Arty updates, The Art Car Boot Fair and Vienna



An image from a recent press shoot on Ridley Road Market
Photo by Phil Whitby

So first things first, a huge THANK YOU to all who contributed or pledged for art pieces on our fundraiser page. With all your help we managed to raise enough funds to get the work to Vienna and to produce a 16 page booklet which will accompany the exhibition and will have an essay on myself and Tinsel written by renowned artist Graham Crowley in it. We are over the moon to have the means to now create something worthy of this essay, as Graham is a highly respected and talented painter who has possibly more energy than anyone I've ever met in my life!

We'll be posting the text from this essay soon so people can read it who wont be able to get copies of the booklet.

And in the meantime we have been extremely busy bees preparing for the Art Car Boot Fair on Brick Lane which is happening on June 9th.

The Art Car Boot Fair has many exciting artists taking part, and in the words of the Art Car Boot organisers themselves:

"We’ll be pushing the boot out for the maddest, eye-poppingly fabulous Art Car Booter to date as we celebrate ten years of fun, frivolity and astonishing art bargains. Anyone with a few quid in their pocket can become a collector for the day, and there’s so much to do and see besides! The wonderful spirit of the Art Car Boot Fair gets a fresh injection of talent every year and all artists are hand picked to let their hair down and flog their fabulous art from their car boots!"

The list of artists is now up on their website with big names like Tracy Emin, Pam Hogg, Gavin Turk, Bob and Roberta Smith to name a few also taking part.

Me and Tinsel will be there with our Bank of Twinkle and Tinsel collecting visitors thoughts and feelings on the economy and also will have a stall selling some of our limited edition prints, including a brand new one which is our first collaborative print titled 'Capital Divided' and is an A4 giclee print edition of 40.

We'll be selling them for £20 each and donating £4 from each sale of this print to the chosen charity by the Art Car Boot Fair called Just For Kids Law. I also want to add a massive thank you to Mark from Atom Printing who made this print possible.


'Capital Divided' edition of 40 A4 giclee print
 

Our kidnapped banker will also be making an appearance and will be forced to collect money for this charity instead of collecting money for the bank he works for!
We have just been interviewed about our plans for the Art Car Boot Fair by Francesca for Run Riot which you can read here: http://www.run-riot.com/articles/blogs/revel-riot-and-rebellion-art-car-boot-fair

I will also have brand new prints of some of my newest paintings available for the first time, including A Gannet's Stomach is Never Full, The Sick Lion, and In War Truth is Always the First Casualty. These were once again printed by Atom Printing:

A Gannet's Stomach is Never Full

The Sick Lion

In War Truth is Always the First Casualty

And then later on this month me and Tinsel will be boarding a plane to Vienna to prepare for the exhibition there at Galerie Michaela Stock and to stage our Bank of T&T in various places around the city. The opening night for the exhibition is on June 27th and we are so excited we can't wait to get over there! It's such a wonderful place so to be having a show there is a dream come true, and the biggest thank you ever to everyone who helped make that dream possible with your support!

We'll be posting news and updates about our Vienna escapades very soon so please do keep an eye out.

The Sick Lion - a new painting

The Sick Lion
Acrylic on canvas

The fable of The Fox and the Sick Lion is a story about an old lion who lives in a cave, and too tired to hunt he feigns sickness so other animals will visit him to pay their respects. Upon their visit the lion eats the animals up one by one. A fox also comes to visit but stays outside of the cave. The Lion asks why the Fox wont enter the cave to which the fox replies "because I can see plenty of footprints going in, but none coming out".

There are a few interpretations as to what the moral of this fable is, one being that 'the dangers of others are generally of advantage to the wary' (Phaedrus), or that 'the powerful are untrustworthy' (La Fontaine).

However, during research of this fable I found out that some of the earliest perceptions had economic foundations.

A Latin poet named Horace had included this fable in his first Epistle as a way to convey and criticise the 'get rich quick' culture of the Roman Bankers, something which resonates significantly today.

