Category Archives: Art

The Jelly Fox – Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy

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Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy E4 LogoLike Salvador Dali and Mick Jagger recreating The Jungle Book. Or a William Blake inspired party-time.

Noel Fielding's Luxury ComedySo describes the associated web-page for Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy from production company Secret Peter showing on E4, the new comedy from one half of The Mighty Boosh, the eponymous Noel Fielding, but though the other Boosher, Julian Barratt, is absent the spirit of Boosh is still very much at play.

Not just its spirit though but also some of the Boosh actors. Michael Fielding (is he more than a name-sake to Noel I wonder?!) who played Naboo turns up here as Noel’s anteater butler – yes you read that right! And Rich Fulcher who played Bob Fossil turns up as William Jessop celebrating his one hundredth birthday and being visited by the ghost of a flea. This may start to give you a feel for what this Luxury Comedy is about – or not.

We are warned that it contains adult humour – in the UK that means only suitable for those over 18 – if you are 17 and British sorry but then this is not for you! Though this show may well not be for you however old you might be – more of that later. It may just as well have warned us that it contains childish humour and that if you are serious-minded-adult-type to watch at your peril.  For Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy is for the child in all of us, if, that is, your inner child was expelled from Kindergarten…

Incidentally to establish that you are indeed eighteen and beyond, Channel 4 make the serious demand of you that you click in a box on their online player confirming such and you are then cheerily beckoned in, not a bleary burly bludgeoning bouncer in sight. Anyone seventeen and younger will naturally be deterred by this. Okay that’s enough sarcasm.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy - The Jelly Fox cast

The cast awaits you

The Luxury Comedy starts in musical fashion with the entire cast however significant however insignificant welcoming us to them and their show.

This second episode, The Jelly Fox, then cuts to Noel Fielding in black leather jumpsuit and Aladdin Sane style face-paint dancing around to a nineteen sixties rock song (I could have just said ‘the 60′s’ couldn’t I as I doubt most of you are familiar with the rock music of the 1860′s).

The rock music so alluded is from 1960′s psychedelic group Lysergic Casserole who recorded just one album which ‘no-one has ever heard of’ and described by Noel Fielding as ‘the best band ever’ but then explaining that

they disappeared having took so much LSD they got trapped in their own guitar case

And the episode proceeds from there. There is no linear way to refer to this episode as it is beyond transcription if not description. You will either get tuned in to its own particular madness or look upon it aghast and askance before turning out toward the lesser insanity of the BBC News at 10 or James May’s Things You Need to Know - James May is very likely in fact Noel Fielding’s TV Uncle – I do not know if that is helpful or pretentious of me – or both.

We see Lysergic Casserole’s guitar-case-trip as they experience Orson Welles having a romantic dinner with a cheese-cake, and then Welles pulling a skipping rope out of his…well I will let you use your own imagination here!

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy Lysergic Casserole

Lysergic Casserole - the amount of times I have spelt this wrong over the years

Their music like all the music in the show is provided by Sergio Pizzorno of British rock group Kasabian – I was skeptical when I first heard of this collaboration not thinking Kasabian’s rather masculine swaggering feet-firmly-on-the-ground music would best serve Noel Fielding’s head-in-the-clouds whimsy – Mercury Rev or Polyphonic Spree would have been more fitting I felt – but Pizzorno’s music sits very comfortably with Fielding’s madcap visions.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy - Diamond Back

Diamond Back

Later Noel Fielding decides to rescue Lysergic Casserole from their Guitar Case bound fate by errecting a ramp made of Ryvita! – it is not just their freedom he has in mind though, he considers that they might make a second album and he could be their manager! But his snouty nosed butler reminds him that the sixites was a half-a-century ago and like Austin Powers their respective mojo’s might not adapt to the transport to the present day…alas they and their Harley’s trajectory is toward the guitar-case of the rock-star they call Diamond Back – Diamond Back having risen from the swamps of Putney, his father a pet-shop junkie and his mother, well she had a hundred eyes. Clear? I hope not.

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy has comedy and music, that at least is established. It also has art. Much of the art is provided by Fielding but not all of it. Animation is provided by the show’s director Nigel Coan. Coan is another Boosh connection having provided its animation too.The Luxury Comedy sets are art and there is one scene where Noel Fielding himself is producing art. The most striking and impressing aspect of the program is its look – its visual swagger.

