The Jaguar Shoes Collective are part of the "Collective" showcase at "Pick Me Up", taking over a room with a woodland camping theme to their space complete with decorated teepees, such as Chrissie Abbott's cat and cloud version! Chrissie's beautiful psychedelic coloured screen prints hang on the rainbow silhouette sunset wallpaper and her range of crockery exclusively for the brand is laid out on display. "This Is It" have made a massive bonfire with holes in the marshmallows for visitors to put their faces through and become part of the scenery! Here is Craig Lawrence demonstrating to best effect how to do a Madonna style "burning up for your love" fire face............. to find out more details of how to attend to snap yourself in this interactive spectacle, click here
The curators of "Pick Me Up" have invited a few of their favourite collectives and galleries to set up a "world of themselves" for visitors to step inside a 3D visualisation of the group's inner thoughts. Here are some snaps of the Evening Tweed space which explores the individual members interest in the process of print and illustration. Inside the installation fitted out to look like their studio, the team are actually practising thier various disciplines, making new work with Gocco printing and paper cutting............ LOVE THIS ZEBRA!
I read on Jim Stoten's twitter that he was giving away badges recently so I hunted him out at the private view of "Pick Me Up" to pick up my very own packet of pins. Jim was taking part in the "Its Nice That" pop-up section of the contemporary graphic art fair. Throughout the ten day event, different artists will be live drawing and selling the pieces straight off the desk as the ink drys. This offers a chance for the public to meet their favourite creatives and potentially purchase a unique original illustration. Totally unphased by the pressure of spontaneous doodling, Stoten sketchked away as we chatted, looking up to give me some "blue steel" for this photograph! "Its Nice That" launched the latest in their line of publications last night, adding the 5th edition to the collection........... of which I contributed to the 2nd issue. The duo behind "Its Nice That" are loyal champions of my work and have recently asked me be on this year's judging panel for the "Young Creative Chevrolet" competition. The award scheme has been set up to support fashion, music, photography, design & film under-graduates with a 1st prize of £1,000 .......... so I recommend finding out more if you are an ambitious art student! > apply here
Last week I visited Alex Noble at his studio which has changed since my last interview, with a new Alice In Wonderland chequer board floor. Sketches, samples and finished garments from his AW11 couture collection hung in amongst his menagerie of dismembered mannequins and props. Here you can see the original paintings he created for the Selfridgescollaboration dresses and the pencil drawing with lace which became the invitation to his show. Its all just casually pinned up on the wall as part of a spontaneous story of work in progress but to a visitors eye, is actually more fitting to being framed and hung in a gallery. Alex's penned drafts are exquisite and a testament to the fact that he is an artist applying his vision to a designer role - when he drapes a dress he is making brush strokes with silk. All of these illustrations and garments need to be turned into an exhibition one day......... especially the Lady Gaga archive which includes early experiments of now iconic pieces.
Alex and I are both part of a new collective of London designers who have come together under one PR roof - which goes by the name of Ella Dror PR. The other names include Craig Lawrence, Piers Atkinson, Void Of Course, Astrid Andersen, Sorcha O'Raghallaigh and NOKI. Needless to say the first press day is going to be interesting!!! There are lots of surprise news stories in store.......... follow http://twitter.com/#!/Elladrorpr to be the first to know!
Click here to find out more about the world of Batty Bass for which Alex has artworked the new album that launched last week.......
I couldn't help but notice this six foot something style beacon strolling across the courtyard of Somerset House at Fashion Week. He then emerged as the muse to the AGI & SAM AW11 collection on menswear day and I wondered who he was! Welcome to the world of www.imtheonlyoneonmystreet.blogspot.com ........ a.k.a Larry .......20 year old.......... living in South London........... studying Fashion Communication at Saint Martins.......... photography and styling his two main preoccupations along with his blog. Here is his sent over his latest film project for us to see ..........
"Film is something that I've always been interested in, the idea for 'Me and My Girls' came about through the film 'Downtown 81' starring Jean-Michel Basquiat. The writers wanted to get the most interesting people around into a film, playing exaggerated versions of themselves, to show what life was like for the downtown New York crowd. It made so much sense in my head and fitted perfectly into a school project. I decided (for now) I'd scale it down to a group of friends - Four girls with individual styles but a great friendship. It's a healthy mixture of 'Sex in the City', 'The Craft' and 'MisFits' with that hint of young British rawness."
