Pick Me Up is a graphic art festival, filled with may upcoming talented artists, printmakers and designers. Held right by the river bank at Somerset House, it has been a kicking off the perfect start to sprint for the past few years. I haven't noticed much change in terms of layout of the exhibition from last year, I guess its all about viewing the works and taking part of workshops, the layout itself doesn't play a big part in the exhibition as such. This year I saw quite a few new featured artists and the exhibition, who are worth keeping an eye out for, such as Malarky and Hettie Stewart. Both artists have a unique style and a lot of vibrancy going on in their works. While Hettie Stewarts's works are more paper based, Malarky is out and about on the streets making London a more colourful place.
I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the whole show, it was filled with all kinds of people, creatives and those who just enjoy the art. Having numerous workshops around the place also adds to the relaxed and happy environment, and its great that you can learn a new skill while enjoying yourself at an exhibition.
This is a permanent exhibition based on Austrian architecture in 20th and 21st Centuries. The exhibition took place in a specially dedicated space for architecture at the MuseumsQuartier (Museum Square), I thought this multicultural space was great for such exhibition. Its the best way to familiarise yourself with surrounding buildings and their history if you are new to the city. In the gallery space a viewer is there to be an observer, however there were a lot of books and information provided in order to enlighten viewers knowledge of the exhibits.
A lot of architecture was taken from the modernist movement, at the beginning of the 20th Century modernism started to evolve due to technological advances and changes in society. All buildings were simplified and stripped from the decorative details, with various geometric shapes introduced. This particular architectural movement is one of my favourites, mostly because I believe an architectural structure looks at its best in a simple form and when able to preform the given purpose. While looking around the gallery I tried to pick out parts of design that are useful to my practise, the two works that caught my eye were a car advertisement poster which used some lovely typography and beautiful illustrations, and a cover of an architecture journal, very minimal composition and great use of type with photography.
After viewing this exhibition, I really wanted to explore the city and find some of the buildings to view them in person. During our trip we managed to find two architectural pieces around the city, and they looked magnificent in real life.
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The Typopassage Vienna
"Although lettering is for the most part taken for granted and not consciously perceived it is indeed one of the most important cultural media of our world"
As a typography enthusiast I was glad to see that one of Vienna's biggest Art and Design museums has dedicated a separate space just for type.
This was a single artists exhibition by MacDonald Gill held at the Kemistry Gallery. The exhibition layout was quite nice, the room was surrounded by various maps and in the middle of the floor there were three dimensional objects placed on a table which were connected to the subject of maps, items collected by travelling etc. I didn't find this particular exhibition interesting, I don't have much interest in maps and couldn't really connect to the theme of these particular works.
Google Web Lab was a cross discipline exhibition, held at the Science Museum. I found the atmosphere of this exhibition very exciting, and I could see how it brought out children in adults. At the entrance you have to go up to a tiny machine which gives you a card at the press of a button, each card is different with colourful geometric shapes on it. This card is provided in order to operate the instruments and other interactive objects at the exhibition. As a viewer I felt really involved in the show, and wanted to try all the different innovations Google has offered us. I thought it was great the way people on the other side of the world were being filmed or were controlling some of the interactive objects via internet. It was great to see art being mixed with technology and science, and people being excited about scientific and technological experiments.
One of my favourite pieces was the musical machine, where you could produce music by connecting various coloured dots on the screen, each dot represented and instrument that was boxed in a see through container in front of you.
Overall I thought this exhibition was a great success, very inspirational and fun.
New York Kings was a group show, held at the Pure Evil Gallery. This exhibition contained many famous graffiti writers from NY. "A unique exhibition of the godfathers of graffiti art using New York subway maps as their canvas to tell their 30 year story while remaining true to their roots. This is a rare opportunity to see examples of a genre that is often temporary by its very nature."
Pure Evil gallery is a very small and hidden space, but it suited this particular exhibition perfectly, as the public doesn't get much insight in to the world of graffiti writers anyway.
I really enjoyed this exhibition, there were many outstanding works, some of my favourite techniques were collaging and preparing backgrounds for the final piece.
Sound and Vision exhibition was a single artist show by Shepard Fairey, held at the Stolen Space Gallery. I thought this show was one of the most interesting ones I have seen so far in terms of layout and curating. There was a small exhibition in the main gallery, few steps outside on the corner there was a store selling Obey merchandise, even the shop had some lovely touches to it in the theme of this show. In another, much bigger space was where the main exhibition took place. And he pasted his works around Shoreditch in order to promote the exhibition. You could really make an evening out of this whole event. As a viewer I was intrigued and couldn't get enough of the art work. Shepard Fairey uses such a big variety of materials and techniques to produce his work, sometimes big masses of work can be unpleasantly overwhelming like when you go to a museum for example, but this was different because each piece had so much character and vibrancy to it there was no way of getting sick of seeing everything.
I cant put my finger on a favourite piece of his, but I do like a couple of techniques he used. Collage is one of them, he pastes on layers up on layers of various aged advertisement and newspaper sheets to create a background and then screen prints designs on to it. Second technique is screen printing on to metal and wood, its something I always wanted to try.
Overall the show was great, he really made an event out of an exhibition, we don't get too see many other artists doing so very often.
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