Also going back to ancient Greece, Socrates had also referred to this particular fable in relation to the Spartan economy asking "and as to gold and silver, there is more of them in Lacedaemon than in all the rest of Hellas, for during many generations gold has been always flowing in to them from the whole Hellenic world... but who ever saw the trace of money going out of Lacedaemon?".

There are further ideas to be found as to what the fable alludes to, but it was the representation of the lion as a figure of greed which fascinated me the most. The fact that the issues of greed that both Horace and Socrates were describing are still so pertinent to us in the here and now, once again reveals our struggles as human beings to learn and grow from our mistakes which have reoccurred throughout history.

And so it was the lion who I wanted to portray from this story, as he represents something that so many of us are fighting against today, both within ourselves and on a global scale. And the reason I say 'within ourselves' is that at the basis of greed is fear and a desire to receive for the self alone which both create these global and very human problems. And surely to overcome greed we need to be aware we all have the ability to suffer these traits (I'm not saying we all do, but none of us are perfect!), just on very different scales.

I painted my sick lion wearing a suit which is one of the most expensive ever made,  designed by Richard Jewels of Manchester & Stuart Hughes of Liverpool. Consisting of 480 diamonds, the suit is worth £599,000. The lion in my painting was created to not appear sick. I didn't want there to be anything wrong with him on the surface. His sickness is not physical, his sickness is his greed.

Help Twinkle and Tinsel make it happen for 'Affluence and Avarice - An exhibition at Galerie Michaela Stock in Vienna' on Indiegogo‏



As some of you will already know, and for those who don't, I am off to magical Vienna in June with Tinsel as we have been invited to hold a joint exhibition at Galerie Michaela Stock and to take one of our interactive art performances 'The Bank of Twinkle & Tinsel' with us during a two week residency.

 

The gallery we are exhibiting with is an independent gallery and is situated amongst lots of other independent and established galleries, so needless to say the opportunity is a fantastic one for us! We will be able to exhibit our work to a completely new and extended audience, and also will be able to interact with people and gain an insight into how global economics are affecting them via the Bank of Twinkle & Tinsel.

 

The Bank of Twinkle & Tinsel trades in thoughts and not currency. We ask people to write their thoughts and feelings in response to current global economic issues on bespoke bank notes (pictured below) which then go on display to share with others.

 

We already have had some insight into how Austria has been affected by the recession in that funding and investment in the arts has been slashed considerably, leaving galleries like Galerie Michaela Stock without the financial backing they need to continue with their work which is often with artists like myself and Tinsel to give us a platform to present our work. The same has happened in the UK and funding for artists is a lot harder to come by.

The Sick Lion

One of my pieces going to Vienna

 

So this is why we have decided to look outside and ask for help. We need funding for two vital elements for the show. The first one is the shipment of our paintings to Vienna at the end of May, and the second is for the accompanying catalogue for which we have been fortunate enough to have the foreword written by renowned and established artist Graham Crowley.

In total we are looking to raise £3000 to cover these costs. We have got 30 days to make this happen!

 

Below you will find a link to a crowd funding page myself and Tinsel have set up for 'Affluence and Avarice - An exhibition at Galerie Michaela Stock in Vienna'.

We would really appreciate if you can take a moment to check it out on Indiegogo and also share it with your friends. All the tools are there. Get perks, make a contribution, or simply follow updates. If enough of us get behind it, we can make 'Affluence and Avarice - An exhibition at Galerie Michaela Stock in Vienna' happen!

'http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/360185/emal/2692442'

If you have any questions at all please do ask as I will be happy to answer! And if you can't help us by pledging please do help us by passing this on to any friends, family and colleagues you think would be interested in supporting the arts.
 

Thanks so much for reading!
 

 

Beyond the Britishness

Politics, history and the human condition; these are the central themes of my practice. These themes are explored through painting using symbolism, historical art and our cultural history including fables, myths, anthropomorphism and allegorical stories.

