Linefeed » Events

Event: KK Exports

Michael — Sat, 23 May 2009 13:48:33 +0000

It’s only a couple of weeks now until KesselsKramer deliver their strange cargo to an unsuspecting Australian public in the form of a poster exhibition, a workshop, a seminar and exclusive screening of their film entitled ‘The Other Final: A KesselsKramer Documentary’. So an event to suit all comers then. I want to go to all four, although a poster exhibition is usually enough to placate your humble author. The whole she-bang goes under the title of KesselsKramer Exports and is held in conjunction with the willfully obtuse agency… er, thingy… The Surgery from June 5th [thesurgery.com.au/kesselskramer]. In the meantime here’s a couple of posters for the Hans Brinker Hotel [hans-brinker.com] that helped hoist KesselsKramer into the public eye featuring artwork by Anthony Burrill [anthonyburrill.com].

Event: GhostBox Exhibition

Michael — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:30:56 +0000

Noel Gallagher (possibly not the most reliable of sources) recently described Julian House, rightly or wrongly, as “the most expensive designer in London”. It was a typically off the cuff remark. If he’d said ‘prolific’ he might have been closer to the truth, having creatively steered campaigns and music videos for, not only Oasis but also, Primal Scream, Stereolab and Broadcast. There’s a great list of his works over at [rateyourmusic.com].

Prompted by his involvement with the Ghost Box record label (he’s a co-founder and releases music via the label under the moniker of The Focus Group) [ghostbox.co.uk], Mr House has just put together his first proper solo exhibition entitled ‘The New Spirit Happening’ at The Changing Room in Stirling of all places [stirling.gov.uk/changingroom].

The exhibition promises an intermingling of screenprints (what you can buy), moving image work and various ephemera with the theme being a fictional place known as The Spirit Hall in a fictional town known as Belbury and the supernatural events that occur there. There will also be performances by various friends of Ghost Box such as Broadcast and Drew Mulholland (Julian House is DJing too) as part of the Le Weekend Music Festival [leweekendfestival.com].

Event: Colophon2009 Secret Spy

Michael — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:51:23 +0000

Linefeed’s secret spy at Colophon2009 [colophon2009.com] can now be revealed. It was Mr Steven Gregor, creator of the excellent Gym Class Magazine [gymclassmagazine.com] — Issue 2 launched at Colophon. Now available everywhere. Grab it. It’s rad. — Steven will be posting an interview with the guys behind Kasino A4 [wearekasino.com] magazine for us who ran the excellent Grayscale Bar at the event. In the meantime check out some secret spycam pics via his Flickr site [flickr.com]. That’s a picture of the magazine store below. Roll on 2011!

Event: Colophon Mags are Go!

Michael — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:45:34 +0000

Magazines stepping up to bat as part of the Colophon2009 Magazine Symposium [colophon2009.com] have been announced. Taking over various venues around Luxembourg this year will be Kasino A4 from Finland [wearekasino.com], Volume from the Netherlands [archis.org/volume], La Más Bella from Spain [lamasbella.org], IdN from China [idnworld.com], Good from the States [good.is], Sang Bleu from Switzerland [sangbleu.com], Nuke from France [guillaume.paquin.free.fr], Karen from the UK [karenmagazine.com], BabyBabyBaby from Mexico [babybabybaby.com.mx], Liebling from Germany [liebling-zeitung.com] and Sneaker Freaker from Australia [sneakerfreaker.com]. Blimey, what a line up! It’s like some sort of magazines Olympics! Colophon runs from the 13th to the 15th of March and is worth every penny… er, euro… er, dollar… Read about Colophon2007 here [linefeed/category/events/colophon_2007].

Need to Know Basis: November 2008

Michael — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:34:02 +0000

Bargains! Bargains! Bargains! Get on down to Somerset House for the åbäke Garage Sale tomorrow to pick up cheap and cheerful Kitsune CDs [kitsune.fr] and loads of other stuff as part of the top Wouldn’t It Be Nice exhibition [somersethouse.org.uk] (sweeps the floor with the Design Museum’s ‘Design Cities’ exhibition [see 959]) ❤ Boicozine’s favourite ex-i-D Art Director, Stephen Male [via Flickr], has taken to helm at US Vogue [vogue.com] although you can’t tell just yet. We’ll be keeping a close eye on those butt-ugly horizontally scaled cover lines to see if he can make them right ❤ It’s all about collectives these days. This week’s collective (don’t worry, it’s this isn’t going to be a regular feature) goes by the name of the Goodfellas Network [goodfellasnetwork.com]. The Goodfellas are a truly international group for creative types including ex-Boicozine contributor Luis Mendo, who now runs the very excellent BladBlog [bladblog.nl] and Joachim Baan [anothercompany.org] amongst others ❤ Matt Pyke aka Universal Everything [via Vimeo] has been curating a collection of moving image works on the theme of synasthesia through his Advanced Beauty website and has just announcing the first Advanced Beauty DVD, available for pre-order now [advancedbeauty.org] ❤ Another ex-mitDR [thedesignersrepublic.com] employee, Michael C Place is a name any design geek will recognise instantly as Mr Build, well just ‘Build’ really [wearebuild.com]. He is currently doing a nice line in graphic interactivity through his Flickr site. Join in… [via Flickr] ❤ Every band should have an archive like this, for the lovingly collated artwork alone… [niagara.edu/neworder]. A weirdly elaborate version of the usually stark record sleeve for New Order’s True Faith is shown above.

