Congratulations Nail Box

I’ve just received an email from the nice folks at Saatchi Online to let me know that my Nail Box sculpture has made it into the next round of their Showdown competition. Out of the 2900 entries my piece made it into the final 300 (out of which only 5 are sculptures) which will now go to a juried selection. If Nail Box makes it into the final 30 selected for the last round, which will be a public voting round, then I may have to send out a few emails asking if anyone is feeling generous enough to give the little fella a helping hand (and yes, I do tend to anthropomorphise a lot of my work).

Secrets Revealed (Oli Bennett Cards)

Well the Oli Bennett Secret Cards sale has now been and gone (although, if any of the cards didn’t sell on the night then I believe that they will still be available online till the 24th) so I can finally reveal which were the post cards that I created for the charity event.

This is one of them but if you would like to see the lot then please feel free to check out my Oodles of Doodles blog where I have just posted all four entries.

Urban Curations

There’s a new website called Urban Curations that showcases work by some rather splendid street/urban and fine artists, photographers and Installation artists. So I feel very privileged to have a couple of my works featured on the site. All works are for sale and Infinity Bunce (founder of the site and a practising artist herself), who has been curating shows in London for some years, will be featuring many of the site’s selected artists for forthcoming events.

The first piece that I have featured on the site is a painting called Kitchen Blue. It is based upon a photograph that I took of a friend, Julia Lister (then known as Joolz Long), standing in my kitchen. The original photo was taken back in our student days in Northampton and as you can see, Julia wasn’t that keen on having her picture taken. A lot of people seem to like this painting and I’m not sure if it’s the ambiguity over the figure’s gender (what with the face being covered, the hair cropped short) or the contrast between the flat graphic nature of the background and the meatiness of the figure's flesh tones. And I assure you all that any confusion over Joolz’s gender if definitely down to my painting style and not her looking like a bloke (which by the way, she definitely doesn’t do).

The second of my paintings featured on the site is this one, The Ambassadors, based upon a photograph that appeared in the British tabloid press a few years ago. It shows a fight between some English and Turkish 'football fans'.
Like the background section in Kitchen Blue, the paint in The Ambassadors is a thick household gloss oil paint that has been applied with a very tiny brush. The paint had to be applied very quickly, before the paint had time to dry (so as to give a smooth finish and not leave any brush marks). With both paintings and others in the series, the white lines that make up the line drawings in the work are actually formed by the exposed and primed surface below. A lot of people asked me if I had somehow masked off these sections before starting the painting process and are surprised when I tell them that I don’t – that I simply paint either side of the lines. This might be a far more labour-intensive way of working but I do like the crisper line that this method produces. With this technique your eye also notices the very slight fluctuation of depth between the paint and the white line when you see the works in person.
The annoying thing about working on The Ambassadors was that about a week into the painting a wrinkled skin started to form on the surface of the paint as it dried so I had to scrap it off, re-prime the board, re-draw the image and start again. I don’t know if it was because of the hot weather or the mix of the paint but this happened four more times before I eventually got it right. It was a some what infuriating experience, during which, toys may have been thrown out of the pram.

Online Raffle Closes Today (Oli Bennett Secret Cards)

If you would like the chance to win one of the first 50 places in the online queue and to buy yourself a couple of original post card-sized artworks in the Oli Bennett Secret Cards Art Sale then today is your last chance. Raffle tickets can now be bought through the Just Giving website.
Over a hundred artist have donated work to the event, including Peter Blake, Remi Rough, Sarah Butterfield, Kipper Williams, Anita Klein, Guy Denning, Candice Tripp, Patrick Hughes, Laura Keeble, Neverwork, Josie McCoy. I myself have created four new drawings for the sale and their numbers are 56, 79, 421 and 511. No, not really – I’m only kidding (it’s an anonymous event). Or am I kidding? Of course I am... Aren’t I?

This isn’t one of my entries in the sale. It’s just that I don’t like the idea of blogging, without giving you something to look at.

But if you miss the deadline for the tickets don’t worry because you can still pop along to the actual auction itself (the viewing and fundraising event) on Monday 20th June at the Westminster School, where all the art will be on display and where the bulk of it will still be for sale.
On the evening itself there’ll also be a traditional raffle, offering tickets to the English National Ballet, a magnum of champagne from Berry Bros & Rudd, wine books and Time Out subscriptions, as well as prizes made by the charity’s beneficiaries.

