Malevich would have approved: Vantablack, the Blackest Black as Black as a Black hole

For someone like me who is a bit partial to black, there was good news this week. Some scientists have invented the blackest pigment know to man using carbon nanotubes. It is completely matt and so black, the brain simply can't interpret how black it is. 

Apparently it has a bunch of scientific uses (like calibrating space telescopes etc) but the real question is, when is Michael Harding going to make it into a tube paint and how much? 

Link here: Vantablack Article from the Guardian

Peter Davies (City lit principal) in the Guardian

In an interview give to the Guardian, the City Lit principal and chief executive Peter Davis expresses his concerns about the widening inequalities in access of adult education (AE)services the expected 40% governmental cut in funding will cause.   

As a person at the younger and no less under-represented part of the age spectrum, I have personally felt that adult education has provided me much more than just fanciful distractions from the daily grind. Although it need to be acknowledged that a certain percentage of AE patrons are not in desperate need of re-training in order to earn a living from the skilled gained at evening classes. If this is a problem then surely the solution is not to cut back service but to improve access to those in more urgent need, ie the under-/un-employed, isolated, and those who would benefit interactions within a social community etc. 

If governmental departments, elected councils and governing political parties are required to prove their positive impacts to their citizens in order to secure funding I wonder how many would still exist. 

Full article at: http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/oct/12/adult-education-cuts

City Lit Fine Art Show 2015

Our end of course exhibition will take place at Espacio Gallery 21-26th July.

Private View Thurs 23rd, 6-9pm. It will be a great evening everyone is welcome, please bring your friends/family/date/cat/dog/ferret etc!

More details to follow!

RCA Secret 2015

So I went along to the Secret postcards show at the Royal College of Art a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time for me as the RCA is not easy to get to in rush hour.

It was a little overwhelming to see around 3000 postcards perched on thin bits of wood mounted on the gallery walls. The most common format was hand painted, photographic (not popular with buyer I overheard), drawings and all types of prints. There were also plenty of unconventional formats such as sculpture, metal plates, 3D photo, embroidery, poured resin, tape and even a tiny camera obscura (my favourite). 

Although it was fun to speculate the potential famous artists responsible for some pieces, I really enjoyed seeing how diverse the artists' responses to a fairly simple and restrained format of the once ubiquitous but now almost extinct postcard. Good stuff.

If you want to find out who did what, click here. 

The National Gallery Bans Selfie-Sticks

Photo features AFUNTA Extendable Selfie Handheld Stick Monopod Pod sold by Amazon (also photo credit?), click to purchase. Lovely blue handle. 

Love it or loath it, the National gallery's recent change in it's photography policy has not gone unnoticed. Cameras and phones now roam the halls and corridors free, you should also give up any hope of ever seeing any famous artworks (eg Sunflowers) up close, even at closing time. 

But all is not lost, BBC has just reported the NT has decided to draw the line at selfie sticks, since they classify under the category of tripods. The logic is watertight since most of us would use two legs and an arm to operate it.

If you would like to have your say, I've put together a short survey (procrastination at its finest), click here to enter or:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JKF8KDJ

City Lit Interim Show 2015 (THURS)

Last week there was much excitement in class, our Interim Show is on!

We have all managed to produce a body of work over the last two terms. Sometimes it was a real struggle pushing forward but having a deadline for the show had probably been a motivating force for most of us. There was a collaborative component to it, we picked out the works to be shown with the help of our very wise colleague/advisers, and also wrote each other's artist statements, throwing up some lovely descriptive phrases and themes from our collective memory, with which Tony weaved his magic and strung them into outstandingly elegant passages that only require a couple of re-reads to get the gist of. 

So congratulations to everyone, it wasn't easy but we have done it! And a big hand to Tony and Chris.

It is on until 21st March, any of the alumni want to drop by and see the works in the flesh (highly recommended) please do so, we're in the 3rd floor corridor boxes. Below are the photo-documentation, along with our statements.

Travel magazines were the starting point for Ross’s project. He is fascinated by the saccharine-sweet depictions of holiday destinations. He takes the unreal fantasy of these places with their heightened colours and splices them with mundane newspaper clippings, scratchy sketches and torn collaged elements to fracture and challenge the consistency of these idealised holiday experiences. In so doing he exposes the fictitious construction of these images and produces complex and challenging surfaces requiring significant amounts of thought to decode.

Canals have taken centre stage in Pat’s painting. She regards them as industrial works of art. This sentiment informs the treatment of her subject as she creates idealised versions of each chosen stretch of canal. She works almost exclusively from photographic source material and during the transcription process the colour palette is tidied up and heightened. The hyper-real, enhanced versions of the images this produces points to an almost utopian view of her subject.

Thinking about the relationship between fashion and dreams and her very real fascination with objects of desire like high-end make up and perfume, Tracy began her project with an extended gathering of related images from glossy magazines. These she slowly began to cut up and collage into a series of slightly ominous and fractured images emphasising the fatty material qualities and slightly unreal colour of these products. Working with print she reinterpreted these using a more graphic set of marks and these became the starting point for an almost forensic exploration of this imagery as she scaled them up to reinterpret them in gloopy, pva heavy mixes of paint. This produced slightly biological-looking images and the work has moved towards a more ambiguous investigation of the attractive/repulsive qualities of her subject.