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy - Keep off the Chest

Artist at work - can you see what it is yet?

And as noted in one scene we see Fielding painting on canvas – we can assume this was done in real-time and condensed into TV-time – Rolf Harris used to do this kind of thing, well not quite this kind of thing!

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy - press-ups

The finished work - it's time for press-ups - naturally

If this show is going to work for you you have to take it on its own terms. Concepts like narrative development and dramatic conventions are only going to get in your way. You have to go with its flow, let it get into your blood and nerves, let Noel Fielding get inside your head. If you are not prepared to do that then the Singing Detective and Celebrity Juice are also scheduled alongside it – their own particular brands of madness may be more accommodating of yours. Though these allusions to other channels imply a world before time-shifted TV of  +1 channels and endless repeats, of online players and PVR’s, and as if the most of you would be watching it during its first E4 Broadcast Thursday evening’s at 10 o’clock!

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy with Andy Warhol

With his cleaner

I alluded to the Boosh lineage but not all of them are from that particular ancestral tree. For example Noel Fielding’s cleaner Andy Warhol. Yes that Andy Warhol. Well is there another Andy Warhol?! In this episode he is planning a vacation with Picasso and Keith Haring and has organised a cleaner replacement going by the name of Frida Kahlo! His suitcase was given to him by Jackson Pollack and his rucksack is borrowed from René  Magritte – not at all art for art’s sake this! – Fielding comments about the Magritte rucksack ‘Yeah it’s a nice design but probably gets a bit annoying’!

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy René Magritte Rucksack

René Magritte Rucksack

Though this episode is called The Jelly Fox it is only in the second part of the show that mention is made of him! We see Little Chrissie and Spoon Snake and their crew on their way to meet The Jelly Fox. And who or what is the Jelly Fox? Well

he gives you what you need. He lives in a blue-fabric castle with creases in it. He will give you a tablet that dissolves in wine. To wipe away your past…

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy with Dolly

Dolly and the Warhol-cum-Kahlo Cleaner

We then cut back to Noel Fielding and another new (ir)regular character Dolly. She has given him a face-painting of David Bowie. Except that she has painted a Tiger. We then see cleaner Frida Kahlo except that it is Andy Warhol wearing a dress. He wants to wear a dress in public but is uncomfortable in doing so, so passes himself off as Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo! – the usual cowardly recourse of the man in denial of their transvestism! Dolly advises him that he should not be ashamed of this. She then advises that she dresses up as a Fireman and a Baby and calls herself a Firebaby! Noel then wants to know whether she dresses with a fireman top-half and nappy or romper suit and a helmet. She explains the latter, obviously! He considers it a joke, she a serious concept. They then argue over this point. Getting nowhere they decide to consult Hawkeye – the complex technology that resolves the flight of balls in Tennis and Cricket not Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce of M*A*S*H* fame!

Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy - Hawkeye

Hawkeye declares

If only all dilemma’s could be resolved this way! Hawkeye decides it is a Concept, and that is an end to it!

It is only at the show’s end that we actually encounter the Jelly Fox – the term plot-spoiler has no impact on a show like this but I won’t reveal it all the same.

If you should be watching this on the 4OD online player you may note a ‘More Like This’ option – but other than its previous episode there is almost certainly nothing more like this on E4 or any other TV channel currently….and I am thankful for this.

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy happily revels in its own wild imaginings. I am happy to revel along in it too – and I don’t have to take anything to do so. The whole psyche-shifting experience is all perfectly legal!Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy - The Jelly Fox

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Dreams – like Vanessa Dakinsky and Natalie Shau

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Vanessa Dakinsky - home pageDream II Natalie Shau MadreNot I have a dream. Not play dreams of Genie. Not sweet dreams are made of this with all of us looking for something. Sour dreams then? Getting closer, already way to close. Nightmare. Wake Up.

Seeing the worst in things. Projecting your own internal horror to the world around you.

A juxtaposition of images could be banal but incites in us panic of the strange, against the stranger, feeling the worst even if that moving biped with a teapot for a head is the sweetest of creatures if you just took the time to get to know him, her, it, whatever…if you could just get past the tea coming out of their spout you might find that even if they are not someone/thing you would invite home then they are still an interesting conversationalist at the very least.

