Tag Archives: Art

Women and Industry in the First World War At IWM North

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New Photographic Display Outside IWM North
Launching the 2014 First World War Centenary programme at IWM North
From 18 January 2014 – Free Entry; Donations Welcome

Exploring how the First World War changed the society we live in today, a new external photographic display at IWM North, part of Imperial War Museums, in Manchester, reveals images of women working in industry during the conflict.

 

As IWM builds towards a major programme of events and displays commemorating the First World War Centenary, six images by official First World War photographer G P Lewis are being unveiled in huge, 5 metre high frames, outside IWM North, on the Quays in Manchester.

George Parham Lewis, an official photographer of the home front, specialised in documenting heavy industry and photographed women workers in the glass, vehicle and food industries.

The images in the free IWM North display document women’s vital contribution to the war effort in factories across the North West of England almost 100 years ago.

 

Taken from IWM’s renowned Photographic Archive, the images were jointly commissioned by IWM and the Ministry of Information, demonstrating the wide range of roles performed by women during the First World War.

Visitors are invited to contact IWM North on Twitter @I_W_M #IWMNorth or Facebook.com/iwm.north if they recognise family members in any of GP Lewis’ photographs on display.

Graham Boxer, Director of IWM North, said: ‘The First World War was a major turning point that shaped the world we live in today, including the roles of women in society. These six powerful images depict women at work during an extraordinary time. It is a fitting start towards a major programme of exhibitions, displays and events marking the First World War Centenary at IWM North.  Later this year we will open the largest exhibition ever created exploring the role of the North West of England during the First World War.’

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The Women and Industry display opens on 18 January, while IWM North’s major exhibition marking the centenary, From Street To Trench: A War that Shaped a Region, will open on 5 April. For more information, visit www.iwm.org.uk

GP Lewis’ photographs depict the following scenes of woman and industry in the North West during the First World War:

  • Women workers in an Oil and Cake factory having tea, Lancashire, 1918. Oil cakes were used to feed cattle
  • Female worker in Charles Macintosh and Sons’ Ltd rubber factory, Manchester, 1918
  • Female glass worker carrying a tube of rolled glass at Pilkington Glass Ltd., St Helen’s, 1918. The company still exists today
  • Women workers stacking oil cakes at an Oil and Cake factory, Lancashire, 1918
  • Women working in an asbestos factory, Lancashire, 1918. Asbestos, now recognised as a dangerous material, was used in many different ways such as in buildings and enginesWomen workers operating a grain elevator at the mills of Messrs. Rank & Sons in Birkenhead, 1918

Christmas Art Attack Night

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Paola Berta hosted a cosy, VIP Charity Christmas night for the creative industries at brand, newly refurbished, venue “BUCCI” located in the heart of Knighsbridge.

Guests were encouraged bringing along presents (i.e. toys) in support of the “BE MY SANTA” Klash Entertainent TV Christmas project. On Christmas day, the presents will be gifted to those, less fortunate, children which will be spending their Christmas at the Ormond Street Children Hospital.

Graham Swain in the center! #Christmas party 2013

Graham Swain in the center! #Christmas party 2013

Michelle Castillo #Christmas party 2013

Michelle Castillo #Christmas party 2013

Maria Inonectima #Christmas party 2013 #live_art

Maria Inonectima #Christmas party 2013 #live_art

Paola Berta, Chanise Thompson #Christmas party 2013

Paola Berta, Chanise Thompson #Christmas party 2013

Robbie Moffat, Paola Berta #Christmas party 2013 #BUCCI #Knightsbridge

Robbie Moffat, Paola Berta #Christmas party 2013 #BUCCI #Knightsbridge

Tony James #Christmas party 2013

Tony James #Christmas party 2013

The event started with a Christmas inspired live art painting by Maria Inonectima and carried on with an intro to life coaching by Dr Anna Maria Sanna, followed by dance and singing performances.

Dr A. M. Sanna introduced guests to the the importance of developing a method to achieve successful results in life, something people might want to particular evaluate at the beginning of a New Year.

Inonectima Fashion brand in collaboration with Aneta Ka, showcased – via a fun and surprising undressing dance sequence “Emanation” – a new piece from the latest Inonectima Fashion brand collection.

Actress and singer, Michelle Castillo – originally from Los Angeles, recently, relocated in London – performed some lovely songs.

In between the guests in attendance producer Robbie Moffat, filmmaker and musician Paul Wiffen, performer and broadcaster Graham Swain, actress Mary Bennett, TV presenter Chanise Thompson.

Guests enjoyed the red carpet photoshot by the live art painted banner and were treated with goodie bags sponsored by Chinara Enterprises and Wild Cat Energy Drinks.

