Malono Blahnik at the Wallace Collection

Synonymous with the fictional character Carrie Bradshaw in the early noughties TV series Sex and the City, the iconic shoes of Manolo Blahnik have gained cult status over the years. If you want to ogle the amazing sculptural creations of this famous designer pop along to the current Enquiring Mind: Manolo Blahnik exhibition at the Wallace Collection in Marylebone. 

The exhibition showcases a delightful selection of shoes dispersed amongst the glamour and decadence of the 18th Century collection of art and artefacts. You get a guide that highlights which shoes are in each room but if you dispense with the map it feels like a grown-up treasure hunt!

If you are in the neighbourhood it is a lovely way to spend an hour. It is a free exhibition and is open until Sunday 1st September.

These shoes are beautiful objects of art but I'm not sure how comfortable they would be to wear!

MA & Mad art

Last Friday I travelled to the University of Warwick with my other half and brother to attend my graduation ceremony. I have spent the last 3 years studying part-time for an MA in Educational Leadership which has involved lots of written assignments and action research projects.  It was a lovely, if slightly surreal day - I couldn't quite believe I had actually done it!

As for the mad art; I spotted a free event on Friday 30th January at Central Saint Martins at Kings Cross which seemed very intriguing.... it was entitled Curating Carnival.
I invited a few friends along and this is what we saw:

Lots of cool arty types attending the event

Dancers wearing metallic sculptures parading in the atrium 

The lights reflected off the shiny surfaces of the sculptures creating interesting effects in the space

Two dancers wearing mirrored masks weaved their way through the flock of sculpture-creatures

Three 'rope' dancers unravelled a large pile of pink rope

On different levels you could see menacing 'bird' dancers who started off with semaphore style choreography

Amazing black and white costumes adorned the 'bird' dancers whose movements had motifs of flight and birds walking

The details in the black and white costumes included applique, patchwork and the use of patterned fabric

I can not claim to understand any of the meaning behind the performance of Curating Carnival, but I do know it was a unique and entertaining experience. A fun free London event!

Amazing art exhibitions

As I mentioned in my previous post I have not had a chance to blog about some of the fun things I have experienced over the past few months.

Let's start with the Isabella Blow exhibition at Somerset House at the end of March. It was a beautiful collection of her vast (and expensive) clothing and accessories. She was a muse and patron for both Philip Tracey and Alexander McQueen so the range of things to see was impressive. Unfortunately because the exhibition was in its final week it was extremely busy and I wasn't able to get any photos of the lovely garments or hats.

In the stairwell leading to the exhibition there was an amazing installation based on Philip Tracey's hats created by Boo Studio.

Flock of Flurry - Paper Chandelier by Boo Studio 2014

Way back in December I visited the London Transport Museum with a friend to see the Art on the Underground celebrating 150 years of the London Underground. Again, as seems to be the case I visited in the final week of the exhibition, but luckily due to an early afternoon from work it was quiet.

Here is a selection of my favourite posters.

In late November I took a trip to the Fashion and Textiles Museum to see the Glamour of Belleville Sassoon exhibition which was lovely. It was great to see such beautifully curated highlights from the 1960's to the present day including a seperate section showcasing the fashion designs and garments worn by Princess Diana and other famous royalty.

Here are a few highlights from the exhibition:

Hand-painted coat circa 1960

1970's beaded bias cut dress

Velvet and silk dupion ball gown 1980's

Hand-beaded lace dress 1960's

Design Museum inspires work for the Tate Modern

I have been very busy at work and doing crazy DIY on my house but luckily I have managed to squeeze in a little bit of arty fun too.

To keep creative I signed up to the Tate Modern six-week evening class based on the Richard Hamilton exhibition. The course covered techniques such as dry-point printing and collage which was right up my street!

The course started with a tour of the exhibition with the evening course tutor Ling, who explained the concepts and intention behind Hamilton's work. It turns out that Hamilton felt his work should be seen in groups or collections so they had a dialogue with one another and that as a viewer you could read them as a series that inter-connected. It was an interesting starting point for being creative!

