Bristol: Banksy Girl with UK Balloon Print – Product Recall

June 3, 2017 butterfly 1 Comment

Coinciding with the UK elections, Banksy just announced on his website the free release on 9th June of an exclusive new print, featuring his iconic Girl with Balloon with the heart being replaced by the UK flag. He hasn’t released any prints since 2010, so this is very exciting news. But there are some conditions.

‘This limited edition artwork on archival quality paper is completely free, but is only available to registered voters in the Bristol North West, Bristol West, North Somerset, Thornbury, Kingswood and Filton constituencies. Simply send in a photo of your ballot paper from polling day showing you voted against the Conservative incumbent and this complimentary gift will be mailed to you.

Lawyer’s note: this print is a souvenir piece of campaign material, it is in no way meant to influence the choices of the electorate, has no monetary value, is for amusement purposes only and is strictly not for re-sale. Terms and conditions to follow, postage not included ‘.

Since the announcement on the website on 3 June, this generated a frenzy of discussions and debate, the role of the artist and political influencing power but also as to whether this was legal or not. Mentioned on the BBC website, due to the increasing number of complaints to the Somerset Police, an investigation has been launched.

Police said anyone taking part in the offer could also be prosecuted.

A police spokesman said: “We’ve received a number of complaints about an offer of a free Banksy print to people living in six Bristol constituencies in exchange for them voting in a certain way in the forthcoming election and we can confirm we’re investigating the offer. It is a criminal offence under the Representation of the People Act 1983 for any voter to accept or agree to accept a gift or similar in return for voting or refraining from voting. Any person participating in an offer to receive a gift is at risk of being prosecuted.”

As a result on 5 June a message on Banksy’s website is now mentioning a product recall.

BPR

www.banksy.co.uk

Paris, Shows, Uncategorized

Paris: Aya Takano – The Jelly Civilization Chronicle

May 26, 2017 butterfly

Japanese painter, illustrator, sci-fi writer and manga artist Aya Takano, is exhibiting ‘The Jelly Civilization Chronicle’, a selection of 26 paintings and several drawings on celluloid, all preparatory studies for a 186-page manga, unveiled in its entirety at Galerie Perrotin in Paris.
Aya Takano belongs to the Superflat movement and Kaikai Kiki, the artistic production studio created in 2001 by Takashi Murakami. Inspired by all art forms, from erotic stamps of the Edo Period to impressionism, from Osamu Tezuka to Gustav Klimt, the artist has built a universe all her own. Her mythology has constructed itself little by little, through her creations and visions of the unknown.

The 2011 tsunami that struck the north eastern coasts of Japan and led to the nuclear accident of Fukushima was a real wake-up call for the artist and this catastrophe deeply influenced her work. Preferring oil paint, which is more natural, to acrylic paint, for example, Aya Takano seems to pursue a new artistic quest, both humble and spiritual, influenced by a unique interest in science and guided by an absolute respect for nature and human life.

Aya Takano has a special gift for storytelling, which she expands and enriches from one image to the next. She has created a 186-page manga entitled The Jelly Civilization Chronicle, exhibited in its entirety at the Galerie Perrotin, in English. After taking form in her imagination, the work came to life in very colourful preparatory oil paintings and drawings on celluloid. We find all the themes and obsessions of the artist from the beginning of her career, 20 years ago: self-discovery, feminine beauty, science fiction, the fight between light and shadow and the pursuit of an immaterial ideal, freed from all restraints of gravity.

The manga stages the adventures of Naki and Minaka in a journey from the “Machine Civilization” to the “Jelly Civilization”. In a back-and-forth voyage between eras and spaces, the two characters meet in the sky and travel to the outer edges of the universe via unexplored places or planets with unknown magical powers…

Initially dressed in emblematic high school uniforms, they are in turns nude or swathed in traditional kimonos or dreamlike clothing made of a mysterious jelly, a living organism that feeds off of water and oxygen. Surrounded by fabulous creatures, they are also accompanied by their ancestors, represented in the form of animals. They learn about the stars, meet a queen in an owl mask and encounter beings with star-tattoœd skin.
On the ruins of a nuclear reactor, after numerous trials and metamorphoses, the herœs return to the peaceful society they originally came from. This “Jelly Civilization” combines tradition, memory and eternity: “Memories of all the people wearing ‘jelly’, memories of all the ‘jelly’, memories of what is happening now, of what might happen…”
The result is the fruit of an imagination that feeds itself, full of every possibility of illusion, like an ideal space on the border of dreams and desires. “I think it is omnipresent inside ourselves and everywhere,” explains Aya Takano. The Jelly Civilization Chronicle represented a real challenge for the artist, who devoted herself to telling the recent story of Japan, while crystallizing within it her worries and obsessions as she never had before: it took an entire year to develop this original and ambitious work, presented and distributed first time in Paris, at the Galerie Perrotin.

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Aya Takano
The Jelly civilization
Galerie Perrotin, Paris

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

Street, streets

Streets: Banksy Brexit mural in Dover

May 14, 2017 butterfly 2 Comments

When Banksy confirmed on Instagram a new mural in Dover last Sunday, it created an internet frenzy (covered). We popped by to have a closer look at the biggest unauthorised work by the elusive artist in the UK .

As usual with the artist, location and message are key. Dover being a strategic location as a ferry port in South East England, and first port of entry and link between the UK and Europe. The mural has been painted on a building of a disused amusement arcade, at a crossing junction between York Street and the A20,where all the lorries drive by to the ferry port, while a large derelict sign ‘Welcome to Dover’ greets trucks on their way in.

According to reports, Banksy created the work under cover of scaffolding. As the building is earmarked for demolition as part of a waterfront regeneration project, locals thought nothing of it. The three storey mural depicts a workman on a ladder chiselling one of the twelve stars of the European Flag, as a symbolic of the Brexit political process with the UK leaving the EU.

Attention to detail is remarquable, from the shading of the ladder and the stencilled lifesize workman, to the trompe l’oeil effects of the cracks in the European flag achieved by two layers of crisp lines, as well as the chips of the star falling off to the ground .

Since appearing on the day of the French presidential elections on 7 May, the mural has generated a great enthusiasm and pride from local residents and travellers curious to see it in person or photograph it, while a a few opportunists also started to chip some paint pieces from the ladder and scribble ‘The Clash’ on it.

When reality goes beyond fiction: with all the visitors, it appears that the council has instructed city workers to cut the grass around the unauthorised mural for a better photo opportunity ( cover photo), while CCTV and police are doing some random rounds to protect it from vandalism.

However there is also another sad twist: the owners of the building, the Godden Family, property developpers in the Kent coast, are planning to sell the mural for £ 1 million (source: Telegraph ) The Godden family said in a statement: “We can confirm that we are exploring options for the retention, removal or sale of the piece.” The family added that it “will look to benefit local charities with proceeds from any sale of the piece”.

Sad times indeed. So get there to see it in person while you can.