Photography by Sergio Mattioli

Charlotte Colbert: Writer, Housewife, Madness | A Day at Home {Ones To Watch}

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For our Ones To Watch, Charlotte Colbert, is perfect; A fresh young artist who recently married and is also a screenwriter: her work is not just visually beautiful, it is also original, leaving you thinking about the her work for days after. Frost Loves.

A DAY AT HOME

New series by Charlotte COLBERT

Show: 29th November – 12th December 2013

39 Dover St, London W1S 4NN, UK

Charlotte Colbert (nee Boulay-Goldsmith

A DAY AT HOME, the new photographic series by Charlotte Colbert, playfully explores the relationship between the imagined and the real within the context of the home. She loosely parallels the writer and the housewife as figures struggling to distinguish between the two. Their identities dissolving within the huis-clos of their setting and imaginings. The black and white images, shot on medium format film and shown within the context of their original negative, are like surreal fragments of a dream or nightmare. Using long and double exposures as well as props and distorting mirrors, her camera becomes a portal into the mind of a fictional character.

“When I see the pictures I feel the woman is probably sitting in her clean and comfortable living room. The decay around her is existing solely in her head” Mila Askarova. Director Gazelli Art House

 

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With playful nods to Bourgeois’ “femme-maison”, the visuals of ruins and fairy tales, Colbert questions the daily insanity of being human, more specifically within the context of the home. Shot on location, in a derelict house in Bethnal Green, the ruins become a character in themselves, the murky mindscape from which one cannot escape.

“Some photographers take pictures and others make them. Charlotte is most definitely in the second category, her pictures a gateway into… her search for meaning and her very special way of seeing” Dorothy Bohm, photographer and co-founder Photographers’ Gallery in London

Drawing from her screenwriting, Colbert’s photographic work is strongly anchored within the language of film and story-telling. Her pictures originally conceived as a series, a sequence developed in script format before being shot. A Day At Home builds on the story-telling language of her work. A very personal exploration of the relationship between the writer and the home, the real and the imagined, identity and the self. A study of madness, the fragility of our sense of existence, reality and belonging. The writer and housewife coming together in their sense of isolation, solitude and confinement within a space which both closes in on them but also opens up into an epic landscape of surreal imaginings. Here, the use of medium format film allows for the character to be overwhelmed, defined and even disappear in her surroundings. Only a couple of images are shot in 35mm, the ones exploring the relationship and the mystery of self-perception, the woman’s body rendered grotesque as the viewer is placed between the character and her reflection.

“A truly original visual storyteller her images are hauntingly evocative” Laura Bailey, Vogue

Charlotte Colbert’s work will also feature in the British Heart Foundation’s Tunnel of Love auction in November 2013. Her work Lips Study will be sold for the charity alongside other lots including prints by Damien Hirst and Sir Peter Blake as well as Cartier jewellery and clothes by fashion house Mulberry.

“Sometimes it feels like the thread linking us to the world is so frail that at any time it could break leaving us at the mercy of all our repressed confusion loss and fear” Charlotte Colbert

 

Charlotte Colbert (nee Boulay-Goldsmith) is a photographer and screenwriter based in London.

 

She has developed a distinctive narrative to her work, which can be followed from her large-scale triptychs, to her film-noir series and her more recent medium format stills.

 

In her first solo show, Stornoway, shown at the Wilmotte and Tristan Hoare Gallery in the old Lichfield Studios, she explored the concept of narrative within the still image, building around the sequencing of images in order to express a space and a time. She used traditional 35mm black and white film and showed the pictures within the negative, questioning the way one looks at photography and contextualising it as a record of events and patterns in the greater sequence of meaning. By turning the image around and leaving the negative apparent, she aims to allow the viewer to re-acquire the moment at which the photograph was taken and make the memory their own.

 

She then developed a series: D.R.I.F.T., an acronym for Do Reflections Imagine For Themselves? shown at Proud Gallery and at Gazelli Art House in which she created a loose film noir sequence within the gallery space, giving the viewer clues to construct and imagine a narrative of their own.

Sketch To Host Café Intellectual: Reading Robert Hughes

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‘The greatest art critic of our time’ – Jonathan Jones
 Robert_Hughes
On Sunday 13th October, The Parlour at Sketch will host Café Intellectual: Reading Robert Hughes. A Sunday evening salon with selected readings and reflections, screenings and sound bites in honour of the controversial figure hailed as ‘the greatest critic of our time’, Robert Hughes.
Curated by The Field and presented in association with the Royal Academy of Arts’ in honour of their highly anticipated ‘Australia’ exhibition. The evening salon will include presentations from a number of Britain’s most esteemed art-critics and artists, whose work has been affected by Hughes’ legacy.
An array of speakers have been invited to toast the work of RA Honorary Fellow Robert Hughes, who was once described by Peter Carey as ‘Australia’s Dante’. Speakers include curator Paul Bayley, artist Dan Davis, Oxford film and television creative director Nicholas Kent, artist Agatha Gothe-Snape and academic and artist Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll.
The bar team at sketch will be creating cocktails inspired by Hughes’ work. Guests will be able to sample ‘Fatal Shore’ and ‘Shot of the New’ which have heady blends, evoking Hughes’s famous tones.
“They need a place where they can go to meet and drink and talk, preen themselves or simply sit alone with a book … the cafe was the opera of the dissenters. It was also the marketplace of ideas.” – Robert Hughes

