Wola Nani press release

MJ DAY

The Urban Habitat Project

Just a heads up guys - We pitched The Urban Habitat Project along with seven other teams to a panel of judges featuring the British Council and members from the China Academy of Art last week.
I'm pleased to say we have been shortlisted into the final four - judging will commence this week for the winning spot. Fingers crossed!

Exhibition | New Décor

I have to say, I'm totally into this exhibition. Not really for the layout or the curation of the show as I felt the first room was a little cluttered. But the pieces within the show were just awesome.
It reminded me a lot of the Telling Tales exhibition at the V&A a few months back, not in terms of stylistics or the exhibition design, but because of the pieces which are on display. I can see this show getting a lot of stick given the 'Design Art' kind of context it probably fits into, but same as with the Telling Tales show, I feel that this subject and judgement is perhaps irrelevant and you just have to view the pieces on their own individual merit. Not try to put them into a box of 'is it design, is it art?' - I just try to keep away from that whole subject. So like Telling Tales, I just enjoyed the New Décor for the fact that the objects in there are really interesting.
Apologies for the poor selection of images, I'm really not showing you the best pieces. Unfortunately no photography was allowed in the show so I've had to make do with what I could steal from the website.
All images are taken from the Hayward website: 
http://festivalbrazil.southbankcentre.co.uk/new-decor/

Exhibition | Ernesto Neto

Today I headed down early to see the Ernesto Neto exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London. We'd also booked in to go for a swim in the pool on the roof terrace but I got there and was a bit freaked out about seeing girls in their bikinis when it was so cold. So I backed out of going in (it was a bit of a let down to be honest). 
In terms of the exhibition, that too was a bit of a let down, I'm not sure what I was expecting but it was just a strange experience. I never really understood how everything was supposed to fit together or what the point was. It's a site specific immersive and sensory comission which Neto has created within the top floor of the Hayward. As you walked through, the tights like material had been filled with different plants so there was a sensory array of smells coming out, combined with that weird smell you get in children's playgrounds like everything has been a little 'touched' and that's only after being open a few days. (Obviously the 'touched' smell isn't part of the show, but it was a little off-putting)
Rather than the idea of skin and body organs I just got the vibes of being inside a dinosaur skeleton.
I dunno, I've just seen better exhibitions which alter the perception of space and your movement around the gallery, such as the Sarah Sze exhibition which was at the BALTIC a few years ago. The two exhibitions are not at all similar, but I felt that the spacial alterations transformed the visitor's relationship with the space more in the Sze exhibition that the Neto.
I dunno, maybe I just totally missed the point? I'd like to hear someone elses view on the show.




All images taken from the Hayward website and belong to photographer Steve White.
http://festivalbrazil.southbankcentre.co.uk/ernesto-neto/

Busy

Sorry I've not posted in a few days. Been bogged down with writing my thesis, other essays and also lots of meetings and signing off the design for our Wola Nani stand for Tent London 2010. I've finally seen the 'almost' finished product from furniture designer Simon Maidment. It's great that things are finally moving forward with that, and I'm really excited about what we have planned. I don't want to give too much away but I'll give you the word: 'sardine'...
In other news, 'the Urban Habitat' project is in and waiting for judging. The 4 best projects will be announced on Tuesday (15th) so fingers crossed for that!
Also there's another exciting project which I've just been asked to get involved in but more on that later. Sorry for all the secrets! All will be revealed soon!

Exhibition | Graduate Fashion Week 2010

Yesterday I popped down for the opening of Graduate Fashion Week at Earls Court. It's a good show. I was proud of my old uni Northumbria, holding the biggest spot at the entrance, and also Huddersfield and Leeds made a little appearance. Unfortunately I didn't get to see any of the fashion shows and ended up a little tipsy on free wine but I recommend a visit! It runs until the 10th of June. See if you can spot the dress I'd like as a wedding dress. (Not that I'm getting married or anything.)  But WOW!
All images taken from the GFW website:

http://www.gfw.org.uk/home.aspx

Exhibition | Free Range

Free Range has opened at the Old Truman Brewery this week.  The 10th Annual Art and Design Show supporting new creative talent. There's loads of really cool universities exhibiting so make sure you pop down! The 'what's on' calender is here: http://www.free-range.org.uk/

Crystal Collection

I've been pretty secretive about our project for the Legacy of the World Expo brief for the 'Urban Habitat Project' but I spotted these on Dezeen today and thought I'd give you a little mouth watering taster (although it's probably not that mouth watering at all, you probably don't even care...) Anyway I like these by Pour les Alpes.

http://www.dezeen.com/2010/06/03/crystal-collection-by-pour-les-alpes/

Exhibition | Kingston Degree Show

http://research.kingston.ac.uk/fada_shows/2010/

Exhibition | COLLECT 2010

Yesterday I was at the Saatchi Gallery for the set up of  COLLECT 2010 from the Crafts Council. This show is looking really cool. A range of galleries from all over the world are involved, taking over two floors of the gallery. Definitely worth a look in, even if you can't afford to buy any of the pieces. There's a range of more traditional works, alongside the contemporary (including a busque of Hitler!?!)

The VIP opening is tonight with the official opening to the public tomorrow. It runs until Monday 17, May.

Legacy of the Expo 2010 launch party

This week the Expo 2010 project was officially launched. To celebrate we invited guests from Shanghai to London. A group of the Chinese curators cooked some awesome food for our launch and welcome party. I had a great time, thank you guys! 

Interview | Rob Ryan

Rob Ryan's intricate paper-cut pieces and screen-prints have been seen everywhere from the pages of Vogue to a birthday card that I sent my Gran. He was in the next room to us at the 'Pick Me Up' exhibition at Somerset House where he had transported his studio 'Ryantown' from the East End to the Embankment Galleries for the duration of the show. Visitors were free to walk around the studio, watching Rob and his team at work. Here's what happened when I caught up with the man himself.

Rob Ryan: Yeah it is a bit like being in Big Brother but it’s like there’s only a few people left in the house (laughs). I thought that at some point I’d forget that the cameras were here and that has happened. I thought I’d be a lot more self-conscious and a lot shyer than I actually have been, but to tell the truth I’m quite comfortable doing this and talking to people because it’s what I do all day anyway. It’s the one thing I’m quite confident doing. I remember someone asked Rod Stewart; “Do you ever get nervous before you go on stage?” and he just said; “What would I do that for? This is the thing I do. This is the one thing that is me.” I thought, ‘that’s quite cool’ and I kind of feel the same.

Rob Ryan’s assistant, Hazel, had asked if we could conduct the interview in the style of (80’s teen mags) Just Seventeen or Smash Hits so after a bit of research I kicked off with; ‘If you were a girl for the day, what would you do?’ – Rob just laughed for the next ten minutes:

Concrete Hermit: I got that from a Westlife interview.

RR: (still laughing) I’m actually really embarrassed!… I think I’d start by having a shower!

I gave up on the Smash Hits style and my eyes were caught by a series of ceramic Staffordshire dogs on Rob’s desk.

RR: I’m having a show in Stafford at the Shire Hall Gallery in November and for a few years I’ve messed around with ceramics. Not as a ceramicist but just as a sort of kind of decorator just to glaze. I’ve done tiles but it’s just like colouring in. I was offered the show and I thought ‘I haven’t got anything definite in mind’ but I thought about it a bit longer and I’d always liked those Staffordshire dogs, I just think they’re lovely.

I had this idea about having a ceramic show and working in the spirit of the things that I really like. I also thought it’d be nice to push it a bit further. I’ve been meaning for ages to make more and more ceramic pieces and really get on with it.

Rob then introduces me to the history of the ceramic Staffordshire dogs:

RR: You know they were originally fairground prizes? These fairs used to go all over the country and they were given out as the prizes; that’s why they’re found all over. I said to Kim Gould, [head of the exhibitions programme at the Shire Hall Gallery] “if you can find them blank, then we could just do our own dogs and our own cats.” She couldn’t find blanks but she did find a place that had the moulds and they’ve re-made them for us.
I’ve been wanting to do this for years but I’ve just noticed recently that Donna Wilson has started doing it too, but mine will be a bit different from that…

Concrete Hermit: Does being here at the ‘Pick Me Up’ show mean that things – certain projects, have been put on hold

RR: Everything is a weenie bit on hold. We’re not getting much done!

Understandable with the amount of people milling around Rob’s table; As we talk, he’s busy drawing up a new design and there’s a constant stream of visitors hovering over. It’s almost the end of the show, and I’d have expected Rob to be tired after ten days of being a living exhibit, but as the questions pour in he’s as patient as ever, joking with the visitors.

