Ektopia

mynameis? has landed. I have it here. It’s great! Shepard Fairey, Flying Fortress, Retna, Mars-1 and Tiffiny Bozic…all in one place. And that’s just the artist sections! Where do I start?

The Graphotism posse have been keeping quiet (and quite obviously busy) in the run-up to the release of mynameis? and it’s no wonder when you see what they’ve created. Admittedly, they’ve made the job of creating a brand new quarterly hardback book a whole lot easier buy managing to cram an amazing line-up of artists to grace their pages but they’ve also pulled the whole thing off with just the right amount of style as well as a perfect visual and written word balance for their intended demographic; and this is what makes it so different from Graphotism. Where as Graphotism is so biassed to the graffiti scene proper, mynameis? offers much wider artistic content. It will still a niche audience but this group will be lovers of other forms of art including street art, graphic design, fine art, photography etc. so there’s so much more on offer. Now you could say that this would dilute the mix but I don’t think that’s the point. It’s a new mix and as far as I’m concerned (and as readers of Ektopia I’m sure you’ll feel the same way) it’s a great mix but the team have managed to offer so much with every artist’s section having it’s own unique strength and depth of content.

One unifying strength is that even though it has so much content mynameis? has a nice relaxed momentum. It never feels hurried and therefore you don’t either. It’s a chilled read and an even more relaxing picture book. Like I mentioned above, it’s not too heavy on the text or the imagery so it’s kind of a perfect balance. It’s just so easy to pick up and enjoy on different levels. Each individual artist has a dedicated space of between 15 and 30 odd pages so I guess that helps with the momentum so think of that many pages each for those artists listed above and you’ll realise the kind of effort that’s gone into making this a fine book.

The book itself is also quite unique in that it’s so much more than a magazine (it shares the way that magazines deliver a range of subjects and it’s also going to be produced regularly) but it differs from an orthodox book (which it physically is) due to it’s advertising space as there are a some full page adverts scatted throughout the pages. It would almost feels like a catalogue if it weren’t for the aspects that surround the artists’ specials and it’s these other aspects that make it so more than the sum of its parts. There are a handful of pages dedicated to new products like clothing lines, designer toys, books, etc. but by far the most stand out aspect of the mynameis? is the gallery pages. These pages fill the space between the main sections in the book and are packed with superb street-photography, which again just happens to suite my tastes perfectly. Some of the photography obviously contains street art but the majority of it are the urban details that people like you and me are interested in. The image below will hopefully sum it up for you.

mynameis? is a sure-fire hit but I guess the long-term measure of success with a publication will be clearer after a few issues have passed. You could be mistaken for wondering if a line-up like this would be hard to repeat but I have a strong feeling that this isn’t going to be a problem seeing as it’s the Graphotism crew who’s behind the book. This is a perfect debut issue. Here’s to Issue Two; I for one can’t wait.

mynameis? has a cover price of £20 and weighs in at 162 30cm x 21.5cm pages and is a hardback edition. It looks like it’s available from London Graphic Centre, Zavvi, Borders, Magma and Forbidden Planet (and more to follow I suspect) but the easiest way would be to subscribe directly from mynameis?, who provide a number of ways to get your hands on your new favourite book.

Well, I’ve mentioned Little People in the City: The Street Art of Slinkachu quite a few times over the last few months but I’ve finally got around to actually getting a copy and I can properly report its brilliance. Hopefully I won’t have to say to much about what Slinkachu does for this very reason. However, for those in need of a quick foundation - Slinkachu is a street artist; a tiny one. He himself isn’t tiny (although I’ve not had the pleasure in meeting him!) but his work is. Tiny little hand painted people are taken out into the real world and have to deal with the same shit that the rest of us have to but on an altogether different scale…literally. If they are not dodging lorry sized lumps of bird crap then they’re getting stuck in lumps of chewing gum! Not all of their troubles come from us though. Sometimes they cause their selves as many problems as we do. There’s a fight between office workers and even an indecent exposure!

However, they don’t all spend their day watching out for giant troubles or even troubles on their own scale; many of the Little People are just going about their own business with little regard for the rest of us. Chilling in the pool (a manhole!). Taking out the bin. Hanging out the washing. You know the kind of thing; it’s the kind of thing that the rest of us do.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing some more large-scale work from this project over at Cosh and the pieces on show were amazing. Like in this book, each piece was accompanied by a sibling piece with a zoomed out photo of the whole scene so you could see the Little People in the same way as you would have don’t if you had been lucky enough to have caught them during their transient short lives.

The think that I like best about the book, and the exhibition at Cosh last month I guess, is that the man Slink managed to keep so much of his new work unpublished on the internet. This meant that so much of the content is completely fresh, exciting and surprising. He’s done a great job of bringing his Little People into book form too and I bet that all the Little People are feeling very proud of being involved with such a great project. Here’s to Volume II.

