Star City :: Nottingham Contemporary

Star City


So went to Nottingham Contemporary seen their latest exhibition 'Star city' with a pretty awesome tagline 'The Future Under Communism' The exhibition is showcasing art with a view to the future from a Communism viewpoint. Their are some quite intresting instatilation pieces. What i particuly like about it was the russian art from the cold war, which was basically propaganda art, to make help promote the soviet space program and to make people belive that this is the future and space travel is only a step away.

The art and instationation pieces showcased are from russian artists and designers, and i found it more intresting to see work from a different point of view rather than from the view of Capaitalism all the time. With Russia opening up more and more work is being displayed what the west would never have seen.

I like all the visonary images of what the cold war had planned for the future and see them as truely inspiring, and often wonder why we havent got a lot of the technology today, but i assume polotics has alot to do with it. Ideas from the Cold War era seemed to lack limititations and it seemed like anything was possible if they could beat America & vice verser.

Overall it was a intresting exibition piece and intresting seeing times and ideas from another point in the world i like it alot and in a way hope some of the pieces can help influence my work in the future.

Ive included some more photos;

[Valentina Petrovich Viktorov, Creative Forces of Socialism are Endless! 1959, poster]

[Soviet Poster]

[Images from the Russian space program.]

[One of the instilation pieces.]

[A model of Sputnik 1, 1957]

Modern Toss

Modern Toss

"Modern Toss the stink of excellence in a world gone tits up!"

For a while now ive been thinking of how to write about Modern Toss and make it relevent to my work and practice and while rewatching old clips and finding more information about it i found a very nice application for Modern Toss in todays media.

I'll start by explaining what Modern Toss is and why it appeals to me. Modern Toss is a British series of cartoon booklets and books aimed at adults, and a television series based on them. It is the creation of Mick Bunnage and Jon Link. I first got into Modern Toss when they were shown on channel 4 a few years ago and have liked them ever since. I find their humour to be very dark and surreal and blunt at the same time. A similar show to Modern Toss was Monkey Dust which is probably a even darker comedy.

Some popular Modern Toss sketches incude:

- Mr Tourette: a French sign-writer who produces offensive signs bearing no relation to his customers' instructions. This usually culminates in his customer being totally unhappy with the work and Mr Tourette calling them "some kind of cunt"

- Alan: a sociopathic, scribble-like creature who plays extreme practical jokes on his middle-class brother-in-law, usually involving Alan turning up uninvited to a social event, causing a large amount of destruction to the tune of "I Like To Move It" by Reel 2 Real before running away, leaving his brother-in-law to shout "Come back, Alan, you wanker!"

- Citizens Advice: irate and often illogical complaints from members of the public about goods, services and employers, usually concluding with the question "where do I stand legally?"

- Work: conversations with disgruntled or complacent employees; for example, a man phones in from home, saying, "I've heard the printer's broken so I won't be coming in"

- Drive-by abuser: a man on a moped who shouts pointless insults at people, animals or inanimate objects he drives past.

- Fly talk: conversations between flies about humans they've encountered, sometimes mentioning celebrities including Chris Martin and 50 Cent..

Sourced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Toss

Drive-By Abuser iPhone app

Aswell as Modern Toss being on television and printed in books it has managed to make its way on to the iphone with a very nice and simple appliacation. The appliacation consists of sound bites taken from one of the characters from the television show and allows the user to play them via the iphones speakers. This application looks very simple and easy to make with little bits of animation and a nice easy menu looks very easy to make and to develop. I like it because i like Modern Toss, i have a feeling people who have not seen Modern Toss may not quite get the jokes but unless they like the abuse then they'll find it funny if not then they won't. Here is a example of the application on the iphone.



Modern Toss work shown in gallerys

The last thing i want to mention about Modern Toss is how there work has been showcased in gallerys and some made into posters. In my opionion Modern Toss is not just a badly drawn cartoon, there are much worse than modern toss and have been drawn better but they all lack the originality and humour Modern Toss pocesses. I don't know if i want to go as far and say its art but i definatly like it and love the style it is done in and shows that you don't have to have the nicest designed picture that it can be just as good in any style you want. i belive the writing and the jokes to help alot too.
Catch you later, yeah?

More examples of Modern Toss and links.



video 1
video 2
video 3



http://www.moderntoss.com/
poster

Colour and The Intangible Exhibition at Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside

So Sometime last week, Friday I think went on a cool trip to the Colour and The Intangible Exhibition at Djanogly Art Gallery, Lakeside. Got a few pictures 007 style (they didn't like people taking pictures) so I'm going to write about one picture which I could get a decent picture of, which is the one which looks like its of a old BT advert...

So what was the Artist thinking about when he/she Designed the spinning vortex of colour? Well one possibility is that they had seen a BT commercial from a while back which looks very similar to the Artists work, so that could be one of the things which influenced them. The Artist was trying to make the colours stand out from the background making it a more striking image, attracting the viewer into the picture. The artist has initially only used the 3 primary colours and as the specks of light cross then you see the other colours made by mixing of 2 primary colours. If you were to interpret the image I think a good way to describe it would be to say that if you have these these things were are fine by themselves but then bring them together and mix them up to get something new and maybe even better.