Archive for October, 2009
Our Friend’s at the Central Illustration Agency have recently signed up creative talent, the Pirates who are set to turn the world of graffiti and street art on its head. The team’s ambition is to create the largest most breathtaking creations ever seen and rather than lurking in the shadows and staying anonymous, the Pirates want to be seen everywhere and by everyone. The Pirates have collaborated with some of the greatest brands on the cards and are all set to reclaim the streets, one wall at a time. Working across all mediums and breaking all boundaries, you wont have to look too hard before you see a PIRATES creation. Check out the wall mural film HERE.
IntelligentNaivety goes behind the till, through the stockroom and into the deepest recesses of the smoking area to meet the people behind London’s best shops.
To kick us of in time for Halloween, Viktor Wynd the man behind the Little Shop of Horrors
Tell us about your look
it’s a red silk suit, with matching shirt, made by a tailer in Kandy Sri Lanka, and red python skin boots
And what about the little shop of horrors?
the aim is to give the impression of a 17th century Kunstkamera housed within the belly of a beast, a strange blood red space, lined with cabinets from Victorian museums and stuffed with an array of wonderful items
How do you find such an array of macarbre stock?
we have a very long nose
Who shops at The Little Shop of Horrors?
the majority of our clients are serious connoseurs and collectors, though we do get the odd person of the street
What’s your favourite item right now?
a stuffed swan that was the centerpiece of the banquet in the tudors
Robert Delamere, a theatre, opera and television director and Tom Shaw, a film, video and live events expert, have taken theatre into the realms of digital downloads. As of October 25 2009, www.digitaltheatre.com, went live. It is a theatrical version of iTunes and this is how it works…You download a special player — like the BBC iPlayer — and you can buy digitised versions of theatrical productions for £8.99 a go. They are yours to keep, although you can’t pass them round: they are locked on your player. The shows are in high def, so the downloads are big, about 4.5 gigabytes, and they take time. But you can start watching 15 minutes into the process. So far, shows on offer include the Almeida production of Parlour Song, by Jez Butterworth, the Young Vic’s Kafka’s Monkey and English Touring Theatre’s version of Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, adapted by Mark Healy. There’s also a trailer for the Young Vic’s The Container, by Clare Bayley. New plays will be added continuously. “One of our hopes,” Delamere says, “is to create a fantastic shop window for the theatre. It’s expensive, especially for a weekend visit, or for somebody coming in on a train. It’s accepted as a powerful art form in the UK and in the media. The government goes on about it. But it’s unseen by so many people, it’s very ghettoised.” Read the full article.
Keep an eye out for Ondi Timoner’s latest documentary ‘We Live in Public’ released on DVD Novemebr 13th. The film centres upon Josh Harris the founder of Pseudo, a live audio and video web service and “the greatest internet pioneer you’ve never heard of” as Timoner describes him. The documentary follows the eccentric innovator at home and at work, his odd social experiments, the rise and fall of his only intimate relationship and ultimately his mental breakdown. Harris is perhaps best known for his pre-Big Brother art project, Quiet: We Live in Public, for which 100 artists were brought together in a New York bunker with 110 surveillance cameras capturing their every move. Harris later turned the camera on himself and his girlfriend, letting web voyeurs watch their relationship unfold – and spectate at every fight. The film makes no judgment about Harris, whose fortunes swing from being the genius at the top of his game, adored and respected by everyone worth impressing, to becoming a lonely introvert so unable to connect that, on hearing that his mother is dying of cancer, he simply sends her a video message to say goodbye.
Read full review.
World Renowned Street Artist Shepard Fairey and the Levi’s(R) Brand have teamed up to create a new limited edition range. The pioneering jean company has partnered with Fairey and OBEY Clothing company in co-designing collectible denim styles alongside a debut of original Fairey artwork and a new poster graphic for the Levi’s(R) brand. The collection is available from today (29th October 2009) and will be marked by Fairey unveiling a series of four new poster designs at a live art installation outside the Levi’s® Store in New York City’s Times Square. The posters will be given away as a free gift, while supplies last, with the purchase of any item from the Obey x Levi’s® collection in selected Levi’s® Store locations across the USA. The front side of each of the four double-sided posters features artwork that exists as a stand-alone piece. The reverse side of each poster also includes one piece of a oversized mural image specially designed by Fairey. “I’ve always felt that keeping my art bold, simple and refined was a way to cut through the clutter, and it’s a formula that Levi’s® has been using for decades that keeps them accessible and populist yet stylish and relevant,” said Shepard Fairey. Read the full article.
It’s Britain’s oldest public museum but thanks to a £62 million redevelopment, museum director Christopher Brown and his architect Rick Mather have dragged Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum into the 21st Century. Mather’s subtle extension actually doubles the museum’s display space which now boasts six floors – one underground – and no fewer than 39 new galleries, including four for temporary exhibitions. The museum is set to reopen on 7th November and is expected to engage with a wider public audience than ever before. In the Guardian today Jonathan Glancey describes gushes of the work; “While Mather’s Ashmolean addition is a magical combination of cool stone, oak floors, spruce plywood, polished plaster, steel, glass and zinc, all its elements have been brought together with a lightness of touch… he result is a building in which every last inch is hard at work, while giving the opposite impression.” Read the full article.
Having been dubbed the coolest toy of the year everyone wants to get their hands on these adorable finger puppet characters, each one an uncanny representation of the worlds leading designers, editors and fashion icons. These odd little chaps come courtesy of The Daily Rubbish magazine and are exclusively available from Liberties for the princely sum of £65 per set. Sold in box sets of five, you can choose your favorite fashion city, Milan, London, Paris or New York. Heroes of the fashion world from Vivienne Weswood and Donatella Versace to Karl Lagerfeld and Paul Smith should be honoured by these woolen imortalisations (although we’re not too sure how impressed Giorgio will be with his wrinkly, orange representation!)
Tate has launched a nationwide competition in association with Threadless T-shirts to celebrate the current Pop Life exhibition at Tate Modern. They are looking for young artists and designers to create a range of limited edition ‘Pop’ inspired T-shirt designs of which 2 winners will be selected by a panel of exhibition associated judges and the Threadless community. Entrants must be aged between 18 and 25 and the winning designs will be showcased in the Tate Modern and sold as limited edition product as part of the Tate’s Pop Boutique. If you think you’re up for the challenge check it out…
Everyone’s talking about the Last Tuesday Society and we at CultureLabel LOVE their newly opened ‘Shop of Horrors‘ full of strange curiosities and oddities. This quirky little retailer is based in on Mare Street, London and is the latest offspring from the so called ‘Pataphysical organization’, The Last Tuesday Society. Check it out of you’re ever in need of everyday essentials from human fetuses to shrunken heads, chocolate anuses, carniverous plants, orchids and mutated teddy bears, not to mention a fine selection of speciality teas, broken children’s toys and dead plants.
New online t-shirt shop Hipstery is causing an online sensation, ‘liberating you from the burden of choice’ as the site puts it. The site works on the element of mystery (intrigued already?)…encouraging customers to answer a quiz of probingly intimate questions in order to establish a sense of their true personality. On the strength of your answers a T-shirt is hand selected for you from a range of hundreds from ‘the best T-shirts sites in existance’…although which sites exactly is of course a closely guarded secret. To quote from the Hipstery manifesto, ‘Life is increasingly loosing mysery…we’ve forgotten to enjoy the unknown and we’re not better for it’. In response the mystery T-shirt marks a new trend in willingly passing over our consumer choices to the seller. It certainly adds a bit of jovial fun to the online shopping experience so why not put you faith in the ‘experts’ and see what happens?