Little People in the City: The Street Art of Slinkachu weighs in at 128 pages. Get it from all the usual places including Amazon UK but preferably from an indie store near you.

Twink. Six albums in (counting a special edition of Supercute) and there seems to be no sign of Mr Twink slowing, slacking or stopping. This time it’s with the release of A Very Fine Adventure and a very fine adventure it is too. For those that don’t already know, Twink is is a one-man toy piano nut who also just happens to be an amazing tune writer and recording artist. I’ve always been a fan. In fact, Twink was one of my original Ektopia posts back in…let me check…2002! So, six years and six albums later and here we are; another collection of tunes. There’s a little more synth compared with earlier Twink releases but still enough Twinkness to know exactly who you’re listening to; still definitely a toy piano band. Drum programming is the best to date too IMHO with such subtle brilliance. As for stand out tunes - Flytrap is a killer tune with all the discordant madness that you could wish for! Toadstall Tea sounds like it would sit perfectly alongside an animated version of Amelie. Come to think of it, all of Twink’s music would work well with animation I think. Anyways, it’s 12 tracker and as usual it’s packaged brilliantly. This time it has a fold out sleeve that you can refold several ways to create your chosen cover for your own fine adventure and, again, it’s all been created by Mr Twink. Can you ever have too much of this kind of thing? While Twink are running the show the answer has to still be “no”. Another awesome CD.

Mr Mr45rpm recently put together a great line-up for a new zine. Font Freak dropped through the letterbox of Ektopic Towers the other day in a little sealed bag with some stickers and a few postcards. Nylon, Airforce, Janoe, Ponk, Gumbo, Sewell, Flor, Raek, Paris, Eko, Richt, CT, Babou, Kyte, Oath, 1981, Scheme Ekon, Sums, Kaione, 1659, 45rpm & obese; put these all together in one place and it’s easy to imagine that the results are amazing. Content wise, it’s primarily blackbook stuff and it’s all great. The styles included vary greatly from very loose organicness (is that a word?!) from Nylon (who also had a short interview) to very intricate graphic 3D fontiness (how about that one?!) from Scheme and everything between. Another highlight for me is the collection of graff photography. It hadn’t occurred to me that gritty graff shots, and their accompanying urban decay settings, would look so special on Xeroxed pages.

To be honest, in the past I’ve not really been a zine kind of guy but you can consider me a convert after checking Font Freak out. It’s also an inspiring little book too. I guess that’s part of the point really, it’s accessible in so many ways. It’s also made me realise that a publication like this has a value equal to that of professionally published books. Content is king and the content in Font Freak is as good as any other graff book that I have in my collection; it just has a different style and it just so happens that I love that style.

Anyways, take a look at some of the pages here and a few more here. 58 black and white pages of graff-goodness for £5…bargain. Roll on Issue 2.

3000th post on Ektopia…gulp!

I would love to say that I had heard of Nick Veasey before I stumbled across his new book recently but I can’t. The glossy black cover with the all too familiar negative imagery of an x-ray stared out at me; not because it was an ordinary x-ray but because it was an x-ray of a digger! In an almost reflex action, I had snatched up the book and was studying the image while simultaneously trying to work out what was going on. Was it some kind of computer generated shenanigans? I assumed so and to be honest this would normally be the kind of realisation that had me placing the book back down and shiftily searching for the Roy Stuart section! However, something here was different. Even though everything was saying “false” the sectional image of the digger showed so much depth and texture that I had to look on (Roy Stuart was completely forgotten about…at least for this particular visit to the book shop!). So, I looked onward and inward and you know what? The images within are all real! Yes!

X-Ray published by Goodman (one of Carlton Books’ imprints) is Nick’s personal journey into artistic x-rayism (maybe that’s not a proper word but it works for me!). However, what’s so exciting about all of this is that the journey’s not only included standard x-ray techniques but also the esoteric world of security scanning tackle!

So, it’s a book of x-ray images then? Well, yes and no. Well…yeas and yes I guess but that doesn’t really tell the whole story. The images themselves are all, without exception, beautiful in every way. They are all very punchy and elegantly composed. Added to that is that the majority of pages show two separate, but, juxtaposed, images during the first section, which is dedicated to objects. Sometimes these are based on pairs of objects with similar shapes such as an ice cream cone and a Christmas tree. Other times the relation is more lateral like the comparison between one of those fancy Herman Miller Aeron chairs (which I would be much more at home on as I type this very review thank you very much dear Herman Miller Aeron Chair Donor!) and an electric chair (which I most certainly have no other interest in beyond movies and this book thank you very much Mr Executioner!). And again I must remind you that these are x-rays so you’re not looking skin-deep here but the complex anatomy of each of these chosen object (and regular Ektopians will know how much I like the anatomy of almost anything as well as inside out stuff). Another one of my favourite images is an all rubber and plastic gas-mask alongside a glass and metal bottle of perfume; another perfect match. It’s these initial 70 pages that do it for me and I could happily go on viewing more and more of the same. I could also have had the book end here and been a happy x-ray voyeur too but no, the book goes on from here changing direction slightly; on to The Body.

