All posts tagged: Art

Wee catch up: Rumana Sayed

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I vaguely memorised Rumana Sayed’s name almost a year ago when I was flicking through the truly fantastic ‘Every Woman Super Woman’ zine with its colourful aesthetics and powerful words. Fast forward half a year later, the young graphic designer becomes the new artist-in-residence at Out of the Blueprint and pretty successfully showcases a bold and punchy body of work in her first solo exhibition ‘Don’t Be Denied’. So we have a wee bit of catching up to do! Tell me a bit about your background. How did you get into making art? My name is Rumana Sayed, I’m 21 years old and live in Edinburgh. I was born in South Africa, but been brought up in the heart of Leith for 17 years. Growing up I have always been into making and creating. I didn’t know what I wanted to do leaving High School. I got into Edinburgh college to do Visual Communication & Graphic Design, studied for 3 years and it became a part of my life ever since. Its a tool for me to creative things differently in a unique way. …

Paving Space

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Often times skateboarders look at public space in a way others cannot necessarily relate to. They see obstacles in the city architecture as something to explore, to interpret and to creatively push the boundaries of what’s possible once more. ‘Paving Space’, a collaboration between artist and skateboarder Raphaël Zarka, Carhartt WIP and Isle Skateboards, illustrates this curious, explorative spirit of street skateboarding beautifully. At the time, Raphaël was captivated by the works of 19th century mathematician Arthur Moritz Schoenflies and his groundbreaking three-dimensional geometric models. Seeing its sculptural potential and seemingly endless possibilities, he started reconstructing them into large-scale modules for a series of shows at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Singapore and Sainte-Croix Museum in Poitiers. But instead of exhibiting his geometric formations as static pieces of art, Raphaël invited a group of pro skateboarders to use the spaces as creative laboratories: By riding the wooden sculptures, exploring different assembly methods and thus informing its arrangement in the different spaces, the lines between obstacle and artwork started to blur. …

Chasing Lyrical Natural Sciences: Katrina McHugh

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Last year, I dived head-first into quite a challenge. I vowed to tell a story through a photograph for 100 days straight. It was a tough, fun and quite frankly a liberating thing to do – you should all try it some day. And as I already said back then, the aspect that makes the #100dayproject so special is the communal spirit that ensued, learning about the daily struggles and inspirations of thousands of other participants, and eventually, finding out about the many supercool projects out there that otherwise might not’ve seen the light of day. #100daysoflyricalnaturalsciences was a quick favourite of mine. San Francisco-based graphic designer Katrina McHugh set out to create beautiful diagrams and infographics out of song lyrics that are rooted in the natural world: ‘I was and am interested in how often people rely on references to nature when attempting to bring shape to the intangible complexities involved in this “being alive” business. It’s no easy task to communicate our human experience so if a nature metaphor gets you a bit closer to whatever the …

Spot On: Jake Wood-Evans

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‘My process isn’t one where I know it’s done when it’s done. It really is just accidental and cause it’s about discovery I don’t know where it’s going. I’ve got to let it go where it wants to go, really’, says Jake Wood-Evans as he carefully skims a layer of paint off the canvas, exposing a character of mysterious features. The Hastings-based painter currently got his first UK solo exhibition coming up at one of my favourite art spaces in London, The Unit. As ever, these guys definitely have got a knack for great, innovative artists.  Jake’s haunting new body of work he’s created for the show – appropriately named ‘Subjection & Discipline’ – is inspired by his deep and lasting affection for the Old Masters of Baroque and the emphasis on beauty and craftsmanship. Setting out to catch the spirit of the era, he excavates layers of oil and reworks the motifs and atmosphere of the original 18th century paintings before giving them a new, dark and brooding, lease of life. But now listen to the man himself …

‘Fixed It’: Obscured Portraits by Henrietta Harris

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Henrietta Harris is a super-talented Auckland-based illustrator and painter, who already left her mark on the art world with exhibited works in places like Tokyo, London, New York or Miami’s edition of Art Basel. Her signature portraitures depart into the surreal with faces sometimes obscured and misplaced by the clean sweep of a brush stroke – something you can see in her cool new oil painting series ‘Fixed it’. Absolutely amazing, isn’t it?   henriettaharris.com @twitter @instagram @facebook

