We spent the whole Summer partying pretty hard – I’m Irish and Bitchy Kath’s Aussie so it’s going to be dangerous. There’s something a lot more depressing about coming home in the wee hours when it’s freezing and raining so I’ve made a decision that over the course of the winter I’m going to do some more cultural things, see more exhibitions and not write-off my only day of rest(we’ll see how that goes wish me luck).
Ping – I receive an e-mail from The Book Club inviting me to Any Willsher’s Private View as well as whole host of interesting events they have coming up over the next few weeks. Couldn’t have arrived at a better time – I’m bored and in need of visual inspiration that’s not on a computer screen.
Andy’s story is rather Rock n Roll fairytale…..growing up in Bedford and was strongly influenced by the Goth bands of the late 80’s. He started his career taking pictures in a local venue where a lot of those acts performed. Whilst working in a West End bank he took a holiday to follow a band called “The Hollow Men” and decided that music photography was the right direction for him. Around the same time he started printing his own pics, sending them to the music press and after having a few shots published was beckoned to the altar of NME whom he continues to shoot for now.
This exhibition celebrates 20 years in music and photography. The exhibition runs from Friday until 31st of November at The Book Club, 100 Leonard St, EC2A 4RH.
Stumbled across this exhibition in London about a month back. There is something about using birds in this way that I really love and appreciate. I love the elegance but vulnerability of these birds and their positions. The effect is much better in the actual gallery but I hope these images will do!
I feel like every second blog is about press at the moment which is necessary as we are getting a huge amount of support from the UK and International press about what we’re doing but at the same time it clogs up my random ramblings about cool stuff. I’ve always been into Art and Illustration and like to paint when I have time. Actually I’m going to be selling some of my work on the website closer to Christmas – need to get back into it.
I’m genearlly in awe of people who can turn a really simple concept into something very cool. I sit on the “overcomplicate it, do it the wrong way round, turn it upside down” side of the table masticating(yeah ok could v said chewing but great word yeah.) till my jaw aches. Sandrine Etrade Boulet’s cleverly nailed simplicity. Kind of reminds me of street sculpturist Liesbeth Busshce I wrote about a few months back
I’m a city girl, I need to live somewhere hectic, vibrant and usually dangerous in a “myself are your father aren’t happy with you walking home at night in your new place love” kind of area – reasons why I’ve lived in Dalston, Brixton and Hackney Wick, guess I’m not content playing it safe. There’s also a big side of me that would like to run to the hills and make pottery, draw pictures surrounded by dogs and horses so the below hotel appeals to that side.
Imagine going on holidays in a UFO in the middle of a forest!
Fittingly called Tree Hotel It’s located just outside the small Swedish village of Harads 60KM south of the arctic circle. There treehouses are designed by 6 separate architect and situated high above the forest floor. Snow, cold, fur, silence and isolation – beats Benidorm any day.
“The tyranny is question, the insatiable need to please, of youth’s domination, of a quest for immortality and a denial of time past” – quoted from the press release. The insatiable need to please, a statement on consumerism? a denial of time past, not entirely sure if I agree with this. Although fashion pushes forward at an alarming rate the past is constantly referenced , designers perpetually looking backwards to inspire new shapes and direction. Surely the fact that modern brands have been used to obliterate works of historical art demonstrates this.
Personally I’m a massive fan of Pop Art(which in itself was a statment on consumerism – the most obvious example Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup repetition prints) and I think it has been cleverly combined with identifiable classical paintings. Branding was initially created to identity of a specific, service, product or business. The use for which it was developed is now outdated in the age of social media where we see self branding for people who are neither a service, product nor business. Bearing that in mind we can now say that painters in created their own form of brand, images which have stood the test of time, identifiable generations of visual artists to come – the ultimate brand combined cleverly combined by JCDC with contemporary pop-brands.
The exhibition runs until October 23rd at Le Bank Gallery in Paris.
U have to see this. We’d just been hanging out in the park with them havin beers and bitching(that was last week before we detoxed and started being all nice). Checked their website out and were gobsmacked by their visuals. Truly the best visuals we’ve ever seen and we’re party girls so we’ve seen a lot.
See out their other work including Louis Vuitton Stores and Glastonbury at The Dark Room.
As some of you know, bitchingandjunkfood.com is no longer headed-up by just me Marion, it’s now Kath too. Kath and I were both doing the own labels and increasingly crossing over so it made sense to join forces and build BITCHY together.
MAX VOLUME PLEASE…
Two Weeks label came about this AW10 in order to represent both our design aesthetics, my background in jewellery/accessories and Kath’s in clothing design. We’re loving menswear just as much as womens and both our own styles are kind of sporty(occasionally slutty but our remade label serves that purpose well) so we decided to do a Unisex collection – we also just wanted a pair of tracksuit bottoms we could throw on and still look cool(guess it’s a bit lifestyle).
