Saturday 3rd August: BLOG TAKEOVER Ciara and Nicci - Saatchi Gallery in association with HUGO BOSS present 'Red Never Fol20ws'

 Felix Bonowski

 Bart Hess

Mark Jenkins

 Iepe Rubingh

Now showing in the Saatchi Gallery, Hugo Boss is celebrating its 20th year anniversary with Red Never Fol20ws. Bringing together a 20 of the most exciting urban creatives this exhibition is well worth a visit.

"The Saatchi Gallery has been a special projects partner with Hugo Boss UK for some time and we are thrilled to be working with them and the contemporary creatives involved to create this unique Hugo: Red Never Follows exhibition," said the brand's managing director, Bernd Hake. "It's the perfect cultural reflection of the Hugo 20th anniversary capsule collection which will debut in stores from early July. The Saatchi Gallery is a wonderful platform for these talented contributors to showcase their unique pieces and we look forward to seeing how guests visiting the exhibition react to their works."

There is a wide variety of work on show including video installation, sound, murals, projections, and sculpture. Each piece has been hand selected from artists situated all around the globe, work that encapsulate the spirit of the label. The show case coincides with the launch of a unique anniversary 20 piece collection from Boss.

A particular piece which really seemed to catch the imagination of visitors was an interactive projection by FelixBonowski. Participants were silhouetted on the wall and their movements affected the objects falling down on the projection. This is a really fun piece allowing you to generating cool shapes and fuzzy textures whilst interacting with the graphics.

Another piece we liked was 'Mutants' by Bart Hess, a video piece in collaboration with HeyHeyHey. shiny latex and an endless grid of tubes transform the human body into a mutant to great effect.

MarkJenkins sculpture 'cornered' Proved to be a powerful and slightly disturbing presence. A sculpture of a man with his head rammed into the corner of the room, we did a double take to register the image as it is just so convincingly human. 

Another wonderful video was 'Painting Reality' by Iepe Rubingh. This showed a group of people on bikes dumping buckets of paint on a busy junction in Berlin. A urban intervention where the cars unknowingly become painters moving the coloured paint in merging patterns, it was great to see so much colour in what would otherwise be grey space.

We would highly recommend a trip to visit the exhibition. There is such a wide variety of mediums and styles in Red Never Fol20ws, not to mention the interactive pieces which are a lot of fun, especially if you have some children to keep amused!

This has been another blog takeover by Ciara and Nicci from Fred Butler HQ.

Friday 2nd August: BLOG TAKEOVER Ciara and Nicci meet Mr. Quiffy.

If you've more of an eye for fun fashion than a sweet tooth then the new 'Mr Quiffy' van on King Street, Covent Garden may just have a treat for you. House of Holland's ice cream van pop up shop are selling T-Shirts, sunglasses, hats, clothes and accessories from their latest capsule collection 'Mr Quiffy'. We had a really warm welcome to the shop from Tahmida who was happy to chat to us about the merchandise and was joking with us about their lack of actual ice cream! You can see her in the photos wearing one of the 'Mrs Quiffy' graphic T-Shirts. Whilst we were chatting, a definite Henry Holland's superfan came over wearing one of the 'Lick Me' T-shirts, so we took a cheeky snap of him with the van as well.
The merchandise itself was really fun and cheeky, the whole aesthetic really lending itself to being sold in such a quirky way. We were super keen on the slogan sunglasses 'stick a needle in my eye' and 'eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth', they really made us smile. The whole atmosphere surrounding the van was fun, bringing a POP(UP) of eyecatching colour to Covent Garden. 

Mr Quiffy will be around on King Street for one more day before the HOH roving store goes off on its travels around the UK. So, get it before its gone; look for the Ice Cream van emblazoned with spots and stripes, you can't miss it! 

This has been a blog takeover by Ciara and Nicci from Fred Butler HQ (with an icecream!)

Thursday 1st August: BLOG TAKEOVER - Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957-1984

In a world where there’s more Facebook users than there are published books, and the cost of a Kinder Egg’s nearly reached one whole English pound, music and art are two things that help make living on this god forsaken planet bearable, and when the two are put together something pretty incredible happens. It's almost as if such a powerful combined force can spark some sort of hormonal imbalance, making you feel all woozy and weightless, yet excited and energised all at the same time; often resulting in flailing limbs, wide eyes and some serious drop jaw.   

  

Regular followers of fredbutlerstyle will know by now about the correlation between Fred’s work and her love of music, and after the success of BoilerRoom’s latest Make Sessions, which featured visuals in the form of Fred and Elisha Smith Leverock’s fashion films, I decided to pay a visit to the Calvert 22 Gallery in Hoxton to see their Sounding the Body Electric exhibition, an exhibition exploring the heavenly cross-over between visual art and experimental electronic music.