Process has become the key driver behind Nathalia’s work. She takes the intricate structures and patterns linked to fauna and natural forms and, working in series on a number of pieces concurrently, builds successive layers of drawing or painting to create an almost overwhelmingly labour-intensive image. The sheer weight of mark making produces a potency which itself suggests a force of nature. The works seems to be a reflection on time, patience and repetition, suggesting a natural growth and evolution.

Michelle uses print, painting and collage, usually at great speed, to explore the territory between overtly figurative images (often prints) and loose, abstract collages. Her pieces share a common mood, usually foreboding and nocturnal, and suggest a search for underlying connections between the seemingly disparate elements of her practice. Landscape is a common theme, a central subject in some works and a backdrop to action in others, and she intends to explore this more fully in paint as she looks to build on the richness of her diverse practice.

Wei’s investigations into the nature of the individual marks that make up an image began with a series of sketches made a great speed from observation. Her project has been built around an investigation of the pure expressive qualities of these marks alone when put aside from their original significance. She has been with working with drawing, monotype and painting with great patience to reveal something of their elemental force. Having found ways to suggest the action of drawing she is now utilising these experiments to produce more sustained paintings that are beginning to invite re-shaping, connecting them to images like cloud formations, microorganisms or cosmic constellations.

Melina makes paintings of rocks, gems and minerals. Rather than specimen-like articulations, her paintings suggest a vast weight of the earth without end. Her images have a subterranean quality, initially dense and impenetrable, and her keyed-up palette suggests great heat and instability. Viewing them is to take part in an uncovering of a latent elegance as we share in her desire to explore and relate to these dramatic underground landscapes.

 Marina’s work explores the ambiguities of culture and context. Her images take on the style heavy mannerisms of theatre and ballet, and explore the role of a central character (usually female) within often stark, noir-esque architectural settings. There is a sense of a veiled, autobiographical thread, sometimes quite nostalgic, hidden behind the conventions of the performance. In this respect the works appear to have a metaphorical aspect, suggesting a conflict between the way the central character outwardly behaves and her underlying feelings and motivations.

Shirley: Sorry I don't have your statement, please send it to me and I will update this

 Anna-Maria’s work takes the form of what look like 3-D wire drawings. The forms she explores have a ceremonial quality, often vessels, and the appearance of artifacts with an archeological quality. It’s difficult to look at them without thinking about importance of touch in her work as she threads and weaves various gauges of wire to produce her forms. She has experimented with spot lighting to produce photographs that blur the boundary between 2 and 3-D and exploring this ambiguity seems like the logical next step in her work’s development.

Katherine has been working on a set of paintings relating a landscape that appears to be the distillation of all the landscapes she has viewed. There is no foreground in any of these works and everything seems vast and viewed at a great distance. The landscape appears barren and remote, yet there is a deeply meditative quality brought about by her carefully considered palette. The paintings give rise to a sense of yearning for a place that will never be reached.

Drop-in Intro to Oil Painting at Dulwich Art Group Sat

Hello all:

The group I used to go drop-in life drawing and once plein-air painting with is now offering intro to oil painting on (of course) Saturday afternoons. There will be tuition there unlike their life drawing sessions, and Simon is a hands-on and traditional teacher in my experience, and very willing to impart techniques and demo if you ask nicely. 

I will probably go to some of these, especially in Mar, after our term ends. 

Now in their own words or click here to go straight to the page. 


Dulwich Art Group Painting and Drawing sessions
Sea Scout Hut, Greendale, Dulwich, SE22 8TX(click opens GoogleMaps)

Regular Groups - click on the links below

Wednesday 28th January 12.00-3.00pm
Thursday 29th January 7.30-9.30pm
Friday 30th January 1.00-4.00pm
Saturday 31st January 10.00am-1.00pm
Saturday Afternoon Introduction to Oil Painting

Saturday 14th Feb 2.00pm-4.00pm Drop-in Intro to Oil Painting

Saturday afternoon we'll be working with a very limited palette and understanding that as tone changes so does hue; unless you're in moonlight or sodium light. We won't be. This is a drop-in group so you can come along if you've not been before or skip this week if you came last. Any new comers wanting to start from the beginning will be shown some moves once the initial demonstration is over more info here

Tutor is Simon Dunstan who will demonstrate and explain.

Cost £20 per session

Will on the Tate Modern

Excellent article by Will Self on the Tate Modern

The only point I'm not sure about is when he says galleries are now 'otiose' (good word!) because of modern reproductions of art works.

"... if they’re capable of reproduction, what need is there for a unique place, time and space in which to display them?"

Is looking at tiny pixels of a Rembrandt painting on your smartphone really equal to seeing it in real life?

Year 2, week 6

Tutorials... you know what I mean! 