Café Intellectual: Reading Robert Hughes will be held at The Parlour at sketch, on Sunday 13th October, 6:30pm – 8pm

Wildlife Sculptures bring London to Life

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From 7th October there is a treat for lovers of art and animals in London, Britain’s foremost wildlife sculptor Hamish Mackie will stage a major solo exhibition at The Cork Street Gallery in Mayfair. He makes the most beautiful wildlife sculptures.

Mackie has previously completed bespoke commissions for organisations including Barclays Private Bank and Merrill Lynch as well as individuals such as Dame Vivien Duffield and Charles Saatchi. Art historian and critic Edward Lucie-Smith has praised Mackie as “master of a virtuoso technique, in a technical tradition that dates back to Rodin. What Rodin did with the human body, Mackie applies to animal forms.” The lifelike quality he captures in his sculptures is attained through careful observation, often involving the artist working from life.

wildlife sculptures in London

His work has taken him to a variety of destinations to see animals in their natural habitats, including stalking deer in the Highlands, tracking cheetahs in Namibia and watching penguins in Antarctica. Whilst there he creates studies or even originals in clay or wax, having to work with deft and spontaneous gestures in sometimes inhospitable conditions. This impressionistic quality is translated into the finished bronze works, in which the motions of his hands and even fingerprints are still visible, lending the works vitality and dynamism.

This October, a selection of almost fifty new works by the artist will be the subject of a major solo exhibition. Through the show, Mackie will help to raise funds and awareness for charities including The Tusk Trust and The Countryside Alliance.

Why war still inspires art – Major IWM exhibition | Events

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Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War
Major New Exhibition
12 October 2013 – 23 February 2014, IWM North Special Exhibitions Gallery
Free Entry, Donations Welcome

Imperial War Museums

IWM holds an unrivalled collection of twentieth and twenty-first century British art. Now, IWM North, part of Imperial War Museums, in Manchester is presenting the first major exhibition of IWM’s collection of contemporary art produced since the First Gulf War – placing more than 20 years of work by over 40 artists in this national collection on public display together for the first time.

The exhibition includes Steve McQueen’s Queen and Country, an installation of facsimile stamp sheets bearing photographic portraits of British service personnel killed in Iraq, and Photo Op, kennardphillipps’ very different comment on the war in Iraq, showing Tony Blair taking a ‘selfie’ in front of an explosion. This large-scale, free exhibition features responses to conflict since the First Gulf War by some of the most significant artists exploring war and conflict today – such as Langlands and Bell, Miroslaw Balka, Willie Doherty, Paul Seawright, Ori Gersht, Jananne Al Ani and Edmund Clark.

Catalyst : Contemporary Art and War reveals how war has been crucial subject matter for contemporary artists in the last two decades. Visitors will explore the rich, varied and moving artistic response to conflict in a media age. Hear from the artists themselves and discover what motivates people to create art about conflict. Explore the ways in which art can prompt us to think more deeply about current events, their immediate impact and their long-term implications.

Through more than 70 works, the exhibition will show the broad range of approaches artists use to explore this vast and complex subject. The exhibition showcases installations, photography, film, sculpture, oil paintings, prints and book works; varying from the highly moving to the humorous, philosophical or outraged.

In recent years the media has become an acknowledged weapon of battle. At a time when our understanding of war is increasingly shaped by the media and the internet, discover how art can prompt us to consider the way the media not only influences our current perceptions of conflict, but how it shapes the way history is written. Rasheed Araeen’s White Stallion explores the role of the media by questioning the nature of propaganda during the First Gulf War, while Paul Seawright seeks an alternative way of photographing war through his images of empty, but lethal minefields in Afghanistan.

Artists are often driven by their own experiences, political views or a desire to protest. Taysir Batniji’s series of estate agent details for destroyed homes in Gaza is a tongue-in-cheek comment on the situation in Palestine. Some artists aim to counter common opinions, while others explore the legacy of their own family history, or the long-term impact of conflict. Willie Doherty’s photograph Unapproved Road, showing a rural makeshift roadblock, suggests a violent past event and reminds us of the significance of land and territory in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Langlands and Bell’s interactive installation, The House of Osama bin Laden, where visitors perform an inconclusive search for bin Laden, or Edmund Clark’s photographs of Guantanamo, both reflect on points in time where the traditional boundaries and ethics of conflict are called into question.