As the Calvert 22 is a space that dedicates itself to the arts and culture of Russia and Eastern Europe, this exhibition focuses specifically on the technologies developed and the work produced by Eastern European composers and artists between the late 60’s and early 80’s, and how their early multi-sensory experimentations effected artists, musicians and collaborations the world over. The exhibition provides a detailed insight into just how pivotal this movement was to early forms of electronic artistic expression. Highlights include excerpts from early 60’s avant-garde films featuring soundtracks produced in the 'Experimental Studio’ at Polish Radio, and Milan Knizak’s Destroyed Music vinyl display.

In terms of art, music and performance Eastern Europe is a fascinating place that has long been producing some of the worlds most diverse and creative contemporaries, and anything affiliated with their modern culture is always worth Czeching out (!)

Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957-1984 runs until 25^th August 2013 and admission is free.

Words by Amy Lee

Images courtesy of Steve White and Calvert 22 Gallery.

Wednesday 31st July: BLOG TAKEOVER Ciara and Nicci do DALSTON HOUSE.

So we finally made it down to the Dalston House installation, part of Beyond Barbican. Its creator is the master of illusion Leandro Erlich who, according to our leaflet, is 'critically acclaimed for creating installations that turn ordinary situations into extraordinary experiences'. For this piece, Erlich has created the facade of a Victorian terraced house lying on the ground beneath a mirrored structure suspended at a 45 degree angle. The mirror reflects the full length of the house front and gives the illusion of people crawling up (or falling down) the walls.  

Initially we were a little off put by the queueing time which is between 30/45 mins. However, this is all part and parcel of the experience and we ended up really enjoying it. It was great to see people's creativity as they really engaged with the installation, planning poses in the queue and inventively using props to create a really convincing illusion. Since having a go ourselves we decided it was actually a lot more fun to watch other people! It's really tricky to take your own photos whilst lying down and trying to look like you're falling...
 
If you haven't already made it down to Ashwin Street to check it out, you have until this weekend. There is also going to be a workshop "The Mirrors of the Mind" with Guerilla Science from 2-5pm on both Saturday and Sunday. We definitely recommend it, especially if there are a few children you can take along with you!

The leaflet had a ton of information and activities in for amusing yourself whilst you're in the queue, so Nicci decided to draw a Fred Butler Dalston House.

This has been a blog take over by Ciara and Nicci from Fred Butler HQ

Tuesday 30th July: My NOKIA Lumia 925

For the past couple of weeks I have been trying out the new NOKIA Lumia 925 handset which has the best camera for low-light photography.  Therefore at 9:25 each night I have taken an image to put the lens to test and "capture the night" along with other chosen creatives such as Bip Ling, Ashley Walters and Kimberly Wyatt.  I started off at the V&A for a night tour of the Bowie exhibition with Jeanette and Felicity Hayward.  The next day I snapped my lady's football team when we finish practice as the sun sets on our park.  Day 3 I was down at Somerset House for the open-air concerts of which I witnessed my friend Jessie Ware win the audience and kill the stage.  Then from one al-fresco music event to an in-door warehouse party with BoilerRoom where I photographed Larry B in Rhys Coren's animated projection.  Following on from this was another evening in my sporty week with RunDemCrew which is a night time running crew who end up at NIKE 1948 at sundown where I shot Teo who was training for her triathlon.  This week's run was to the CSM campus at Kings Cross which inspired me to return a subsequent night to take a panoramic wide-angle shot of Felice Varini's beautifully painted "Across the Buildings" installation, and Granary Square's rainbow fountains! To finish off the report, here I am in Hackney Wick in front of the Olympic Stadium which was having a 1st anniversary celebration across the water.  

Sunday 29th July: "Fred Butler Versus Anushka"

Here are my behind-the-scenes snaps from the i-D shoot I did with Victoria Port from Anushka (Brownswood) where Tory Turk styled her in my archive for an article about fashion / music crossover.  With Stephanie Sian Smith behind the lens, you can check out her beautiful portraits and fun gif over on the official article and read the interviews we bounced back and forth.

Go HERE for "Fred Butler Versus Anushka"

“Anushka’s sound is very layered, large, timeless and impossible to categorize, which is the thing that drew me in. It’s the music equivalent of my textiles.” 

Sunday 28th July: Anthea Hamilton’s "LET’S GO" at the Bloomberg Space

One of my favourite facades of London's financial district is the neon rainbow stripe strip lit Bloomberg building that faces Finsbury Square.  The latest show to fill its ground floor exhibition space is "LET’S GO"  by Anthea Hamilton which opened on Friday evening.  Here are my photos from the private view of the artist and her collaborator Gervais Cedric Bitjoka who will be performing within her works on future dates according to the phases of the moon.  It's the Japanese classical dance of Kubiki that has inspired the walls and sculpture of a rubber kimono hanging on household piping painted bright yellow (which perfectly matched my outfit!).  The massive, high-ceiling venue has been covered in large scale striped wallpaper with a character referencing Robert Crumb's hairy limbed illustrations and also reminds me slightly of  Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are" with the forest background!

July 27 - September 14, 2013

11:00 – 18:00 Monday – Saturday

Bloomberg SPACE
50 Finsbury Square
London
EC2A 1HD

See archive posts on Anhea's shows here, here and here.