Admission to the Oli Bennett Charitable Trust event is free but places are limited so, please respond to Kieron by email at ConnollyKieron@aol.com if you would like to attend.

Saatchi Gallery Showdown 5

I’ve just checked my page on the Saatchi Online site to see how my Nail Box sculpture is doing in the new Showdown competition and was surprised to find that it’s current standing is listed as 32 out of 2900 entries. This seems pretty good as it’s normally the paintings that get all the votes. But it’s early days yet and I won’t be shocked if it doesn’t make it into the top 300 entries and therefore advance to the jury voting stage.
Also, I suspect that Nail Box is a bit vain and only wanted to enter the competition so that lots of people would get to see it.

No Show(s)

Unfortunately the Barbarian Art gallery, with bases in Zurich and Moscow, didn’t make it through the selection process for this year’s Frieze art fair in London so myself, and the other four artists that they had invited to represent them, won’t be exhibiting there this time.
And as I’ve not heard back from VZ Art Gallery regarding their request to show my work at this year’s Liste art fair in Basel, Switzerland (which starts very soon) I’m guessing that plans have changed there too. Oh well – easy come, easy go!

Fun in Venice (& Suffering for Other Peoples Art)

Venice… Where to start!
I’ve just got back from my second ever Venice Biennale. For anyone who doesn’t know what this is, it is basically a giant, international contemporary art exhibition that takes place in Venice for about six months, every two years and this year is Venice’s 54th Biennale – so it’s been going a while now. For this biennial art fair numerous different countries stage exhibitions at various locations (pavilions), dotted throughout Venice, although the highest concentration of the pavilions tend to be situated in two areas to the east of the city, the Arsenale and the Giardini (a park where 30 pavilions were all purpose built for the various regularly entering countries, back in the… er… lets just play it safe and say the 20th Century).
Although the Biennale officially opened on Saturday 4th June I managed to secure a pass (with the help of my good friend, the journalist, Holly Howe) that let me go exploring the Giardini and the Arsenale for the three days preceding that date.

If you’re one of those people that aren’t that au fait with sleep then it is technically possible to fit in all the art shows and a good chunk of the opening parties into one week but unfortunately this year I was a bit incapacitated. The weekend before I’d cracked a rib falling off my bike (actually, if the truth be told – I fell over my bike before I even managed to get onto it) and even while being dosed up on some powerful painkillers, I was still walking like a geriatric most of the time. Not that I have anything against geriatrics – I just don’t want to be walking like one just yet. To make matters worse, half way through the week I sneezed and pulled a muscle in my lower back (go on - laugh – I know you want to). The only consolation of this was that the back pain took my mind off the pain in my ribs. The upshot of this being that this time round I only managed to cover the Arsenale, the Giardini and about a sixth of the remaining satellite shows. But even so, considering the amount of late night parties (always a good reason to get to the Biennale a few days before the official opening) we managed to go to, we still saw a hell of a lot of art.

The Parties
One of the annoying things about the parties and openings is that so many of them happen on the same night or at the same time and it’s not always possible to work out in advance which ones to pick. The grandest one (and the one for which I felt most underdressed) that we went to had to be the party hosted by Marino and Paola Golinelli (of the Marino Golinelli Foundation, founded in 1988 to promote art, science and culture) at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. After the speeches Holly and I got to speak to the very stylish and gracious Paola Golinelli and I gave her one of my mini screen prints. Again I have to thank Holly for arranging my invite to this one. It was a very swanky event that was made even more impressive (well, to me at least) by the giant, four or five stories tall, Bamboo nest structure that the institution had had constructed next door to their building, and connected via a bamboo walkway to their roof-top garden. The structure was definitely one of my main highlights of the week and I went back a few days after the party to walk up its internal spiral walkway to the viewing platform at the top.

On another occasion me and my merry band of Biennaleites unfortunately missed the boat to the island where the Frieze 20th birthday party was being held, due the fact that a nameless someone (Jackson – you swine) texted us the wrong address for the pick up point. Although, to be honest, most of us were still recovering from the amazing party that the Finish pavilion had thrown the night before, on one of the small outlying islands. So instead we all trundled off to massive garden party that the Icelandic pavilion was throwing.

