art

Listen up Weekendudes and Weekendettes, have I got a fact for you. So it turns out the South Kensington area of London where all the museums are is known as Albertropolis. How fricking sweet is that, and what a boost for all of us with names that end in “-bert” who up to now have had only the nagging fear someone might call us Bertie. My desk has been renamed Robertropolis and it has laws and a flag and a national anthem (I’ll sing it if you ask me nicely). Where was I? Oh yes, live from Robertropolis, it’s the Weekender!…. (Read more)

Some of the best cutting edge creatives in Japan came together to work on this excellent video for androp – Yuri Suzuki, Tomoaki Yanagisaw and KIMURA under the direction of PARTY. Oh, and they put together some musical ROBOTS to create a sound and light spectacular. Technophiles, start your engines…

www.prty.jp

Improved is a strong word, but this is so, so good. As you look at the images on this site, all your prior knowledge about art history and the Renaissance slowly drains out of your ear (that’s what ear wax is) to be replaced by this smug, cackling fat cat, lounging in some of the most epic paintings in the history of time. Take that, intellect!

www.fatcatart.ru

If you're in London you might want to swing by the Architectural Association School and check out H.O.R.T.U.S. (which stands for Hydro Organism Responsive to Urban Stimuli.) To be honest i'm not sure what to think about this one but it's been a slow week art-wise for me so i'll throw the information in this post in the hope that it will help me make up my mind about the project.

ecoLogicStudio, H.O.R.T.U.S. installation at AA. Photo: Sue Barr

ecoLogicStudio, H.O.R.T.U.S. installation at AA. Photo: Sue Barr

ecoLogicStudio, H.O.R.T.U.S. installation at AA. Photo: Sue Barr

With HORTUS, the architects from ecoLogicStudio are inviting the public to become cyber-gardeners and "invent new protocols of urban biogardening."

There's a bright green carpet on the floor and hundreds of intravenous-style bags are suspended above our heads. The bags are in fact photo-bioreactors and they form a 'greenhouse' that hosts nine different species of algae, from chlorella to algae found in London's canals. Visitors can blow into flexible plastic tubes, fostering the growth of the algae with their carbon dioxide and activating the oxygen production.

The plastic bags carry a QR code. You hold up your smartphone, scan the code and are directed to a page of information about the algae you've just 'fed' with your breath. Large containers are distributed between the algae bags, they host bioluminescent bacteria that automatically fed through a pump with air from the oxygen released.

The greenhouse cohabits with a virtual garden that feeds on visitors' scans and tweets about the exhibition. Their 'interaction' with the algae shape a garden rendered in real time on a screen.

ecoLogicStudio, H.O.R.T.U.S. installation at AA. Photo: Sue Barr

ecoLogicStudio, H.O.R.T.U.S. installation at AA. Photo: Sue Barr

I wasn't much impressed with the QR codes and the virtual garden created by tweets but it turns out that the project is much more than just another demonstration of how 'nature meets buildings meet the virtual.' H.O.R.T.U.S. is one of the manifestations of ecoLogicStudio's exploration into the role that algae might play in our future life: to produce nonpolluting hydrogen-based energy, to filter water or take a more important role in our alimentation.

The architects recently had the opportunity to try and test their idea on a larger scale in Simrishamn in Sweden. The Swedish Municipality is in need of new urban ideas to help boost its economy: the fishing industry is declining and young people are leaving the area.

ecoLogicStudio came up with an Regional Algae Farm plan that involves a series of algae-related urban activities and architectural prototypes.

H.O.R.T.U.S. enables the public to engage directly and simply with ideas and systems that might form a larger part of our life in years to come.

If someone held a gun to my head and asked me to pick the coolest person on earth ( a fairly unlikely scenario I grant you – what could they possibly be trying to achieve?!) I would probably plump for comedian/musician/maverick Reggie Watts. Constantly defying expectations, this collaboration with photographer Noah Kalina is a peach of a little film – enigmatic, elegant and every gorgeous shot is composed with consummate care. Beautiful.

www.reggiewatts.com www.noahkalina.com

I know we’ve posted him before but if Matt is prepared to make such great work at such an alarming rate then what are we to do? Every picture he creates (and god knows how he creates them) seems at once mythological but still futuristic, like that bit in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure when they bring Beethoven to the mall and he plays the keyboards. Matt’s images have got so much story behind them that I’m just waiting, praying, for the day he starts making comic books. (Read more)

http://mattleinesart.tumblr.com

Photographer Simon Høsberg is a man of many lives. Mountain climber. Dancer. Impromptu advice giver. Groupie. He even made it from Copenhagen to the Mediterranean on 14 euros. A browse through ihs website is like reading the biographies of ten men rolled into one – with camera in hand he’s captured a staggering number of faces and stories. But while being called a “jack of all trades” is often short and for a lack of focus, Høsberg’s capable endeavors are the product of an active mind and enthusiastic approach rather than an inability to specify. Long live variety! (Read more)

www.simonhoegsberg.com

All this week we’ve been pushing the trailers of BAFTA-nominated short animations your way and now, as the contentious list of contenders for the Academy Awards has been announced, here’s a rundown of those competing for Oscar glory. (Read more)

www.oscars.org/awards

We’re gearing up for another jam-packed evening of ideas. Don’t be misled by the simplicity of the title, we will be broadening our horizons and expanding our minds for the third talk of the series, Words as Words. We’ve invited experts in the form of a lexicographer, a novelist, and a clinical scientist/speech therapist to enlighten us on language – how it has evolved, how it is used, experimentation with format, and what happens when we lose language skills. This is set to be a corker! (Read more)