Accompanying the work on display there will be a series of new interviews, specially commissioned by IWM, with artists whose work is on display, including Langlands and Bell, kennardphillipps and Paul Seawright.

Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War presents a unique opportunity to view new and recent acquisitions to IWM’s Collections, including works by Taysir Batniji, and Edmund Clark, films by Kerry Tribe and Ori Gersht, and a print series by Miroslaw Balka. The exhibition presents some of IWM’s official commissions: Queen and Country, Steve McQueen’s response to the war in Iraq; Paul Seawright’s photographs of Afghanistan and Langland and Bell’s unnerving interactive installation: The House of Osama Bin Laden.

IWM North itself – designed by world renowned architect Daniel Libeskind to represent a globe shattered by conflict – is a contemporary response to war. A major season of events will accompany the exhibition.

Coinciding with this major exhibition at IWM North, IWM London are hosting IWM Contemporary in autumn 2013 – a new programme of free contemporary art and photography exhibitions and public events.

Connect with IWM North and share your thoughts on Twitter via @I_W_M #SeeArtHere or on Facebook at Facebook.com/iwm.north

Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War is supported by The Little Green Paint Company.

Graham Boxer, IWM North Director, said: ‘IWM North is a venue for challenging exhibitions; a place for visitors to discuss big questions relating to war and conflict and our lives today. Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War contains some of the most important artworks on this theme of the past 25 years – on display together for the first time – and explores why war has inspired such creativity.’

 

Paloma Faith Discusses her Album Art

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PALOMA FAITH WILL CURATE AN EXHIBITION OF HER ICONIC IMAGERY IN NOVEMBER

Paloma Faith, along with Album Artists, is curating an art exhibition comprising a selection of her album artwork and iconic imagery since her debut album was released in 2009. The exhibition will display stunning, limited edition and critically acclaimed images by photographers David Standish and Finlay Mackay, and live photography by Saul.

Paloma Faith

Paloma, whose striking and unmistakeable image has quickly elevated her into a style icon, has been steering the creative direction of her promotional images from the start of her career. Couture, custom made clothing, dazzling hair and makeup, have all been captured in photo form for public display to become some of the most dramatic and celebrated album art images, now available to own.

Paloma Faith. ,Art work, music

The works, range from 50 cm to 1.6 meters in length, include posters, limited edition high quality prints (signed by Paloma and the photographer), and very limited, large beautifully printed and framed photographs, also signed by Paloma and the photographer.

Paloma Faith

Paloma said

‘I am thrilled to be able to exhibit these artworks. The photographers involved are all amazing and I am so proud to have worked with them. I am extremely hands-on with my visuals, and collaborate very closely with photographers to achieve the final image.

‘In an age where we are all downloading music, it’s wonderful to be able to appreciate fully the work that goes into creating the beautiful imagery surrounding an album.’

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In the video above Paloma Faith discusses her efforts to create spectacular album art in the digital age, and her experiences with the “poetic and sensitive” David Standish compared with the “dynamic and physical” Finlay MacKay and Saul who Paloma has known since she was 18 and who she can trust to get her “right angles, which are the bane of a woman’s life.”

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Thames Festival 2013 | Things To Do

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City Cruises to host Sir Andrew Motion and Dan Cruickshank for Thames Festival 2013

 

As part of the 2013 Thames Festival celebrations, City Cruises, London’s leading riverboat operator, is hosting two distinguished events with former poet Sir Andrew Motion (7 September) and National Geographic and BBC art historian, writer and presenter, Dan Cruickshank (9 September).

 

Celebrating the very best of the Thames, the Mayor’s Thames Festival brings together art, music and educational events through an inspiring 10-day event on the river, its banks and bridges. As a key feature of tourism on the Thames, City Cruises’ is hosting these two major events on its flagship boat – and largest on the river – the Millennium Diamond.

 

Sir Andrew Motion – now President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England – will present an afternoon of poems and reflections from both his own collections and others on Saturday 7 September (4pm to 6.30pm). Concentrating on London’s greatest waterway and its many myths, poems and tales, Sir Andrew will take guests on a literary journey as they sail down the very river that inspired them.

 

Dan Cruickshank, whose credits include Around the World in 80 Treasures and Marvels of the Modern Age, will take centre stage on Monday 9 September (7.30pm-9.30pm). Taking guests on an architectural tour of London’s bridges – past and present – he will enlighten passengers on their rich history, heritage and significance in making the Capital the powerhouse that it is today.

 

Both events are ticketed and include a glass of red or white wine and canapés. Tickets cost £22, with each cruise departing from Tower Pier at 4pm, 7 September (Sir Andrew Motion) and 7.30pm, 9 September (Dan Cruickshank).

 

For further information or to book, please visit www.citycruises.com or call 020 77 400 400.