This section is full of images that are much more familiar to me with my healthcare background. However, the majority of these images, while normal, have been given a dramatic edge. This effect has been enhanced in some of the images by overlaying semi-translucent photos to help train the eye into what’s really going on while other images in this section are seriously large. These are perhaps the most intense images in the book. You don’t need to be told that these are made from multiple x-rays or how many hours (well days and months actually) that these have taken to piece together. You’ll see them and know that they are almost incomprehensible. Whether it’s a bus load of people, a sectional x-ray of a whole building (complete with the boss sitting on his backside reading a paper on the top floor and an office worker trying to fix a paper-jam in the photo copier on the ground floor!) or a Boeing 777. Not content with x-raying the 777, Veasey also x-rayed the hanger just for fun to create the world’s largest x-ray. Astonishing.

Nature is next up with some of the most gentle images in the book. The flowers in particular are love fluid on stalks and even like strange sea-creatures at times. They nearly all look like they are underwater and much more elegant than you could imagine. As for creatures, there are also a whole host of these too. The most impressive being the remnants of the creatures, such as the array of shells that almost look like they’ve been computer generated…but of course, they’ve not.

Fashion takes the stand towards the end of the book and is an alternative look at textiles. There are some obvious images such as random items of clothing to an under-wired bra (well I think it’s obvious but I’ve been told I have a one track mind!). However, there are also some more of those great jutaposed images here too. The best of these has to be a high heel with it’s skeletal wearer that’s mirrored by a guys foot in a size dozen work boot. Great stuff.

The back of the book hosts the index that shows a thumbnail of each individual image alongside a paragraph on how it was made or the idea behind the imagery or a simple or amusing story behind the process. It’s a perfect way to end the book for me as I hate to be left guessing about stuff. I think it could well be my favourite book of the year so far. X-Ray weighs in at 224 pages and is hardback 28 x 23 edition. It’s available direct from Goodman/Carlton and all the usual places including Amazon UK

Where do you begin talking about Blek Le Rat? What can I say that really sums who he is and what he’s been doing. I thought about just writing “Influential influential influential Banksy Banksy Bansky!” but that doesn’t cut it (although it’s true and Banksy is the first to admit it). I guess it’s a story spanning three decades and it’s never been going better for Blak (whose real name is Xavier Prou). There aren’t many people that have been doing art on the street in the way that we’re used to and that’s because you could easily say that he was among the first how took aerosol to the stencil on urban architecture. Simple black images painted on whatever got in his way.

Getting Through The Walls has been released today in the UK via Thames & Hudson and it’s a close look at the man, his art, his message and just how influential he has been to the art and advertising world.

After an detailed interesting introduction, where we learn exactly how it all started, the book simply divides into two sections, Pochoir (stencil) and Posters and inside each section it remains as simple; each of his subjects (each stencil) has a dedicated section with a collection of images and a detailed explanation of each piece.

There’a a competing battle for me when I look at Blek’s work. On one side there are Blek’s relatively simple stencils that don’t always appeal to me visually but at the same time (the other side) they seem to demand my attention. I think it’s because it isn’t always the actual stencil itself that makes the piece and quite often the placement that’s just perfect. He certainly has and eye for the placement and I suppose if he didn’t he would have been forgotten about 20 years ago! In fact, the best images in this book in my opinion are from a project in a derelict building called the Chateau de Bagnac (pictured above). His finest stencils seem so fitting on the decayed walls of the building.

Another of my favourite sections is from an ongoing project called The Man Who Walks Through Walls where a man, based on Blek himself, appears to do exactly what the title suggests (above). He carries a large bag and a suitcase full of stencils and looks ready to do his work in his dark glasses. This particular images has travelled the world so is a good metaphor for Blek going out and doing his thing.

It’s hard to comprehend the effect that Blek’s had on the art-world. Like all artistic genres, it’s difficult to remember when they weren’t around but it’s always rewarding to be able to pinpoint a true beginning and this books marks that well, as well as celebrating everything that’s happened to date. I can’t imaging that this will be the first and last book that shows off his work; I’m sure they’ll be more in the future but for the time being this is an excellent look into Blek’s artistic world. Getting Through The Walls weighs in at 128 pages and has 300 photos of his work in-situ and is a soft-back edition. It’s available from Thames & Hudson and from all the usual places including AmazonUK.

