Category Archives: London

London: Festival Iminente 2017

July 20, 2017 butterfly

This Summer, a European cultural invasion hits the heart of Brexit Britain as the very first UK edition of Festival Iminente opens at London’s Old Truman Brewery. A two-‐day festival of explosive and experimental Portuguese art and music, Festival Iminente brings the soul of Lisbon to the heart of London, following its successful debut in the Oeiras region of Lisbon in September 2016.

Curated by Portuguese artist Vhils and Lisbon’s Underdogs Gallery, Festival Iminente not only offers Brits mourning Brexit a chance to immerse themselves in the most innovative new music and art from Portugal but also enlists some of Europe’s most creatively exciting artists to invade the capital with their best work. The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, London will overflow with art from a line-‐up of Europe’s hottest visual artists, creating immersive and in some cases, political pieces tackling the state of Europe and the current human condition. Enter through European Border Control, policed by Portuguese interventionist artist Mais Menos and prepare to party in an alternative European Union of art, music and creativity.

Artists include: Add Fuel (POR), AKA Corleone (POR), Andre da Loba (POR), Ben Eine (UK), Bordalo II (POR), Conor Harrington (IRL), Draw & Contra (POR), Halfstudio (POR), Mais Menos (POR), Mar (POR), Pixel Pancho (IT), Sick Boy (UK), The Caver (POR), Vhils (POR), Wasted Rita (POR)

The 93 Feet East live music venue gives a platform to urban underground musicians from across Europe, but with a strong Portuguese flavour. Full line up: 28th July: DJ Glue (PT), DJ Kking Kong (PT), DJ Big (PT), Francis Dale (PT), Slow J (PT), DJ Ride (PT), Shaka Lion (PT), Batida (PT/AO), DJ Nigga Fox (AO) 29th July: DJ Glue (PT), DJ Big (PT), Cachupa Psicadélica (CV), Chullage (PT), Halloween (PT), Scuru Fitchadu (CV), Novelist (UK), Rita Maia presents Migrant Sounds (PT), LV & Joshua Idehen (UK), DJ Firmeza (PT)

Festival Iminente combines the best new music with new art in an experience of intense collective intimacy, with food trucks and a bar that only accepts Euros. We’ll see you there. *****************

FESTIVAL IMINENTE -‐ 28 & 29 JULY, 2017 BRICK LANE YARD & 93 FEET EAST OLD TRUMAN BREWERY 91 BRICK LANE LONDON E1 6QL

Tickets on sale at www.buytickets.at/iminentefestival
Afternoon £10, Evening £15
www.festivaliminente.com

London

London: Harland Miller – One Bar Electric Memoir

July 10, 2017 butterfly

UK artist Harland Miller, renowned for his satirised Penguin paperback paintings, is returning to the White Cube this summer for a new exhibition called ‘One Bar Electric Memoir’. Featuring two series of paintings, the works on show are a continuity of Miller’s investigation into the relationship between viewer, text and image.

The first series of large-scale works is based on Miller’s extensive archive of psychology and social science books, dating from the 1960s and ‘70s. Characterised by their bold and colourful abstract covers, these books embraced a positive attitude and the possibility of ‘fixing’ disorders through a process of self-help. The geometric cover designs reminded of contemporary abstract paintings but also provided a foil to the darker aspects of social neurosis addressed by the books’ content.

In another series of fictional book cover paintings, Miller depicts the outlines of letters in a range of typefaces and colours, intersected or layered over each other to create short, enigmatic words such as ‘Up’, ‘If’, ‘Ace’, ‘Pot’. With their bold, saturated colours, these paintings reference American abstraction and, in particular, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha’s use of vernacular signage and motifs.

The shapes stand out from the saturated mute backgrounds, as do the paired fictional but witty titles such as Reverse Psycology Isn’t Working, 2017. In both series of paintings Miller uses his own name as author. The inclusion of his own name, not only alludes to his authorship of both image and text, but to the fine line that exists between fiction and reality.