Cover © Fabienne Rivory

Croisées by Fabienne Rivory

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Creating something excitingly new often means questioning common perceptions, mindsets and practices. For her long-time project ‘Labokoff’, French artist Fabienne Rivory explores the interactions between photography and painting, the interface of the real and the imagined. Just recently, she released a new, vibrant set of works – a series called ‘Croisées’ that’s as dreamy and poetic as her earlier creations: Beautifully mirrored reflections of eerie landscapes shot in b/w-tones are brought to life with bright watercolours, ink and gouache. A fusion made in heaven, as it seems. labokoff.com @twitter @facebook  

Silent Quarter by Tim Lane

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Back when I spoke to him last year, Bristol-based illustrator Tim Lane already hinted at getting his hands on an ambitious new challenge that draws on his colossal art book project ‘Anima Mundi’. And he certainly did not laze about for long and hurled himself into a wonderfully dark short story project called Silent Quarter. Featuring a combination of writing and drawing, the fragmented narrative unfolds as a spiritual journey through the mind of an old mask-maker and barber as he comes to the end of his long life of love, service, ceremony and creativity. With its open and playful structure – think of beautiful fold-out artworks augmenting the text vignettes – Silent Quarter winds along different threads and leaves the reader with various forms of interpretation, as they’re exploring a world of reality and delusion: “From the magic of creativity and the powerful transformative effects of: masks, haircuts and thunderstorms – to the intense personal experience of: loss, the endurance of love and the importance of memory. It ranges from a seemingly solid sense of a community, a family, an ancestry …

Spot On: Chris Delorenzo

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Sometimes it doesn’t take more than a few simple line drawings, striking patterns and elaborate geometry to create something incredibly expressive and graphic designer Chris Delorenzo certainly has the artworks to prove it. Playful, witty and fueled by his love for literature, poetry and cinema, his practice is all about crafting a visual narrative that invites the observer into a different reality or questions the very one we live in. Once an art director for Saatchi & Saatchi in NYC, the Massachusetts-native works as an in-house design weapon for clothing brand ‘Johnny Cupcakes’, juggles with brand design, logo, typography and editorial work and yet finds time to chase some pretty cool personal projects. If anything, check out the Be Brave Podcast he co-produces, which features interviews with young people who made a name for themselves in the creative industries and has Chris’ quirky style written all over it. Oh and have a look at his ongoing ‘Nude with phone’-series, which is, well, pretty hot right now. @Instagram @Twitter @Dribbble

Haunting monoliths of magnetic tape | The “V”HS Project

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Over the years, the hunger for new technology has relentlessly thwarted one or another beloved everyday gadget we couldn’t imagine living without. While vinyl records made a miraculous return to strength, things that once reigned our living room shelves for a heartfelt eternity – music cassettes, polaroid films, Super-8 or VHS tapes – were reduced to mere nostalgia by the hands of their successors.  Meanwhile the French mixed-media artist Philip Ob Rey has dusted off the good old magnetic tapes in style to turn his fantastic “V”HS project into a piece of social and environmental critique. His dark and brooding monoliths, created in collaboration with painter Louie Otesanek and photographer Mailie Viney, walk the frozen Icelandic vastness, clad in old VHS film-rolls, stones, feathers, shells or dry seaweeds with one single purpose: Questioning the global tech craze, the overconsumption of new technologies and consequently the unstoppable plastic pollution of the Earth. With the use of a doomed technology that humanity has inevitably forgotten, Ob Rey wants to remind humanity of the mortality of its existence, …

On The Bookshelf: Made For Skate

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Rowley XLT, Koston 4, TNT, Chief, Reynolds 3, DVS CT, the list goes on and on. Well, what probably sounds like a lot of gibberish to some is only a small fraction of the compadres that kept my feet safe day in day out on my trips down the city streets and to the local park, joined me jumping down stairs and handrails or enduring pool and miniramp sessions since I started skateboarding back in ‘01. It’s hard to describe why I still remember this so vividly, but let’s put it this way: My weapons of choice – the piles of broken wood and the mass of shredded footwear – had as much of a story to tell as it might’ve been this soft toy from your early childhood, the first football jersey that made its way under the Christmas tree or even the first band shirt you bought ages ago. There is an emotional value, a form of identification and dissociation that so often goes without saying. ‘The worn down soles, the frazzled laces. You made …