I stood in front of the mammoth piece of art in NYC’s MOMA back in 2005 for ages. It wasn’t for long enough in my opinion but my wife though I was overdoing it so eventually we moved on. The piece was called 727 (pictured below) and was by an artist called Takashi Murakami. I had witnessed something truly out of the ordinary and I’ve never studied a piece of art in an orthodox gallery setting as much as I did this piece. I try and think back to whether I knew about Murakami before this but my memory fails me. As for as I’m concerned, my love for Murakami’s work started in New York. Fast forward a few years…

Takashi Murakami, Japanese art superstar, recently had an exhibition at the MOCA in Los Angeles. It’s not like his other shows where his latest art is shown but more of a celebration of approximately the last 20 years of his work. As well as showing more than 90 of Murakami’s paintings and installations, a kind of catalogue to accompany the exhibition has also be published.

The catalogue in question, © Murakami, has been published by Rizzoli in the US and is distributed by PGUK over here in the UK. Calling © Murakami a catalogue though is as vast an understatement as you could make. Calling it simply a book is the same. It’s a monster…a tome! Standing at over 32cm tall, over 25cms wide and whopping 4.2cm thick it’ll probably end up taking up more room on a book shelf than the majority of books and it’s jam-packed with Murakami goodness.

Now, seeing as the exhibition is made up from around 90 of Murakami’s pieces you’ll quickly realise that the book isn’t just a photographic document of just the works themselves. If that were the case you would end up with a book with half the amount of pages, even if it had some detail shots of the pieces. Sure, they’re all there in the book but that’s just part of what’s on offer here. © Murakami stands alone as a kind of case study (or a series of case studies) of Murakami’s art…and life I guess. So, all of the art very much revolves around the many essays that have been written by many different people and it makes for a very interesting read. Much of the essay content is quite intellectual. That’s not to say that it’s been over-intellectualised but I will admit to finding some of it to be quite difficult to take in at first. However, I’m 100% sure that it’s not to do with how it’s written but to do with my lack of intelligence! In fact, once I slowed down a little bit and started to read it “properly” it all made a lot more sense and I found it much more rewarding.

Once I got into the essays I found myself trying to work out what it must be like to live in another culture in another time. I’m failing to get to grips with the impact of WWII had been like for the Japanese. More importantly, the generation after the war. Murakami grew up being told by his mother that he was lucky to be alive. Kokura, where the Murakami family lived, had been the US’s initial target for the second atomic bomb but it had been called off due to weather conditions that day. The bomb that was destined for Kokura was delivered to Hiroshima and the rest is history that we already know. However, a little Murakami grew up under the weight of knowing that he may well have never even existed. In the book it justifies Murakami’s use of mushroom clouds but it obviously goes a lot deeper than this. I don’t have the intellect to de-construct it further but the end result is definitely something unique that the Japanese artists of that generation (and the next I guess) have been endowed with because their art is unlike anything that came before and until recently wasn’t seen outside of Japan. It’s now become a huge influence around the world with the popularisation of Manga and Anime, which seems like a modern invention to us. In fact, early anime was hugely influential to the young Takashi and there are many examples cited in this book as being both inspiration and also being work that has been completely reworked or remixed. This is one aspect of Murakami’s work that I wasn’t expecting actually. Take the image below for example. It’s called Time Bokan - Blue and was created in 2001. It’s a remix of a still from a TV series from the mid 1970s known by the same name, Time Bokan. It’s been modernised, outlined, added to (the inverted red mirrored image at the top) and generally just tinkered with. However, it’s unmistakeably the same piece. This single images teaches me two things - first of all, the whole anime thing has been going on for longer than I realised and also that the art world, unlike the music world, are celebrators of the past and are more than happy to enjoy remixing the past and the present. In fact, it’s almost seen here as a eulogy rather than a cheap alternative to the original. I love that.

The book is stacked with beautiful pieces of art. Some I’ve used in this review, others aren’t safe for work due to nudity and some are so cute that they’ve not been used here to save your from screaming out loud in your office when you’re supposed to be working. One piece that is probably borderline is a sculptured triptych called Second Mission Project ko². In this piece (pictured below) a larger than life-size super-cute manga girl morphs in three stages from her upright humanoid figure to an aircraft in flight that’s almost unrecognisable from her former self apart from her flowing hair on the top of the strange craft. As she springs into the air, in the second part of the sculpture, her semi-naked torso swings forward as her arms and legs move toward their positions underneath. It’s exquisite. Perfect in every way. A beautiful Transformer.