Those of you who already know my work might have noticed the absence of one word which has been prevalent within my practise for the last 10 years, Britishness. It's been a long time coming, and feels like it's been a long time in the progression stages but my work has moved it's focus, the pendulum has finally swung away from my 'Britishness' banner under which I created all of my work.

I've always used cultural references and historical art within my work, but the use of fables, anthropomorphism and symbolism is where the fork in the road has taken me. I feel I can also be quite broad, I don't feel bound by these new areas of interest, but feel the scope can be wide and my references as loose or as precise as I would like them to be.

From my 'musings of an artist in progress' blog almost a year ago, where upon I had just done my first freehand painting in years which was of a dove with a gnarled foot, I have moved into brand new pastures to explore my fascination with the human condition and the heels that are dug so deep into the ground when it comes to change or learning from mistakes of the past.

It's been quite a slow process as I've practically started from scratch both in content and style. My Dove With a Gnarled Foot lead me to reading about what different animals have symbolised to us throughout the ages, and how the image of these animals can be used to convey thoughts and ideas. This also lead to reading about Aesop and his fables, his use of anthropomorphic characters being used to try and moralise human behaviour; and to reading about Greek and Roman mythology as well as tales from the East. And what struck me about all of these ancient stories and tales was how they can still resonate today, on a global scale.

Representations and allegories of peace and war, greed, honour, hunger and poverty, generosity, all huge issues we are still delaing with in the world today can be found in these old stories.

So while I might still deal with an issue which is here in Britain, or I might still reference Britain as a British artist, the crux of my work is no longer about that.

Below are some of the images I have found along the way, including a couple of my own. I am almost finished with the second piece in my portraiture collection to go with my 'Gannet's Stomach is Never Full'.  The piece is called 'The Sick Lion' and is taken from one of Aesop's fables and I will be writing about that here very soon.



A Frog Sitting on Coins and Holding a Sphere;
An Allegory of Avarice by Jacques de Gheyn II

The Hare, the Turtle and The Fox by William Reynolds Pepper

One of my studies: Butterfly with a Torn Wing detail (in progress)

The Dog and the Shadow by Thomas Bewick

Gustav Klimt 'Fable'

One of mine: Dove with a Gnarled Foot detail

A Gannet's Stomach is Never Full



A Gannet's Stomach is Never Full
Acrylic on canvas 73 x 55cm

I have just completed a new painting of which this blog has the same title. It is the head of a gannet placed upon the tux wearing torso of a Bullingdon Club member.

One of the main questions in my mind during the construction of the idea and carrying out the painting was 'how much is enough?'. Something I have stated previously in relation to some of my artwork is I am not against wealth. I am not at all opposed to people who know how to generate and make money, who can actually use their skills and their understanding of how money works, to make more of it. But money is a huge responsibility and it takes strong shoulders to carry the 'burden' and use it properly and positively, and without greed. I do feel it's what you do with your money that counts. Where this thought becomes entwined with current politics is that I like many many others also feel that our government seems determined to be as cheapskate as possible with people who have the least whilst creating more and more wealth for the already wealthy...and that is from the nature of greed.

Now it would be very unfair of me to suggest that anyone who is or has been in the Bullingdon Club is a gannet, and that certainly isn't the purpose of this painting. The Bullingdon tux is being used as a reference to the privileged roots of many of the politicians currently running our country, with London's mayor Boris Johnson and our Prime Minister David Cameron themselves members once upon a time.

As cuts are being made to the NHS, the police, the fire service, the arts sector, privatisation causing huge costs to the consumer with energy bills and travel, the whole pastygate affair and now even a hike in alcohol prices to try and 'deter' heavy drinkers (by this they must simply mean 'heavy drinkers without money' as heavy drinking will still be affordable for the well off by this new ruling) I have often read these headlines and had visions of politicians as gannets swirling over the everyday people, swooping down and grabbing at anything they can get their hands on, while they get fatter the rest of the country have to make do with less.