A woman asks what happens when he makes a mistake with the scalpel.

RR: Well, we just screw it up and throw it in the bin!

The woman seems a bit put out by this but Rob then patiently explains how works are repaired or rescued should anything go wrong. I guess his Rod Stewart anecdote is true, and it’s clear he really loves his work.

CH: How did you initially get into the cutout style that your now so well known for…

RR: I just did one, one day and it was really crude and it was nothing like this. It was like a folded piece of paper.

CH: Like the snowflakes you’d make in school.

RR: Exactly! I thought this’d be quite a good thing for me because it simplified everything. It stripped it down. It’s quite a sort of limited way of working and I think I always struggled with wanting to fit too much into a picture. It limited the amount of decisions I had to make. I didn’t really have to think about colour or tone or even perspective, it’s much more about the construction. Of the way all the pieces have to fit together to join up on one piece of paper. As such, that almost gave me the structural way of working. It made me choose the elements that I wanted to put in the picture to create the message.

CH: Speaking of the message: a lot of the work features text, poetic phrases and romantic notions, where do the words come from…

RR: I write a diary and write in my sketchbooks and I guess I lift them from there. They’re pretty much thoughts, which I jot down in sketchbooks and then just go to them when I’m at the studio and dig them out. I do little sketches of things and I join them together to make pictures, that’s what I think it is, just lots of little notes in books and stuff.

Having worked on a range of collaborations on a varied selection of projects such as; a window display for Liberty’s London and a project with British designer Paul Smith, I asked Rob which has been his favourite collaboration and why.

RR: I did a skateboard last year with some skateboard people called Love N Skate and that was pretty good. Stu who runs the company is really nice and they loved what I did. They didn’t want to change anything, they didn’t say “yeah we like that but it’d be great if you just change that or…” and I just knew that whatever I did they would think it was great because they wanted me to do it. I had wanted to do something with them for ages because I used to share a studio with them and I knew them as friends on a day to day basis.

I did something a bit different and we joke about it because somebody left a comment on their website about how it was great seeing Rob Ryan do something edgy. Whenever I see Stu, I always make a joke that “I’m trying to be more edgy Stu!” and they just take the piss out of me.
It wasn’t edgy at all it was a picture of this soldier, he’s got an erection and he’s painting it with gold paint, it’s kind of funny and silly more than anything.

In interviews and reviews of Rob Ryan’s work, the words ‘timeless’ and ‘romantic’ appear again and again…

RR: I don’t really like doing modern. I don’t really do cars or mobile phones, I just don’t like drawing those kind of things. It just looks silly when I do them and I’m not really interested in them, I don’t have anything to say about them.

CH: Do you think the way that most of your work seems to be surrounded by nature, it’s a kind of escape from city life? As you and your studio are based in the centre of London.

RR: Yeah, I think about this sometimes but in a way I find the city quite peaceful, and it doesn’t sort of stress me out at all. You know all these people that come to London and can’t cope with it, it just doesn’t really bother me in the slightest, it’s just a place. I think I said in an interview a while ago that I saw it as an escape in my pictures of an idealised version of the countryside and an idealised version of nature. So maybe as a city dweller I have this kind of romantic idea of nature or whatever. But I don’t do pictures about nature, I do pictures about people and nature is somehow in it and a part of it as well, you know.

Asking Rob about other artists who he likes or any artists which inspire him, we moved onto his love for more traditional forms of painting.

RR: I don’t think I get “inspired” by other work, in as much as it spurs me on to do more work. I recently bought the Grayson Perry Monograph and I was really inspired by his work and the way he talked about it and how hard he works. And I think that made me think ‘God, I could be doing a lot more different kind of work.’

CH: It’s the drive behind the work, more than the actual pieces themselves

RR: Yeah, if I see somebody and they’re doing something that’s quite challenging then I think well I should try and do something a little bit more. But you should just really do what you want to do, you shouldn’t force yourself to go and do something just because you’ve seen somebody else do something you like.
I like pictures that have got a nice kind of mood to them. I really like German Romantic painting like Caspar David Friedrich and Adolph Menzel and all these German painters where it was all about the landscape and how glorious it was. I think it’s all to do with mood and emotion and feeling, not that my work is anything like that. That’s just personally the kind of work I like.