The great thing about the Biennale is that you not only make new friends but that you bump into loads that you already know. As we arrived at the airport I bumped into two people I knew at the baggage collection and a third one on the coach outside. And at the Azerbaijan party I bumped into four people I knew, although I did already know that one of them, Lee Sharrock, would be there as she was the PR person for the show. And if any of you have been following the news items about the Venice Biennale then you probably won’t have missed the recent media attention that the Azerbaijan Pavilion has been receiving. But hey, as they say – all publicity is good publicity.

Favourite Pavilions
As you can probably imagine, last week was a week of visual overload so I’m not going to be able to instantly recall all the amazing pieces of artwork that I saw but here’s a few that still seem fresh in my mind. I’ll start with the Giardini cluster because that’s probably the easiest to remember.

I’m a big fan of Mike Nelson’s work and his all invasive installation in the British Pavilion is well worth the long wait in the massive queue outside (oh no, I’ve over hyped it now). I also have a soft spot for the work of Christian Boltanski so I was pleased to see that he hadn’t let us down with his contribution at the French Pavilion.

Opera seemed to be one of the reoccurring themes at the Biennale this year and I felt that the Hungarian Pavilion put it to best use with their Crash – Passive Interview installation/experimental opera, reflecting upon the stories of car crashes in dialogical form (created by Hajnal Németh). The USA Pavilion’s upturned tank (turned into a treadmill), cash machine pipe organ and strange gymnastics performances were also interesting. And Lee Yong-baek put on a fantastic solo show at the Korean Pavilion – my favourite work being either the mirror with the morphing religious icon faces or the slow-moving video piece of almost unperceivable soldiers, clad in flowery camouflaged uniforms, moving amongst a flowery foreground and background.

And here’s a photo of me posing with Lee Yong-baek’s soldiers in front of the US Pavilion’s upturned tank.

My amble through the Arsenale was a bit more of a blur but the main pieces that stuck out for me were the giant burning candles in the shape of a massive full scale renaissance sculpture and a life size man, an anti-mafia installation and the stunningly monumental clay sculptures of Adrián Villar Rojas at the Argentinean Pavilion.

Out of the few pavilions (20 or so) that I managed to see outside of the Arsenale and the Giardini these are some of my favourites:
Ho Tzu Nyen’s strangely hypnotic film, The Cloud of Unknowing, at the Singapore Pavilion. And I’m not just praising it because it was a relief to step out of the blazing hot sun, into a cool spacious hall and watch the film on a full-size cinema screen whilst reclining on enormous white leather bean bags. The mist that billows out from the screen at the end of the film is also a nice touch (oops – spoiler!). Actually, mist and smoke were another theme that kept popping up at the Biennale this year, especially at the Arsenale. And I did hear that Anish Kapoor also installed a smoke piece, Ascension, at a collateral event staged inside the Basilica di san Giorgio but I somehow managed to miss it – gutted!
Another pleasant surprise came in the form of Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil’s wobbly white interiors at the Luxembourg Pavilion.
And pretty much everything at the Future Pass – From Asia to the World show was amazing but unfortunately I only had a few minutes to rush round it before I had to catch my plane back to London.

So, here are my tips for enjoying the circus that is the Venice Biennale:

1. Get there a few days before it officially opens and enjoy all the parties.
2. Take comfortable footwear.
3. Unless you want to have to leave the parties early to catch the last boat back to your accommodation (10:30pm), book somewhere in Venice itself.
4. (And this is probably the most important one) If you meet a drunken Belarusian artist who wants to party and who wants you to party with him – then it’s virtually impossible to say no.

Sketchbook Project - Digitized

Although I’m still regularly posting pages from my 40 page contribution to the Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project on my Oodles of Doodles blog (along with other random sketches and doodles) you can now see all of the pages from the sketchbook that I submitted for the project in the co-op’s all new, digital library.

My book is one of about 10,000 that are currently touring the US.

New Model Kit Designs

I’m currently working on some designs for a new series of wall-mounted low relief sculptures. Like my And When I’m a Man piece (which was made from 12 casts of my own body), these new works will be based upon the pre-assembled Airfix-style model kits that many of us used to make when we were kids – except that these new ones will be much smaller than my original life-sized one. For this project I will be working in collaboration with the on-line arts magazine, FAD and the California-base industrial designer, Noel Wilson.

