ABC...

These aren't just any alphabet cards. These alphabet cards are by Pop-Art legend Peter Blake and they are a-mazing. An Alphabet by Peter Blake comes in a box set of 26 postcards derived from his 2008 portfolio of silkscreen prints and are available at my new favourite retail-stop Other Criteria. Destined to be the new educational tools by yuppy parents for their toddlers racing around Hoxton Square on their wooden PedoBikes, I can see these selling out fast. Can anyone spell I - want - one?

Something About Nowhere

Here are a few detail images of my day working on my installation for The Middle of Nowhere. There was something about the exposed brick wall that was so 80s - digital graffiti anyone? Get down on it...

The Middle of Nowhere

I've been working on a group exhibition that opens next week in Southall, London - The Middle of Nowhere: Objects and Actions in the Abyss, in association with Departure Gallery, a platform that reclaims urban spaces for contemporary art. I will be exhibiting new work with a mixed media installation and once the show launches I will be posting documentation of the artwork on display in this unique and interesting space.

The Middle of Nowhere runs from 6th-10th March at 6 Trident Way, International Trading Estate, London UB2 5LF with an opening reception on 5th March from 6.30-9.30pm - visit Departure Gallery for further details about the space and participating artists.

Lights, Camera, British

Congratulations to Fish Tank, for winning a BAFTA yesterday night for Outstanding British Film. Having reported on it last year, the film captured a state of mind of British life by filling a void of sincerity that is not always found in other generic 'council estate drama' films. With director, Andrea Arnold's particularly British acceptance speech, wrapping up with a "God Save The Queen", I look forward to seeing her future work and her British sensibility that only the British know how to do with gusto.

Very Tokyo

I have to share this cool postcard I received today from my friend Misato - it's a fresh take on the par avion red and blue stripes found on postal mail and I'm told it's "very Tokyo". One day I will see it with my own eyes, but until then I need to find an equally cool postcard to reply with. Have a great weekend everyone!

Yellow Pages

Right. It's been more than a week since my last post and I promise there's a valid reason - I'm involved in a group exhibition opening in March - more on this next week - and this has resulted in being in a computer-coma for the past two weeks. But I'm back and I really want to share Ana and Renée's domination as The Ladies of the Press* at Testing Grounds last weekend at South Street, Reading. The night was as eclectic as it was electric (the mobile press desk has to run somehow) and I was made an honorary Gentleman of the Press*, being put to work on fringing the incredible Live Press publication, that featured interviews and extracts with all the artists involved on the night. The edition took a grid framework with a special insert of a page from the yellow pages, thanks to the eccentric performance from Theodor Di Ricco, who lives, works and wears exclusively yellow. My contribution was a pair of doodle-inspired 'skins' which added decorative insertions to the three hours of pure performative publication.

GRIDSKIN I

GRIDSKIN II

It was a spectacle to watch these pages come alive and I encourage anyone to visit a Ladies of the Press* event - this may be made easier now that they are officially on tour and will be gracing their press-panache across the UK as well as Europe in the coming months. Visit their blog for dates and further information.

Thank you Ladies for a fantastic day! Here a some of their photos of the press desk in action...

Reading Test

This Saturday I'll be joining publication princesses, The Ladies of the Press* at Testing Grounds in South Street, Reading, Berkshire. I have known artists/curators/editors, and more importantly friends, Ana Čavić and Renée O’Drobinak from our days at The Slade and since their first publication with Cluster Arts Magazine, they have accomplished so much and they have been recently awarded with a residency at Concurrent this coming April to continue their practice of performative publications, creating a collaborative explosion of live art on every page of their editorial editions. Testing Grounds host series of experimental live art and music events concentrated in the South East of England, inviting audiences from different disciplines to create, discuss, perform and socialize.

The event on Saturday 13th February is free and runs from 6pm - for further information visit Testing Grounds or South Street for directions.

