ZINE @ The Custard Factory 

Just a reminder about the amazing Zine festival that is taking place at the Custard Factory in Birmingham . . . . .  Opens tomorrow!

i have two postcards there at the postcard exhibition so if you have chance go along and take a look.

Urban Outfitters / Framers @ Custard Factory

5-7 Corporation Street, B2 4LP / Custard Factory, Digbeth

Birmingham, United Kingdom

Take a look at the website for more details 

http://www.birminghamzinefestival.com/

or find us on facebook 

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=104056762967490&ref=ts

also check out the venue hosting the event;- "The Custard Factory"

in Birmingham 

http://www.custardfactory.co.uk/

Birmingham Zine Festival 

Here is the designs for my entries to the Birmingham zine festival, i decided to work with my wrong had illustrations, i did a few designs before hand and then picked my favourites for the postcards, what do you think. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .?

http://www.birminghamzinefestival.com/

Birmingham Zine Festival

Not long ago i found this mail art exhibition that asks for people from all over to take part and create a postcard to display at the exhibition which is part of a festival "The Birmingham Zine Festival".
I should have posted this sooner but have not had much time to blog. . . .  but that will change!!

"The Birmingham Zine Festival will feature a wide range of self-published books, comics and magazines. We'll also be showcasing a selection of artwork from artists connected to the alternative press. If you’d like any additional information about our events, get in contact!"

You are invited to take part in our exhibition of postcards, where each postcard will be a unique work of art. At the end of the exhibition, all of the postcards will be randomly ‘swapped’ and you’ll receive someone else’s original artwork in the mail – yours to keep!

To take part in the exhibition, send us a message with your name and address. When you receive your postcard, just follow these simple instructions:

• Create your own unique artwork on the blank side of the postcard. There’s no theme so feel free to submit whatever you like.
• Write a message on the reverse, leaving the address space blank (we’ll fill that in later!)
• Mail the postcard back to us in the envelope provided, along with your name, address and website details.

That’s it – we’ll do the rest! All of the postcards will be exhibited at The Framers Gallery in Birmingham as part of the Birmingham Zine Festival.

So today i am taking some time to come up with some ideas i want to send on my postcard for the exhibition so stay tuned for the finished piece which will need to be done soon to send off in time :-)



Exciting!!!!!

http://www.birminghamzinefestival.com/

A Beautiful Day at St Ives 

It was recently my birthday and i was taken to St Ives in cornwall for the day, i have lived in cornwall now for three years but it was my first time visiting.

I loved every minuet of it, we walked through the town, and went to the TATE gallery, took photos and had some beautiful food and wine in a wonderful seafood restaurant.

The cornish postcard stand "love it"

Seagulls! i find them so fascinating and funny birds but i really don't like it when i am trying to eat a cornish pasty and they sit and watch you, this one was posing.

The weather was really extreme it was real cornish weather turning from beautiful blue sky and fluffy clods to stormy and raining. but i love that. 

When the weather was good-IT was GOOD! look how beautiful the sea is looks tropical makes me want to jump in.

The TATE exhibition was brilliant, we went to see the "Lilt Van Der Stokker" "No Big Deal Thing" A bold, colourful works that are represented in a disarmingly unashamed and exuberant way, with ideas of beauty, love, relationships, family and the everyday. Playing on stereotypical femininity, she challenges and engages with legacies of feminism exploring ideas often thought of as forbidden in contemporary art.

Her demure medium: coloured-pencil drawings on A4 paper which she scales up and paints directly onto the walls of the gallery.

She challenges the idea the "grand" and the "serious" and in the process asks the question "just what is a fitting subject for a work of art"

http://www.tate.org.uk/stives/exhibitions/vanderstokker/default.shtm

http://www.galerievangelder.com/artists/stokker2.html

here are some examples of her work taken from the "Galerie Vangelder" website 

http://www.galerievangelder.com/artists/stokker2.html

POP UP !

The POP UP Generation 

"I was reading about Pop Up restaurants, "Picture the scene: you're going out to eat at one of London's hippest new restaurants. You've dressed up and are ready for a night of intimate fine dining – trouble is, first you've got to find the place and unlike Covent Garden, there are no helpful tourist signs in the maze of quiet residential streets in Kilburn, Dalston or Brixton."