And like my second model kit based sculpture, Baby Kit, which subverted the whole point of the model kit (being that the sum of all its parts didn’t actually make a whole), the new series aims to do this a little more subtly by substituting just one element with something from an unrelated figure. In the case of this working drawing the left arm has been replaced with an octopus tentacle. In another design I have substituted the right leg for that of Daffy Duck.

This design which is based upon Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man drawing probably won’t be part of the new series of sculptures. It was just an idea that I had whilst I was sketching out the tentacle element of the first drawing and I couldn’t resist putting it down on paper to see how it looked.
Although I’ve always loved da Vinci’s drawings it wasn’t until I copied out the head and torso section of his Vitruvian Man that I really got a feel for the brilliance of his draughtsmanship. There’s a wonderful accuracy and economy of line in his drawing. I would advice anyone to get a piece of tracing paper and copy one of his sketches – just for the feel and flow of it.

Creative Spotlights Interview

If there are any masochists out there who fancy reading more of my ramblings about art then please feel free to check out my interview with Creative Spotlights. The site currently runs features on art and music but will soon be venturing out into other creative industries such as film and theatre.

Calling All Artists

If there are any artists out there who would like to put their talents to good use and help out the Oli Bennett Charitable Trust by creating one or more postcard sized pieces of artwork then please check out the details below.

I’ve just started working on my cards and here’s my first one. As you can see this pencil sketch bares a startling resemblance to one of my Orifice Box sculptures – although this one seems to be spawning or something (don’t ask me what it means – I only drew it). I’ll wait until after the sale before I post images of the rest – it supposed to be anonymous after all.

The Oli Bennett Charitable Trust (Registered Charity number: 1090861) is asking for donations of artwork for an anonymous postcard art show which will be held on 20 June 2011.

Oli Bennett was a young man killed in the 9/11 world trade centre attack. The charity is set up in his name to provide funding and grants for young people with business ideas, many of who are from an underprivileged background. It operates in a similar way to the Prince’s Trust. The fund has helped a wide variety of young people in the past set up businesses as wide ranging as wood recycling, sports coaching, fashion designing, jewellery making, ceramics, Car valeting, cake making etc.

The sale will be along very similar lines to the Royal College of Art secret postcard show RCA Secret.

Artists are asked to create postcard sized works of art in any media. They will be exhibited online for a week and then sold on the evening of the event for the sum of £20 each. The twist is that the artist signs the postcard on the back so the buyer doesn't know whose artwork they have got until they buy the card and then turn it over. All proceeds from the sale will go directly to the charity.

Any artists who would like to help by designing one or more postcards for the sale would be much appreciated. Please email your postal address to: olipostcards@btinternet.com

We will then get some cards sent off to you. The deadline for returning the cards is 1 June 2011.

If you would like to come to sale you would be very welcome, it will be on 20 June 2011 at Westminster School in central London. If you’d like to come let us know and we will send you more details. Thank you so much for your help.

Two Became One

I’ve just realised that I didn’t get round to posting a photo of the stilted spiky cube piece once I installed inside my Frankenstein’s Orifice Box sculpture. So here it is, peeking out through the carved orifice of the external box structure.

I had to add an extra light source just so you could see some of the details in the photo but when I come to exhibit the piece I will probably leave the interior without any artificial illumination. Although this will mean that the viewer won’t be able to fully see what is inside I do like the intrigue that comes with knowing that there is something half hidden going on. As a kid I was a big fan of horror movies and the ones that I loved the best were always the ones where you never fully saw the monster – where it was always lurking in the shadows (letting your imagination fill in the gaps).

So as if to totally shatter the illusion, here’s the internal piece just before I sealed it in. As you can see from the photo, I had to disassemble the outer structure in order to join the stilts of the inner cube to the base section (Ikea this ain’t). Originally I had planned to just remove the lid of the outer box and slot the stilts into the base that way but whilst I was hammering the nails into the inner cube the stilts must have realigned themselves so I had to do a bit of wrestling to get everything to fit back together (no, I’m wrong – it is just like Ikea).

Sketchbook Tour Hits Portland, Maine

On Wednesday the Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project opened on the next leg of its tour at the Space Gallery in Portland, Maine. If you happen to be in the area and fancy checking out any of the 10,000 artists sketchbooks that are available for public perusal then you have until Saturday to do so. After that the project will be moving onto its next destination of The Granite Room in Atlanta, Georgia.

Here’s one of the pages from my contribution to the project.

