Lights of Soho - Feature Series (Spotlight)

Soho has been synonymous with neon lights by Chris Bracey with his pieces making it across the sex establishments in the area. It was only fitting that a gallery opened featuring works that moths will find appealing as well that is the Light of Soho! I popped down to see their Spotlight exhibition which ends on April 2016.

Heading down during the day will give access to the member's lounge and installation in the window display is just as impressive as it is during the night. It's not hard to miss when walking down Brewer Street as you are hit with the wondrous colours of Neon Dog by Deepa Man-Kler, which was also featured in Lumiere London 2016, and comes complete with neon bones and poo.

The exhibition also features the works of M3 (Matt Mackman) and Illuminati Neon, who bring their own unique styling to their neon pieces.

Neon Dog - Deepa Mann-Kler

England's Dreaming - Illuminati Neon

Holidays in the Sun -

Ever Fallen in Love - Illuminati Neon

Frith Gallery - Chen Zhen

A Chen Zhen exhibition was held at Frith Street on Golden Square, London. The exhibition was held on 7 July to 14 August 2015. Chen Zhen is known as one of the leading figures in Chinese Avant-Garde.

 

The first piece I came across in the exhibition is the Autel (Alter) Series which explores the artist’s experiences of the consumer society. The most prominent piece which is most striking is of the red ball which is a meteorite encased in Bauxite ore. Objects beside it shows the sacrifice of the consumer object as it gives itself to the birth and death represented in the meteorite.

 

The next installation is the Cocon du Vide (Empty Cocoon) which resembles both a “cocoon” and someone bent down in prayer. The installation is made with threads of prayer and abacus beads with a child’s toy in the centre made with a shell case and ammunitions. The title seems to suggest with the work the idea of rebirth and growth, especially with the juxtaposition between the toy and the cocoon casing.

 

On a table has atop the Crystal Landscape of Inner Body, made with glasswork, forms organs made up in the human body. Each piece also takes on a symbol of the 12 astrological signs.

Instrumental Musical is a series of works made up of traditional Chinese chamber pots. It is associated with the sound of cleaning, which is linked to Chen Zhen’s experiences in the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Un-interrupted Voice is are percussion instruments made from beds and chairs from around the world. The work is connected to the ideology of Buddhists would rather be beaten than speak out openly about faith. The drumstick, made from police batons, are to strike the instruments as a way of self-awareness or “drumming an awakening of the mind” and is not to imply any form of real violence.

 

Lands-Objectscape has these desolate settings illustrated with everyday objects in glass “coffins” to signify victims of the consumer society.

Hung from the ceiling is Lumière Innocente (Innocent Light) which is of a child’s bed which shares the same feel of Cocon du Vide.

“A child’s bed hanging in space … A transparent organic form … A silent life attached to a thread in the void, nascent and vanishing. A cocoon of light …” Chen Zhen describing Lumière Innocente

 #ChenZhen

Phillips - Joana Vasconcelos: Material World

Joana Vasconcelos: Material World was exhibited at the Phillips gallery in Mayfair, London. The exhibition was held from 15 July to 28 August 2015. The exhibition features sculptures of her textured works which brought her to prominence during the 51st Venice Biennale. The exhibition is to coincide with Joana Vasconcelos’s Thames and Hudson monograph book.

The exhibition features bold, playful and a very colourful work to crochet coming together to form a unique style of sculptures. One large behemoth of a piece featured is Material Girl, brings not only to mind of Madonna’s hit singles back in the 80’s and among many at the exhibition, a real gem to behold.

Material Girl

It’s a take on it would seem that Joana Vasoncelos through the fabrication of the materials to form sculptures, making a statement on what she perceives as “Material World”. It almost like an alien world capturing different details playing on what’s familiar but bringing out a whole different side, witnessed in New Wave which employs LED lights, cushions and a picture frame. There’s also a section of ceramic animals showing Vasconcelos’s resilience in showing her art in different forms of animal snapshot poses with her signature spin. She can also inject some fun and humour into her work with Tea for Two, which is a double urinal coated in crochet.

Imperial

Glasshouse

Tea for Two

New Wave

Arthur

Merlin

#MaterialWorld

Somerset House - Summer Screen Film Poster Exhibition 2015

The Summer Screen Film Poster Exhibition in its third year is held in the West Wing Gallery of Somerset House from 30 July to 23 August 2015. It celebrates through illustrations and graphic design of posters inspired by films being shown at this year’s Film4 Summer Screen held in the courtyard of Somerset House. It is presented by both Somerset House and Print Club London.

Asides from the prints on display, there is a makeshift television screening the behind-the-scene footage of creating the poster designs by different artists.

The exhibition has in total 15 limited editions screen prints which are available for purchase. There are 200 prints of each design at the exhibition on Print Club London’s website. 

