The Long Night

Today I went over to town for the Long Night, part of the AND Festival I stopped for a bit to watch the big screen, and I think the happenings were part of that. The camera on top of the screen was pointing down on the people in the square, with the footage being projected live on to the screen. Someone was obviously sat in the building to the side, and they were moving their hand across the screen, and tickling people, squeezing people, picking people up, poking them etc. They were also making chirruping noises in the background - it was hilarious!

It gave me a good vibe about the city, and it made me realise how much I'd missed in the Capital of Culture year. Grr M.E.!!

We sadly couldn't get into the Ventilation Shaft tour - it all looked closed off, and I'm wondering if you could only see it as part of the tunnel tour... We managed to get up the Cathedral Tower tho! Annoyingly they sent us the wrong way, and we missed the lift :| We were not happy! The views at the top were marvellous tho! Just a shame we missed the sunset...

Coming down we met a woman and she was impressed to hear we'd managed it with ME!

Then I really wanted to try and get to the Walker Art Gallery, and a couple of other art galleries just to soak up the atmosphere and see what was going on - but the steps up the tower had killed Kurzon and me big time and so we just came home. Sad, but health has to come first, and there's always next year!

Banksy @ Bristol

This morning we were up very early, and had made it to Bristol by 8:20am!!! Kurzon parked whilst I joined the queue. There were people giving out free hugs too :) The queue was in several parts. The first bit was about 40 people outside the museum doors. Then it missed a bit, and it went back to a steep hill, which snaked up and down 5 times. At the top of the hill the expected queueing time was 2 hours. We joined in the road just beyond the hill, but we were right at the front. However, the exhibition didn't open til 10, so we still had to queue nearly 4 hours :P But hundreds of people queued behind us, so some of them must've been turned away eventually. Anyway, when we eventually got to the bottom of the hill, we got a cool Banksy stamp on our wrists, and then we eventually made it into the museum. Was amazing!!

We went in, and the first room you were sorta shepherded through pretty quickly, and into a smaller darker room. Photography was allowed, but no flash, and this room was fairly packed. One end featured a set up of his work space, with his stencils etc. Was really cool :) Then the rest of the room was just paintings of his. I think what really amazed both of us was that the paintings where it's a classic with a graffiti twist, he hadn't just used prints, he'd repainted all the classics! He is truly an amazing artist, it even won Kurzon over!! :D

Then we went through to another room with big cages in. One had a security camera, which moved slightly, with 2 baby security cameras sat in a nest, like a Mummy bird with her chicks :) Then another cage had an aged Tweety. There was a monkey sat painting, but with barbed wire round the top of the cage - what I'll be like if Creative Chaos takes off ;) And a bunny sat there trying make up on (cosmetic testing) and a fur coat wrapped round a branch twitching - it seriously looked like an animal tho!

Then we went upstairs, and he'd put little funny things round and about the normal exhibitions. I got photos of most of them, but the one I didn't was a penis in with all the stalactites/mites etc haha!

I would seriously recommend this exhibition tho, it was wonderful! Just odd with his anonymity tho, normally you come away from an art exhibition brimming with information and technique, today I'm just brimming with vibes (and a few concepts of course hehe).

 

[Apologies for lack of photos, I'll try and upload them at some point!]

Tate Exhibition: Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today.

"Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today."

It was fantastic, especially as I was working on a Colour textbook last year, so it meant a lot to me!

Walid Raad
Interesting contrast between stark images of Lebanon, and brightly coloured dots based of colours of ammo-related-ness.

Andre Cadere

He used to carry these round with him, and the colours are in a pattern, but he made a mistake on each one so they didn't become too orthodox. I enjoyed finding the mistakes ;)

Blinky Palermo
This guy used stripped of coloured material to create canvasses - cool idea!