As I’ve already said, it’s a monster of a book. I’ve had it for ages and it’s taken me some time to get from cover to cover but it’s been worth ever moment that I’ve spent within it’s pages. There’s so much in this book it’s a struggle to know what to choose to write write about. 90 works doesn’t sound like a huge amount to fill a book but these aren’t just pieces of art. These are something truly special and each demands proper inspection. Even the simple pieces are like that but the more detailed works could be exhausting if you wanted to get everything from them. There are some three-page fold-outs that show the whole of some of his wider and multi-canvas works.

One thing that the book doesn’t dedicate as much pictorial space to as I would have liked is the way in which Murakami has created a universe that anyone can afford to be part of. At the top end are his very expensive paintings and sculptures but there are also toys and key-chains at the lower end and everything between, including Louis Vuitton (one of his prints below) paraphernalia and beautifully printed footballs. You could say that he’s made himself into an artistic version of Tescos or Wall Mart but it’s closer to the truth that he’s just a successful artist that has created a art market that anyone can be a part of.

In other Murakami news - He’s making an animation called Kaikai & Kiki and you can catch a small trailer here. I’m sure you’ll agree that it looks stunning. His characters transfer so well to that 2.5D world as they do in his 3D sculpture work. I can’t wait to see it in full some time soon. In the meantime, there are some production stills from the animation included in this book.

There are a number of videos where Murakami discusses the pieces in the MOCA show. These videos are the perfect accompaniment to this book too. It’s great to hear things about the individual pieces right from the artist himself and to get a more realistic idea of the scale of the art itself.

© Murakami weighs in at 330 massive pages and is available at Rizzoli, PGUK in the UK and all the usual places including AmazonUK.

As a footnote - Check out the photo below. The MOCA show had a huge billboard in town that Revok and Augor painted over. Two days later it was gone and after a little investigating it turned out that it wasn’t the billboard company in the act of getting it off the street but Murakami himself that had requested it to be taken down and sent over to Tokyo to join his private collection. Cool guy.

Antony Micallef - a Neomodernistic master. I’m not sure if that’s a contradiction in terms (and therefore a terrible way to start a book review) but words tend to fail me when I look at Micallef’s art. I first saw his work in 2005 but it seems that he’s been wowing others since before 2000. In fact, there was a new gallery that opened in the little town where I live and one of his pieces, 21st century love (pictured above), sat upstairs with a £500 price tag on it (I’ve pretty sure that it was just £500 if my memory serves me). I used to go into the gallery regularly and climb the stairs and stand in front of that print wishing that I could get the money together but it just wasn’t possible at the time. Since then, Micallef has become huge - and I mean HUGE…so have the price tags. Owning one of those prints has now become a fading dream…sorry about that; I just slipped into a momentary depression! Back to the story - More recently, he had a solo show, called It’s a Wonderful World, at London’s amazing Laz.inc and the artwork on display during the opening night was rumoured to have sold in half an hour. To accompany this show, a limited edition book (only 500 copies) was published as has become customary with Laz’s shows of late. A black hardcover affair didn’t seem to stay on the shelves for long either and before I knew it there were no more copies left and I had missed out. Luckily for all, an unlimited version of the book has been re-released for all to enjoy. Hurrah!

Antony Micallef (ed 2) has, again, been privately published by Laz.inc and that’s the only place it’s officially available from. 90-odd pages show 84 metaphorically dark but physically colourful images. Even the black and white paintings seem full of colour to me with their resonating vibrancy. On one level, when you first see many of the images that he’s created they can seem quite playful and humorous. However, it soon becomes apparent that this couldn’t be further than the truth. At their apogee, which they frequently reach, the images can be brutal, vicious, twisted (insert your own definition of these words here). One thing is always constant hough and this is how emotive each and every one of his pieces of art become one the surface is brushed to one side.

With all the reference material that Micallef uses the work is instantly familiar. There’s so much branding and cultural iconography visible in his paintings with obvious references going to the high-street food giants as well as news networks, the fashion industry, the entertainment industry, the military and even orthodox religion. It’s all there in the top image isn’t it (did I mention that I missed the opportunity to buy the print?!). White Mickey Mouse ears like twin halos. A torso completely covered with brand logos that could easily be real metaphorical branding done with hot irons by the now empty look on her face. A childish Christ-like like pose with a high rainbow instead of a IRNI inscribed plaque on a cross. Angel’s wings with blue and white military stars. It’s brutal for so many reasons but so special for every one of them. And that’s just one painting! Everything but the bombs I guess but there are plenty of those elsewhere in his catalogue of masterpieces. Mangled or simply distorted faces immediately also distort the painting’s story. Like Bacon and like I just said, sometimes the faces look like they’ve been smudged and original detail has been washed away. Maybe this has been done ’smudge’ some of the story away to make it more challenging for us to decipher the characters true feeling and what is being portrayed. Maybe it’s not but you can’t help getting in closer to see if you can find some remnants of a facial expression that was once there. Other times the faces are pig-like, which I imagine is just mirroring the vulgarity of the industries that Micallef injects into his work. With all the branding re-sampling and these distoprted images you can’t help making obvious references to Francis Bacon, who we now know was a frequent re-sampler of other artists’ work. That’s not to say that Micallef’s work is like Bacon’s because it’s not; it’s just an observation.

