Good ol' Blighty posters

The Modern British Posters Exhibition at Saint Martin’s is a beautiful and sometimes humorous trip though poster advertising during the first half of the 20th century. Those days when you could advertise petrol by pointing out that magicians prefer shell. The collection focuses on Shell Mex, BP, London Transport and the Post Office as well as propaganda and post war posters.

Messages are usually simple, straightforward and punchy and the graphic use of shapes adds to the impression of a strong nation with plenty to work for and be proud of.

I especially liked the posters advertising modern British buildings being built from the rubble. Perhaps our current government could do with instilling a sense of pride in today’s Britain using public announcement advertising. Advertising used for making people happy? Just a thought.

Fundación

Fundación recently opened an new Exhibition space with a collection of live and commissioned architecture. The standout pieces for me were the origami bridge and the Pre fab house on the rocky hill.

The next live piece they'll have out is the display room in the British Museum for part of the Terracotta Army in September.

www.fundacionstudio.com

Here's a slide show from the exhibition.

Umbrella

Anthony Gormley Show

The Anthony Gormley exhibition at the Hayward finished last weekend. I went. It was good. I got a cold. From the Blinding Light room.

Never got ill from art before. I'm impressed.

Teddy's Albion Ashtrays

To mark the end of smoking in Pubs in England, our very own Teddy Keen has designed a range of outdoor furniture made from redundant glass ashtrays.

You can view the July 1st Commemorative Ashtray Collection at www.albionashtrays.com.

Here are some nice photos of Teddy and his ashtray furniture. People with a strong disposition might want to check below the fold for something a little more, ahem, arty...

 

And here's the hot stuff...!

Further Reading
Times Article
Love

 

Art Walk - Whitechapel

‘Twas a chilly lunch time in Shoreditch and the eager troops set off to The Whitechapel Gallery on the bustling Whitechapel High Street.  On arrival it became apparent that the exhibition of photographer and filmmaker Margaret Salmon was going to knock the socks of the ‘knitting crap’ we had witnessed in past weeks.

Armed with a pencil and questionnaire we stepped forth into the gallery space and absorbed the first piece “Ninna Nanna”.The film showed three Italian women in different stages of early motherhood, filmed in their homes and singing the Italian lullaby that titles the piece. The group’s reaction to the triptych varied.  Some saw the loneliness of motherhood, some saw the beautiful bond between mother and child, some spoke about how the different emotions of motherhood united women world over whilst others pondered over what they would have for lunch.

The next piece we stumbled upon was titled “PS”.  It combines beguilingly elegant footage of a man gardening and smoking against a sky lit by fireworks with the harrowing dialogue of a couple in conflict. The gentleman says the word ‘fuck’ a lot and seemed like a bit of a tosser.  Some of the group felt aggression, some felt threatened but most felt the growls of their empty stomach.

With a skip in our step we journeyed on to watch the final film “Peggy”.  This is a monochromatic portrait of an elderly woman whose remarkable voice provides the moving soundtrack in this elegy to the beauty of old age. Listening to the first few renditions of the ‘Amazing Grace’ chorus aroused feelings of contentment.  That all makes sense when you are old.  That she has finally found true calm.  By the 15th rendition she starts sounding a bit like Marge Simpson and one questions her state of mind.  Perhaps she’s actually a bit mad and melancholic?  Perhaps she should learn a few of the verses?  All in all, it was a heartening experience that laid to rest the soggy experience of the textile fiasco. Mmmm pie time...

Natalie

 

Art Walk - Boyle Family at Construction

This week's walk showed that there are interesting people doing interesting things all over London if you just get off your bum to have a look. This walk was the shortest yet - spitting distance from the Tea Building at Construction, a little gallery just off Commercial Street. The Boyle family are a London-based family (a couple and two children) who have made works together since the sixties.

