Tuesday, 7 April 2009

Haunch Of Venison Host Tasty Exhibition - Mythologies

I have vague memories of visiting the Museum of Mankind as a child. One image that remains strong is the shadow puppets they had on display. The 2D characters with weird faces and limbs fascinated me. They had an other-worldliness that slightly creeped me out but kept me looking on. And it's this feeling that comes back to me as I push though the door of 6 Burlington Gardens. This is where Haunch of Venison Auction House is holding it's Mythologies exhibition, and where the Museum of Mankind once was before it went off to join the British Museum.



Tracked down this shadow puppet performance from Indonesia.


Through the show they've created a giant cabinet of curiosities that echoes the old museum and shows off the Victorian building to it's best. There's a lot of weird and wonderful stuff here to check out, but it's not all quality curio. This might be due to the fact that it's an exhibition that's curated by an auction house, so you sometimes get the impression their artists work has been crow-barred into the theme.

All in all though, some top work from some of the industries contemporary heavy weights.

Here's some of my picks from the show:



Tim Noble and Sue Webster, get rude with shadows on their
Wall of Shame.





The anatomically correct skeletons of Sylvester and Tweety Pie, by Hyungkoo Lee.







Nice big photos of Damien Hirst's Skull. They had glass on the surface so it shimmered as you walked towards it.

Originally, a crystal skull took pride of place in the Museum of Mankind.



This image unfortunately doesn't do justice to Mat Collishaw's dead moths on scanner beds. The level of detail produced by high res scans and huge blowups resulted in something really beautiful.



Ed and Nancy Kienholz's, 76 J.C.s Led the Big Charade Christ bashing installation.



A "scartchy chin moment" over two hungry stuffed Dobermans (Jochem Hendricks, Siblings).





The guys in these photos believe their magical powers can turn bullets to water. Here they are cammi-ed up and ready to do battle, secure in their beliefs that they will escape unscathed.

I can't imagine they go up against many guns or else I think their faith in magic would've been seriously called in to question a while back.



Another stuffed dog. This time it's caught it's own tale. How cute.



And yet more taxidermy...Polly Morgan plays with the artform, celebrating the corpse as beauty instead of attempting to fake the animals mortality.

Cheery stuff eh?

Thursday, 19 March 2009

Long Live Culture Jamming

Culture jamming, ad busting, or subvertising are three cruddy terms coined when the people who used to put up 48 sheet posters for Nike shoes got pissed off that the kids who would see those posters would barely be able to afford them. So they decided to put up fake ads that would have straplines like 'Just Do Something' and flaccid-looking swooshes.


But since foreign exchange students and rebellious teenagers on Oxford Street started buying those t-shirts with Adihash logos and reading Adbusters magazine felt a bit like you were being told off, we've not seen much that's made us laugh.


So we're pleased to see its return with the 'Taste The Failbow' skittlefisting blog, in response to the 'Interweb the Rainbow' online campaign for Skittles. Take that, adland.

Monday, 9 March 2009

Lightwriting

We've been dazzled by lightwriting lately, even though it's nothing new.

Wikipedia claims it's because 'With the abundance of computer generated special effects and motion graphics this practical approach to stop motion using light sources moving in the frame delights and perhaps confounds the techno-savvy modern viewer'.

We love how strange and unauthoritative that theory is for Wikipedia, so we're not going to disagree with it.

Here's a video from the future by German collective Lichtfaktor.


Forest from LICHTFAKTOR on Vimeo.

Sunday, 1 March 2009

Online Resources

You inevitably have to do a lot of macing up as a creative.

We've bookmarked the following sites as ones we've found useful and that speed things up a bit, when you've got to spend some time developing CTS.


Searches images on flickr. You can see loads of images at the same time and find the one you want more quickly.


Image search engine that finds higher res versions of a particular image you have.


Art direction inspiration.


High res logos.


Free fonts to download.


Photoshop tutorials by Americans who all seem to have the same voice and speech mannerisms.


Send files up to 100 MB for free.


Online jukeboxin'.

Sunday, 22 February 2009

New Illustration

What with Tony Hart's recent passing away, we've been struggling to think who could inspire a nation of kids to pick up a pencil in quite the same way. Devotees of Tony Hart know that many rainy days can be happily spent with some A4 paper and a pencil, just drawing and making noises of whatever it is you're drawing.

We've picked out some of the best illustrators we've seen recently, who've made us reach for our Crayola.

Mario Hugo is very good with a pencil. And type. And making stuff look dribbly.






Chrissie Macdonald is very good with a bit of card and some double-sided tape.






And David Foldvari nails the whole black and white/scribbly thing.




Wednesday, 18 February 2009

Datamoshing

So it looks like we have a new visual-FX device.

I first saw this used in Becks's 'Youthless' video a few months back and wondered when it would rear it's ugly-beautiful head again. Takeshi Murata has been using it in his art for ages and the term "datamoshing" (the effect that fakes the glitches that happen when video is compressed) was first coined by the Youtuber, paperrad. But, no doubt, we'll now see it everywhere from Channel U to Hollywood, after Kanye's jumped on board.


KANYE WEST "Welcome To Heartbreak" Directed by Nabil from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

Via Gui, cheers fella.


Beck “Youthless” from chickengang on Vimeo.

Sunday, 15 February 2009

!WARNING THIS VIDEO CONTAINS FLASHING IMAGES!



Simian Mobile Disco - Synthesise.
Live Visual Performance.
Directed by Kate Moross & Alex Sushon.

(Blogger likes to crop Youtube vids that are wide, hence the click through.)