optimist prime
we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the starsArchive for September, 2008
The mysterious Watson Bros
Around the back of the office here, there’s a mysterious bronze plaque tucked up under a mail slot on a very nondescript door.
“By appointment to H.I.M The Sultan of Turkey The Shah of Persia”
But are they the same Watson Bros (established 1885) that craft handmade guns and rifles? Or something more life-affirming? I’m desperate to peep in the mail slot, but a bit scared of what I might see…
Incredible skeletal windows at Harvey Nicks
Heading off to work from a talk at the IPA this morning, and wandered past these immaculately constructed coathanger carcassses running through the front windows of Harvey Nichols.
My photos aren’t great, but the giant skeletal remains of strange fish and beasts stretched through the length of the glass display space along Knightsbridge… Wow…
Amnesty bullet
I don’t often plug and play a straight-down-the-line bit of TV advertising on my blog, but this piece for Amnesty International France is great. Easy to do good work for charities – tugs the heart strings and all that – but this is great regardless.
Levi’s finishes London style…
Wandering down Old Street this morning, and stumbled upon this arresting bit of site-specific advertising under the railway bridge (note to self… are the media planers sure that the people walking under that bridge constitute enough of an audience to make a difference, or are they counting on PR and blogability?)
Anyway, having worked on Levi’s in my past life, I DID think it was an interesting way of tackling the perennial problem they face with recognisability of their finishes/washes. If only you could read the ones up the top of the board, maybe someone, somewhere might take notice. The lack of light under there dosn’t help much either (though it does keep the integrity of the finish intact!)
Anyway, all these possible flaws aside, I still thought it was a cute ldea, and a great change to the usual paper billboard that it covered up!
Not a bad effort, that…
Just got sent this link by a recent Kingston Uni graphic design grad, Paul Calway…
Don’t know what it says about his graphic skills (though his portfolio is very nice) but it was nice to have such a giggle in my inbox in the morning. Fantastically art-school jokes, but Hitler as a moody YBA is just too delicious. The tent snippet is my personal favourite.
Without further ado (and continuing the weird YouTube Hitler trend of the moment), here is “Hitler, A Modern Artist”, the BBC4 promo.
Similacrum Lucida: Yundoo Jung and the kids come to life
Just came across this MOST fabulous artist – Yundoo Jung.
Currently living in Korea, he studied here at Central St Martins and Goldsmiths about the same time as I was at uni in Sydney.
This series in particular, “Wonderland” from 2005, are just gold dust. He’s recreated children’s drawings as photographs, with all their abserdities and surreal strangeness built in.
Also loved the title of one of the articles written about his work:
I’m a bandit, and I shall take away thy pride.
-Yuko Hasegawa [Chief Curator, Tokyo National museum]
Is this TISM?
Or just some other balaclava-clad personage gracing the walls of Shoreditch?
(For those of you that are unfamiliar with TISM – you really missed out on being a teenager in the 80s/90s in Oz…)
Lovely work, anyway…