View the full set of pics here

Harland Miller – One Bar Electric Memoir
Until 9 September 2017
White Cube, Mason’s Yard, London

London, Street, streets

London streets: Fanakapan

May 21, 2017 butterfly

Street artist Fanakapan recently completed series of murals in the streets of East London. Using a shiny silver inflatable 3D style, the artist painted a silver balloon dog, a duo of clown characters holding a smiley balloon , and a tribute to Peanuts fictional characters by Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip featuring a flying helium balloon of the bird Woodstock and Snoopy.

London, Shows

London: Ryoji Ikeda π, e, ø @Almine Rech

May 17, 2017 butterfly

Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda is currently showing a solo exhibition ‘ π, e, ø,’ organised with Olivier Renaud-Clement at Almine Rech Gallery in London

Ryoji Ikeda has gained a reputation as a unique artist working across both visual and sonic media. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visual materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.

The exhibition title π, e, ø stands for three important mathematical constants;

π (pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter)
e (the base of the natural logarithm)
ø (phi, golden ratio: a+b/a = a/b), all of which are infinite.

The show focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and aesthetics.
Through the use of mathematical vocabulary, the artist seeks to present infinity in a visual way.
The works on paper, multiple variations of 1×1 surfaces of white and black from series of numbers, the transcendental and the irrational, are exhaustively visualised in decimal expressions reaching 1.25 million digits a piece. These signs are beyond the limits of human comprehension or experience, and must be taken for wonders — apparitions of ominous and numinous beauty. A restrained elegance and minimalism reigns throughout, but the monochromatic surfaces belie the furious richness and staggering detail within.

Works from Ryoji Ikeda’s time and space series, which convert the notion of Time onto 2-dimensional surfaces (Space), are presented together with works from the test pattern series that refers to the mathematical constants π, e, ø and uses colors which are developed during the colour separation process of 16mm film.

More silent epiphanies are present in related works that elegantly visualise silence and time. 0’10” shows the numerical countdown from 10 to 0 that precedes films, making physically manifest the immaterial and temporal notion of ten seconds of 16mm film. Similarly, the work 4’33’, which consists of the physical equivalent of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of blank 16mm film with time code, clearly references John Cage’s hugely philosophical meditation on the impossibility of silence.

data.scan [nº1-9] is part of Ryoji Ikeda’s ongoing datamatics project (2006-) in which he explores the potential to perceive the invisible multi-substance of data which permeates our world. It is a series of experiments in various forms – audiovisual concerts, installations, publications and CD releases – that seek to materialise pure data. The audiovisual installations are composed of a combination of mathematics and the vast sea of data present in the world. Elaborately composed microscopic visualisations are shown on nine displays on plinths, all tightly synchronised with a minimal soundtrack and features sets of data from recent meta-scientific investigations mapping the human body and the astronomical universe (structures of errors, DNA sequence | chromosome nº11, morse code studies, molecular structure | protein, 4-dimensional hypercube | nodes). Positioned horizontally in intimate relation to the viewer’s body, the installation offers an intimate perception of each singular data investigation.

Ryoji Ikeda – datascan

Echoing data.scan installation, is an ambiguous archeology of encoded knowledge from the systematics series. Systematic patterns of data expression, from archival computer formats to contemporary technology referring to the technological progress of the digital age are displayed. These “primitive” systems, cultural artifacts and remnants of earlier technologies belong to a technological continuum beginning with the earliest stirrings of coded communication. The memory of a song forgotten in the piano roll, is now only silence, absence.

Ryoji Ikeda – systematics

Ryoji Ikeda π, e, ø
Until 20 May
Almine Rech Gallery, London
Grosvenor Hill, Broadbent House,
W1K 3JH London UK

London

London: East End Mob

April 22, 2017 butterfly

In the last decade London’s East End has seen some remarkable changes. The wave of gentrification has forced the once industrial sprawl and urban wasteland of the area into adopting a different facade. ‘East End Mob’ presents work from iconic artists who have been actively painting in the area before and during this change, their character-driven style synonymous with the walls and landscape of the East End.

The line-up includes A.CE London,Coloquix, Dscreet, Mau Mau, Mighty Mo, Pez, Rowdy, Sickboy,Sweet TooF, Tizer, Vinnie Nylon and Cranio.

‘East End Mob’ is an authentic exhibition and much needed nod to some of the biggest pillars in East London’s Street Art and Graffiti scene.

Specially loving the Mighty Mo miniature brick wall, nod from back in 2010.