And if you would like to see what I did for the project but can’t make it all the way to the US to visit the tour then by all means check out my Oodles of Doodles blog where I’ve been uploading pages from my sketchbook along with my other drawings, sketches and scribbles.

The Return of Spiky

Tomorrow I should finally be able to finish my Frankenstein’s Orifice Box sculpture when I install the internal Stilted Nail Cube piece. Even though I completed the main, outer shell some time ago, it has been sat in the workshop at the Victoria and Albert Museum (where I’ve been working and where I also collected the scraps of old wood to construct the sculpture) waiting for me to complete the internal structure. So now that both sections are complete I’ll have the outer shell delivered to my studio and hopefully they should fit together – fingers crossed.

The inner section is inspired by my earlier Nail Box sculpture which in-turn is heavily influenced by the Minkisi totems of the Congo (and possibly by an image I once saw of one of Eduardo Paolozzi’s early sculptures in an old catalogue – but I might have just dreamed that bit because I haven’t since been able to find any reference to it).
Although you can’t clearly see it from this image, the front and the back of the cube have windows of splintered wood ‘exploding’ outwards (so that you can look straight through the box). When I was constructing the piece I wanted the splintering to look quite spontaneous and not too contrived but in order to get the exact random quality that I was looking for I had to do quite a few controlled experiments first. This involved me sandwiching pieces of old wood between two thick pieces of plywood with holes cut out of the middles of them and clamping the lot firmly to a sturdy vice. I would then run at the vice, swinging a claw hammer like a maniac, and try and hit the sandwich dead in the centre of the cut-out holes (needless to say, there were a few near misses). At first I just tried hitting the centre of the holes from a non-maniacal, standing position but for some reason the screaming nutter approach achieved the best results.

As is the way with most of my projects – as soon as I start making one thing I get loads of ideas for similar or spin-off pieces. And when I was making the inner cube section of the Frankenstein Orifice Box I began to wonder what a whole cluster of stilted cube sculptures would look like if I lengthened the stilts so that the cubes were viewable at head height. Needless to say – I now want to make a cluster of long stilted cube sculptures (oh, where will I find the time?).
Incidentally, this sketch was made during a practice shoot for a filmed, 24 hour drawing project that I’m thinking of doing along with film makers, Oliver Goodrich and Mike Taylor at Big Face Art. The project will involve me sitting at desk and trying to draw solidly for 24 hours. I know that 24 hours doesn’t sound like a mammoth amount of time to do anything as an endurance task but it’s amazing how mentally tiring it can be if you just sit for six or seven hours and try to fill sketchbooks with drawings from the top of your head. Anyway – we’ll see how it goes.

While I was going through some of my old sketchbooks I came across this one from 2008 which also plays with the idea of raising up small box structures to head height via the use of spindly stick structures. So I must have these little themes running through my head and they just resurface every now and again when they spot a project that suits them. A lot of these drawings tend to be nothing more than thumbnail sketches accompanied by lots of scrawled instructions (normally about construction methods or suggested materials) to my future self - although this one doesn't seem too scribbly.

Sketchbook Tour Hits Texas This Week

On Saturday 12th March the Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project starts its tour proper as it leaves its base, the Brooklyn Art Library, and heads off to the Austin Museum of Art, Texas. And the following day it will be stopping off at the 29th St Ballroom at Spider House.

So if you happen to be in Austin, Texas this weekend feel free to pop along to either venue and see if you can find my sketchbook (here’s one of the pages from my contribution to the project) amongst the 10,000 other books that make up the tour. The next leg of the tour will be at the Space Gallery in Portland, Maine but I’ll tell you about that one when it comes up at the end of the month.

And if you would like to see what I did for the project but can’t make it all the way to the US to visit the tour then by all means check out my Oodles of Doodles blog where I’ve been uploading pages from my sketchbook along with my other drawings, sketches, doodles and scribbles.

March 12, 2011 / 12:00-6:00pm
Austin Museum of Art
823 Congress Ave
Austin, TX

March 13th, 2011 / 12:00-6:00pm
29th St Ballroom at Spider House
2906 Fruth St
Austin, TX

New Prints at Beyond the Valley

I’m pleased to announce that my latest screen prints, ‘Swirly Skulls’ and ‘Swirly Skulls on Pink’ (my particular favourite) are now available at the very fabulous Beyond the Valley concept store located at 2 Newburgh street, London W1F 7RD - off Carnaby Street.

