see, through the lens, ‘without light, the garden wouldn’t exist’. See images from this along with other interesting projects, such as ‘The Boyfriends’, ‘The Girlfriends’ and ‘Popstar’ on her foliosite.
What’s Up #7: Skull Kid
Axel aka Skull Kid is a prolific, young creative from France who flits over the boundary between illustration and photography. The camera is his tool but there’s nothing so straight forward about the resulting images and textures he manages to produce with it. Venture over to the Skull Kid Flickr page [flickr] and take a dip to see how refreshing his unique style of image making is.
What’s Up #2: Erwan Frotin
Erwan Frotin [bigactive.com/photography/erwan-frotin] is a French-born photographer who specialises in still lifes. Some of his best work has appearred in Carine Roitfeld’s [wikipedia.org] current dark and dishy version of Paris Vogue [vogue.fr]. He has recently photographed Rachel Thomas’s [bigactive.com] set creations for a Tsumori Chisato [surface2airparis.com] campaign. Shown above are a few less recent grabs from his portfolio for Paris Vogue.
Three Poses a Pound
Got a thing for old Photo Booths? Well, you’re not alone. There’s a whole community of like minded individuals waiting for your call as well as a list of Photo Booth’s around the world [photobooth.net/locations] so if you ever get the urge you can find one close to you (the non US section needs a bit of help though, if you are outside the US and know of any near you why not add it to the list). There’s also a brief history of Photo Booth Art (?) [photobooth.net/art] over the years, a contact form in case you’d like to hire one yourself and loads more, making photobooth.net one of the quirkiest and most comprehensive fansites along the internet highway. *Bring Bring* Hello? Who’s that? Jeez, I told you not to ring me at work.