One thing that surprised me the most is that there’s no street-art background. This is all from the fine-art arena yet fit’s so well with what so many of the popular post-street-artists’ are up to nowadays. Antony Micallef has a signature style unlike any other. It’s instantly recognisable and is as complex as it is rewarding. He also appears to be like the majority of us according to the great interview in the book; a “hypocrite”. For all the apparent disdain towards the industries that are depicted in his work he also a stickler for consumption and likes his branded trainers like the rest of us. A true love/hate relationship with ’stuff’. There’s a healthy honesty in this interview and also in his work as he informs that his work mirrors modern culture rather than preaching against it and this open honesty is something, in my opinion, that’s much needed at the moment.

Antony Micallef (ed 2) weighs in at around 90 pages with 84 images and a 2 page interview that is one of the best I’ve read. It’s a padded hardcover edition and as previously stated, you can only get a copy direct from the Laz.inc gallery in person or by phoning them up on 02032140055. It’s the only way that many of us will be able to enjoy Micallef in the comfort of our own homes and enjoyable it is.

You know that when you get a book in the post and the dust jacket is made of sandpaper that you’re handling something more than a little out of the ordinary. For me, that book was [Art]ifact. It’s published by the innovating Victionary and distributed in the UK by PGUK and thankfully (for me at least as I can’t stand the feel of sandpaper anywhere near my fingernails) the dust jacket that protects the embossed thick card cover is further protected (and protecting) by a clear plastic cover. This is where you get the second hint at what you’ll discover during your trip within this intriguing book. Below the title is reads “Inspiring ideas for sandpaper” followed by 40 random ideas; the first being “use as a book cover” followed by such thoughts as “make a pinhole camera”, “make a glittering ribbon”, “use as toilet paper to make fun of others” and, my favourite, “scratch where it is itchy”.

Ektopia has its own design category and if you look trough it you’ll find loads of innovative pieces that border both the realms of art and design. To be honest, I didn’t really realise that what I was looking at and enjoying the most in the design world was something quite specific. Sure, I’ve had problems which category to place many of the deigns into - deigns, art or both - but, at the same time, I wasn’t conscious of the fact that these designs were something quite unique, not only in their own right but also as a collection of fascinating art pieces. So, as I turn the pages of [Art]ifact I’ve found many of the pieces that I’ve chosen to post on Ektopia mirrored in this book and that’s something I wasn’t prepared for. It’s not just 2 or 3 either, it’s a lot. That’s what’s made me realise that the design I enjoy most in the world is a certain type of design that I hadn’t (till I picked up this book) realised actually existed.

The designs in [Art]ifact are easier to describe in musical terms as it’s already been accepted into our current tastes. It’s mixing Fugazi and Destinies Child together together. It’s the Breeders mixed with Madonna. It’s the Beastie Boys mixed with The Beatles. One object or idea (in these cases, a tune) and mix them with another object or idea to take then from the ordinary to something completely different. When it’s done badly it’s ignorable, when it’s done well it’s interesting and when it hit’s the mark perfectly it becomes something extraordinary as the object’s context is warped just the right amount to make the original idea recognisable but just enough to make it truly unique too. This is what [Art]ifact is all about.

[Art]ifact is divided into three main sections; Observative & Augmentation, Fun & Function and Interactive & Sensation. Each section is physically divided by a smaller formatted sewn in booklet that holds the thoughts of each designer about their individual product. Section wise, I’m not sure what qualifies each design to be in its particular section really. Each seems to fit into each section equally but I suspect that’s to do with my lack of understanding rather than the book’s creators so I’m not knocking it. A few examples from the book are in order I think…

The IV Drip Feed Plant Pot (above) is as good as any place to start. Take one part mundane and one part medical equipment and you get a passively controlled self-watering plant pot. Now you see it in front of you it seems to make so much sense and it also looks awesome don’t you think? It helps that there are people that can actualise these ideas so beautifully I guess. What about My Turn-Ons? These are massive speakers (see below) in the shape of in-ear headphones. This time it’s not just a remix of ideas buy a remix of contexts; a known object and a foreign size. Actually, if you look in Mixko’s “Art & Creative” section you’ll see that everything they’ve chose to show is win, win, win. They are masters of the [Art]ifact.