The Simpsons Go To The Bowl

Six-million dollars buys you the world's most recognisable brand to be paired up with the world's most famous family during a Super Bowl time out. Coca-Cola's "Hard Times" advertisement featured The Simpsons during yesterday's Super Bowl XLIV - times may be hard for Mr. Burns and if you have six-million dollars then Coke's doing alright, but the real winners are the New Orleans Saints... bring on the Good Times!

Euro Trip

This week Barcelona plays host to The Influencers at the Centre of Contemporary Culture. In its sixth year, a series of events incorporating art, guerilla communication and radical entertainment, explore the potential of non conventional communication in contemporary society. This year the festival focuses on themes such as consumerism with a three-day workshop on bicycle customisation. For more information about the workshops and screenings visit The Influencers website.

Wall Drawing #546 and Wall Drawing #386

While in Milan, head to Massimo De Carlo to view the monochrome-monopolisation, Sol Lewitt Presented By Rudolf Stingel. Five wall drawings fill the space of this impressive Milanese commercial gallery which is due to grace the British Isles with a permanent space on Dover Street, London later this year. So for now, if you can't make it over to Milan before March, click here to visit a special dedication to 'Team Sol Lewitt' installing the show. Incredibile!

Sun Seeker

This weekend I had an unusual craving for the sea, so I followed the sun southwards to Brighton...

Art Detox

When I was at art school I had a saying for some of the artworks produced by my peers: "Skip Art" was when I would throw my own refuse into the communal skip only to find it had been glued, nailed or balanced on someone else's 'creation' a few days later. With great irony, this week sees much media fascination with Michael Landy's exhibition, Art Bin, at South London Gallery. The six-week installation, consisting of a transparent polycarbonate and steel 'skip', invites the public to bring their artistic failings and create a monument to creative failure. I'm interested in Landy's take on taste and the process of what defines good and bad Art from both the artist and the viewer in the controversial context of contemporary art - the fact that submitted artworks for Art Bin will be chosen by Landy and his representatives says a lot. Damien Hirst's contribution with a large print of For The Love Of God, will hopefully set a trend and allow anyone who has produced anything emblazoned with skulls, that has plagued the art world in the last two years, to have a creative detox - if not for the artist, for the sake of everyone else.

Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal

... may be a great t-shirt slogan, but they are the words said to have been uttered by Picasso and they resonate strong with contemporary art practice today. I was first introduced to The Rubell Family Collection this time last year when I was living in New York - the private collection, based in Miami since 1993, pioneered the concept of a 'Miami model' with such collections opening themselves up to the public to create independent institutions. The Rubell Family have 45,000 square-feet of independence and their current exhibition, Beg Borrow And Steal attributes Picasso's wise words. All 260 works by the 74 international artists on display, including Duchamp, Koons and Prince, are owned by the Collection and they explore the artistic practice throughout generations of appropriation as a reflection of their own moment in time. The Rubell Family are conscious of the speed which contemporary art travels and by referencing the earlier landmark artworks in the collection, a greater understanding of the past defines the present and embraces the future,

"... The most interesting contemporary art almost always engages with a future that is not yet known, and we believe this new work is dealing with that future. The same way Andy Warhol predicted our current culture of fame, artists today are working around something we are just beginning to understand. It has to do with information overload, time, the collapse of time, indistinct authorship, virtuality and intense individuality. In the future, there might be a simple explanation, but for the moment it is a glorious mess of things."

Beg Borrow And Steal runs to 29th May 2010 and the exhibition catalogue is now available through the Foundation's website.

Pole To Pole

I was in Oxford over the weekend and paid a visit to Modern Art Oxford where I was welcomed by stewards in head to toe gold lamé suits - as one who considers first impressions absolute, I deterred my usual rule of thumb, politely denied to wear the golden suits on offer to the public and forged my way into the (usually quite conservative) museum, to enter the world of Pawel Althamer's Common Task and Miroslaw Balka's Topography. In conjunction with POLKSA! YEAR - a series of 200 projects celebrating Polish culture and the arts to the British public - Althamer takes his vision global with his work, Common Task, that has been travelling across continents with groups of 'astronauts' in golden suits and golden luggage, in their golden plane with their adventures documented in the exhibition. In contrast, Balka's video work explores the minimal landscape of his native Poland in a series of multi-projections on walls and floor screens paired with a chilling soundtrack of leather-whipped metal and industrial drones. Offering a different insight from his commission at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, the cold reality of a country stricken by war throughout history is present in both instances. The artworks from the artists present both the future and the past of a country that well deserves a year of celebration.