My own dreams involve flight – literal flight and of fancy too – becoming invisible, physically stronger or faster, even occasionally I choose to be a wittier version of myself – or so I imagine in the fevered moments of my sleeping…usually though my dreams are like a sleeping soap not much different to my day routines – occasionally a character from a TV program might show up in one of its scenes and which will feel quite unremarkable at the time and shows clearly I watch far too much TV. I have even had a few bloggers show up in my dreams of late. Really! It might have been you! And again clearly demonstrating that I am spending too many hours reading the diverse ramblings – sorry, articulate observations – of bloggers.

Vanessa Dakinsky Helium

Helium by Vanessa Dakinsky

But if my dreams do drift from the banal and it seems as if I am to encounter creatures or shapes that will frighten and unnerve me, a sense of foreboding, then frankly I am a spoil-sport, I know then that I am dreaming and I wake up. I do not wait around to get a good look at the menacing creature coming toward me, so as to stare them in their predatory eye or even to run and hide that much the better to experience the impending horror all the better to record it in my waking hours with the end to make art of it.

Is that what Vanessa Dakinsky and Natalie Shau do? In the name of their art suffer their dreams so as to make life of them again upon their expectant canvas? Or do those who have dreams they cannot make sense of go into art or music or fiction-writing or some other flight from reality profession whereas those who have prosaic dreams – or worse swear to you that they never dream – go into accountancy or newsreading or grave-digging. You can’t be cursed with a dark imagination and dig graves for a living, right?! And if there are any grave-diggers perchance reading this I am happy for you to give me the heads up and put me straight.

Both these artists were featured this week on My Modern Met…and some of the words used to describe them are predictable enough if also unavoidable – juxtaposing, surrealist and here I am hundreds of words about nightmares in and I have yet to mention Alfred Hitchcock or Lewis Carroll.

If I had to set up a Dakinsky versus Shau showdown because modern media likes that sort of thing then I would say Dakinsky is the more compelling artist, Shau the more compelling nightmarist.

Natalie Shau

Hunter's Dream - Shau

And that perhaps both should see a therapist. But then that might cure them of their art. But again I’m only an unlicensed pop-psychologist so don’t pay too much heed to me.

Both are new names to me, perhaps they are to you too. I am not going to spend too many more words on them as their art does speak for itself. What a cliché. And one I always use when posting about paintings or photography too. Then I will say that art is subjective and you don’t need me to make up your mind for you and that I will just post up the artworks and be done. That is probably what that ‘WordPress Writing Helper, Copy a Post as an existing template’ is for.

I will then go on to add ‘But then what is the fun in that?! in regard to myself usually giving you some of my thoughts anyway. I have blogged too many posts! But hey sometimes the best comments aren’t always the most original ones. I’ve not said that before – ends blog-post wiping the easy stain of cliché off his hands feeling a little more content with himself.

Pleasant dreams.

Natalie Shau - Dream II - My Leda

Natalie Shau - My Leda

Vanessa Dakinsky oil on canvas self

Vanessa Dakinsky - self-portrait

A Book on One Page…

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A Book on One Page - BronteA Book on One Page invites us to overturn a conventional wisdom and to judge a book by its cover. Well, sort of.

A Book on One PageA book on One Page is an idea, concept and website courtesy of Spineless Classics. I don’t think you need me to spell out the idea – okay a cheap pun but at least I did not follow it up with a winky emoticon!

They came to my attention via a Tweet back in December – okay Christmas Day – yes I was on Twitter on Christmas Day! The tweet was from Wired Magazine – Wired being a print and online magazine about technology and its place in our lives or in their own words ‘the first word on how technology is changing the world’ – yes I know we live in an always-on never-sleeping connected world but what’s the deal with always having to have the first word anyway, or indeed any word – sometimes silence is all that needs to be said – but I have digressed!

A Book on One Page - Wired TweetThe tweet as you can see was a link to a more detailed article on the Wired Website.

I could in fact simply include one such image for you to understand all that needs to be understood about said A Book on One Page site and service but I like to let you know my thoughts and feelings about things too. I just cannot help myself. That is why I blog – to unburden myself on the unsuspecting blogosphere – okay moving on!