Private Public (below) mixes with the idea of wearable contraptions to assist us with privacy when we are using “mobile technology devices” in pubic. This one really caught my imagination when I saw it on WMMNA a while back. It’s more than just an amusing little design though as many of these designs are. This one in particular was designed to prompt discussion about issues of privacy and isolation with technology in public places.

Bin Bag Bear (below) was an idea to somehow change the way we see rubbish bags as they litter the streets before being collected by the local councils. This kind of project borders very closely with much or the urban intervention side of street-art actually. I think that’s why I liked this particular project so much. It would have been as at home in Street Renegades as it would here. When I think about it, it’s the same with the majority of these ideas though. They may not be urban interventions but the designers/artists have intervened with these ideas, designs and products to alter the context and challenge the viewers preconceived ideas about them

It’s a shame that Ben Wilson’s Chairfix didn’t find itself included but I bet that everyone who looks at this book will be able to think of something that didn’t make the final cut. That’s not because the book doesn’t have the best of this type of design but just because there is so much of it about at the moment. So why is this? When I see stuff like this I’m constantly reminded of Laurence Lessig’s words regarding what he calls read-write culture. The digital age has given us the tools to remix and it’s a language that we’ve become fluent in. It’s part of our vocabulary. I think that’s why we are so open to these ideas and products. I digress… the small omission of the Chairfix is more than paid back by the inclusion of my all time favourite mashed up [Art]ifact, the Lapjuicer (below). The brief that the designers were given was to simply redesign the food processor and they certainly achieved this! What a wonderful idea and a sublime object (not to mention the images in the book, which are superb).

These ideas and products make sense to us even though they are not always what they were originally intended for. If you visit the main innovative design site’s, like me, you’ll have seen quite a bit of this book’s content but with the internet’s heavy flow of new data you’ll probably not have the time to remember much of it either. That’s what makes this book so great. it’s a permanent reminder of the wonderful and quirky design goodness that’s been realised over the last few years and I see no reason that this book couldn’t become a series of books in the future. I hope it does. [Art]ifact weighs in at 256 (312 if you include the sewn in info booklets) entertaining pages ad can be purchased direct from Victionary, PGUK and all the usual places including AmazonUK. There are also a few sample pages from the book here. Enjoy.

In 2001, Dave Kinsey, yup, that Dave Kinsey, opened a gallery in LA based upon the same ethos of the graphic design studio that he had created back in 1996. The gallery, BLK/MRKT, would be a place to showcase not only established “new contemporary” artists but also artists that were on their way up too from around the globe. BLK/MRKT recently started an annual exhibition called the BMG Artists’ Annual and a retrospective book of some of the artistic works that were shown in the exhibit was published by Die Gestalten Verlag. Last year, the first book, BLK/MRKT One was released. As far as cataloguing a show is concerned, it must have been the best catalogue ever. A large scale (31 x 24cm and 208 pages) burgundy coloured padded hard-covered affair is a grand, and fitting way to catalogue such fine art. Anything less wouldn’t do the contents justice actually. I’ll come back to BLK/MRKT One later because this year, the second BMG Artists’ Annual book was released; BLK/MRKT Two.

BLK/MRKT Two packs an equally big punch with is monster size but this time it’s a standard hard cover edition but has the added luxury of a linen spine, as you can see from the picture above. It’s difficult to explain what all these artists have in common. Their work all possesses something that doesn’t seem to be present in a lot of orthodox fine art. The obvious parallel to make is with street-art and graffiti but that’s not actually a correct comparison to make. If I was forced to explain how I see the connection (which I’m pushing myself into a corner to do!) I would have to say that it’s something to do with how the artists see their work. I feel that it’s something to do with the perceived preciousness of the works. When graff writers paint they know that a piece may stay up for a while or disappear overnight. There’s no good in being too precious about the piece when this could happen but they still write. It’s like the act of writing is as important as the end result. I think that this is the parallel that I’m trying to make. When I see these artists’ works I see as much of the process as I do the finished piece and I wonder if this is the same for these artists. Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong. It’s not like all the artists are street based anyway, I just wonder if they have a similar kind of ethos about the process and the piece. In the forward to the book it’s discussed more in terms of the importance that the image has been made with a physical medium rather than just digital. That’s not to say that the paintings are supposed to be antidotal to the digital age though. I guess it’s just the importance of the pieces being tactile in some way.

What I do know is the artist selection on BLK/MRKT Two is varied and rich. Many Ektopia Favourites are included as well as many that I hadn’t been introduced to before. A perfect combination really. Jeff Soto has got a nice handful of pages showcasing some of his spectacular work. His recent work has become more colourful (physically) while remaining quite dark (metaphorically) at he same time. I love it. Conor Harrington (see image above) also has a load of pages. Now here’s an artist that whose pieces can only be truly appreciated when seen big. I had the fortune to have caught some of them during a couple of different exhibitions over the years and was completely blown away but his style. We are lucky enough to be treated to as large a scale images of his work as we are likely to see apart from the real thing. You can really get into the pieces here. Studying them pay dividends here. The details are extraordinary. Ian Francis’s (below) content in the book also reap the benefit of the large scale reproduction.

