Si Scott

I can't believe I missed this exhibition - it's right up my street. Luckily Si Scott has a fantastic website with a selection of his Ink & Lyrics exhibition work and lots more besides. The full picture above really doesn't do Black Swan justice, so here's a detail too...

For lots more (and much bigger) images check out his website. Lovely.

I am rubbish

I've been a little busy. I'm right back on it now. In the mean-time, here's a nice picture to enjoy.

Ambroise

by Porchez Typofonderie.
I wonder how they think up those little poem-type things to show the fonts? Some of them are really quite pretty. Completely nonsensical but pretty nontheless.

Lego Man Update

Thanks to some detective work (ie. a helpful comment - thanks Anonymous, whoever you are!) it turns out he's quite a popular guy. reddit has some more in depth information but surfice it to say he has been a very popular art installation - until someone dumped him in the sea that is. He even has his own website.

Giant Lego Man Found in the Sea

"No real than you are". What could it mean?

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A giant, smiling Lego man was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort on Tuesday.

Workers at a drinks stall rescued the 2.5-metre (8-foot) tall model with a yellow head and blue torso.

"We saw something bobbing about in the sea and we decided to take it out of the water," said a stall worker. "It was a life-sized Lego toy."

Gorgeous Letterpress Ad.

The Selfridges website has a nice feature related to this at the moment too - a wonder search. There's a big long alphabetical list of lots of peoples 'wonders' (although unfortunately you can't read past O at the moment as the link to the next page is broken - rubbish!) that make some interesting (if slightly pointless) reading. It has a nice header too, but unfortunately it bears no relation to the ad in September's Vogue. How odd. I'd think a brand as huge as Selfridges (a guardian for a lot of other prestige brands no less) would do this a bit better really. It seems like all the thought went into the lovely ad and the rest got a bit cobbled together.

Marian Bantjes

Marian Bantjes' website is full of swirling typography, gorgeous design and special bits like this, a map of influences. There are much larger details of it here. A fantastically simple idea and a lovely piece. Marian Bantjes' website is a goldmine of inspiration itself!

Happy Birthday

What a perfect day for a birthday cake.

Helga Steppan

Helga Steppan's photography is so simple but so fascinating. Groups of belongings arranged by colour into classical compositions are immediately enticing and call into question all sorts of identity, ownership and authorship issues. The Man & Eve gallery website states;

'Belongings Apart' questions the extent to which an object or possession can ever represent its owner or hold particular meaning and invites the audience to discover its own associations in the work.

I can't help wondering how this will be affected once someone owns a print of the photographs, and if/when they sell it and so on.

Surreal Things

I finally got round to seeing the Surreal Things exhibition, just in the nick of time! Surrealism is quite easy to dismiss thesedays as being gimmicky and all too familiar, but seeing such a huge amount of work all in the same place was really overwhelming. It really helped give a sense of the works originality - concepts that really were dislocating and difficult and against the grain. However the use of recognisable repeated motifs fueled the transition of the style from shocking, to becoming talked about to eventually becoming appropriated into all areas visual culture. Dr MF Agha, the art director of Vogue at the time, put it really well;

"What is a snobbish art scandal today is an accepted style tomorrow and a merchandised style the next day."

The World is Going Simpsons Mental

First, a series of 7-11 stores across America magically turn into Kwik-e-Marts. Then Homer's svelte donut-wieldng figure appears alongside the Cerne Abbas giant. Now they've upstaged the world of fashion in this months' Harper's Bazaar with some help from Linda Evangelista.
I get the impression we haven't seen it all yet...

I'm back!

No, I haven't forgotten you, little blog. I've been in Lisbon! A bit hot, lots of touristy things, lots of tiles, lots of custard tarts, and a nice pointy sign.