The Dairy

Tucked away neatly behind a large Victorian block of flats in the heart of Bloomsbury, there was once a dairy. As of today, this vast and unique tardis is the contemporary art exhibition space of prominent collectors Nicolai Frahm and Frank Cohen.

The opening event was a knockout. Guest were served White Russians in milk bottles from a milk float and gorgeous salted caramel ice cream from Nina's traditional ice cream van.

The actual exhibit that has been selected as the premier for this swanky new art gallery however doesn't quite live up to expectations. John M Armleder was invited to use his pieces in Frahm and Cohen's collections as a starting point to create an installation that filled the Dairy. Some aspects are brilliant and achieve the its aim to 'retransform art into a functional structure, merging aesthetics and function, contemplation and entertainment' the bar that's actually just a piece of art puts the visitor on edge and asks us to redefine the space we are used to, the window that holds the same pattern as the wall through which you can just see tyre plantpots identical to the ones around you indoors juxtaposes what is art, what is design and what is home.

The Dairy's old fridge is quite a masterpiece and it is in this space that the Dada movement which inspired Armleder and led to his association with the Neo Geo and Fluxus art movements can best be seen. Stuff. Shoved on to shelves in some spaces or eerily sparsely placed on shelves, stuff is piled onto the old fridge shelves. A taxidermy weasel, vases of flowers turning to death, fairly lights and TV sets are shown side by side. In this space Armleder has annihilated art and at once created it. These things question meanings of art, collecting and display an if those factors can be questioned- what is even the point of the show? It is an intelligent attempt at existentialism that Sartre couldn't have done better at.

However, the large glitter canvases and disco balls hanging in the reception area really don't add anything to the overall coherence of the installation. They are noticeable because they are unnoticeable. Visible because they might as well be invisible. It's a real shame that something bolder and more thought provoking couldn't have been done with this space. Then again, maybe it's annoyance at the the lack of proportion and awkward placement and sizes of the art in this space that Armleder wants us to feel. It's exactly the sort of thing he's after.

Regardless of the installation, this brand new art space is incredible and well worth a visit.

PICK ME UP

Pick Me Up is the annual graphic arts festival at Somerset House. It is a platform for up an coming graphic arts and design graduates and practitioners to come together and show off their talents. Talent being the optimum word as this year's show is fabulous! Over the ten days the show runs for their has been a nail bar, Aardman Shaun the Sheep making workshop and even a pop-up illustrated burger bar by Zoom, the 12 year old comic making prodigy.

Today I lent a hand with CMYK embroidery. Using the cheap, offset newspaper colour printing technique of four colours- cyan, magenta, yellow and black- the artist Evelin Korsikov has manipulated her yarns to follow this basic colour principle.

Everybody chipped in to attempt to finish a huge version of the pick me up logo.

She also kindly embroidered me at it!

The exhibitions of work support artist collectives, such as Fatherless the American screen printers and Coffee Club, who all met, surprisingly, at a coffee bar. These artists support each other to promote their freelance work.

There is also an exhibition of works by newly established illustrators and graphic designers. Called Selects, this exhibition gives a platform to some amazing artists such as the ever jovial Daniel Frost, whose little mr Ben-esque characters couldn't fail to put a smile on your face and the wonderful Katie Scott who presents her own versions of botanical drawings.

Alternative London

Graffiti gets a bad rep. And in many cases this is fair, buildings and streets defaced with scrawls of 'I luv Wendy' and tags with anxious political intent. Street art is a whole different kettle of fish though and this was demonstrated on the Alternative London walking tour which guided us around the Brick Lane and Spitalfields Market area of London to show us pieces by some of the worlds best street artists.

This area of London is like two worlds, separated by the old city walls but in no need of a physical barrier as the two worlds occupy the same space but are culturally and visually worlds apart. One the one side of Liverpool St for example is the great railway station, broad gate skyscrapers and the dripping wealth of the city. On the other, East End culture and the poverty to match. The street art is often considered a great rebellion, an opposition to culture but in situ it reads as more of a defence. A defence of hundreds of years of and old London melting pot of immigrant and East End culture. The city encroaches but the spray cans will prevail.

The art itself is fascinating. Not just paint on walls but a real exploration of people and their interaction with space around them.

Ronzo uses paint to define the juxtaposed worlds. His odd figures have a traditional graffiti look, but are more profound.

Vhils completely redefines the phenomenon of street art. He first plasters a wall an then implants explosives in the wet surface, blowing it away to reveal the image. Can it be graffiti and vandalism if he's creating the surface of his work too?