Rant: Design City, My Arse!

Boicozine — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:43:02 +0000

Hey London, did you know this year marks a design explosion in the nation’s capital not seen since the Industrial Revolution or Le Corbusier bringing modernism to Paris the inception of the Bauhaus in Dessau! No me neither. Although this is what a recent exhibition entitled ‘Design Cities’ at London’s Design Museum supposes [designmuseum.org]. If it’s true that London is ‘The’ ‘Design City’ of our era then why are there no amazing new buildings going up in the central London? Why is it that London’s current visual motif seems to consist of ‘Dallas’ style glass monoliths and loads and loads of roadworks? Why is free pitching rife and designers often shown a lack of respect for their skills by being asked to work for free? If you take the take that design is decision making then why are there so many bad decisions being made in terms of architecture and design in soggy old London town? Not knocking Britain’s many and varied, über talented creatives (and there are loads of ‘em) but ‘Design City’? My arse.

The ‘Design Cities’ exhibition is such a transparent attempt to assert some sort of lame authority over all that is designed everywhere in the world when the real truth is that (pre crunch) London was simply very good at recognising and buying good design. If anything, we are in an age where territorial boundaries are being broken down. Where design from anywhere is more and more accessible. In this respect London has become a city where you can find out more about design trends from at home and abroad. It is a bit like a sort of big, international design scrapbook (without the scrap), but hardly a city in the midst of a ‘design-led revolution’.

On visiting this exhibition, my heart sank when I guessed the ending after reading the first board (ie modern design started in London and ends in London. It’s all about London etc etc). The saddest thing is that the exhibition tries to hide this attempt to assert the city’s authority behind so many truly inspiring periods and pieces plucked (as the British has always had a want to do) from throughout design history. And, in doing so, talks down to the visitor, assuming them to be empty vessels you can simply top up with knowledge and then send them out to regurgitate what you have ‘told’ to them, at will.

Exhibitions at the Design Museum have a reputation for being a little touch-and-go. Their recent foray into English Graphic design legends has upped their game but ‘Design Cities’ does not bode well for the future… and it’s going on tour! How embarrassing. See Alan Aldridge [designmuseum.org], visit the shop, have a cake, but I wouldn’t be too bothered about the jingoistic, overpriced and overblown, ‘Design Cities’.

Bloody Show Offs

Boicozine — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:55:06 +0000

Meirion Pritchard, currently Art Director for Wallpaper [wallpaper.com] (along with pals Simon Robinson and Matt Thomas) likes to encourage shy and retiring creative types to Show Off (well, they’re not all shy, definitely top notch creatives though). I’ve been a tad slack and you now have only a few days left to catch the latest Show Off exhibition at the Art Vinyl store in Broadway Market, East London [facebook.com/events]. See original new pieces by Chrissie Abbott [chrissieabbott.co.uk], Laurent Fetis [laurentfetis.com] and Anthony Burill [anthonyburrill.com] (his contribution is shown below). Thanks to Melvin Galapon [mynameismelvin.co.uk] for pointing this out.

The weather's wine, wish you were beer

Boicozine — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 08:48:40 +0000

Boicozine is participating in a postcard exhibition to be held at the Geoff McFetridge designed Sunshine Cafe in Tokyo. The advantage being that postcards are such a neat size, you can pack loads more contributors in (66 at last count), so something you everyone? Visit [postcard-exhibition.blogspot.com] to spot submissions by creative types such as Toby Neilan [tobyneilan.com], Andreas Samuelsson [andreassamuelsson.com], Ingela och Vi [ingelaochvi.com], Körner Union [koernerunion.com] and Carolin Löbbert [ykeschotten.com]

Be Damned Again

Boicozine — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 08:03:56 +0000

I love a good independent publishing fair and this one is the daddy [publishandbedamned.org.uk]. What sets Publish & Be Damned apart from any other indie publishing fair is that this one is carefully curated. You can’t just turn up with a bunch of raggedy photocopies in yer hand. This is the creme-de-la-creme of zine culture. Turn up this Sunday to the Rochelle School in East London [afoundation.org.uk/rochelle], or be damned to spend the rest of eternity never knowing just how cool indie publishing can be. There’s a full list of participants (including the excellent Fever Zine [feverzine.co.uk]) on the website or look em up on [facebook]. You can see some pics from last year’s event on [flickr].

Melbourne Festival City

Joe — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:43:56 +0000

Melbourne, like London, has the cool sweat of festival fever right now (even though it’s winter). For people who haven’t heard what’s up down under, here’s the skinny…

The Melbourne International Design Festival is on again, and getting bigger and better every year. There’s loads of things to do and see and make. We like the idea of Patrick Blanc’s Vertical Garden thing [nationaldesigncentre.com] (see the image below) and an exhibition that tells the story of, arguably the best course of it’s kind in the country, the National School of Design at Swinburne University’s Graphic Design degree [nationaldesigncentre.com]. Over at the festival’s ’satellite’ series of shows entitled State of Design [stateofdesign.com.au] there is another truck load of interesting events. the ones we really like are mostly in Design for Everyone [stateofdesign.com.au].

If your feeling a little jaded by this design overload, how about spending some time alone in the dark? The programme for The Melbourne International Film Festival [melbournefilmfestival.com.au] is looking as strong as ever, we especially like the idea of Ozploitation [melbournefilmfestival.com.au].