In essence what this site is providing is full text novel posters. As with many ideas on the web they are copied quickly and there are other websites offering similar services. Of those that I have seen A Book on One Page produces the better art in my view – yet other sites dispense with the art altogether reproducing only the text in poster form.

This site and company was set up by the aforementioned Carl Pappenheim. The Wired article explains how he came to set it up

Pappenheim created the first Spineless Classic as a last-minute Christmas present for his mother. Having watched “architectural drawings roll off the presses at a friend’s printing company,” he figured that he could fit 100,000 words on each poster-size sheet. The reaction to the resultant poster led to the creation of the company, and posters are now available to be shipped worldwide.

I noted on LinkedIn he describes himself as Owner at Spineless Publishing Limited and does not detail much about his art background. Perhaps because he has customized his CV as it were to a particular audience. He has also his own website which works as a hub and portal to his other online endeavours. However I could not find much more in the way of his artistic output.

The advertising strapline for his A Book On One Page site is

Imagine a whole book on a single sheet. A bold art print on which, up close, you can read the full and complete text of your favourite classic work, right from “It was the best of times” to “a far, far greater thing”.

Further and greater detail about them can be found on their website – on their About Page, no really!

A Book on One Page - categories

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies I'm not even going to comment on!

The collection of books on show covers best-sellers and classics but is still quite a modest store. Chances are your favourite book if you wanted to buy it so framed in this format is not available. They are though adding to their library all the time, additionally we can suggest new books via their site contact form.

You might consider that the books so chosen would concentrate on the slimmer volume end of the literary canon but you would be mistaken. Large volumes such as The King James Bible, War and Peace & The Wealth of Nations are among their tomes – though as you might imagine the larger the volume the higher the price tag.

Choosing an image to illustrate a book is no easy task. How to alight upon just one that captures the complex narratives and ideas of a book.

A Book on One Page - Ascent of ManA case in point is Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species – there are two versions available on this site – one with a single finch and another with the Ascent of Man theme – the latter works better for me not just because a more familiar and iconic image but because it is a more striking and resonating image. The finch on the other hand feels a less compelling image and work of art. You of course may feel quite the opposite. As said it is subjective which is why the choice of image as noted is no easy task – I guess though this being a web-store more than an art-gallery it will be commercial sales that will determine which images will endure rather than the preferences of the artist himself.

This Ascent of Man image is one of the poster books which actually is not A Book on One Page but A Book on Two Pages – and works well like that too – as long as you have the wall-space!

A Book on One Page - F Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby

The Complete Robert Burns is also available – it is illustrated by the Scottish St Andrews National Flag – he is a poet very much of the Scottish national (ist) consciousness but the flag inclusion here feels a too obvious and cheap choice out of place with his body of work – Scotland was at the heart of him but there was much more to him than that. As a piece of art too it feels tending towards opportunistic tourist gift-shop knick-knack ‘art’.

Not all of these books on one page include art images at all – the Complete Works of Shakespeare for example includes the words of every one of his plays and every one of his sonnets – it is not available on one sheet either or even two rather five – should you want to purchase this bard’s work you will definitely need a large room to hang it.

I include images of other Books on One Page that I think did work and would consider ponying up the readies for.

If the prices are beyond your respective purses and wallets there are also versions available as jigsaws and postcard-sets. I don’t do jigsaws but understand near-completing them only to find a piece is missing is a source of quite substantial angst compounded even more then if you are wanting to finish your Complete Robert Burns jigsaw so as to then read its poetry and prose!

I guess this alternative range of mediums may be extended in time – if not to the usual mugs and bookmarks then perhaps to duvet covers and rugs – even wall-paper?!

These works are available to purchase online but if you prefer to see close up and smell and touch the art you are buying first they are for sale at retail locations. Currently though you would need to be resident or visiting in just three countries – the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa.

Any literary works you would like to see done this way?A Book on One Page - MilneA Book on One Page - Robert Louis Stevenson

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Phoebe Claire Riley – green man and silver birch costumes and other such things

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Phoebe Claire RileyPhoebe Claire RileyOver this year I have been following the University of the Arts London Showtime site – in effect a market-place for their students of fashion, art  and design to share their works with the world.

At a time when they are still developing their art and finding their muse as it were. I will be interested to revisit some of these posts years, hopefully not too many years, from now to note how many of them have gone on to fame and fortune. It is important afterall that their art is seen by the widest audience possible – what good is art and fashion if no eyes ever alight upon it save the artist’s and close friends and accomplices.