One thing I feel sure we should be proud of is that, although we may not have had it perfecty figured out,  here in the UK we were a society which had built itself up to be one that looked after each other with the welfare state and the NHS. Even if we were still making mistakes and working out how to make it even more 'fair' I believe it is a model that we should protect and use to inspire other areas of the world which arent quite so keen to look after each other. I want to be from a country that will lead the way in providing support those with less and wont buldoze the least well off people into carrying the more well off through times of turbulence.

The West Bank Lovebirds

A few months back I began working on a couple of studies for an eventually larger piece called The West Bank Lovebirds.

The ideas for the works aren't a comment specifically about the troubles in the Middle East, they are a comment about war in a much broader sense. But they are inspired very much by the huge wall that divides Israel and Palestine.

I think it would take someone who really and truly has their head in the clouds to not know about the new wave of extreme violence occurring there at the moment. The war is ongoing, and the argument from both sides of 'we'll only stop firing rockets when they stop' is alarming and distressing as it appears to show no end. It ironically shows both sides coming from the same place, to destroy human life in the name of not wanting to be the one who puts up the white flag,

On the various social networking groups I am part of (mostly Facebook and Twitter) there is no shortage of opinions and emotions to be found in relation to this war. There are people saying they hope it's not WW3, some desperately defending the side they have an alliance with, and lots of people adding to the anger with sweeping judgements on both sides of the wall, many questioning the politics of all the other nations somehow involved, and many people just simply questioning 'what is it all about?'.

To me this wall represents something that happens between humans on a daily basis on many different levels. Casting sweeping judgements in anger on a personal level or from afar is akin to putting up walls and creating barriers between us and a peaceful existence. The fighting has to stop EVERYWHERE.

People all over need to stop fighting over who is right and who is wrong and put human life over pride, land, religion and history. If Israel and Palestine manage to find peace imagine what a path that could create for conflicting countries and individuals everywhere. I'm not suggesting it will be easy, internal struggles, struggles in personal relationships, struggles with our own governments and politics show how complex these issues are. But when it is an issue about our own humanity to one another what other answers are there?

To me the image of the lovebirds on the West Bank wall is to show it is only us who does this to each other. We put up the barriers and create the wars. Nature doesn't see the wall or even care about it. Two lovebirds could quite easily land on this wall and overcome it's significance without realising it. In a way the significance of the wall becomes insignificant when love overcomes it.

I know this is a very obvious statement to make (I'm guessing some will see it as naive or ignorant), but I wouldn't have guessed that from reading all the Facebook updates and twitterings of personal opinions. Sometimes when things are so obvious we overlook them, and I think to show love and be vulnerable takes a lot more strength than to fight and stay angry. So here is my first study for West Bank Lovebirds. I'll be pursuing with new pieces under this title in the very near future, now more than ever I understand my own purpose in wanting to paint them.

A Mini Retrospective and Banker Kidnap

On July 5th myself and Tinsel Edwards are opening an exhibition at the brand new A-Side B-Side gallery in Hackney. The joint exhibition is a mini retrospective of both of our works from the last 6 years and is set to have a look at the process we have both been through and where we are at now.

Alongside the exhibition we are also staging an interactive art piece based on a 'Kidnapped Banker'. We went to the RBS building in Liverpool St to photograph us as we waited for a banker to emerge from inside and as you can see were heavily and successfully disguised!





The whole idea of kidnapping a banker is intended as a tongue in cheek way to create a space within our exhibition for people to tell us and each other their own personal feelings and opinions and ideas about the current financial situation we are in.

At the private view we will be handing out Twinkle and Tinsel bank notes upon which we want people to write their thoughts. These bank notes will then be pinned around the banker creating a visual display which both plays up to the general current opinion on bankers which is very much the standpoint of the media and hopefully in some ways will also challenge it too. We want to know about individual opinions to see how we can all move forward and all take part in making it better.

We will also be showing documentation and memorabilia from previous public art stunts such as our Traffic Wardens piece where we fined cars with parking ticket bags, but inside the bag was free art, and our Opinionated Objects where we asked people to bring us their unwanted objects which through the use of text and paint up-cycled into pieces of art.