Lawrence Weiner
Simply the words, WITH A TOUCH OF PINK, WITH A BIT OF VIOLET, WITH A HINT OF GREEN on the wall. Very emotive, very striking, and really allows the viewer to conjure up whatever emotions and images they want :)

Daniel Buren
His artwork had been used to create unusual but effective waistcoats for the curators, really quite cool! Just white a single colour stripey :)

Angela Bulloch
She had these six screens, which were just mesmerising! I didn't realise they changed colour til I'd read the blurb, they do it so subtly, but it was really wonderful! Based around the 256 colour system of Mac OS 9 (ah, those were the days!! :D )


Francois Morellet
This is way more impressive than it looks! 40,000 squares, 2 colours. He opened up the phone directory and worked thru the numbers. For an even digit he used one colour, for an odd digit he used the other, Impressive! I wouldn't have the patience to do this, or another piece by...

Jennifer Bartlet

And her Equivalents... Small dots in squares?! This many?! Never :P Rubbish picture to try and express this, ah well...

David Batchelor
Now these were cool. Shiny and on the floor. Me and Kurzon both wanted to walk on them haha.

Richard Serra
Video, filmed on 35mm film (yay!) of him removing pieces of paper from a stack to reveal different colours. Yes, you see his hand every time, and yes, he has enhanced the sound of the paper lol!

Jim Lambie
LOVE LOVE LOVE!! Made form vinyl tape, set up by curators wherever it goes, starting on the outside with a set colour, following a set pattern, and finishing the middle with whatever is left over! I got slightly distracted walking along the lines :P I LOVE this, and want a room in mine and Kurzon's place with this for the floor, and for the walls...

Damien Hirst
Please note, I mean the circles not himself! Kurzon is now debating marrying me, esp as I want a rotating circluar bed as well... Hmm. Ah well, proposed to me today, so I'll be fine :)

Mike Kelley

Now... His work... It involved "Sex to Sexty" comics, arranged in grid formation, with colours in the place where he had editions missing, with the colour taken from a nearby issue, really very cool! Me and Kurzon were able to look thru them, and say which ones we found most amusing, and I had to try and guess which were his fave... An interesting exercise! "Are you ready for marriage? Guess your fiance's favourite comic sex images and find out!" Ahh... To give you some examples, there was a witch "riding" a broomstick, and a naked guy running along with a watermelon in a specific place :D

Ed Ruscha
It doesn't look much, but he'd made his own inks from substances, very cool!

He'd also done a whole sketchbook on stains - a lot of the art students there didn't get it, but I think it's something I wanna try haha, very up my street ;) Some of them were using his work to draw from tho simply cos it was "easy" o_O

John Baldessari
This was classic. Each day for six days he went into a room and painted it all a different colour. No joke. My 3 thoughts?
1. I am not repainting that much if Kurz is indecisive when we're married ;)
2. Big Brother task?!
3. It'd be toxic by the end ;)

Gerhard Richter
I love this concept of how a simple colour chart can become a work of art :) (Was also nice to see a 3D version of a colour wheel on display too!)

Byron Kim
This was fascinating as each panel was the skin tone of someone she'd met, and they all come together to make a piece of art, yet they each individually stand as one too :)

Cory Arcangel
I loved this, as it played a police chase one line of pixels at a time, but it was stretched to form stripes. Really rather cool!

Jan Dibbets
Now, this really inspired me, with a collection of photos of cars, all taken so close up that you couldn't tell what they were. I need to find a subject matter to create something similar with!! I do a lot of macro photography, but a set of 6 photos, all of the same subject, in different colours etc would be fascinating to do!

Bas Jan Ader
www.park.nl/catalog/1showrec.php3
This video really amused me. It's a boring video of a man arranging flowers. But it's based on Mondrian's colour scheme of black, white, red, yellow and blue. And whereas Mondrian worked in squares and rectangles, very structured, rigid formula, this video reflecting him was using movement, flowers, organic-ness. Such a great contrast!!

Ellsworth Kelly
And last but not least I'm including this simply cos I got funny looks when I said to Kurzon that it reminded me of Tetris/Mac Boxicon. He agreed hehe :D

Rauschenberg, Warhol, and Duchamp all made appearances too. Always feel a bit in awe to be in the presence of their work, even tho I've seen some of it before. Just love it!!