Not that I am under any illusion that this humble blog of mine will contribute too much to their fame or fortune either – but who knows what post will go viral and what sink into the cyber-void…

Of course there is fame and there is fame, there is fortune and there is fortune. Only time itself will reveal whether they are the next Alexander McQueen, the next Sam Taylor-Wood.

The artist that caught my eye this week was Phoebe Claire Riley. She has a BA Honours Degree in Costume for Performance. I have always had a liking for costume design and consider it a pity that its leading exponents are not better known and courted, shunned instead for their more glamourous haberdashery clan-members of Couturiers and Ready-to-wear Designers. 

Phoebe Claire Riley

Hansel & Gretel, The Witch

Their work is more famous than they are but then perhaps that suits too – letting their work grab the limelight while they go quietly about their business unbothered by intruding microphones and camera lenses.

Their work for example quietly appearing in many a period film or TV costume drama – too many to mention – but what a gift Jane Austen has been to their tireless trade! Not that all costume work is 18th Century Gentrified Fashion I should quickly add!

So with Phoebe Claire Riley it is her work that may get more of the media attention than she herself.

There is but a brief biography of her on the showtime site thus:

I am an aspiring costume designer and a competent and creative maker and supervisor.
I enjoy working collaboratively and I am keen to learn and develop my skills further within employment.

And what a difficult time to be seeking employment too.

Though her bio is brief interestingly and perhaps instructively the tags she gives to this page are not – there are many and I am not going to list them all as you can see them for yourselves save just to list some of the more intriguing ones – Facebook like, St Exuperry’s King, conceited, Hansel and Gretel, costume cora, prunesquallor, boiled sweets – whether these tags resonate with you or are just too opaque I do not know!

On show is a sample of her work and her inspirations. I present a sample of that sample.

I shall do my best to keep up with her work – even if this might mean squinting through the rolling credits!

Phoebe Claire Riley

Cheeta's Fuchsia, Titus Alone, the Gormenghast Trilogy

The Cold Wharf – Sandy Skoglund

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A picture speaks a thousand words it is often said. Even if we don’t hear all of them. Some pictures have more to say than others…some have over-much to say – others short, sweet, succinct.

A picture cannot be self-evident then? It can speak but it speaks in multiple tongues.

And in any case self-evident to whom?

Some listeners hear more, experience more than others do.To one a picture may elicit a warm fuzzy feeling of love and empathy; to another it elicits nothing they remaining cool and indifferent to it, yet another may have a visceral dislike to it.

One may be flattened in awe by it but another left feeling only existential ennui…

Each of us ourselves will sometime hear more or less depending on our moods and our current and passing preoccupations. Sometimes to our environment we are as a sponge, other times as marble.

Where we experience the art may also effect how we are affected – the company we are in, or if we are alone. We may respond better in a crowd at a gallery with friends and strangers or by ourselves at home with a paper print or online image.

But what about what we already know of the artist and their art?

Do you find knowing about what the artist thinks about it a help or hindrance? Do you need to find out what the artist says about their work/s first before experiencing it? Or do you prefer to experience it first without that knowledge only seeking out what the artist thinks about it afterwards?

The reason for these musings arise having happened upon a piece on My Modern Met about Sandy Skoglund called Incredibly Elaborate Non-Photoshopped Scenes posted up by one of their bloggers Eugene. The article presents a brief biography about this American artist and sixteen of her works. You can also access many more of her works on her website which includes video too, as well as a much more detailed biography/résumé.

The Cold Wharf - Sandy SkoglundThis post though is about one and one only of the works featured. I wanted to see what I would make of an image without any context or knowledge of the work in question. The work so chosen is The Cold Wharf. It was not chosen because it was the one I enjoyed the most or thought was the most challenging or interesting – rather it was chosen at random to test my own capacity to respond to an image thrust before me rather than one I may have a more natural inclination or bias toward.

Though perhaps it was not that random and perhaps my sub-conscious and its silent hand led me to it above all others. Perhaps.

Like the other images though it was dominated by a palette of two bold colours. For The Cold Wharf these were red and gold. Or red and orange. Or red and yellow. Clearly I am confident that one of the colours is red at least!

