Andy Thomson for Movember

Andy Thomson has been taking part in Movembers Mo -trait project by drawing portarits of people for the Movember charity. Have a look at the Gallery of Mo' here:
https://www.galleryofmo.com/

Movember is an independent global charity with a vision to have an everlasting impact on the face of men’s health.
With this aim in mind, the month formerly known as November now witnesses the cultivation of millions of moustaches all around the world. Men with their “mo’s” enjoy a month-long moustache amnesty in order to raise vital funds and awareness for prostate and testicular cancer and mental health. It’s no longer just November. It’s Movember.
Under the direction of the Movember Foundation, Movember supports world class men’s health programmes focused on awareness and education. These programmes cover issues such as staying mentally healthy and living with and beyond cancer or mental illness. The Movember Foundation also helps fund important research projects.

The Reith Lectures by Grayson Perry

BBC Radio 4 are currently broadcasting 4 lectures about contemporary art by Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry. The lectures have been broadcast and are available to listen to on the iplayer here. They are a witty, accessible and informed set of talks about the way Grayson sees the artworld. He has looked at whether contemporary art is good or bad in his first lecture; what the boundaries of modern art are in his second, and his third discusses the role of art as rebellion, and whether art is now dead. Is he talking to you "dinner and a show" and "fun fashion and friends"? Are you an artist or a bedroom DJ?

As he says"And it’s a nice life. Come in! It’s not easy, it‘s not easy, I’m not saying it is, you know it’s not like being a celebrity but it’s a very rewarding and exciting place you know to hang out. I mean here we are in Tate Modern now. It’s the first or second most popular tourist destination in the country, 5.3 million visitors a year. And I suppose in some ways I’m talking to those people but not all of them so I sort of, I looked at some Arts Council survey on audience segmentation, who are the people that I’m talking to with this lecture? And they’ve divided up the audience for art, museums and galleries into several categories and I don’t really need to talk to what I call the "urban arts eclectic" or the "mature explorer" because they’re a guaranteed shoe-in. They’d come anyway. And I haven’t got a chance with the "bedroom DJs" or the "time-poor dreamers". I’m working on the 36% who are dinner and a show, or fun fashion and friends. So that’s who I’m working on, they’re the people I’m talking to."

Handwritten Letter Project

"There is always something nice about receiving a letter, especially these days when email, text, status updates, and tweets, dominate our communication, leaving many to lose sight of the things that have been around for a while (like ink and paper). However, it is important that they do not."

I can't remember the last time I received a letter? Graphic Designer Craig Oldham also worried that the letter was becoming a forgotten art form so he instigated the ‘HAND.WRITTEN.LETTER.PROJECT’ "The project extended an invitation to designers and creative thinkers alike to simply write and make known their thoughts posed by this situation: in handwritten form and on their stationery." The results were exhibited in Sheffield at Made North and a publication is available from their store here.

This website showcases some of the correspondence since the projects initiation in 2007, containing the thoughts of some of the biggest and best designers and design studios from the world over.

He also commissioned Rik Das  prestonillustration graduate to hand write on the venue windows to advertise the show - 

The Association of Illustrators Awards 2013

The winners of this years newly reformatted AOI Illustration Awards "The Oscars of Illustration"! were announced a few weeks ago. There are several new categories from the old "Images" format reflecting the changing nature of illustration commissioning. Here are the professional category winners you can see the new talent winners on the website (click the title link) as well as the shortlisted works, including Ritwik Das as mentioned a few posts ago. The Category winners and a selection of awarded works will be exhibited at Somerset House in London from the 8th October and will travel to four venues across the UK including Blackpool & Fylde College.

PUBLIC REALM: Jane Reiseger
Title Wayfinding and interior graphics for the new Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia
Use Illustrations were used for interior graphics and way-finding throughout the 8 levels of the hospital.
Commissioner Buro North for the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

EDITORIAL: Edd Baldry
Title Scouse
Use Illustration for an interview with Tony Crowley, a cultural historian, on the changing accent in Liverpool.
Commissioner Red Pepper Magazine

BOOK: Merav Salomon
Title Frostbites
Use Poetry book written and illustrated by Merav Salomon
Commissioner Tollen Hefte

ADVERTISING: Lesley Barnes 
Title Imagination
Use Poster for the V&A Museum of Childhood
Commissioner AMV BBDO
Client V&A Museum

CHILDREN'S BOOKS: Levi Pinfold
Title Black Dog
Use Picture Book
Publisher Templar Publishing

SELF-INITIATED: Anna Cattermole
Title Reportage of Traditional Wooden Boat Building
UsePersonal project leading to exhibition collaboration with National Maritime Museum

DESIGN: Jonathan Burton
Title Odd Bods
Use Special Edition Playing Cards
Commissioner Folio Society

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER: Nicolle Fuller
Title Nanolipogel Attacking Cancer
Commissioner Yale University
Use:Visual showcase for recently published research to evoke interest from the non-science public and describe how nanotechnology might help combat cancer.

