Tigerprint

Free Range: Graduate Art & Design

The 9th annual Free Range at The Old Truman Brewery, London 29th May - 20th July 2009.

This is Europe's largest graduate art and design show with free admission. This is the hottest way to discover new creative talent. Over the eight week period, thousands of students from the UK’s top art and design colleges will exhibit their work. Free Range was set up to showcase the works of budding designers and artists to both public and potential employers alike, giving students the best opportunity to promote their work.

Each year the show has increased in size and popularity, making it a destination point for thousands of Londoners and lovers of visual arts. Over 150,000 people visited this free-entry show last year. In addition to the events, the work of thousands of exhibitors is showcased in the official Free Range catalogue and website.

Colour @ Tate Liverpool

This Colour exhibition runs from 29 May- 13 September 09- lots of interesting artists and how they use colour in their work. Take a look at the site- really interesting collaboration with Flickr and people sending in their own colour monochrome photos to create an individual colour palette.

University of East London - Degree Show

The graduating students of 2009 will be exhibiting their work at the University of East London; Visual Arts Degree Show from 5th June - 12th June 2009 and at New Designers, Islington from 9th July - 12th July 2009.

For further information about the Printed Textile Course and students, please
visit www.ueltextiles.com

Cardiff School of Art & Design

Be sure to check out Cardiff School of Art & Design Degree Show this summer.

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones is currently on at the V&A until 31st May 2009.

This exhibition is a collaboration between the V&A and one of the fashion world’s most prolific milliners, Stephen Jones. 

Stephen Jones began his career on graduating from St Martin’s School of Art in 1979. Since then he has produced hat collections twice a year under his label ‘Stephen Jones Millinery’, while also collaborating with some of the most prominent fashion houses and designers of our time, including Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, Thierry Mugler, Christian Dior, John Galliano, Comme des Garçons and Marc Jacobs.

Distinct from hat-making, with its large-scale production of standard hat types, millinery focuses on the creation and decoration of elegant, experimental and often whimsical hats. Jones permits us to examine the world of millinery from the inside out, following the life-cycle of a hat from its point of inception in the milliner’s mind to its final incarnation atop the wearer’s head.

If you manage to visit the exhibition let me know, I would love to know what you thought.

Willard Wiggan Micro Sculptor

From Friday 6 March, Harvey Nichols Leeds will be exhibiting the work of celebrated micro-sculptor, Willard Wigan.

Born in 1957 in Birmingham, Wigan began his artistic life at a tender age of 5, and has since received critical acclaim for his minute pieces.  He says, "I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn't hold me back and my teachers couldn't criticise me. And that's how my career as a micro-sculptor began."

The celebrated micro-sculptures, that commonly sit inside the eye of a needle or on top of a pin head, will be on display outside the Personal Shopping Department on the Second Floor.

Fig at Impressions Gallery, Bradford

Fig.

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin

Until 18th Jan 2009

Artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin create a contemporary take on the Victorian 'cabinet of curiosities' in this collection of over eighty photographs made by them over the last three years currently on show at the Impressions Gallery in Bradford.

The exhibition features an astonishing range of still lives, portraits and landscape images made both in the UK and abroad. Subjects include fantastical objects from museum collections such as a 'Merman' skeleton, a single leaf blown from a tree in Tel Aviv by the blast of a suicide bomb, the hand of the world's tallest living man, and the plastic bag collection of 'Aunty Ethnie', a relative of the artists.

Displayed and numbered in a pseudo-scientific way, each image has an accompanying caption written by the artists - hence the title Fig., an abbreviation of the word figure, a term used in museum catalogues. These personal captions allow them to ingeniously connect their disparate subjects, often in witty, unexpected, and moving ways.

Broomberg and Chanarin are clearly interested in tracing the links between photography and the colonial impulse to acquire, map and collect the world.

RCA Secret

Olafur Eliasson

Manolo Blahnik

Paul Smith

RCA Secret is one of the most unique art events in the U.K which promotes the work of up and coming artists. The idea is simple – invite famous artists and young art students to submit an original piece of art with just two rules – the art work must be completed on a postcard and it must be signed on the reverse, keeping the artists’ identity a secret. All cards are sold in a one-day sale, with each card costing just £40 each.

2,700 art works were on display this year, with over a thousand artists responding to the invitation. All areas of fine art practice are represented: painting, printmaking, sculpture, and photography, using diverse materials and methods.

Have a look at the website to see all the postcards created here.

Bradford Animation Festival

The Bradford Animation Festival will be held 12th - 15th November at the National Media Museum in Bradford. The festival will include special guests, sneak previews, retrospectives, workshops and competition screenings culminating in the BAF Awards on Saturday 15 November.

Tickets are selling out fast so be sure to check out the website for full details and tickets.

P.s Don't forget the E-Greeting Competition which we are currently running.

Manchester Artists' Book Fair

The annual Manchester Artist's Book Fair will be held this Saturday 8th November at the Holden Gallery at Manchester Metropolitan University. The fair will be open to the public 11 am - 5.30 pm and there will be 45 stands as well as the MMU special collection of artists' books. For more details and the gallery of books see here.