The Cold Wharf has a sleeping man surrounded by an army of toy soldiers armed with toy rifles and toy guns. There are toy missiles too. These are many but all unattended. All of this artillery though is aimed toward the sleeping man.

Is he sleeping though or are his eyes just closed in fright, ostrich-style? He is prone on the ground but his hands are over his ears and he appears to have moved his head beneath the telephone table. Taking cover from the toy bullets, from the noise?

Are the violent images arranged against him real or in fact part of his dream, his night-mare?

Or where does this violence originate anyway? With him or with others? Where does his violence end and the world’s violence begin? Is this the violence of his own life – his mind, his home, his neighbours, his neighbourhood. Or the fictional violence of comics and books, computer games and action-movies seeped into his unconscious?

The violence visited from the second-hand daylight of his TV screen? The endless staged killings of crime shows and the common-place tidal wave of violence from news-programmes?

The violence of war and genocide and crime and matter-of-fact accidents.

Or is this a Grimm fairy-tale, the innocent play soldiers become sinister reality and about to turn on their Gulliver?

This image is a staged scene – everything in it I can assume is there for a reason.

Why is the dog there? Lying alongside him, so then the man’s pet and close faithful companion…mirroring his master’s actions, joining him in his doom.

And the telephone and its stand – are they significant, or at least have meaning? The telephone to provide a call for help, the SOS from all the violence. But it is inescapable violence so the telephone is redundant, a sign only of futility…

Do the colours themselves have any meaning – political or religious or other symbolism? Perhaps that depends on when the picture was taken. Red could mean China or the old Soviet Union, communism itself, and the reasonable or unreasonable paranoia thereof?

The gold makes me think of the sun and the red imagery of Japan so perhaps then the Rising Sun…I am assuming the prone man is American or at least Western then if I am considering his enemy to be from the East…he looks Caucasian but it is not that clear. Japan is now a friend of the USA but if this picture was set in the early 1940′s?…but then that telephone is not of that decade, far more modern than that. Perhaps it is a metaphor for the rise of Japanese industry and prosperity and the decline of the USA’s industry and prosperity.

And what of the title The Cold Wharf? Sounds like The Cold War but…

What do its words mean to me? Cold is obvious but the colours feel like a glow of warmth and of a radioactive heat at that, and ominously nuclear than solar.

The word Wharf though does not resonate with me… for now at least …

And what of this picture’s thousand words to you reading this post? You may hear similar words to what I hear but you may well hear something else entirely. You may indeed have no interest at all in what The Cold Wharf has to say.

For some that is the curse of art. For me it is its blessing.

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The beauty of ugly, the ugly of beauty – David Kretschmer

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Mirrors - David KretschmerMirrors - David KretschmerIn my post International Photography Awards 2011 I promised further posts about some of the individual photographers who received awards or placed second or third.

One such was German photographer David Kretschmer, currently based in the Netherlands, whose entry ‘Mirrors’ was runner-up in the Non-professional Fine Art category.

He describes his work thus:

“Mirrors shows the contradictory view on beauty in the modern society. Four beautiful young girls, looking very doubting and insecure. As they are almost perfect looking, they observe themselves very strict and criticize every single flaw on their body and face. The four guys are in complete contrast to the girls. They are not perfect at all but they look very confident at themselves and don’t care about any beauty ideals. They are not pristine but they are satisfied.”

I have to agree.

Consider too a couple of recent pop songs.

Christina Aguilera‘s torch-song ballad ‘Beautiful’ nails this subject to its scarred beating heart. It was penned by Linda Perry and could we imagine her having penned it for Justin Timberlake?

The Sugababe‘s anti-anthem Ugly was similarly stirring in sentiment, but again could we have imagined the, let’s face it, far less photogenic Take That, agreeing to sing the Dallas Austin lyric?

I only have to think of myself and how much time I spend in front of a mirror before venturing out into the big bad world – barely a cursory glance often enough as I tumble outside – and believe me I am not one of nature’s pretty pictures!

Mirrors - David KretschmerMirrors - David KretschmerNot all of David Kretschmer’s work is detailed on the IPA site but you can see it in full on his own website. He is a newcomer to professional photography beginning as a freelancer last year. He already has a number of other photography awards to his name as well as appearing in numerous international publications including the UK’s Digital Photographer, the South Korean Blink and the Russian Fotovideo.