Since its launch five years ago Beyond the Valley has gone from being a springboard for designers to one of London’s leading destinations for fashion and innovation. As well collaborating with up and coming artists and designers the store and label showcase products by well respected brands and this year’s names include Vivienne Westwood, Aveda, Nokia and Aston Martin. Beyond the Valley has been voted one of the top 100 Coolbrands of 2007/08/09 and 2010.

As well as ‘Swirly Skulls on Pink’ (above) and ‘Swirly Skulls’ (the black on white version) the store also stocks my older and more recognised screen print, Spidey Pods. Unfortunately the image above doesn't totally do the work justice. If you call into the shop and check out the print you'll see that the pink is much more vibrant in the flesh (or on paper rather).

So if you are in the vicinity of Carnaby Street then I thoroughly recommend you to pop into this lovely little store. Every time I nip in there I always find something new and peculiar that I want – which is why I have to restrict my visits.

Opening Night Footage

I've just found this piece of footage from the opening night of the recent States of Reverie show at Scream Gallery in Mayfair. I've managed to spot my work and a few friends in amongst the crowd but even though I was there right from the opening I seem to have managed to evade the camera's lens – unless you count the split second that you see the back of my head whilst I’m talking to fellow artist and exhibitor, LG White.

Horned God Orifice Box

Months ago I showed you some images of my Horned God Orifice Box (yes, I’ve still not come up with a snappier title for it yet) whilst it was under construction and even though I finished it soon after I forgot to post any images of it in its finished state. So here it is, along with a few related sketches.

Here it is sitting on one of the work benches in my studio. The Horned God part of its title comes from the branches coming out of either side of it. And the Orifice bit – well that’s probably quite obvious.

This small drawing from my pocket sketchbook was made early on when I first thought about starting the Orifice Box series. Unlike the Horned God and Frankenstein’s Orifice Boxes this is to be left plain except for an external drawing decoration. I have yet to start this one though.

In this image you can see that, in-keeping with my love of using found materials, I have used the backboards from some old paintings. They came from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and you can clearly see one of the original labels and some of the remnants of gum tape. Although you can’t see it from the two photos, the inside of the Horned God Orifice Box is lined with a collage of bits of early 20th Century newspaper and over-drawn in a similar style to the external pattern on the small drawing above.

One thing that I want to get back into the habit of doing is the quick-fire drawing sessions that I used to do every night before I went to bed. I particularly enjoy the very fast sketches that only take a few seconds to execute. What you loose in accuracy you tend to gain in vibrancy. This one was made after I’d started the new series of Orifice Box sculptures and is a kind of cross between them and my earlier wall-mounted Orifice sculpture.

Brooklyn Art Library Opening This Weekend

 

This weekend sees the start of The Sketchbook Project’s tour of galleries and museums around the US. The tour begins at Art House Co-op’s very own Brooklyn Art Library located in the heart of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY.

My sketchbook will be one of the many books submitted by 28838 artists from 94 countries around the world. Each book on the tour can be checked out like a library book as well as being able to be viewed on-line. Although due to the scale of the project, it will take a while yet before all of the sketchbooks have been digitized. But if you would like to see in advance what I submitted for the project then feel free to check out my Oodles of Doodles blog.

To find out where else the project will be touring just click on the tour date map.

The Brooklyn Art Library - 103A N 3rd St. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Hours: Tues-Sun: 12:00pm-8:00pm (closed Mondays)

Where Art You Interview

If anyone out there is interested in reading any more of my ramblings then please feel free to check out the interview that I just had with Where Art You editor, Helen Wilson. Where Art You is a website about art in London - featuring the latest reviews, previews, interviews and much more. The site is pretty darned good so even if you don’t really want to listen to what I have to say it’s worth checking out for the reviews and other stuff.

To wet your appetite (or kill it altogether) here’s the first question and my response -

As your model kit When I Am A Man suggests, many young boys want to be soldiers when they grow up – what was your childhood ambition?

Apart from a few very brief periods when I quite fancied being either a bin man, a monk, a steam roller driver or a kamikaze pilot (I was very young when I wanted to be the later and probably didn’t really understand the limited career path of being a human bomb, or the fact that I needed to be Japanese and born a few decades earlier) I always wanted to do something involving art.
As a child I would obsessively draw, paint and build stuff, so when I was old enough to realise that there were jobs out there that allowed you to carry on doing these things into adulthood I pretty much wanted to do all of them. I wanted to be everything from an architect to an illustrator to an animator to a comic book artist. But I was also a massive horror fan as a child and would fantasize about working in the film industry and making monsters for movies – although, growing up in semi-rural Shropshire, this seemed a world away and just a pipe dream.

