An Exhibition for Hipstamatics

'Hipstamatics' is the first European showcase of snapshots taken using the popular iPhone app that allows mobile phones to mimic antique analog cameras (it was actually awarded ‘App of the year’ by Apple in 2010).



When: 14 January– 31 January 2011. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. 

Where: Orange Dot Gallery, 54 Tavistock Pl., WC1H 9RG.

Hipstamatic Facts:
- The original Hipstamatic analog camera was launched In 1982 by brothers Bruce and Winston Dorbowski.
- By the end of 1984 the group had manufactured and sold 157 units.
- The two brothers were tragically killed in a road accident that very same year, meaning that Hipstamatic never became mass produced.
- Now the Hipstamatic iPhone App has sought to recreate the magic of the original Hipstamatic analog cameras. It's got high-res output and gives anyone the ability to hand pick which film, flash and lense is best for a shot. I for one am a fan.

Review of 'Decode' at the V&A. Go see!

Take a walk in a field of digital flowers that light up as you move through them, interact with Thom Yorke on screen, create your own artwork triggered by sound and take five minutes to sit in front of a camera that will record your photo in a ghost like image before superimposing it with that of someone else.

These are just some of the wonderful exhibits at Decode an exhibition of digital media currently showing at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

While the opening pieces just inside the entrance aren't terribly provoking to anyone not too interested in programming or open-source code, the installations get gradually better as one moves through the Porter Gallery. In retrospect, this is probably a strategic part of the exhibition's intent - it lures you in by filling you with the false sense of reassurance that you know what it's all about, only to jump out and surprise you with a shout upon turning the corner.















Decode inspires by reaffirming the relevance of art, its exhilarance and absurdity, in our ever more digitalised, technologised, informational-ised world. Highlights include 'Flight Patterns' by Google digital design heavyweight Aaron Koblin, a beautiful, simplistic visual stylization of flight data recorded from aeroplane journeys over North America throughout a 24-hour period, and 'Tree', an interactive projection piece with branches blowing in response to wind directly outside the museum and shedding leaves that move along the ground as visitors walk amidst them, by Dutch artist Simon Heijdens.

There is a sense of wonder about these pieces were created in the first place but then questions are forgotten as you create a painting just by moving or you make the leaves on a virtual tree fall off just by walking up to it. You also end up having random conversations with strangers - a virtually unheard of phenomenon in any London gallery.

Decode: Digital Design Sensations on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL until April 11 2010.

Review: Babylon at the British Museum

Some say big exhibitions at the British Museum often look dry compared to the Tate Modern’s blockbusters or V&A’s fashion shows, but I thought Babylon was outstanding. It certainly deserves blockbuster status since the impression it leaves is of the inevitability of human nature and self destruction; as relevant now as it was thousands of years before we even started counting them.

The curators have expertly chosen to include art, poetry, audio tracks, and accessible, concise explanations to charge our interest in the ancient architectural relics. By evoking the imagination as well as the mind, a vanished civilization becomes reconstructed.

Some of the exhibits have never been seen in Britain before, and include awe-inspiring glazed brick panels from the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way, and a typographically stunning tablet describing the New Year celebrations in the city. With many such objects on display, the show aims to give visitors a real taste of everyday Babylonian life and culture.



Famous myths and stories are also explored including the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, together with some of the incredible Babylonian achievements that are still with us today. Try to imagine life without the the 60 second minute and 60 minute hour and you'll begin to appreciate just how much we owe to the people of Babylon...

As an aside, one of the images from the exhibition, pictured at the top (Julee Holcombe's "Babel Revisited') reminds me of a piece of work I did for the Financial Times pictured below.

Babylon: Myth or Reality on show at the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DG until March 15 2009.


Review: Tim Walker at the Design Museum

Above: Erin O’Connor, Jacquetta Wheeler and Lily Cole, Colchester, Essex, England, 2004, British Vogue

Ladies jumping out of books, coloured cats, a garden in a bathroom, a hanging model and the most stylish messy room. All from the imagination of Tim Walker, a fashion photographer with an amazing eye for absurd detail whose images are witty and playful yet sufficiently sophisticated for his high fashion clients.

His creations are daring, theatrical and full of a magic that has rightly earned him his place in the high ranks of fashion photography stardom, and a Vogue master lineage, at only 37 years of age.

Glam, decay, fantasy, impressive lighting - it's all there - and well worth seeing, at the Design Museum, Shad Thames, London,  SE1 2YD, until 28th September 2008.

Review: The bloke who does blotches and scribbles: Cy Twombly at the Tate Modern

'Cycles and Seasons' spotlights an artist who hasn't put a foot wrong in a 60-year career; he takes the casual, and makes it monumental"
Charles Darwent, The Independent, June 2008

Darwent has written an excellent review of the exhibition so I'm best to direct you there, but let me just say that I found this to be a stunning exhibition. Most attention-grabbing was Twombly's Four Seasons ("Quattro Stagioni") series created between 1993 and '94, pictured above.

...Did you also know that Twombly was in the news recently because a French woman kissed one of his paintings in a museum in Marseilles, France? She was wearing bright red lipstick, which stained the snowy white canvas. The painting was valued at over $2million, and the woman was charged with damaging the masterpiece.

Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons is at the Tate Modern, Bankside. London SE1 9TG, until September 14th.

Review: Psycho Buildings (Artists take on Architecture) at The Hayward Gallery

Psycho Buildings invites us to engross ourselves in a series of ten captivating and disconcerting installations that combine 2 and 3D design with the use of light, colour and smell to encourage viewers to become adventurous participants, and question what architecture means to us.

The installations that I really enjoyed experiencing included a roof top lake, designed like an infinity pool, looking like you could row yourself (or even throw yourself) right over the edge; a steel-plated “Life Tunnel”; a miniature outdoor cinema made of plywood and PVC; a red fabric staircase and an inflated transparent fabric sphere where visitors interact by climbing a staircase to the roof and then rolling and bouncing around while observers below enjoy the view.

Without a doubt, Psycho Buildings is an exhibition which has succeeded in getting people to re-examine and explore their relationship with their surroundings. It's a really fun exhibition that deserves to be the highlight of The Hayward’s 40th anniversary season,

Psycho Buildings is at The Hayward, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1, until August 25th.

Review: Vanity Fair Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

Vanity Fair was launched in 1913 by Condé Nast, whose vision was to produce an insightful magazine reflecting the era’s vibrant culture

Now 150 portraits of artistic, literary, sporting, fashion and high-society leading lights, photographed by legends from Cecil Beaton and Man Ray to Mario Testino and Annie Leibovitz,have been gleaned from its glossy pages to the walls of the National Portrait Gallery

In the early selection from 1913-1936, artists, dancers, writers, and scientists, such as Claude Monet, Albert Einstein, and Charlie Chaplin, hang next to society beauties such as Jean Harlow and Greta Garbo.

 Publication of Vanity Fair was suspended in 1936, owing to the Depression and stormy global events, but it relaunched again in the 1980s. The contemporary photos are more venturesome and we are treated to the likes of Tom Cruise, Keira Knightley, Madonna and George Clooney. And of course who can forget that front cover of a heavily pregnant Demi Moore.

If you're seriously interested in photography you shouldn't miss the Vanity Fair Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2, £8-£10, until May 26th. I thoroughly recommend it.

Review: From Russia at the Royal Academy

The critics have gone ga-ga for the Royal Academy's show of Russian and French masterpieces.

It is one of the most-talked about and highly anticipated exhibitions of recent months as more than 120 masterpieces from Russia's four great state museums have finally arrived in the capital.

Matisse's The Dance (above) was the highlight for me. The work was painted in 1910 for a Moscow sugar merchant and has never been seen before in this country. Other works on show included paintings by Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse together with those by Kandinsky, Tatlin and Malevich... quite a unique opportunity to explore the fascinating exchange that existed between French and Russian art during a crucial period that was witness to upheaval and revolution.

Of course there is general acknowledgment that a "pretty spectacular" multitude of treasures has arrived, but on the other hand the Guardian's art critic Adrian Searle, asks: who wants one damn masterpiece after another?"

Simon Jenkins, another critic, also picked up on the abundance of Russia's collections writing. "Russia has more works of global appeal than it can handle, yet needs more money to look after a fraction of what it has". He points out that most of these treasures are buried in vaults "which few people alive will ever see".

A great reason, then, to brave the crowds and book a ticket.

From Russia is at the Royal Academy, W1, until April 18

Review: Pop Art Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

I caught this show first thing on Saturday morning. It's a wonderful time to visit the National Portrait Gallery, as this early in the morning the exhibition space is still empty and you can have the place to yourself, enjoying an unblocked view of the works.

The show examines the role of portraiture within Pop Art bringing together key works by all the major Pop artists - Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein (USA) and Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and Patrick Caulfield (UK)

Using images of the famous and the notorious taken from the media, the Pop Art portraits created a new breed of fantasy portraiture using the influences of popular art and culture.

Comic books, magazines and other modern mediums were the inspiration for the Pop Art Artists to create altered and transformed images of instantly recognisable faces. An obsession with celebrity and the changing influence of fame, the images are often warped versions of a very familar face or versions of the artist themselves put through the media celebrity filtered lens.

A truly inspiring exhibition - full of colour, wit and lateral thinking.

Pop Art Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery
11 October 2007 -20 January 2008
£7.00-£9.00

Review: Alan Fletcher at the Design Museum

I caught this show just before it ended at the beautifully positioned Design Museum near Tower Bridge. A colourful and very inspiring exhibition for designers and non-designers alike, Alan Fletcher was the man uniquely responsible for defining British graphic design with his witty and individual approach from the late 1950s onwards.

"If, in another fifty years, the Design Museum decides to stage an exhibition of the great graphic designer of the age, what will there be to look at? Perhaps it’s a generational thing but the joy of the Fletcher show for me was in examining physical objects – of being able to see the real thing and not just a facsimile. But with media and, therefore, design becoming increasingly screen-bound, what will the Alan Fletcher of 2056 have to display? Just a whacking great screen? And will there be any point in going to a museum to see it"?

Patrick Burgoyne, Creative Review