As well as the concept beyond his ‘Mirrors’ work I enjoy the way they have been executed – the opposite of Omar Ortiz who paints pictures that look like photographs, Kretschmer’s photographs look like paintings.

I also like the way some of the subjects have been shot – looking less like reflections and more like they have become Alice Through The Looking Glass as we bare witness to their out of body experience.

I look forward his future work.

Mirrors - David Kretschmer

Mirrors - David Kretschmer

Gordon Young – Nice to See You

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Gordon Young - Comedy Carpet

Gordon Young Typographic Trees

Typographic Trees, Crawley Library

British artist Gordon Young’s latest work The Comedy Carpet, Blackpool is currently featured on My Modern Met.

On his website Gordon Young describes himself as ‘a visual artist who focuses on creating art for the public domain’.

He styles his work as projects with his first such project dating back to 1992, ‘The Fish Pavement, Hull’. His works cover public spaces the length and breadth of Great Britain.

Most of his work is sculpture along with rather singularly typographic pavements.

Another Lancashire town, Morecambe, is especially favoured, including one project on their most famous son who made the town his stage-name, Eric Morecambe, with the Eric Morecambe Memorial Area, a work which included a statue of him by Graham Ibbeson along with steps in homage to those on the Morecambe and Wise show, where their jokes and catch-phrases are written into the steps. A public space that allows a much-loved comedian’s work to live on and perhaps inspire some of its younger visitors to go and look them up on YouTube…

Gordon Young has won numerous awards for his work and appeared in many publications.

What then is the Comedy Carpet? It is made up of three-hundred granite slabs towards constructing a giant board-walk on the Blackpool water-front – like the Eric Morecambe memorial this includes jokes, catchphrases and punchlines etched in to it, but this time from a thousand British comedians – I have visions of pub-teams making vigils to see how many of the thousand they can name!

One of the most visible quotes ‘Nice to See You’ is very apt and was first used in the 1970′s by the recently knighted Bruce Forsyth on the BBC game-show The Generation Game.

Gordon Young The Comedy Carpet

The Comedy Carpet

The Generation Game is now long gone but Bruce Forsyth is still very much with us – he now compères Strictly Come Dancing – as is the catch-phrase.

Gordon Young’s website is yet to provide full details of his Comedy Carpet Project but the aforementioned My Modern Met article provides more information. Even better if you live within travelling distance of Blackpool then pop along and experience in person. I am certain it will be much-photographed though the best shots perhaps will be aerial, such as from a nearby fairground attraction – not a roller-coaster but maybe a more sedentary ferris-wheel!

His website does though provide fuller details of all his previous projects.

I end this post with photographs of some of them.

Gordon Watson Wall of Wishes

Wall of Wishes, 2007, Bristol Brunel Academy

Gordon Young Climbing Towers and Boulder Wall

Climbing Towers and Boulder Wall, Blackpool, 2006

Gordon Young Burns Steps

Burns Steps, Ayr, 1998

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Alexander Kitsenko – Magic Landscapes

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Alexander Kitsenko Ukrainian Autumn

Ukrainian Autumn

As explained in my last post 500px – living and breathing photography I was going to blog about one of the prize-winners of the International Photography Awards 2011, Alexander Kitsenko, discovering as I did more of the Ukrainian photographer’s work on 500px but was so taken with the 500px site itself that I deferred the post.

Alexander Kitsenko

From 1X site

Here then it is.

Perhaps the best way to post about a photographer is simply to display some of their work with a few of my own personal responses – a picture speaks a thousand words – like many a cliché it is a truism too – and let the viewer make up their own mind.

Some background may be of interest though.

Alexander Kitsenko describes himself as a Landscape Photographer on the 500px site and states that he is from Kharkov in Ukraine. That is the extent of the biography he gives – suggesting perhaps that he too thinks his work should speak for itself.

The subjects of his photographs are certainly landscapes – and all Ukrainian landscapes it seems – for me to they have a dream-like quality – something about how he captures natural light – whether at dawn or dusk, direct sunlight or the watery filtering of cloud or mist.

When I googled him, my passing reference to him in my last post on this blog was page-ranked third, and with all due respect to my, it is sadly fair to say, little-viewed-blog this would suggest that he is not widely published on the web.