Frieze, Basel and Venice Biennale 2011

I’m ashamed to admit it but even though I live here in London I’ve never actually made it along to any of the Frieze art fairs. But this year looks to change all that as I’ve just been invited to be one of the five artists representing Natasha Akhmerova’s Barbarian Art gallery at this year’s fair. Barbarian Art is an international gallery based in Zurich and Moscow and active worldwide.

This year looks like being a pretty good year for international art fairs. As well as being invited to exhibit at Frieze and represent VZ Art Gallery at the Liste art fair in Basel, Switzerland, I’ve just booked (OK, my mate Holly has done all the bookings as she’s the organised one and secretly loves being in charge of everything) my flights and accommodation for this year’s Venice Biennale. I went for the first time two years ago and even though I lost my mobile (and 10 years worth of none backed-up phone numbers) in one of the canals I had the most amazing time. It’s incredible how small the art scene is because at the last Venice Biennale I bumped into so many people that I knew from London – a prime example being that on our first night there my mate popped next door to see if he could borrow a cork screw and found out that we’d booked a room next to a group of artist friends from back home. This year we’ve made sure that we arrive in Venice a few days ahead of the official opening weekend so as to take full advantage of the many opening parties – oh yeah!

Vote For Me (please)

If anyone is feeling generous enough to spend a minute or two to vote for my piece in the Saatchi On-line Showdown I would be a very happy bunny. I have entered my giant green model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man. Unfortunately you have to sign up first (although you don't have to give any more details other than a name and your email address) and then come back to this link to find my work – but at least then you get to check out all the great artwork by thousands of other artists and decide which ones you think should make it into the next round. If you fancy taking part then hear's the link. Cheers.

Screen Prints For Sale

Because to the large amount of traffic that my blog has been getting the last few weeks (largely due to the sudden on-line popularity of my life-size model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man) I thought I'd take advantage and give my screen prints another mention.

If the first one looks strangely familiar then you might remember the postcard-sized single skull versions that I made and handed out free to the folks queuing for last year’s RCA Secret show. I have been promising to bring out this larger, 9 skull version for over a year now but due to a prolonged bought of slackness, I’ve only just got round to it.

These new hand-pulled, screen prints are in a limited edition of 50 - a much smaller edition than my Spidey Pods prints and each one is signed, titled, dated and editioned. I’m currently in the process of cropping the prints down from the 70 x 50 cm paper, on which they were printed, to 60 x 45 cm as this size works best with the image. However, I may keep a couple back, un-cropped, just in case anyone would like to frame them in a larger frame with a wide mount. I know that Ikea do a nice 70 x 50 cm plain black or white wood frame, with a mount, for about £20 but I’ve not tried a print in one of these frames yet so can’t comment on how they look.

As the Swirly Skulls prints are new they have only just started to appear in the London galleries and shops but if you would like to get your hands on one at my special, commission-free price (usually 30-50% less than in shops and galleries) feel free to get in touch. I'm selling them for £50 each. So if you fancy buying one just drop me a line at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk.

However, for those of you who love skulls but also like a little bit of colour - here’s my new, 2 colour, ‘Swirly Skulls on Pink’ screen prints. They come in a strictly limited edition of 50 and each print is signed, titled, editioned and dated. The paper dimensions are 70 x 50 cm (larger than the new, single colour, ‘Swirly Skulls’ prints which are 60 x 45 cm). And as with the new, one colour, Swirly Skull prints, these are also available for a super low, commission-free price (£60 each if bought directly from my good self). If you would like one just drop me an email at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk .

But if you fancy something with even more colour then how about one of my Spidey Pods prints? The most famous person, so far, to own one of these prints is the actor Andrew Garfield, who will be playing Peter Parker/Spiderman in the new Spiderman movie. Now if that’s not a good endorsement I don’t know what is.

The prints are all hand pulled, 3 colour, screen prints on acid-free, archival paper. The paper size is 58.6 cm x 54.2 cm (image 38.7 x 39.4 cm). Every print is signed and numbered (being from a maximum edition of 300). And if you would like to get your hands on one, my ‘commission-free’ price is £100 (around 33-50%off the usual gallery and shop price), just get in touch at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk.