This is dining out with a difference – underground, "pop-up" restaurants in private homes are the latest foodie fad to hit London. From creative cuisine in Kilburn at MsMarmiteLover's The Underground Restaurant to nine-course vegetarian Japanese eating on slouchy sofas in Horton Jupiter's beatnik flat, called The Secret Ingredient, in east London, guerrilla dining is at the cutting edge of eating out, provided you can find the location in the first place. Even celebrities and famous restaurants are getting in on the act, with Jo Wood opening her home to paying guests and Mosimann's launching a pop-up restaurant on the bank of the Thames during the Henley Regatta. By their very nature you won't find any neon signs or overt advertising for these gigs – it's all done by word of mouth and the internet. 

please read more at  




http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/everyone-back-to-mine-popup-restaurants-in-private-homes-are-the-latest-foodie-fad-1696262.html

"Everyone back to mine: Pop-up restaurants in private homes are the latest foodie fad" 

 This got me thinking what else have I seen or heard about that has the same idea as "POP UP" resturant and what other "POP UP" activities can be taylurd in to the new "POP UP" generation ?

POP UP Gallery's 

Do it yourself: pop-up galleries

Even with a limited budget, it’s remarkably easy to set up your own space

"A former Italian restaurant in the heart of London's Covent Garden has become the latest venue for a "pop-up" contemporary art gallery" 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8130731.stm

Impromptu exhibitions have been opening all over the capital city, as artists make the most of a glut of empty commercial property during the recession. I have noticed more so than ever the amount of empty space and unused shops around the streets of Falmouth, more so now that ever! is there any way of making something such as the "POP UP" idea work in Falmouth? I have come across the idea of a pop up Vintage Flea market which impressed me. I feel that this will be an area that I might look in to some more, the idea that nearly anything can be a "Pop Up" and put anywhere inspires me, I have been also thinking lately of ways to get my work out there some more maybe his could be a start ?   I also love the idea of a collective coming together to do something like this. . . . . . .  

We only have to acknowledge the empty spaces that the chain Woolworth have left, now wouldn't that just be brilliant if something popped up in an old Woolworth near you ? 

"Pick 'n' mix art: Woolworths returns as pop-up gallery"

"Woolworths has been all over the news today, thanks to the fact the much-missed stores are making their comeback on the internet. But that doesn't solve the problem of what to do with all those disused stores that are currently littering London's high streets. Many have been turned into pound shops, one in Camden briefly became a squat but many have simply been left empty and abandoned. . . . . . . 

http://www.timeout.com/london/big-smoke/blog/8051/Pick-n-mix_art-Woolworths_returns_as_pop-up_gallery.html 

. 

 "What resources do you need to start up a contemporary art gallery in London? You must have inexhaustible reserves of energy, a large helping of missionary zeal, and a healthy dose of chutzpah. A network of friends willing to help out on a voluntary basis probably helps. Surprisingly, though, you don’t need much money."

 please read on about this at http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Do-it-yourself-pop-up-galleries%20/19611 

 

MA Shows at University College Falmouth

http://www.falmouth.ac.uk/component/events/965/view/ma-shows-2009-293/index.html

Chiharu Shiota

I was looking through my friends blog and she had this amazing artist on there that she had gone to see at an exhibition.
My friend Carol who is also on her MA doing Textiles went to London for a day and this is what she found and it inspired me to put it on my blog ! have a look and let me know what you think.

http://carol-scarletwoman.blogspot.com/

Chiharu Shiota's gallery was an oppressive spiders web, a huge cat's cradle, someone else's walk through nightmare.

'''when I dream...I feel the dream as reality. I can't distinguish between dream and reality. When I wake up, I have the feeling I'm still dreaming'.

Taken from Carols Blog
It was brilliant to see this on Carols Blog I have always loved Chiharu Shiotas work and seeing in on carols blog inspired me to revisit why I loved it so much.

Hayward Gallery
Walking In My Mind

Walking in My Mind explores the inner workings of the artist's imagination through immersive, large-scale installation art. Ten international artists transform the Hayward Gallery's indoor galleries and outdoor sculpture terraces into a series of gigantic sculptural environments, each of which represents an individual mindscape. Interior worlds of emotions, thoughts, memories and dreams collide with exterior reality, blurring the boundaries between inner and outer space.

After the Dream

Unconscious Anxiety

"I wonder how mi exhibition would look like if I could create an environment as if you were walking through my mind."

The 8 Of us exhibition
2008

Images of The 8 of us exhibition, the half way point for myself and the end exhibition for others.

Cloth & Culture Now

Autumn Collection 2007
Autumn Collection 2007Severija Incirauskaite-KriaunevicieneLithuania2007Metal, cotton

Spreckley (detail) by Paddy Hartley.
Paddy Hartley is one of 35 International artists showing in the latest exhibition called Pricked: extreme embroidery at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York until March 9th 2008. This follows on from their show Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting earlier this year. These shows are available as touring shows - if only one of the major spaces in the UK would bring these exhibits over here. You can see more of Paddy Hartley's work at the National Army Museum in London.
Paddy also sells his work on etsy, Made By Paddy

http://www.madmuseum.org/