Although the father Mark Boyle recently died, the remaining members still produce work. The family's most famous work is an ongoing series called Earth Pieces where they identify a 2m square patch of the world by a random method like throwing a dart at a map, and then visit the site to make an exact recreation of what they find there.The show we saw is part of a different ongoing series called Seeds for a Random Garden. It's actually the first piece the family has made since Mark passed and we were lucky enough to meet Sebastian Boyle who told us about the work's creation. The piece is a planter box of earth created from dust swept of the streets of Charlton. Over a period of several months the planter box was then photographed every ten minutes to document the life that sprang forth from the random seeds swept from the street.

The resulting film is displayed over 8 hours. It is quite hypnotic to watch a day pass before you. We couldn't help wondering what the film would be like sped up a little to show the weird and wonderful stuff growing from the box - maybe it's our short attention span. We didn't suggest it to the artist! Sebastian told us of a show they did in Norway where people waited for months for something to grow from their garden. Nothing ever grew as they planted their seeds in what they thought was "clean soil" but was poorly translated from what was in fact "sterile soil". Sebastian was also kind enough to show us an Earth Piece in his upstairs office. It was a recreation of a piece of floor from a decaying factory. The family make the pieces by making a plaster cast of the actual plot and then pour the form to make a resin shell. To see the piece it's really hard to see where reality begins and ends which is of course the idea. It would be amazing to see a few Earth Pieces side-by-side. We look forward to seeing more of the family's work.

 

Albion visit White Cube

We’ve started doing Art Walks on Thursday lunchtimes. As our Creative Director Nick says, we live in “the most vibrant and culturally rich area of the best city on the planet”. So, just occasionally, instead of sitting at our desks or playing Guitar Hero, we’re going to go for a walk to a nearby cultural thing.

Today we went to the White Cube gallery to see whatever they had on, which turned out to be Sergej Jensen’s exhibition ‘La chambre de la peinture’.



Unfortunately most of thought it was, as art lovers technically call it – shit. It looked like some rugs that had been left outside for a bit. And, as it turns out, that’s pretty much what they were:

The principle of the readymade… suffuse his practice; sections of fabric are left outside to let the weather alter its surface. His practice draws attention to seemingly incidental details such as flecks of wool or frayed edges, and his muted palette and gestural mark-making, whether applied in paint or stained with bleach, point as much to negative space as to delineated forms.

Camille liked it though, because she likes rugs and things. And Aaron was impressed that the gallery had let the artist put a window in specially.

 

Art Walk - Geffrye Museum

The Geffrye Museum is a little slice of tranquility amongst the sirens of Shoreditch High Street. It's only a short walk from our office, so we took an hour to pay it a visit.

The Geffrye was built nearly 300 years ago, and for 200 of those years, served as almshouses for pensioners. By the early 20th century Shoreditch was one of London's most squalid places (yes can you imagine a more grimy place than it is now?) and the pensioners were moved to higher ground. Fortunately the arts and crafts movement rallied to save the building as a showcase for fine furniture. What makes the Geffrye unique is that its collection is devoted to documenting the interior tastes of London's middle classes.

The period rooms settings covering 1600-1900 stood unchanged for 50 years until a recent refurbishment that claims to be more historically accurate. The detail may be more precise but some of the ambience of the old rooms has been lost. The new settings look like they were finished yesterday whereas you could nearly imagine the old settings had stood since the time they represented.The 20th century rooms at the Geffrye are particularly enjoyable, probably because they cover times that we have lived through. OK so some of us have seen more of the 20th century than others.

The Geffrye's permanent collection of 20th century chairs is fairly uninspired, if not annoying. In fact seeing Matthew Hilton's Balzac chair sitting smugly on a pedestal nearly incites you to burn down your nearest Foxtons. Not that you need a good reason to do that. Hans Wegner has designed more than a few classic pieces in his time, but the tripod chair on display is also just too fady.What about an English classic for the people like Robin Day'sPolo chair or Q Stack? Or Carl Jacob's ingenious Jason stacking chair produced by Kandya in London? The Geffrye displayed some really exciting 20th century chairs in a recent show called Sit? It included some great bastardisations of design classics by John Angelo Benson including a hay bale version of a Le Corbusier. Wouldn't it be nice to see a candle version of the Balzac chair that would just melt into a giant puddle of wax? The Geffrye museum is a great secret and makes a very important point - that en mass the middle classes don't have great taste.