To find out about the inspiration behind the print check out the original Spidey Pods sketch further down the blog.

States of Reverie – Opening Night

I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone that made it to the opening night of the States Of Reverie exhibition at Scream on Thursday 13th (I should really have posted this over a week ago but it's been a busy couple of weeks). The turn out was amazing and it was only afterwards when a friend emailed my this wireimage link that I realised how many famous faces were present. After checking out the link it seemed that the place had been full of actors, designers, musicians and models. Needless to say, I didn't see a single one of them – I must have been wondering around in my own little bubble again.

Glen Matlock (of the Sex Pistols) and Jo Wood were amongst the guests...

along with actor, Sean Pertwee - seen here with Scream's very own press officer, Lee Sharrock.

And here's a picture of me looking a little drunk (although I promise I wasn't at this point. However, what condition I ended up in at the after-party at China White's is another matter entirely) in front of my giant model kit sculpture. Incidentally, I was totally blown away by how fast and by how many sites my model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man, appeared on after an image of it appeared in my last post. I think that Laughing Squid might have been the first to feature it but it also soon appeared in the Huffington Post and on Boing Boing, as well as dozens of other sites. So thanks everybody.

'States of Reverie' exhibition at Scream

This Thursday sees to opening of States of Reverie at the Scream Gallery in Mayfair, London - where I will be exhibiting three of my sculptures (And When I’m a Man, Magnet and Book Tower II). The other six artists in the show are Clare Chapman, Chinwook Kim, Ann-Marie James, Malgosia Stepnik, LG White and Guillermo de Zamacona.

‘And When I’m a Man’ which is basically a life-size version of myself as a 12 piece, pre-assembly, model kit will be hanging on the gallery’s office wall for the duration of the show. 
As well as being a self-portrait, the piece engages with my interest in nostalgia and childhood perceptions of adulthood (and the role that toys play in this). One important aspect of the piece is its colour. When constructing the sculpture I tried to find the same colour as the green plastic soldiers that he used to play with as a child. But rather than go back and find examples of these toys to get an accurate match, I chose a colour that matched my memory of it – recognising that the passage of time would have altered and exaggerated the memory and produced something far more lurid.

And When I’m a Man was produced in 1998 but apart from appearing in a couple of small shows around that time and a brief appearance in the film Scratch directed by Jakob Rørvik, it has sat in storage at Candid Arts in Islington – until now that is.

I created ‘Book Tower II (Nostalgia For a Childhood That Wasn’t Mine)’ (also see Book Tower) last year for a show at a gallery in Redchurch Street, East London. Although I was wasn’t 100% happy with its proportions and thought it looked a bit stubby, so last week I added two more books to raise it to just the right height. So the image you see here is slightly different than the one you will see in the gallery from Thursday onwards.
Apart from the base section, none of the books are glued together – instead they all have cut away sections and are then slotted together. The construction process for the piece started of relatively straight forward enough. However, as the piece grew and got taller the construction processes dictated that the structure had to be regularly dismantled and reassembled in order to enable the addition of more sections. And the bigger it got the more difficult it got to remember how everything fitted together – especially since all the dust covers had to be removed and then cut to size and reapplied at the final stage.

Out of all of my sculptures ‘Magnet’ has had one of the most interesting lives so far. Originally titled Toy Tower it was changed to Magnet after its first showing when it became evident that its powers of attraction seemed to work on children and adults in equal measure. On the first day of Magnet’s first exhibition the person invigilating told me that they had looked over to where my sculpture should have been, only to find that it had disappeared. Apparently four little boys had managed to sneak the piece out into the street before being chased off by the invigilator, who wheeled the sculpture back into the gallery again.
Although originally constructed quite some time ago Magnet has had to be rebuilt several times as, over the years, the temptations of numerous collectors and souvenir hunters have obviously got the better of them. After almost every show I would find that pieces of the sculpture were missing. But as the toys in the sculpture date from the 60's to present day it's probably not that surprising. I sometimes wonder though, whether renaming it Magnet was just tempting fate.

States of Reverie
13 January – 20 February 2011
Scream gallery, 34 Bruton Street, London W1J 6QX
+ 44 (0) 20 7493 7388
Opening times: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm; Sat-Sun 11am-5pm