COLOUR MATCHING TECHNOLOGY
I don’t believe in God, but if I did, he would be a black, left-handed guitarist. – The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci (dir.)
The Dreamers, a film which made me fall in love with the french films, haziness and Jimi Hendrix. Music which portrays emotion so epically, the lyrics and words evoke feelings and colour.
ANGER, HE SMILES, TOWERING IN SHINY METALLIC PURPLE ARMOUR
QUEEN JEALOUSY, ENVY WAITS BEHIND HIM HER FIERY GREEN GOWN SNEERS AT THE GRASSY GROUND
Nancy Honey photographs 100 Leading Ladies in a place where they go for inspiration as a portrait setting. The photographs see 100 powerful, successful and inspiring women and a short glimpse into the world which inspires them. What is so interesting about these photographs is that the women in them shape how the photograph looks as it evokes the subjects place of inspiration; the viewer is allowed insight into the lives, personalities and character of these admirable women.
To follow up from this exhibition, former Times journalist Hattie Garlick interviews each of the women in their own words, sharing valuable advice and personal reflection. This is a living history exploring in depth the personal and private issues surrounding inspiration and valuable insight for the next generation of young leaders.
Nathan Sawaya’s ‘Art of the Brick’ exhibition has come to London in the form of a giant playroom capturing and animating youth, art and creativity through LEGO bricks. Beginning with replicas of classic art works such as Rodin’s sculptures and iconic paintings such as Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earing, Sawaya projects LEGO as a material with the ability to match such works. The sense of endless possibility in creativity is present throughout the exhibition (even right to the very end where a LEGO playroom featured, allowing the public to create their own LEGO sculptures)
A favourite from the exhibition was ‘Swimmer’ (above) with the use of lighting, the sculpture exudes fluidity like water itself, which is pretty remarkable considering the piece is made up of small LEGO bricks. What i find most impressive about Sawaya’s work is how he takes these geometric forms and pieces them together to create human expression and emotion; proving LEGO bricks to be a tool for opening up to limitless creative expression.
Bringing Monica Bonvicini’s ‘Don’t miss a sec’ installation up, here. The installation is a one-way mirrored toilet cubical. As passers-by glance at the mirror, the user of the cubical is acutely aware of being looked at.
Quoted by neoaztlan.com as a work, which absurdly pushes boundaries with what is public and what is private and offers a performative element in which inside and outside are blurred together.
For me, the piece creates a Big Brother sensation of being scrutinized and watched during intimate moments; uncomfortable and endearing at the same time. Don’t miss a sec’ exposes inner moments to the outward space, emphasising to an extent, that the notion of privacy is no longer.
I recently went to see the Shelagh Wakely ‘A View from a Window’ exhibition on at the Camden Arts Centre.
Highlights were the installation pieces, which included using the gallery floor and shaping organic forms with the spice Turmeric. The warm, vibrant yellow and fragrant smell exuding from the visual piece, was for me, a centre piece and a definitive moment of the exhibition, as art about indulgence in sensatory moments. The material use of the Turmeric is innate with the ephemeral and organic nature of Wakely’s art.
Other pieces in the exhibition, including drawings and ripped collages exuding to a very transitory nature. I also consider Wakely’s uses of fruits and metallic foils as a sensual engagement with nature, an indulgent relationship with the environment and process of art making.
Overall, this is definitely the sort of art, which I love most. Art which is about creating a sensual experience, that has multiple layers and adheres to the fleeting moment.
Yves Klein was one of the founding artists for the Nouveau Realisme movement of the 1960s. The movement sought to find new ways of perceiving the real. Artists of the movement took from life, incorporating aspects of reality into their art.
Klein’s Anthropometries (above) evoke the very beginnings of performance art. Using the naked body as a printing tool, Klein takes from life and reality, epitomizing phenomenology and the notion of experience.
Klein was a fan of the philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who’s work ‘The Poetics of Space’ focused on applying the method of phenomenology to architecture, through this, architecture becomes a space of imagination and experience not based on purported origins.
Bachelard wrote: “First there is nothing, then there is a deep nothing, and beyond that, there is a deep blue” Cohering with this, Klein’s work is iconic through it’s synonymy with the saturated ultramarine blue, registered and branded as IKB (International Klein Blue) in 1957. The colour is one of vibration and depth, and through Klein’s work associated with the notion of ‘immaterial.’ The ‘immaterial’ adhering to the spiritual rather than the physical, a freedom from material position and material burden.
What we can learn from Klein is that there is no limit, no boundaries. We can do anything we want, if we work on it. So if you want to feel powerful and achieve the ‘immaterial’, slip on a little IKB and the world will be your oyster.
Illica 