However he is signed up to other community-based photography websites where more of his work is on show – some of it indeed, such as 1X, the same as available on 500px – understandably as a photographer work is shared across multiple sites for maximum exposure as also you never know which of these sites will stand out from the crowd and which will get lost in the sound of them.

He does on the 1X site provide further information about himself – that he is an amateur photographer and that he is trying to ‘make life a fairy tale’ which is certainly the aura I get from much of his work.

More prosaically he states that he is in his early thirties and shoots his landscapes on a Canon EOS 35D – a camera from about 2005 now superceded by updated models – a modest mid-range camera in terms of performance if more fire-power and cost than most friends-and-family photo-taking cameras. And it demonstrates that though your choice of camera is clearly a central choice the most important factor is the photographer’s inner-eye, their sense of subject and art.

Alexander Kitsenko The Kingdom of Fog

The Kingdom of Fog

I also came upon the above photo from a site called Weather Forecast which I found arresting. Like a lot of his woodland photographs the forest is magical looking if in a Grimm way, beautiful yet forbidding.

He is also featured on Art Limited where both the same bio and photographs are on show.

As then details of him are not forthcoming on the web I will, as I suspect he wants it, let his work do the talking.

Alexander Kitsenko Mystik Forest

Mystik Forest

Alexander Kitsenko Evening Silence...

Evening Silence...

Alexander Kitsenko - Ukrainian Landscape

Ukrainian Landscape

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500px – living and breathing photography

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500px Home PageIn my last post International Photography Awards 2011 I promised to explore further the photographers of some of the works that impressed me most.

500px Alexander Kitsenko sample

Sample of Kitsenko's work

One such was Ukrainian photographer Alexander Kitsenko. In doing so I came upon a portfolio of his work on a site called 500px, and the site impressed me as much as Kitsenko’s own work. So my post on Kitsenko is deferred while I recommend to you the 500px site. However before I go on here is a sample of his work available on 500px.

I also commented that in addition to having a website to display and to provide a store-front for your photographic artwork you should consider submitting your work to photographic competitions such as the post-featured annual International Photography Awards.

A third option is to submit your work to sites dedicated solely to photography. Here you are able to share your work to like-minded peers and be an inspiration to others as others inspire you.

500px is one such site.

500px Team

Site Details

When you submit your work it can be commented on by both fellow contributors and the site’s editorial team. In turn you are able to comment on other contributor’s work.

The site can be viewed in general simply by clicking from link to link on the photographs that you most respond to. Alternatively there is the short-cut of searching by the numerous categories on offer such as Animals, City and Architecture, Black and White, Fashion, Fine Art, Still Life among many others. Finally there is the standard search engine option.

As well as submitting individual photos you are as likely having a portfolio or two to want to share and this site allows for this with various templates available.

Photographs are available for viewing without registering but to submit and view others portfolios you need to register.

As you can see from the opening image nude content is allowable too but not immediately available asking you to confirm you want to see it.

500px - People sample

Sample in People category

500px also works as a social network site allowing peer-to-peer commenting and the usual social media sharing options to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and others.

Blogs are central to this site too – the site itself has its own blog and you can set up your own photo-blog. The site also allows you to view content across all blogs by aggregating it all into a time-line.

The blogs are in many languages and the site integrates Google Translate too. And Google Translate I am finding is becoming a lot more reliable than its rather initial bumbling translations don’t you think?

The site registration and service is free though there is a paid service at a very reasonable $50 per annum.

Like a lot of free services there are limits on the number and size of content uploaded whereas the paid service allows you unlimited storage.

The paid service also allows you if you have your own web-domain to integrate your 500px portfolio into it.

The paid service is also compatible with the iPhone and iPad and allows web-analytics courtesy of Google.

The best thing I think about sites like this as oppose to your own website or entering a competition is the peer-to-peer interaction – being able to support and feedback on each others works – to friend like-minded photographers and to be inspired by other photographers whose work you may not otherwise have become aware of.

Have any of you used this site? What do you make of it? And how does it compare with similar community based photography sites?

As it is autumn where I am, I finish with this image from Hungarian photographer Ildiko Neer uploaded this very day of writing this post.

px500 Neer Ildiko

Let the Sunshine In

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