Wednesday 21 December 2011

Show Comes Down Early

If any of you planned to catch the current Urban Curations exhibition at the Triple X Tattoo studio in Hackney, London I'm afraid to say that the show has already come down. It had to be cut short as Triple X Tattoo are now re-locating to a new studio in Leytonstone, East London.


I popped along this evening to collect my toy tower sculpture, Magnet. As I just live round the corner from the show, at the bottom of the now artistically fashionable Vyner Street and as my sculpture is mounted on wheels I decided to take a gamble and push my work home. It took a while but I as it got home in one piece I now feel reassured by the robustness of its construction. Although having to carry it up three flights of stairs did make me question the logic of simply not taking it back to my studio.

Unfortunately I didn't get to have a proper look at the show before it came down. I missed the opening night as I was still in Miami for Art Basel and since I've been back in the country I've busy trying to sort out a few future projects before the Christmas holidays. One of them is a nine piece screen print box-set in collaboration with the fabulous Mister Remi Rough – but more about that in the New Year.

Friday 16 December 2011

Domus Launch Party

Today saw the launch of the new Domus showroom at 50 Great Sutton Street in Clerkenwell, London. Working closely with Sam Frith and David Kong I co-curated the art exhibition side of the venue's launch. Domus has gone for an industrial and relaxed look but clearly haven't tried to fill every nook and cranny of their new space with their products, so the artwork that is on display doesn't look boxed in. Although not an art gallery, Domus Clerkenwell has a planned programme of integrated art exhibitions and the artwork currently on show is by Julian Wild, Gary Martin and myself. One of Julian's 'System' sculptures (a sphere made from copper pipes) is situated above and to the right of the fire place in the outside court yard, whilst Gary's 'Sink and Swim' sculptures that look like inflated arm bands can be found downstairs, aptly placed upon Domus' corner section of a swimming pool.


As Domus' main clients are architects, my 'And When I'm a Man' sculpture seemed the most fitting piece to show since it closely mirrors the preiser figures (some of which I noticed were used to decorate this year's Domus Christmas tree) that populate many an architectural model. And to coincide with the launch my sculpture also got a bit of a make-over. Over the years the piece had suffered a couple of knocks whilst in storage so now felt like the right time to sand it down, strengthen the joints, re-fill them and then give it a shiny new re-spray.


One of the many nice touches at today's launch was the group of waiters and waitresses that caught everyone off guard when they unexpectedly burst into song. They all had amazing operatic voices and the acoustics of the space seemed pretty darn good too.