Space invader as the name suggests, creates tiny pieces from
Lego that recall the 1970s game. You move around the area spotting these tiny pieces which offer an aspect of the search. It's like hide and seek for the streets and enables people to fully interact with the area.

Despite the freezing March Saturday, we really enjoyed and fully recommend the Alternative London tour.

www.alternativelondon.com

Chris Bracey @ Scream

Chris Bracey's first ever solo exhibition of his incredibly fun art work. The pieces verge on the edge of. Being ready mates as Bracey uses neon letters and battered shop signs from reclamation yards. But he does something special to them, forcing them to be viewed as extraordinary kitch pieces. Some look like 1970s tattoos, some recall the Sex Pistols' iconic God Save the Queen single cover with the iconography of the deeply religiously symbolic teamed with Soho chic. As the pieces faintly hum with electric charge, you can't help but feeling similarly charged up in their presence. Professor Green certainly agreed, purchasing a piece for himself at the opening.

Light Show

Ironic perhaps to visit an exhibition entitled Light Show on the first day of 2013 that I've had any vitamin c and also the day NPower send us an extortionate energy bill. Our interaction with light is a profound sensory experience that determines how we view the world around us and how we feel, but due to modern life's reliance on the screen and on electrical lighting it is a necessary force we reckon with ever single day. This latest show at the Hayward Gallery explores light in everyday modern life.

The first piece you are greeted with us Leo Villareal's Cylinder II. This vast structure containing 19,600 LED lights is programmed to never show the same sequence twice. As with snowfall, the rain, fireworks and Christmas tree lights it is completely mesmerising and encapsulates feelings towards these natural and nostalgic phenomena.

In Slow Arc Inside a Cube IV, Conrad Shawcross's manipulation of light lets light lead the way, as it is the light source that manipulates the room and the viewer in this case. His engage robot explores the cube it inhabits and it's viewer beyond, changing the look of both as its pinpoint torch carves its way. The changing cubed pattern shadows take over the walls and bodies of those observing.

In the last room, strobe lights rain down on 27 different water features, causing them to pause and be observed in a completely surreal way. Reminiscent of cling film used to represent water in early Wallace and Gromit films, Olafur Eliasson's Model For a Timeless Garen, felt like a garden out if a horror film. Time and movement are paused and replayed making chutes and arcs of water freeze into the droplets of water they are made up from.

What these pieces show is that light is a manipulator and can also be manipulated. Our overexposure to light in modern life- from smartphone screens being the first thing we see in the morning, to the orange light-polluted London sky being the last thing we see at night- puts light at the centre of modern life.

As the sculptures on show are linked only by their use of light, these theoretical ideas behind the exhibition are a little lost. It did also, at times, feel as though each piece was a little lost in the battle for our visual attention. Still, each piece echoed an aesthetic beauty that makes the show well worth seeing.

It is impossible to escape electrical lighting and being forced so physically into the same space as it in an intense dose at the Hayward is overwhelming, questioning whether the light we use is too much. After receiving my electricity bill, I certainly think electric lighting is something I use too much. It was a relief to step out if the dark light show and back into the sunshine.

Tim Walker; Story Teller

Today I had a bizarre encounter with a giant doll, snails that were bigger than me and a swan love boat parked on an indoor beach of lurid fake sand. Tim Walker, who graduated in 1994 and spent the early years of his career wasted as a newspaper photographer, has spent the last decade creating weird and wonderful worlds for fashion to inhabit. He doesn't just photograph fashion, he helps create it. That unobtainable, exaggerated fun we associate with this fickle world is played out in Walkers work. From pastel Persian cats, to models hidden under beds made of bones, he leads fashion into the realm of impossible imagination.

The current retrospective at Somerset House allows us to experience his magic first hand, his giant doll is as eerie up close as she is chasing models through the woods.

Happy Halloween

I received a call from my housemates as I was en route home last night- the lollies had run out- we needed more supplies. It was only 6pm! The trick-or-treaters were out in force in the Clapham area. I told her we would hide in the lounge at the back of the house and pretend not to be in, before instantly feeling guilty about it and detouring to the local corner shop for a selection of sweets. I was ever so slightly spooked when the cost of the random selection was £6.66. Devilish!

Getting in the spirit, we carved our pumpkins, joyfully answered the door to hoards of kids covered in fake blood and then embarked on a scary trip out. Our local Picturehouse cinema was screening The Shining, a cult classic I have never seen before. It wasn't too scary that I couldn't sleep, but I was pleased I'd shut the curtains before leaving the house!