Onto the art. We were given the theme of perspective (one of Hamilton's reoccuring themes) and were asked to define the meaning of the word in small groups. We had to do this with drawn images only. Our visual interpretation was then re-interpreted by a different group.... an interesting start to the class. Towards the end of the session Ling mentioned our homework (WHAT?) for the next session - which was to read two essays and to etch a dry-point plate based on the 'perspective of a space'.

The main room of the Hamilton exhibition at the Tate Modern

One of my favourite Dada-esque pieces from the Hamilton exhibtion at Tate Modern

The reading part of the homework was easy and interesting, but I was a bit stuck on what to etch onto my aluminium plate. That was until I visited the Design Museum's 'Hello, my name is Paul Smith exhibition...

The Paul Smith exhibition was full of fun bright, beautiful and inspiring things; take a look for yourself:

A recreation of the Paul Smith design studio at the 'Hello, my name is Paul Smith' exhibition at the Design Museum

The stairwell in the Design Museum

I used my photo of the stairwell to create the image for the drypoint print plate. Which I will post about seperately. The work I enjoyed the most was creating collage pieces with a restricted palette of colour and materials (red, white, yellow and green) based upon our printed image / print plate.

The final collages were then worked into with text and imagery from newspapers and magazines.

Caroline Joynson - Tate Triptych 2014

Patrick Caulfield at Tate Britain

I managed to sneak a whistle stop view of the Patrick Caulfield exhibition before it closes on the 1st September. I have always loved his work and it was great to see so many of his large paintings in one place together.

Palace Art Fair 16th May

The Palace Art Fair is an annual event that showcases local artists, designers and crafts people. There are stalls and exhibitions of loads of very talented people - including Blaze and Mel from the Putney School of Art etching class had entered the Fulham Palace Art Fair and exhibited their work on a stall together - their work looked absolutely brilliant and I think they sold quite a few prints between them! Nice work there girls...

I met up with Louise (from etching) before the Private View and had a lovely cup of tea and chat and we wondered down to Fulham Palace to see the girls - some sections of this building date back to the 700's!!

We all had a lovely evening and I really enjoyed seeing Blaze and Mel's work look so professional in their section of the exhibition.

Whaam! Lichtenstein exhibition

I enjoyed a lovely Friday evening with a friend soaking up some Pop Art at Tate Modern and scoffing some tasty grub at Jamie Oliver's Union Jack's.

Sunglasses alert outside the gallery.

All the classics were on display and the best room exhibited Lichtenstein's iconic comic book inspired pieces - which can now be found on my settee!

Pick Me Up Print Fair Somerset House

I managed to see the last hour of this Print Fair on the Friday night hoping to get to do a workshop with  Jon Burgerman but I was just about 5 minutes late for the last slot - typical!
Anyway the show was full of really fab stuff and after a speedy rumble around I selected this cool multi-screen print from a USA print collective called 'Fatherless' - here is a link to their work: http://www.wearefatherless.com/

What do you think to my new print? She now lives in my lounge looking pretty hot!

Bright Lands exhibition Dulwich Picture Gallery

Last summer I enjoyed the 'Into the Wild' art course with artist Liz Charsley-Jory and produced five oil pastel studies of the trees and woodland of Dulwich Park. A month or so ago I was contacted by the staff at Dulwich Picture Gallery asking if they could use an image of one of my pieces of work in Liz Charsley-Jory's exhibition to show the diversity of workshops she has provided during her residency at the Gallery. I was delighted to say yes and took the journey out to Dulwich village on the 19th May to see the exhibition and visit the Dulwich Festival Artist Open Houses too.

The Bright Land Exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Liz's work is influenced by the 'Group of Seven' Canadian artists who were influenced by the majestic landscapes of Canada and worked outdoors. They worked during the 1920's - 1930's and stove to capture the light and bold structures of the landscape and felt that it should be captured whilst being 'close to nature'.

Tom Thomson - The Jack Pine

Liz Charsley-Jory

My work is on display in the exhibition (right hand side single birch tree)

The Dulwich Festival Open Houses - Graffiti House

This was a brilliant gem. Street artists such as: Phil Ashcroft, Thierry Noir, Phlegm, Remi Rough, Run and Stik were given permission to decorate an abandoned house on Lordship Lane. It was open to the public for two weekends and the house was filled inside and out with mad, crazy and awesome graffiti and street art.

Here are a few photos of the best bits: