UK street artist Phlegm has been changing the face of Sheffield’s abandoned lots, transforming them into galleries of black and white murals.
Phlegm has a unique talent for adapting to the surfaces of his dilapidated surroundings, allowing his characters to evolve in situ; the walls appear to have been constructed just to inhabit his creatures.
In the above images Phlegm painted the walls at an abandoned school in Sheffield. “Spend a week on your own in there and you can literally watch nature eating it’s way through it, claiming it back,” says the artist of his experience of working at the school
Artist Mariko Mori’sJourney to Seven Light Bay is a digital project that transports visitors to Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan, where Mori has installed the first part of her monumental earthwork ‘Primal Rhythm’. The installation consists of a sun pillar and the egg-shaped ‘Tida Dome’ that changes colour with tidal movements.
Inspired by the caves of Okinawa in Japan, the digitally rendered ‘Tida Dome’ is a hollow shell through which light enters as it floats in the bay, shifting colour from red at low tide to blue at high tide, with many gradations in between. Mori has chosen exact coordinates such that at the moment of winter solstice, the lengthening shadow of the ‘sun pillar’ will penetrate the actual moonstone, once it is physically installed in the bay, uniting the celestial with the terrestrial, the masculine with the feminine.
Nick Cave Soundsuits, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery
Artist Nick Cave has been using his wearable Soundsuits in performances, collaborating with locals to create dynamic visual and aural sequences that are unlikely to be confused with the output of the other musician with the same name.
Nick Cave Soundsuits: Untitled, 2009 Digital c, print, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery
Coming up post-Halloween is Erik Sanko’s pagan puppet premiere at BAM for Phantom Limb’s performance of 69°S.
The production dramatizes the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing 1914 trans-Antarctic expedition in which his vessel, the Endurance, was stranded amid freezing ice-floes for an entire winter only a few miles from the South Pole. 69°S is the latitude at which the intrepid arctic pioneers struck peril. The ensemble, led by Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff, brings to life Shackleton’s adventure with elaborate hand carved marionettes in a series of tableaux vivants using music, film and photography to create a fantasy Antarctica.
Florence + the Machine at the Archway in Brooklyn / Photo by Bryan Derballa
The Creators Project, the unlikely partnership between Intel and Vice, made a quick stop in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood this weekend. Defining themselves as an ‘ongoing global arts and technology initiative to support artists, musicians and filmmakers who are using technology to push the bounds of creative expression,’ The Creators Project, seeks to elevate artists and support new work.
Crowd at Tobacco Warehouse / Photo by Bryan Derballa
Ming Wong, Persona Performa - work-in-progress - 2011. Courtesy of the artist. Photo copyright Carlos Vasquez.
Performa will initiate its fourth international biennial on November 1 with a month long festival of performances through the city, with a premiere on opening night of live performances by the artists Elmgreen & Dragset.
The events calendar will be choc-a-bloc with films, live street performances, and theatrical events at art spaces through the city. Ming Wong will create a site-specific piece for the Museum of the Moving Image, inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece Persona, and Spartacus Chetwynd’sLion Tamer will be inspired in part by the Mae West film in which she tames the beasts on stage as well as ’society swells’ offstage.
Filmmaker Guy Maddin will create a live cinematic, musical event, based on his 1988 cult film, Tales from the Gimli Hospital: Reframed, which will be scored by an array of talented musicians including a superstar band of Icelandic composers. The original film, one of Maddin’s early cult successes, is a dreamlike tale of jealousy and intrigue between two men sharing a hospital room.
Guy Maddin, film still from Tales of the Gimli Hospital, 1988. Photo courtesy Guy Maddin. Performa 2011
Shepard Fairey DJs at the closing party for ATP at Asbury Lanes on Sunday night / Photo by Kareem Black
“GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK,” shined the nostalgic light upon us as we arrived at this year’s annual New York-version of All Tomorrow’s Parties, a London-based festival that has been held variously at UK, USA, and Australia since 1999.
Although widely popular and respected, the festival’s organizers, Deborah Higgins and Barry Hogan, still consider it “boutique” as it doesn’t rely on corporate sponsors. You won’t find unsightly vinyl banners with beer logos or perky credit card representatives handing out extra large t-shirts in exchange for your signature and address. You won’t find very much intrusiveness of any kind, actually. What you will find, however, is an environment where artists wander among the crowds and a culture where art and music are the focus. Miles from the average music festival…
Beth Gibbons of Portishead on Sunday / Photo by Kareem Black
The organizers of Berlin-based Pictoplasma, a boutique festival and conference for graphic designers and illustrators, are arranging Character Walk, a fun walk-through New York with stopovers at galleries and concept stores, showcasing installations and exhibitions by participating artists throughout the city.
The exhibitions will highlight the hairy, furry, smooth, and ectoplasmic, a colorful array of monsters and ‘characters,’ which have developed ecstatic fan-bases amongst kids and adults alike.
BB Chokra performance outside at the Watermill Center, December 18, 2010 Photo By Hronn Axelsdottir - Copyright All rights reserved by watermillcenter
CHOKRA (Conscious Hoarding Of Kinetic Rage Associated) is an artist from United Arab Emirates, who uses pigment, smoke, scent, spices and powdered chilies to create mesmerizing performances that emphasize ritual and drama.
His pyrotechnic performances use multilingual rhythms set in Arabic, Urdu, Hindi and English. CHOKRA also explores trans-gender identity using sound animation, video and transnational costumes. His work is an incarnation of the cross-cultural and multi-ethnic potpourri feeding the construction boom in UAE, with immigrants bringing cultural contributions from the Indian subcontinent. The surge of art-traffic in connection with the Dubai art fair, and museums sprouting in Abu Dhabi increases the creative dynamic and encourages dialogue for Arab artists in the US.
A photo taken at Burning Man, David Art Wales 2010
Festivals have been sprouting love, peace and happiness across the planet, and some like the Festival in the Desert in the Sahara in Mali, Afrikaburn, and Burning Man which take place over several days, become watering holes for artists, musicians and a place to show off distinct styles.
Escape to New York was a festival organized in early August in South Hampton New York with installations, live music, performance art and experimental theatre. The organizers put up private teepees, suitable for glamorous camping, “glamping,” to accommodate the Hampton’s taste for sanitized partying – in contrast to the tents and wagons that spawn chaotically in the crowded fields of Glastonbury.