There are also many new artists to me that have left a huge impression. Mark Dean Veca’s full-room painted installations are crazy and beautiful. Organic soft forms in vivid colour envelop the walls and make you feel like you could actually dive right in. Check the images on his site and you’ll see exactly what I mean. Lucy McLaughclan’s name seems familiar but I can’t place where I know it from. However, I didn’t recognise her artwork and am all the happier for seeing it now. She paints the most beautiful faces in leaf and water-drop shapes. Each one’s different and each could tell a story of its own. Enchanting stuff. But most of all, David Choong Lee’s has left me feeling that the book is worth it’s cover price for his pages alone. I the way that his pieces are constructed physically. Here’s something that could never be done digitally. The limitations of the canvas sizes, how they fit together and how the content on each piece moves to the next are just perfect. The way that he paints so much raw emotion into his central characters is also amazing. The image below is just a small part of a long morphing row of canvases of the same height. I can’t wait to learn more about him and his art. Expect to see him featured properly on Ektopia sometime soon.

What’s so refreshing is that there’s no text to accompany the images throughout the book. There’s a an artist heading each time the artist changes and that’s all. Just huge lavish images of their work. There are small artist biogs right at the back of the book but that’s all and it’s all that’s needed. The images speak for themselves and it’s less distracting this way; at least for this particular book anyway. In the forward of this book, Kinsey and Jana DesForges (BLK/MRKT’s director) write about how they hope that the latest collection of works by the 33 artists in BLK/MRKT Two will prove to be both intriguing and inspirational. Well it certainly is on both accounts.

Here’s a list of the the other artists that I’ve not mentioned in this wonderful catalogue - Gordon Bennett, Tiffany bozic, Alexone, Flavien Demarigny, David Ellis, Gregory Euclide, Amir H.Fallah, Robert Hardgrave, Martha Sue Harris, Mark Jenkins, Mel Kadel, Dave Kinsey, Adam Kurtzman, Marion Lane, Jason Murphy, Andrew Ponier, Jeremy Pruitt, Scott Rench, Jesse Reno, Jennifer Sanchez, Mike Stilkey, Kristen Thiele, Code Blake Thompson, Weston Teruga, Stephen Tompkins, Ben Tour and Rostarr….I think that’s all! Phew! You can get a copy direct from Die Gestalten Verlag or from the usual places including Amazon UK.

Oh, before I forget…I mentioned the original book didn’t I. BLK/MRKT One, like its follow-up, is a cracking book. I imagine that any book release is an exiting time for an author and publisher but when this one came out it must have been an exhilerating time for all involved. Not only had they achieved so much up to this point but they had gone on to successfully produce a luxurious book with so much appeal. It’s the same format that volume two continued in all aspects. There are even a few of the same artists (different pieces of course). Highlights from this volume are Bask’s paintings on wood, Vladimir Zimakov’s sketchbook style inky scratchings but most of all though, I was taken back by the collection of Jose Parla’s typographic distressed pieces. I wasn’t sure about his work when I first saw it on the The Run Up DVD last year. However, I was lucky enough to catch his pieces in this years Sm, Med & Lg exhibition in London a few weeks back and was blown away. seeing the pieces in this catalogue is also a great experience and I’ve studied them a lot since I’ve had this book.

Again, it’s packed full of artists so here’s the full line-up…here goes - Michael R. Andreev, Tiffany Bradford, Deanne Cheuk, David Choe (another fantastical selection by the way), Calma, Warren Dykeman, Jordan Eagles, Daniel Fiorda, Doze Green, Maya Hayuk, Evan Hecox, Rich Jakobs, Dave Kinsey, Marion Lane, Mars-1, Travis Millard, Brendan Monroe, Leif Parsons, Scott Radke, Jesse Reno, Andrew Schoultz, Tra Selhtrow, Lance Sells, Yuri Shimojo, Jeff Soto (agghhh, can’t get enough of those Soto pieces), Mike Stilkey, Tes One, THH70, Cody Blake Thompson, Ben Tour, Nate Williams, WK Interact and Milee Yu. Phew…again. You can also get this one direct from Die Gestalten Verlag or from the usual places including AmazonUK.

I al know is how much I’m looking forward to checking out BLK/MRKT Three sometime in the near future hopefully. It looks like they are having another fine year so there’s no reason why the next book, assuming there will be one (and why not if not!) will be another fine catalogue in any art lover’s collection. Bravo BLK/MRKT and bravo DGV.