More info and Tickets

Sure, a new swimwear collection does feel like an odd thing to cover as we chain ourselves into our heavyweight waterproofs and step out into London’s weather-beaten January, but what better remedy for the blues than looking at sun-kissed pictures of beautiful people? We Are Handsome are Australia’s answer to sunshine on tap – a small company with an independent, ethical backbone, twinned with a desire to make seriously beautiful items of clothing. We caught up with founder Jeremy Somers in the wake of the launch of their latest collection, The Romantic. (Read more)

www.wearehandsome.com

The one thing that every single one of us have in common is not the fact we all think chocolate brownies are delicious or that traffic jams are rubbish, it’s that we’re all going to die. But wait! Rather than get all gloomy and existential about the whole mortality shebang, London’s Southbank Centre is dedicating an entire weekend to exploring, discussing and reacting to the fact that everyone’s body clock is ticking. (Read more)

www.southbankcentre.co.uk/festivals/death

An ambiguous cover of the latest McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern led me to track down/Google the photographer Tabitha Soren. Quite sometime later I emerged from her large format portfolio site, fascinated by the disquieting images of people mid-flight in her series Running and the ruined scenes of post-Katrina New Orleans. The latter (pictured here), is a haunted visual essay from 2005 where a strange light illuminates a very real and very disturbing landscape; documents as powerfully relavent now as they ever were. (Read more)

www.tabithasoren.com

Eva Rothschild, Natural Beauty (2009). All images courtesy of Kunstverein Hannover Hot Touch is on now at Kunstverein Hannover, an exhibition dedicated to the work of artist Eva Rothschild, her first ever in Germany. Creating work that is both new and referential, the artist recalls the mid-20th century concept and tradition of Minimalism, and the fragile, [...]

Wow! Spoke Art released a small edition of the Jimi vs. the MPC piece and it sold out before I had a chance to even post about it. I was stuck in airport limbo on my way back from Baton Rouge, but I hope everyone that was interested got a chance to get one. If you were wondering, the original is still available through Distinction Art. Just search for “Jimi”! Stay tuned for another print release and a solo show with Spoke later this spring.

The ever great Angoulême comics festival started today and with that in mind, here is one of my favourite ever cartoonists who is both touchstone and benchmark for a whole heap of comic artists working today. Jim Woodring, former bin man and merry-go-round operator, draws and paints brilliant and infinitely weird wordless comics featuring the anthropomorphic Frank, “whose adventures careen wildly from sweet to appalling.” Jim’s style and output is that of a master craftsman and the psychedelic world he illustrates never fails to amuse or confuse. His biography tells us he lives in Seattle with his family and “residual phenomena.” (Read more)

www.jimwoodring.com

Rudolf Stingel, Untitled (2011) Luxembourg & Dayan‘s Grisaille explores the use of a generally monochromatic color palette in works spanning multiple centuries. The exhibition is divided between the gallery’s new space in London and the 77th Street location in New York; the show began in London in October, overlapping with the New York show throughout [...]

You don’t have to be an architect to understand that buildings have their own life force. Something about them has always seduced us humans – we’ve named them, worshiped them, even granted them supernatural powers. Matthias Hoch has devoted a career to them; documenting the vacant, the geometric, and the structural with the precision of a surgeon and the eye of an old master. Why have we not celebrated him before? Well we’re doing it now. Take note. (Read more)

www.matthiashoch.com

A really nice, creative homage to London’s humble cafes from London-based studio Neasden Control Centre, run by Stephen Smith. These models play on all the charm and character of a local tearoom, using collage, paint and loving attention to detail to recall the one-of-a-kind-ness of the pre-Stabucks era. The rest of the NCC portfolio, full of hand-drawn type, installations, and published bits, is of equal joy with projects ranging from Hamburg’s Ego Club interior to a collaborative bespoke type project for an awards ceremony. (Read more)

neasdencontrolcentre.com

“I am a cheerful chap who loves to draw,” Ryan Gillett tells us on his website, and he couldn’t have put it better, because “cheerful” was the first thing we felt when his latest booklet dropped through our mailbox. We were tickled by his sketches – a joyful collaboration between red and white, they captured a lighthearted, childlike enjoyment of objects – and a browse through his website confirmed our suspicions, Gillett is a master of all things whimsical, clever and charming. He also invites us to: “Come in and have a look around.” So do it! (Read more)

www.ryangillett.com

The east London skyline is in the process of changing thanks to Anish Kapoor’s 115-metre Orbit sculpture in the Olympic Park, and while reaction has been mixed in some quarters, it is nevertheless utterly fascinating to come across the detailed process notes on the artist’s website. From initial inspirations to models and studio photos detailing some of the stages the much-talked about project has been through, it’s a terrific way to get behind the media bluster and get into Anish’s mind for a few blissful minutes.

www.anishkapoor.com/Orbit