Cassandra Yap - True Romance

Concepción Studios - Roman Holiday

Rose Blake - West Side Story


Joe Wilson - Princess Monoke

Joe Vass - The Warriors

Steven Wilson - An American Werewolf in London

Ben Rider - Aguirre, Wrath of God

Barry Leonard - Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Rose Stellar - Do the Right Thing

Peter Strain - The Silence of the Lambs

Ministry of Love - The Second Mother

Holly Wales - The Graduate

Claudia Borfiga - Last of the Mohicans

RYCA - Withnail & I

#summerscreenprints

Barbican Centre - Aaron Koblin and Ben Tricklebank: Light Echoes

Light Echoes is shown in the Curve gallery in the Barbican Centre between 27 June to 6 September 2015. The installation is created by Aaron Koblin and Ben Tricklebank. The installation creates an environment that “plays with time, space and sensory perception”.

Employing laser projections, the installation sends out intervals and a wall of light as it slowly shifts through the Curve. The piece itself feels like a pilgrimage as you slowly follow the light as you pace the sands under you with ominous music playing in the foreground. The installation finishes with a still video of what was captured during the journey.

 

#LightEchoes

Royal Academy of Arts - Summer Exhibition 2015

The Royal Academy of Art’s Summer Exhibition was held this year from 8 June to 16 August 2015 and was curated by Michael Craig-Martin. From 12,000 submissions, it was whittled down to 1,100 showcasing a spectrum of artwork ranging from prints, paintings photography to installations, showing off a summer worth of vibrant art. Some of the artworks will be sold off to fund for RA’s free tuitions which has been offered for nearly 250 years.
The artworks able to viewed and admired in person, but the artworks are available online which can be viewed individually or done as a digital tour of the gallery. Not only that, this exhibition is has a sense of inclusiveness where visitors can immediately experience the exhibition even without a ticket to the event such as Conrad Shawcross’s The Dappled Light of the Sun which was situated on the outside in the courtyard of RA. Visitors are then dazzled and enticed by the colours of Jim Lambie’s Kaleidoscope Staircase as it leads up to the exhibition’s main doors.

The exhibition as a whole as it plays every detail of placements and colours combined with different art that plays on the tip of the tongue. This is apparent in the vision of Michael Craig-Martin as he has complete visuals and control as he plays on the use of space through different mediums. An example is of the Lecture Room, where I find that too much sculptures in one room can power over each other sometimes, but the use of sky blue-coated rooms in the room create space for each sculpture to breath and truly be appreciated individually.

Below are some works that were featured in the exhibition:

Matthew Darby Shire - Captcha No. 11 (Doryphoros)

Nigel O'Neill - 5 Colour Painting 4 and 5

Michael Craig-Martin - Untitled (Watch)

Gumuchdjian Architects - Lake Spa & Garden Pool

Liam Gillick - Applied Projection Rig

 #SummerExhibition

 

John Aldus - Tokens

John Aldus’s Tokens, were made in 2009, were installed on Marchmont Parade on Marchmont Street. In total there are 20 pieces of “Tokens” altogether. The Marchmont Parade was created in partnership between the Marchmont Association., Camden Council, Allied London Properties, Hermes, Brunswick TRA and John Aldus. The installation was opened in summer 2010.

Marchmont Street and Brunswick Centre were built on the Foundling Estate where Foundling Hospital stood. The story behind Foundling Hospital was that Thomas Coram was disgusted by the appalling conditions of the very poor and socially excluded children were living in describing it as “left to die on dung hills”. This led him to gather a set of influential Governors (William Hogarth and George Frederic Handel) seek the royal patronage of King George II. He built the Foundling Hospital in 1739 which became Britain’s first home for abandoned children.

Mothers would leave so that when they were in a potentially a better position, they will return and reclaim their child. As a way to know who their child was if they find that they are able to return, the mothers would leave token with a lot of them taking forms of a heart, one of which has become one of Aldus’s token. The tokens, most of which can now be found at the Foundling Museum, became symbols of the social history of the times when mothers were reduced to handing in their children in hopes of a better future as a reason of poverty and rules of society.

Another story behind one of Aldus’s Token is the circular coloured pieces on two of the pavement slabs. When mothers wanted to give in their child into the Hospital, they had to pick from either a bag for either for the boys or the girls accordingly to their child’s gender. Candles were snuffed out to protect the mothers’ anonymity as they enter the room. From the bags, came three coloured balls:

• White – Child would be checked to see if they were deemed able to survive through medical tests and permitted into the Hospital should they pass.
• Red – Re-entered into the ballot should a mother’s child with the white ball fail the medical test.
• Black – the mother was immediately escorted off the premises with their child.

Aldus’s Tokens are enlarged metal representations of the tokens can be found along the Marchmont Parade:

If you’re popping around to see Tokens, pop around into the Foundling Museum too where you’ll find the original tokens. Just nearby is Coram’s Fields where they have a peculiar policy of allowing access to any adult if they have a child with them. You can find concept design, sketches and models of Tokens on John Aldus's website.

#Tokens