Artist newsletter

Just a reminder that this is the last year we can sign up for the artist newsletter for free.

Put in 'student membership' and then the City Lit code, it will be free.

 The City Lit code is CITY0060.

Term 1 Dates Year 2 Thurs

Back to School!

Dear all:

Is it me or has the last few weeks flown by?

Not that I wouldn't miss the Saturday morning lie-in's, but I'm super excited to start the new year and catching up with everybody. It just wasn't the same doing art at home/elsewhere.

What advice would you give to the 1st years if you were asked?

See you Thurs!

East London Printmakers summer show

 

My printmaking studio is having a summer show, come and see my print (some of you have already seen it)

http://www.embassyteagallery.co.uk/east-london-printmakers-annual-exhibition/

Private view on Tuesday 16th September - free beer!

I'm invigilating the afternoon of Sunday 21st September, stop by and say hello if you're around

Embassy Tea Gallery
195 - 205 Union St, London SE1 0PB
17th – 28th September 10.30 – 6pm
16th September – Private View 6.30 – 9.30pm
26th September – South London Art Map 10.30am – 9.30pm



Press release below









SUMMER SHOW 2014

Celebrating another fantastic year of printmaking, East London Printmakers will be holding its annual exhibition at the Embassy Tea Gallery.

Seventy artists will be exhibiting their latest work, showcasing a wide variety of printmaking techniques.

We are very proud to announce that this year, British Abstract Expressionist painter and printmaker Albert Irvin OBE, RA will be opening the exhibition.

East London Printmakers is an independent, artist run studio based in London Fields. Our aim is to provide professional and affordable printmaking facilities for artists and designers and to create opportunities for them to discuss and exhibit their work.

We offer professional standard printmaking facilities for screen printing on paper and fabric, etching and relief and run a variety of courses.

Embassy Tea Gallery, 195-205 Union Street, London SE1 0LN 17th – 28th September 10.30 – 6pm 16th September – Private View 6.30 – 9.30pm 2
6th September – South London Art Map 10.30am – 9.30pm

We would like to thank Five Points Brewing Co., Rabbit in a Frame and Printmakers Council sponsoring the exhibition this year.

Plein Air Painting with Dulwich Art Group

Two weeks ago a few of us went along on a plein air painting trip with the always excellent Dulwich Art Group. After a pleasant road trip through Kent in hazy sunshine, we arrived at Knole Park in Sevenoaks.  

Road trip....

to Leeds. I'm going to see favourite artist's exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute, you're invited...

Dates on Doodle here

Update: Summer class trip to the Seaside

Two dates have been set for the seaside, join us if you can:

Date 1: Sun 17th Aug to Brighton.    Contact Anne via email
Date 2: Sun 14th Sept, destination tbc. Contact Wei via email 

Look what amazing stuff you could be missing:

Hello:

We're now well into the summer break, hope you are all enjoying the terrible freedom being inflicted on us all.

We have talked about a relaxed trip to the seaside at some point over the summer, so here is a doodle to work out a date/destination, please indicate your preferences for both:

Click here to go to Poll

Hoping to see you at the big blue,

How Can an Artist Bypass Galleries and Sell Directly to Their Audience?

Nice article on the Huffington Post by Clara Lieu. 

 

Lots of very practical advice. Specifically, sell on Etsy and maintain your shop regularly.

And here is a nice web publishing platform for artists, though it's down for me at the moment: www.cargocollective.com

Summer Programme: Part 1 Life Drawings

Perfect timing for those of us whose Art withdrawal has already set in, Katherine has put together a list of ongoing life drawing drop-in classes around London. 

This will form part 1 of our Summer Programme (TM). If you like the look of any of the events shown, please leave a comment below as the people might also want to go can form a little team. 

Hope to see you all at point point over the next couple of months, otherwise have a brilliant summer!

Mondays

Place	Postcode	Time	Price
Royal Inn on the Park	E9 7HJ	7-9	£3.50-5.00 (depending on how many show up)
Bethnal Green life drawing	E2 0PT	7-9.30	£7.50
Candid Arts	EC1V 1NQ	7-9	£7
Life drawing Waterloo Untutored, 5-30min poses	SE1 7AA	6.15-8	£8.00 for 1hr and 45 minutes

Tuesdays

Place	Postcode	Time	Price
Holborn life drawing	WC2N 4EA	6.30 - 8.30 (on hold until Sept)	£12
Candid Arts	EC1V 1NQ	11-1 and 7-9	£7
The Goldsmith’s Centre*	EC1M 5AD	6.30-8.30

*Last Tuesday of the month (not in Aug)

End of year 1, and thank you!

Colleagues and friends:

Year 1 at the CLFA is now officially over. We drew, we painted, we printed, we sculpted, we laughed, we cried and we wanted to thank Chris and Tony for all the extra effort and support they have given to the course and all of us, but how?

Answer: Mugs:

                          ^^This one says "Nicely Done!"

Yr 1 Final drawing Project with Tony: the results...

It's almost worth the cube torture in lesson 1 isn't it; well done everyone for the excellent work!