We Have No Art; We do everything as well as we can

Sister Mary Corita Kent's 10 Rules for Creativity

Rule 1
FIND A PLACE YOU TRUST AND THEN TRY TRUSTING IT FOR A WHILE.

Rule 2
GENERAL DUTIES OF A STUDENT:
PULL EVERYTHING OUT OF YOUR TEACHER.
PULL EVERYTHING OUT OF YOUR FELLOW STUDENTS.

Rule 3
GENERAL DUTIES OF A TEACHER:
PULL EVERYTHING OUT OF YOUR STUDENTS.

Rule 4
CONSIDER EVERYTHING AN EXPERIMENT.

Rule 5
BE SELF DISCIPLINED. THIS MEANS FINDING SOMEONE WISE OR SMART AND CHOOSING TO FOLLOW THEM.

TO BE DISCIPLINED IS TO FOLLOW IN A GOOD WAY.

TO BE SELF DISCIPLINED IS TO FOLLOW IN A BETTER WAY.

Rule 6
NOTHING IS A MISTAKE. THERE’S NO WIN AND NO FAIL. 

THERE’S ONLY MAKE.

Rule 7
THE ONLY RULE IS WORK.
IF YOU WORK IT WILL LEAD TO SOMETHING.
IT’S THE PEOPLE WHO DO ALL OF THE WORK ALL THE TIME
WHO EVENTUALLY CATCH ON TO THINGS.

Rule 8
DON’T TRY TO CREATE AND ANALYZE AT THE SAME TIME. 

THEY’RE DIFFERENT PROCESSES.

Rule 9
BE HAPPY WHENEVER YOU CAN MANAGE IT.
ENJOY YOURSELF. IT’S LIGHTER THAN YOU THINK.

Rule 10
"WE’RE BREAKING ALL OF THE RULES. EVEN OUR OWN RULES. AND HOW DO WE DO THAT BY LEAVING PLENTY OF ROOM FOR X QUANTITIES." 

JOHN CAGE

HELPFUL HINTS: ALWAYS BE AROUND. COME OR GO TO EVERY- THING. ALWAYS GO TO CLASSES. READ ANYTHING YOU CAN GET YOUR HANDS ON. LOOK AT MOVIES CAREFULLY, OFTEN. SAVE EVERYTHING IT MIGHT COME IN HANDY LATER. 

THERE SHOULD BE NEW RULES NEXT WEEK.

George Grosz The Big No

I just made it in the nick of time to the (now finished) exhibition The Big No by George Grosz at Linden Mill in Hebden Bridge- what a fantastic show (from Hayward Touring Exhibitions) of the work of George Grosz.

Grosz was one of the greatest satirical artists of the 20th century. A founder of the Berlin Dadaist "movement" and a revolutionary left wing artist in the Berlin arts scene of the 1920s, "he depicted the vices and injustices of a deeply divided society." Along with Helmut Herzfeld (who became John Heartfield) he introduced photomontage to the mainstream. Even some of his drawings are composed like photomontages.

Grosz was deeply political and fierce in his depiction of what he saw as a decadent upper class ignorant of the hardships endured by the majority in post WW1 Germany.

'In 1916 I was discharged from military service. The Berlin to which I returned was a cold and grey city. What I saw made me loathe most of my fellow men; everything I could say has been recorded in my drawings. The busy cafés and wine-cellars merely accentuated the gloom of the dark, unheated residential districts. I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing at the moon; men playing cards on the coffins of the women they had murdered. I drew a man, face filled with fright, washing blood from his hands… I was each one of the characters I drew, the champagne-swilling glutton favoured by fate no less than the poor beggar standing with outstretched hands in the rain. I was split in two, just like society at large…'

The Big No features two portfolios of his drawings Ecce Homo, published in 1923 and Hintergrund in 1928. Ecce Homo was subject of a four year legal case for Grosz and his publisher accused of both pornography and bringing the German military into disrepute. They were acquitted.

The exhibition showed the full range of drawings from these portfolios and it was great to see such powerful, political and graphic works. He is fantastic at the depiction of the pompous self important and ignorant class that ultimately led to the rise of Nazism in the thirties. Bankers, businessmen and politicians...

Indeed Grosz himself was fortunate to escape Germany he left for the US in 1933 the day before the Nazis came to take him. They denounced his work as anti German; seized and destroyed it. As a communist party member he would certainly have ended up in a Concentration Camp had he stayed.

He lived and worked and taught in the States for the remainder of his career and only finally returned to Germany in 1959, he died that same year.