Showing posts with label states of reverie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label states of reverie. Show all posts
Opening Night Footage
I've just found this piece of footage from the opening night of the recent States of Reverie show at Scream Gallery in Mayfair. I've managed to spot my work and a few friends in amongst the crowd but even though I was there right from the opening I seem to have managed to evade the camera's lens – unless you count the split second that you see the back of my head whilst I’m talking to fellow artist and exhibitor, LG White.
States of Reverie – Opening Night
I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone that made it to the opening night of the States Of Reverie exhibition at Scream on Thursday 13th (I should really have posted this over a week ago but it's been a busy couple of weeks). The turn out was amazing and it was only afterwards when a friend emailed my this wireimage link that I realised how many famous faces were present. After checking out the link it seemed that the place had been full of actors, designers, musicians and models. Needless to say, I didn't see a single one of them – I must have been wondering around in my own little bubble again.
Glen Matlock (of the Sex Pistols) and Jo Wood were amongst the guests...
along with actor, Sean Pertwee - seen here with Scream's very own press officer, Lee Sharrock.
And here's a picture of me looking a little drunk (although I promise I wasn't at this point. However, what condition I ended up in at the after-party at China White's is another matter entirely) in front of my giant model kit sculpture. Incidentally, I was totally blown away by how fast and by how many sites my model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man, appeared on after an image of it appeared in my last post. I think that Laughing Squid might have been the first to feature it but it also soon appeared in the Huffington Post and on Boing Boing, as well as dozens of other sites. So thanks everybody.
Glen Matlock (of the Sex Pistols) and Jo Wood were amongst the guests...
along with actor, Sean Pertwee - seen here with Scream's very own press officer, Lee Sharrock.
And here's a picture of me looking a little drunk (although I promise I wasn't at this point. However, what condition I ended up in at the after-party at China White's is another matter entirely) in front of my giant model kit sculpture. Incidentally, I was totally blown away by how fast and by how many sites my model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man, appeared on after an image of it appeared in my last post. I think that Laughing Squid might have been the first to feature it but it also soon appeared in the Huffington Post and on Boing Boing, as well as dozens of other sites. So thanks everybody.
'States of Reverie' exhibition at Scream
This Thursday sees to opening of States of Reverie at the Scream Gallery in Mayfair, London - where I will be exhibiting three of my sculptures (And When I’m a Man, Magnet and Book Tower II). The other six artists in the show are Clare Chapman, Chinwook Kim, Ann-Marie James, Malgosia Stepnik, LG White and Guillermo de Zamacona.
‘And When I’m a Man’ which is basically a life-size version of myself as a 12 piece, pre-assembly, model kit will be hanging on the gallery’s office wall for the duration of the show.
As well as being a self-portrait, the piece engages with my interest in nostalgia and childhood perceptions of adulthood (and the role that toys play in this). One important aspect of the piece is its colour. When constructing the sculpture I tried to find the same colour as the green plastic soldiers that he used to play with as a child. But rather than go back and find examples of these toys to get an accurate match, I chose a colour that matched my memory of it – recognising that the passage of time would have altered and exaggerated the memory and produced something far more lurid.
I created ‘Book Tower II (Nostalgia For a Childhood That Wasn’t Mine)’ (also see Book Tower) last year for a show at a gallery in Redchurch Street, East London. Although I was wasn’t 100% happy with its proportions and thought it looked a bit stubby, so last week I added two more books to raise it to just the right height. So the image you see here is slightly different than the one you will see in the gallery from Thursday onwards.
Apart from the base section, none of the books are glued together – instead they all have cut away sections and are then slotted together. The construction process for the piece started of relatively straight forward enough. However, as the piece grew and got taller the construction processes dictated that the structure had to be regularly dismantled and reassembled in order to enable the addition of more sections. And the bigger it got the more difficult it got to remember how everything fitted together – especially since all the dust covers had to be removed and then cut to size and reapplied at the final stage.
Out of all of my sculptures ‘Magnet’ has had one of the most interesting lives so far. Originally titled Toy Tower it was changed to Magnet after its first showing when it became evident that its powers of attraction seemed to work on children and adults in equal measure. On the first day of Magnet’s first exhibition the person invigilating told me that they had looked over to where my sculpture should have been, only to find that it had disappeared. Apparently four little boys had managed to sneak the piece out into the street before being chased off by the invigilator, who wheeled the sculpture back into the gallery again.
Although originally constructed quite some time ago Magnet has had to be rebuilt several times as, over the years, the temptations of numerous collectors and souvenir hunters have obviously got the better of them. After almost every show I would find that pieces of the sculpture were missing. But as the toys in the sculpture date from the 60's to present day it's probably not that surprising. I sometimes wonder though, whether renaming it Magnet was just tempting fate.
States of Reverie
13 January – 20 February 2011
Scream gallery, 34 Bruton Street, London W1J 6QX
+ 44 (0) 20 7493 7388
Opening times: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm; Sat-Sun 11am-5pm
‘And When I’m a Man’ which is basically a life-size version of myself as a 12 piece, pre-assembly, model kit will be hanging on the gallery’s office wall for the duration of the show.
As well as being a self-portrait, the piece engages with my interest in nostalgia and childhood perceptions of adulthood (and the role that toys play in this). One important aspect of the piece is its colour. When constructing the sculpture I tried to find the same colour as the green plastic soldiers that he used to play with as a child. But rather than go back and find examples of these toys to get an accurate match, I chose a colour that matched my memory of it – recognising that the passage of time would have altered and exaggerated the memory and produced something far more lurid.
And When I’m a Man was produced in 1998 but apart from appearing in a couple of small shows around that time and a brief appearance in the film Scratch directed by Jakob Rørvik, it has sat in storage at Candid Arts in Islington – until now that is.
I created ‘Book Tower II (Nostalgia For a Childhood That Wasn’t Mine)’ (also see Book Tower) last year for a show at a gallery in Redchurch Street, East London. Although I was wasn’t 100% happy with its proportions and thought it looked a bit stubby, so last week I added two more books to raise it to just the right height. So the image you see here is slightly different than the one you will see in the gallery from Thursday onwards.
Apart from the base section, none of the books are glued together – instead they all have cut away sections and are then slotted together. The construction process for the piece started of relatively straight forward enough. However, as the piece grew and got taller the construction processes dictated that the structure had to be regularly dismantled and reassembled in order to enable the addition of more sections. And the bigger it got the more difficult it got to remember how everything fitted together – especially since all the dust covers had to be removed and then cut to size and reapplied at the final stage.
Out of all of my sculptures ‘Magnet’ has had one of the most interesting lives so far. Originally titled Toy Tower it was changed to Magnet after its first showing when it became evident that its powers of attraction seemed to work on children and adults in equal measure. On the first day of Magnet’s first exhibition the person invigilating told me that they had looked over to where my sculpture should have been, only to find that it had disappeared. Apparently four little boys had managed to sneak the piece out into the street before being chased off by the invigilator, who wheeled the sculpture back into the gallery again.
Although originally constructed quite some time ago Magnet has had to be rebuilt several times as, over the years, the temptations of numerous collectors and souvenir hunters have obviously got the better of them. After almost every show I would find that pieces of the sculpture were missing. But as the toys in the sculpture date from the 60's to present day it's probably not that surprising. I sometimes wonder though, whether renaming it Magnet was just tempting fate.
States of Reverie
13 January – 20 February 2011
Scream gallery, 34 Bruton Street, London W1J 6QX
+ 44 (0) 20 7493 7388
Opening times: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm; Sat-Sun 11am-5pm
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