To find out what might come next from the land of Larry ........ check his TWITTER.
"You Me Bum Bum Train" is the interactive performance where you are guided thought a labyrinth of experiences to encounter a myriad of unexpected characters in surreal scenarios. It all began as a party with 3 wheelchairs and collectively silly sense of humour, steadily escalating to a series of complex sets installed in nightclubs. For each of these plotted out parties were hand painted and reproduced posters and fliers depicting the particular theme. The team behind the bonkers business both studied illustration at Brighton University so were a dab hand at drawing out their ghost rides in gouache. The whole collection of original artwork is now on display in The Drawers Gallery situated in the basement of the Haggerston Pub, 438 Kingsland Rd, Dalston, E8 4AA. It's open 2pm till 9pm every day except Mondays throughout the month, ending on the 28th. According to official sources "If you would like to come during the day the pub is really nice and it does amazing pizzas for all you pizza fans." !
To get a little insight into the world of "You Me Bum Bum Train", find out by watching Jonathon Ross & Dermot O'Leary's testimonials from last year's Barbican residency:
To close the week of The W Project's celebration in exhibition and events, the final night transformed The Russian Club Gallery into "The Sit Down Affair" supper club. Tables were laid with beautiful batik print cloth and Josephine Chime had been up all night preparing the menu of 12 dishes including an expertly named "Spring into Summer rolls". Elisha, Kim and I kicked off the evening of entertainment by screening our four fashion films and discussing our work process. A Q&A session was opened up for the guests to delve into the depths of our all female collaborative process......... whilst forks tucked into octopus salad. To follow our part in the proceedings, Caryn Franklin and Debra Bourne from "All Walks" took centre stage to explain the message of their enterprise and how they are reaching out to spread the word. Having been instrumental in setting the style scene in the 80's when Caryn was a founding member of i-D Magazine the industry was a relaxed environment, rich in self expression. In these pioneering days of D.I.Y dressing, individuals had freedom to express themselves in an intuitive way. In the 20 years since, Caryn and Debra have witnessed the shift in celebrity centred culture and the homogeneous dictatorship of strict expectation in the ideal beauty portrayed. The promoted image of a young Caucasian waif only relates to a slim sector of society yet it is the goal presented as the ideal to achieve. Ironically we are in a situation where women are undergoing surgery to imitate 2D airbrushed representations of an unreal body. Caryn and Debra want to redirect this perpetuating plague of social pressure before it is irreversibly damaging to the emerging generation. To tackle the nation of girls bombarded with this warped message, they are communicating directly with the age group by going into colleges. By re-educating future designers, the charity are effectively aiming to plant the seed of change in demonstrating individual choice. As an incentive to demonstrate the positivity in this process, industry leaders have come on board to illustrate the practicalities of applying it to their practise. Erin O'Connor, Rankin and a host of designers including Vivienne Westwood, Hussein Chalayan and Giles Deacon have taken part. By designing for a muse that is any age, any race, any size is ultimately a limitless and exciting creative prospect to tailor outside the bracket of the straight up and down size 8 mannequin. Interestingly the most powerful message of the evening was to start making a change to culture as a whole by focusing firstly on yourself. Caryn made the point that by looking the mirror and accepting your own individual beauty will be the ground breaking step to altering perception of both yourself and others around you. If we individually carry a torch of empowerment in our unique inner beauty it will touch whoever we come into contact with and ignite a message to take hold and hopefully uplift the nation. As Elisha also stated......... the less energy, emotion and time invested in anxiety spent in altering your appearance could be better applied creating prolific beautiful work............
Lets each agree to try and radicalise this state of non-independence and switch up the style stakes!!! Go to the All Walks site to see how to get involved.
"I have a couple of images of me printing my letterpress dancehall poster at the New North Press which is just off Hoxton square. After a three day workshop I completed two posters about my two loves...Eric Cantona and Dancehall music."