POLSKA! YEAR runs at Modern Art Oxford to 7th March 2010 and The Unilever Series: Miroslaw Balka How It Is runs to 5th April 2010.

Campaign Quiz

Alexander McQueen S/S 2010

Possibly the best Spring/Summer campaign of the year - if not of all time? - fashion photographer Nick Knight places model-turned-snake charmer Raquel Zimmermann in an uncompromising position. Start the weekend by feasting your eyes over my quiz - fingers on buzzers...

Spot a) the model & b) the product

A Casualty Of Politics?

A year ago today history was made when the first African American was inaugurated as President of the United States of America. Like with any anniversary, one looks back to the past to reflect and contemplate the future - but today is, unfortunately for Barack Obama, not just any anniversary - today represents the end of a year that had been fueled by a historical Democratic political campaign, declaring 'Change', 'Hope' and 'Yes We Cans' which have resulted a year on in a disappointing chorus of 'No We Can't'. But apart from the promises that Obama has been unable to meet on both national and international stages that only highlight what Presidential life is like when it is shared with Senates and Congress, I want to ask what position the power of art now takes, having played such an important role in the election campaign of 2008, when Obama's approval rating has dropped by thirty per cent with only a popularity of 50 per cent today? His rise to power played with ideas of a Superman figure, battling between good and evil, that was so successfully driven by the Obama campaign and adopted by the world's press, it awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize for what seemed to be based on only a series of promises. The artist Shepard Fairey undoubtedly played an important role in the candidacy. Art critic for The New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl, called Fairey's 'HOPE' poster, "the most efficacious American political illustration since 'Uncle Sam Wants You'". The artist created the iconic design, originally featuring the word 'PROGRESS', independently from the Obama campaign with Fairey taking the position as a visual commentator with a passion for politics and the power that poster art inherently possesses. Once campaign officials embraced the popularity Fairey was generating, a series of revised artworks featuring the words 'CHANGE' and 'VOTE' were released with record-breaking distribution numbers of half a million posters, cementing his name in history and all the success he could ever hope for. Fairey's art was everywhere and on everything around the world, teamed with Obama's growing celebrity status, his career propelled him to take on corporate commissions for the likes of Saks Fifth Avenue, publications and into the world's most prestigious collections including The Smithsonian, MOMA and the V&A. But with the world's most recognisable figure inseparable from an artwork and style that is so recognisably Fairey, are there consequences for an artist who has displayed such a personal allegiance towards a Superman that in reality, is just another politician? Does the artist have responsibility for attributing to the power of electioneering - for contributing visually in order to place a figure in politics that happens to helm the most powerful country on earth? Very little can be done in a political year and 2009 has experienced exceptional circumstances. There is no reason why Obama cannot achieve all that he has promised in time, for if anyone is to cease from war, bring America's healthcare system into the twenty-first century and improve climate change to name a few, he is the man to do it. But there are obstacles that may never be jumped over and with the ever-increasing criticism of the inexperienced President, is it possible in a world of makes-and-breaks for Sheperd Fairey to be a casualty of politics?

The Religion Of Luxury

The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much:

but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.

Ecclesiastes, 5:2-3

These may be the words according to Ecclesiastes, but what the labouring man may not know is that the sleep of the rich is sweeter aided by their abundance as they lie under their 100% cashmere blanket thanks to the art world's high priest, Damien Hirst. Produced under his exclusive marketing arm, Other Criteria, the blanket features icons from the artist's New Religion series, measures 1470 x 1830mm and is made in Scotland by traditional techniques and finishes to create the most luxurious look and feel. If you have £975.00 to donate towards the cause of Other Criteria, enquiries are being accepted here.