A few weeks back I blogged the Chris Ofili Exhibition at Tate Britain. By now Londoners should be well familiar as you’ll have noticed the posters all over the underground.
First saw Jasper Goodall at an art show at Electric Blue Gallery a few months back and stumbled upon his work recently on another blog so went for a bit of a net snoop. Image below brings together several themes churning around in my grey matter at the moment – Egypt, the cosmos, bondage and triangles(not necessarily in that order)
Afrodizza(second version) 1996
Acrylic, Oil, Polyester Resin, Paper Collage, Glitter, Map Pins and elephant Dung on Linen
243.8×182.8
Courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery London
New year’s resolution – get out and see more art shows(beats all that gym nonsense and spending less) so I’m starting with this one. An RCA graduate, Ofili established his name through exhbitions at Charles Saatchi Gallery in North London and has also had numerous solo shows during the nineties including the Serpentine Gallery. In 1998 he won the Turner prize and was selected to represent Britain at the Venice Biennale last year. He is counted as one of the UK’s top artists.
Ok so that’s the serious art stuff out of the way but why should you really go to see the show and how can you relate to it? Ofili draws on many contemporary insiprations as well as primitve cave paintings. Themes referenced in his work include blaxploitation films and gangsta rap which he uses to question racial and sexual stereotypes in a humorous way. Lyrical content is very important in his work and he regularly uses hip-hop titles in his work e.g Pimpin Ain’t Easy by Big Daddy Kane.
Today the trail of Fashion blog reading has lead me on to architecture, not something I’ve ever blogged about before, nor something we even have a category for(so it will go under art for today). Having spent the last year living in a warehouse I’ve developed a little bit of an obsession with loft and warehouse living and, more specifically, mezzanines. There’s something quite grandiose about the two ZZs but apart from that mezzanines are a great way of creating extra space without dividing into compartments. Slightly reminiscent of treehouses and bunkbeds, mezzanines awaken my inner child. My dream home, pictured above, was created by L. Comber architects in a 700sq feet loft in Canada. A little on the austere side, I’m not sure where all my paintings, candles, books paintbrushes and magazine tears would go. Presumably there is some walk-in-wardrobe concealed behind a glass panelled door. I imagine that the person living in this loft has a rack of clothing lifted straight out of 10 Corso Como. They probably also have at least two of everything. They are not driven by fashion but form, functionality and lifestyle. Distinct possibility that they are slightly OCD and I imagine shoes would not be allowed indoors. Wonder how aforementioned people deal with baby puke.
Anyhow, for now I’ll make do with a 3 bed period flat(with endearingly crooked walls, creaky floors and draughty windows) and dream of what might be one day(if I was tidier, less eclectic, chucked out all my clothes and became a bit more serious). I probably would also need to straighten my hair.
Ever since receiving the red sequined edition for my birthday in January ‘09 from a vodka-loving aunt, I’ve been hooked on this suited up vodka bottle trend (if not the alcohol itself…) and have decided to start a collection. Had to pick this up in Duty Free on my way back from a short stint in Trinidad last week…Absolut Rock, whose tagline should be ‘as if the studded trend hadn’t already reached critical mass…’. But I couldn’t resist!
If you haven’t read it, you’ve probably all seen a tattered copy gracing the dusty shelves at your local library as a kid. And if you’ve never laid eyes on Maurice Sendak’s popular children’s book Where the Wild Things Are (and that’s weird, mind you), then there’s no doubt that by now you’re more than familiar with it this year because of all the movie’s surrounding hype.
The first of a two -part post, an epic tale of warehouses, fashion shoots, graffitti, cold, sewing, blogging, tweeting, partying – or maybe just a little rant.
We’ve not been hear a year yet and it’s sadly come to an end. As Bitching and Junkfood expands we move to new studios by Broadway Market at the end of the month. We’ve felt it for a while, started with Chloe(fine artist friend), then Martin(another fine artist) then the Dubstep producers next door and, last week, Nick IDM. I was going to wait a couple of weeks before I bid my fairwell with a final blog post but I guess that what I witnessed today underlines the end and pretty much puts a full stop after it too. The is the Hackney Wick Argmageddon and this time it’s not a fashion trend.
When Bitching and Junkfood was a Swarovski-size glint in my eye I decided that Hackney Wick(an East London Warehouse District) was the place to get the little Bitch off the ground. This time last year we started looking for studios – I googled “Warehouse Hackney” and up popped the most amazing space I’d ever seen – a huge warehouse, empty and draughty , the kind of space you’d ususally find a B+Q or maybe even a Tesco. Six of use came together to make this our studio and moved in on the 22nd of December. I flew back from Dublin on the 28th to work 12 hour days with a team of 7 people to build our studios and I mean build – we built the floors, ceilings, stairs, walls. It was probably the most challenging thing I’ve done so far – it was -5 degrees inside and we worked day and night to get the space ready.
Lovely Summer's Day on the canal with some charming graffiti vandals
