“Self(ish)” @ Art Beat Gallery, Brussels, until 30th June 2009:

I am pleased to announce that a solo exhibition of my ‘Self(ish) Characters’ series of works will open at the Art Beat Gallery in Brussels next week, the opening is on 11th June from 7.p.m. and the show runs until 30th June.

Also I’m pleased to announce that I won the Royal Photographic Societies Rejlander Competition with my image ‘Self(ish) Characters #14′, of all the entries the RPS said they felt mine was ‘the most creative and that it was to a high technical standard.’ (image below)

EDIT: I won the Competition with this!!

It turns out not sleeping properly for many days is rather productive for me…. 

Opinions please.

x

This is a re-post, in the form of a re-edit, in the form of a reference to a previous post(s), in the true to postmodernist ideal of something being nothing but a link to something else… Since I apparently can’t decide on what to do with these images and I keep playing… Here’s something “pretty” to look at:

Ah… Cindy, oh how I love thee…
Figured since she has some new work about, has been featured in the Sunday Times Magazine recently, and of course is simply someone who everyone should know about I’d do a People You Should Know on Cindy Sherman… After all she takes photos using herself to model characters too… enjoy (new work is at the bottom, two of these I hadn’t even seen before, god bless google image search!):

Also heres a nice video I found where some lady talks about the new work, lets you see some more of them…

p.s. I find it hilarious that when googling her to get the images for this I was directed to my own blog on page two of the google image search with the Alex Prager images that I posted in a previous p.y.s.k. because I tagged that with Cindy Sherman considering the blatant influence Sherman’s early work has had on Prager…

The mad tea party from Ralph Steadman’s illustrations of Alice…

I found that image earlier… its probably what the inside of my mind looks like sometimes… other times its a lot more elaborate…

Sometimes you can really surprise yourself… I’ve been cleaning through my computer today, something woefully overdue. What shocked me was something I found that I’d written a good while ago and just stashed in a folder of very random thoughts on my previous computer which then got saved when I put all that on an external drive… Something about it struck me. I’m going to share it simply because I want to, its not outstandingly profound, or original, but I wrote it nevertheless….

“Sometimes it’s best not to think. Don’t think about the things that you need to do; the things that are bringing you down; things that have happened; things you know will happen or even things you enjoy. Thought only serves to ruin a moment or create tension where it is not needed. Thought reduces something amazing down to words, reducing the wonder of natural heights to the form of a sentence, a sentence no one will read. Indescribable wonders become one liners. Compartmentalized and thrown away into memory. Either that or thought blows the simple up into a string of questions, worries, and pains. A deadline becomes a menacing gate, chained and impassable looming before you sensationallised into impenetrable darkness, panic sets in and creates inertia.

Instead spend time in ignorant bliss, focus on the present, the now. Its too transient not to. You would betray the moment to not give it your attention. Imagine a world of pure moments; collected pain; ravished joy; last looks and new beginnings. There’s no waiting for the next ‘thing’ to happen because the next ‘thing’ is now. The now. This moment, me typing sitting in my room listening to music, enjoying the simplicity. The now; the sip of coffee that you take and taste to the full. Now; sitting waiting for a bus watching all the people rushing around you, thinking about where they need to be. Busying away they’re lives waiting… in between ‘things’.

There is too much waiting, I spend most of my time unconsciously sitting around waiting for what I feel will be my life. Waiting for the mystical beginning of something ‘real’. An imagined hyper-reality that plays out entirely in my mind whilst the real slips further away. My life has been the start of a movie, the first 30 minutes of contextualisation, character introductions and backgrounds, before the real adventure starts. Who knows what that real adventure should be, but there is this expectation that there will be one. I find myself thinking like that instead of enjoying the now. Always looking towards an imagined horizon. A distant and unknown fallacy. The life of a dreamer, always spent gazing into nothing but the world created behind my own eyes. A world where the snow never darkens. The colours never fade. But the moments arent real. A world created by thought. A thought that corrupts the real by obsessing over each detail, retreating to a world where everything goes right instead of facing the antithesis.

So, no to thinking, no to obsessing, down with rationality and down with responsibility. No more waiting for something to happen, something magical, something dramatic, something from a movie.

Happiness in the moment, the simple things.

No regrets.”

Like I said sometimes you just surprise yourself, perhaps I’ve been away from creativity for too long, but that gave me a jolt when I read it… I think I’ve become too entrenched in the mundanity of my current life, I need to take my own advice.

What happens when you take my favourite book ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll and divide it by one of my favourite photographers Annie Leibovitz… add in some of the worlds top fashion designers (both in person and in attire) and print it in the pages of Vogue….

This does (oh and my mind explodes with joy):

The Model is Natalia Vodianova as Alice here with Olivier Theyskens…

Tom Ford as the White Rabbit…

Marc Jacobs (?)

Karl Lagerfeld…

Jean Paul Gaultier as the Chesire Cat…

Viktor and Rolf as Tweedledee and Tweedledum…

Stephen Jones as the Hatter and Christian Lacroix as the March Hare… 

John Galliano as the Queen of Hearts and as his King Alexis Roche…

Donatella Versace and Rupert Everett for the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon… 

Nicolas Ghesquière of Balenciaga as Alice’s Cat Dina… 

Now 1) if I need to explain to you who these people are you need a slap, and 2) if I need to explain the characters or situations from the books to you, you need more than a slap…