Both myself and Tinsel have a lot of ideas in our works which are social and political issues, and so it is through a mini retrospective that we want to see how these ideas have progressed and changed over the years both in how we approach them and create the works.

I will be showing some older pieces like 'Twinkle Troughton My Life Story So Far Part 1' and ending with my newest piece 'Dove with a Gnarled Foot'. I think an artist's journey is a fascinating subject no matter how established artists are. If you constantly push yourself to move forwards then the overall affect can take years to become evident. The changes in my work are now more evident though and would look very in-cohesive alongside one another:





And I hope the filled in gaps in between the two alongside Tinsel's work will create an insightful display of how an artist develops as well as create a new chapter for me to move into in the future.

Below I have included some of the text from a recent interview with West London gallery Debut Contemporary who asked us all about the upcoming exhibition and the Banker Kidnap plan!

Debut Contemporary: Can you tell a bit more about the mini retrospective (and kidnapped banker!)

Tinsel: We are kidnapping a banker (not because we have a vendetta against bankers!), but because we want to find out what people really think and feel about the global economic crisis..... At the exhibition opening we will be handing out Tinsel & Twinkle banknotes, asking visitors to write their thoughts, solutions and opinions onto them, the notes will then be pinned around the banker forming a visual display. The media update us daily, but we want to know how people REALLY feel, and if they think there is a solution. Decisions are made by politicians, debate is fuelled by the media reports, instead this is an artistic response to the issue of the economic crisis.

Twinkle: As Tinsel said we don't have a vendetta against bankers, our choice of the kidnapped banker is based on how bankers are rightly or wrongly being portrayed in the press. The image or idea of a banker speaks a lot of words at the moment. What we ultimately want to create at our exhibition is a space where people tell their own feelings and ideas on the current financial struggles which isn't being asked from them in a political environment. We do however intend to invite Dianne Abbott the local MP along to the show so she can have a chance to see what people are saying and feeling in this ongoing problem. Whether she will be able to come along or not is not yet known.

This will be alongside a collection of works by us which spans over the last 6 years. Our works nearly always have social commentary or social issues at the heart of it, so the kidnapped banker and Tinsel and Twinkle money should work together as a whole as well as individual pieces.

DC: Why did you decide on the retrospective this early on?

Tinsel: To really understand an artists motivations its crucial to see a large cross section of their work, we hope that this retrospective show will give people the opportunity to see the development and overview of our artistic interests spanning 6 years. We called it 'mini' because its not like we are in our 70s and we are looking back on years and years worth of paintings! but it is a good few years worth, and these works as a collection tell the story of our journeys as artists.

Twinkle: There isn't too much more I can add to what Tinsel has said here as she has put our reasons for a mini-retrospective in a nutshell. However I do also think that artists don't have to be established or be an institution before they have a history of their own worth looking at, all artists have a journey they have travelled and I think that can be fascinating at any level.

DC: What are you hoping to achieve from the show?

Tinsel: On a personal note I hope that seeing the works together as a collection will give me an overview of all the hard work I've put in over the last decade! Working on an individual painting and being obsessed by it, neurotic and passionate about it is one thing, but being able to step back and see it within a context will hopefully feel rewarding. My work has been undergoing a massive transformation in recent years, and putting this show together feels like letting go of older concerns and moving forward with new ones.

Twinkle: It's definitely marking a full stop for me and helping me to create a new chapter. I am also really looking forward to seeing an overview as it can sometimes feel like a long process from having an idea for a piece of work, turning that into a piece of work, exhibiting it, and then moving forward in both content and technique. I think seeing a collection of works spanning over a few years will give a really good idea of how progress has occurred rather than seeing all new works within one space. I also think that even though me and Tinsel work individually we do also work closely on talking through ideas and inspiration and agonising over problems, so we have both helped each other move forward and it will be great to see how the story of both of our artworks have evolved together.

You can read the full interview here: http://www.debutcontemporary.com/blog/2012/6/6/tinsel-twinkle-kidnap-banker.html