Melbourne leaving the rest of the graffiti world behind

(click to enlarge)

Some great graph pics up on Blacklodge!!'s flickr site recently. I love what's going on in the scene over there at the moment. Melbourne excels as Australia's creative capital, and blacklodge!! has captured it nicely in his extensive street exposay. It's also fantastic that he's noted down all the locations for all of his pics too, for anyone who is there to take the tour to see the pieces for themselves.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebadseed/page7/

Blacklodge!! also belongs to an excellent flickr group called Stencil Graffiti, which has 934 members and features over 13, 000 photos. Highly recommend checking it out if stencil is your bag.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/stencilgraffiti/

New plague of rats in London

(click to enlarge)

A new plague of rats in town it would appear. Shot this one (if that's what you do with rats?) in Old Street yesterday. Banksy it aint, it's Zulu. The stencil is rather crude, as is the technique, but it had pride of place on an entire, freshly white washed wall just along from Curtain Road. Shot it with my phone, so the quality id somewhat ropey, but I like the way you can see the runs and scratches on the textured concrete.

I see your face in the clouds

(Click to enlarge)

Out and about the other night I was surprised to see a rather large face staring across the road at us. Not completely proportionate, slightly skewiff (the picture - not me, fool!) there was something strangely attractive yet unattractive about this piece. So why does it look weird?

Here's a little test for you all. Enlarge the image in your browser. Now shield the majority of the face focusing on only one feature at a time. First the left eye, then the right, then the mouth (I realize the mouth is completely off center, but bear with me). Each individual feature is actually really well illustrated for a 2.5m tall aerosol painting on a roller door, but it looks like they're from 3 different subjects, or the same subject source from 3 different angles comped together to make one.

Thoughts?

Goodbye Bush...

I don't think there's a person left on this earth who isn't thrilled/glad/relieved to see the back of George Bush, America's worst president. Which is why I laughed out loud when I saw this brilliant ad in the Australian newspaper, The Daily Telegraph today. Supermarket hair removal brand Veet joined in the loud chorus of 'goodbye and good riddens' and sold a few more tubes of hair removal cream at the same time. Brilliant. No more Bush indeed.

Ha! Those crazy fuckn Danish!

(click to enlarge)

I came across some of Simon's portraiture work a few years ago, but his latest project is by far the most ambitious. He has a favored style concept of taking his photos over a period of time from the same place. His current project is no exception to this concept.

Simon's spent the last 17 months creating a truly remarkable piece of photographic history.... His photograph entitled We're all Gonna Die – 100 Metres of Existence uses an extraordinary dimension of image (100m x 78 cm) to highlight how incredibly ordinary we (well, at least some Germans) are.

All in all, there are 178 people in the photograph that were shot over the course of 20 days from the same spot on a railroad bridge in Berlin, most of whom oblivious of the fact that they would be part of such an historical image. There are a few obvious questions that come to mind for me... where the hell do you hang a photograph that is 100m long? Can you still classify and composite image made from multiple photographs a single photo? Regardless of either of these facts or if in fact this is the longest photo ever, I can't help but respect the effort and concept.

To witness the spectacular online fruition/representation of this project (and the images I've put here from the site really don't do his work justice), I urge you to go to:

http://www.simonhoegsberg.com/we_are_all_gonna_die/slider.html

Rosie Hardy - Fantas(y/tic) photographer

(click to enlarge)

Through the fantastic vehicle of flickr over the weekend, I was forwarded on to a young photographer called Rosie Hardy. Originally from England, but soon off to USA to be with her partner (also a photographer, who she met through flickr), this 18 year old just blew my mind with her outstanding photography and concepts. A little bit dark, a lot quirky, this youngster has a prolific output (on top of a hectic school schedule), but still manages to get a pic out every day for her 365 (self portrait) project. In fact most of her work is self portraiture with a twist, and her comping and retouching skills are well above average too. Makes the rest of us look positively lethargic.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosie_hardy/

(Thanks Rosie, and good luck with your psychology exam)

Mark Rothko at Tate Modern

Untitled, Black on Maroon, Maroon on Orange

(click to enlarge)

Rothko in his East Hampton studio, 1964
(click to enlarge)

For something with a little difference from our usual Friday night antics, Ross & I decided to get a dose of culture. We had been meaning to go to the Rothko exhibition for some months, and as it was due to close in about a week, the time seemed right to pull finger.

The exhibition focused on the body of work from his last 8 years, a period in which he was consumed with the strategy of repetition and variation. This quote encapsulates the strategy at the heart of his work throughout that period:

'If a thing is worth doing once, it is worth doing over and over again - exploring it, probing it, demanding by its repetition that the public look at it.'

It was a great show, and fantastic to be a part of it (I tried to pull off a few self portraits in front of the pieces that were my favorites when the security guards were distracted, but without joy).

There was an awesome section of the show where they delved deeply into the techniques Rothko used. This was done by photographing some of his works with ultraviolet light. This technique helps highlight the multi-layered application of his strokes, making the 'invisible' visible. It was fascinating.

My only criticism was the lighting of the show on the whole. I understand these large pieces with subtle colour change and brush work are very hard to light, but out of the 9 rooms of work, only about 2 were lit satisfactorily.

Selfish Cunt

New batch of stickers up around Hoxton/Shoreditch. This has gotta be my favorite tho. Ha! Clockwork Orangesque. Dedicated to you Jonathan!

Kate Moss for knife crime

New(ish) on the streets is this nice piece for knife crime London. Around Hoxton, and I think there may be one near Camden too?

Put your hands up for... crowd shots

Came across some great gig crowd shots on a friends site the other night (thanks Lionel - Ha!) I think they're from the Boyznoize gig?

Grant Armishaw: Great NZ events/gig photographer

click to enlarge

I recently came across a very talented young photographer based in Auckland. He's relatively new to the professional photography game (ie. he's young and fresh). His gig pics blew me away, especially his Shapeshifter exposay, and behind the scene shots. Great eye and composition. He manages to capture the moment, and get right up close and personal with his subjects, in particular Shapeshifter, Pacific Heights, Tiki & Concord Dawn. Made me wish I was back in NZ at those gigs.

Grant heads a studio in Auckland called GAP (Grant Armishaw Photography).
Check out his work on:
http://gap.smugmug.com/gallery/6907424_ute8c#448056475_xt23h

Grant's also got some great pics on his flikr site too:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/grantarmishaw/

This guy's one to watch for sure! Thanks for the pics Grant.