As ever, you can query how much of it is art, how much of it deserved to be there. But i think all of it fitted this criteria from Britannica Online Encyclopedia, of being "a visual object or experience consciously created through an expression of skill or imagination". And they inspired me and brought me enjoyment :)

Arab Platen Printing Press

Fun With Old Stuff recently invited me to do a guest journal for him, and I thought it was pretty fitting for Creative Chaos too! I have been brought up with a right mixture of old and new technology – spare moments as a child would be spent either on the latest Apple Mac (which my Dad needed for his work) or looking at the old BBC computers in the garage! My brothers loved old audio equipment, and my Dad would do slideshows and get old reel to reel tapes out on family occasions. But the biggest secret in my parent’s semi detached family house? The garage, which is full of printing presses, type, ink, and anything you could possibly want to print at home!

The main feature? An Arab Platen Printing Press, which you can see on the right of the picture. A large machine, which I have marvelled at since a young age, and which I think all the family are still mesmerised by (although my Mum would be grateful if it took up slightly less room!!) My Dad inherited it from his old school, where he used it to help print the school newspaper. It still has some larger jobs, such as wedding invitations within the family, but generally it is now used for pleasure.

When I learnt of funwitholdstuff’s fascination with this almost forgotten world of printing presses, I knew precisely how I was making his Birthday card this year! Let me talk you through how we did it...

Thankfully, my Dad has been through most of his collection of type, and created a little book showing all the different fonts. These are just what he has collected over the years, so unlike on a computer, just because you have a font in one size, doesn’t mean you have it in another size, or even have all the letters!!

I chose “Thorne Shaded” in size 36 (which happens to be the only size he has in this font!)



It so happened that there was only one “Y”, and we all know “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” has two... So we did the words separately, and used separate colours. We began by arranging the word “BIRTHDAY” in a composing stick as seen below:



We started with “BIRTHDAY” as we were using red ink, and doing “HAPPY” in black, and it’s best to use coloured ink first. The word “BIRTHDAY” was then transferred to a chase (a metal frame which holds the type) on an imposing block, which is simply a big smooth slab. The type has to be held in place with furniture (blocks of metal, almost like “padding”) and quoins, which are adjusted to apply force to the furniture, so the type is firmly in place.



Following this, the chase is bravely lifted, and you just hope the type is securely held! In this case, paint stripper was needed to remove old ink, white spirit to clean it, and a snake block to smooth the type to give a smooth print.

We smeared red ink onto a glass plate, and used a rubber roller until it was warmed up and rolling smoothly.



We used the rubber roller to roll the ink onto the plate of the press, and set the press in motion to get the press’ polyurethane rollers inked up. To begin the press in motion, the brake is removed, the wheel given a slight push, and then the foot pedal allows you to control the speed slightly.



When the rollers were well inked, the chase containing the type was mounted into the press, and held in by tightening the clamps. The type is then inked using the rollers.



The fiddliest bit comes next, as the paper and the type are lined up. We simply glued blocks to the packing, and rested the paper on it; adjusted the bars and elastic bands which prevent the paper getting stuck to the block when they meet; and started a trial and error process!



We set the press in motion, let the rollers run over the ink a couple of times to make sure the type is well inked, and when ready to print the impression lever is pushed forward to bring the paper and the type together to make an impression. When printing presses were in common use, the aim was to have as little impression as possible, so as to disguise that it was printed on a press. Nowadays? A very different story, with people wanting deeper impressions, as a contrast from the everyday printing we now experience!
It took a few tries, but here is the final “BIRTHDAY” imprint...



Then starts the clean up process!! Lots and lots of white spirit, rags and newspaper, a heck of a job! Only to make it dirty again with the black ink printing the word “HAPPY”, using the same process as above!



The final result is, in my opinion, impressive. And more than worth the time and labour that goes into it.