studio fun!

yes, it's this coming weekend. possibly also featuring pink gin floats.

Don't stop me now

DON'T STOP ME NOW
- the body beyond death – GROUP SHOW, May 29 – Jul 05, 2008

Trolley Gallery is pleased to present a group show examining the human body beyond death. The artists chosen here work with diverse interpretations of the physical, the spiritual, the artefact, and the ritual.

VIEW VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE EXHIBITION

Work included coffin drawings by Bianchi, L.Fox, N.Fox, Greene, Rendel, and myself, as well as a 3D coffin hand crafted by Bianchi & Bragg which created quite a stir and was reported in The Guardian.

"Hardly any risks are acceptable these days. We shield ourselves from peril. That's just sensible. But whatever happened to buyer beware? At the Trolley Gallery in the East End of London, artists have come together for the show Don't stop me now - the body beyond death, among them the renowned collective LE GUN. Their installation Died Happy consists of a boxed clay figure in a hole in the floor, and there is no doubt that he indeed died happy. A protrusion rising to floor level is testament to that. All was well until one woman stood on this proof of his happiness. It snapped and she was banned, but she exacted her revenge. "We got a visit from Tower Hamlets health and safety," explains director Gigi Giannuzzi. "Apparently someone had reported our exhibit as a danger to society! No prizes for guessing who." The sculpture endures but it is surrounded by a fence and hazard tape. Itself a comment on modern life, you might think."

here is the offending article (you might remember him from the Shoe Shop of Curiosities):

LE GUN at D&AD awards on 26 May, 2008

D&AD and Studio 8 Design asked us to do up the Royal Festival for the D&AD Awards 2008.
We designed many hundreds of life size cardboard cutouts which were then wrecked and stolen at the end of the night by drunken advertising executives. Many of them can now be seen through the windows of tastefully lit loft apartments and at cocaine parties throughout Hoxton.

Party pics here on Flickr and more installation shots here - you just need to go past all the admen in black suits...

(drawings by Bianchi, Bragg, Fox, Greene, and myself)

shh! top secret

here's a sneak preview of our current job in progress, to be officially unveiled next week...

snake dance

something new

we're currently in the process of working on a pretty hefty (yet fun) job that needs to be done by next wednesday, so I'd rather say no more until then... but here's a little peek:

more walls

another mural-for-money, this time at cargo (the nightclub). This took 1 1/2 days, inside, and there's 2 parts to it (the other part I don't have a picture of yet but Cargo made a time-lapse film of its creation which should be up to view somewhere soon).

Painted by artists from LE GUN: Bianchi, Bragg, Fox, Frost (of heretic), Greene, Rendel and myself.

corporate job

This mural-for-money was painstakingly painted over 7 whole days by 6 of us 'artists from LE GUN' for metro newspapers. It covers a wall 19m wide x 3m high and is completely exposed to the elements, which made this year's april showers/hail storms/occasional ray of sunshine particularly memorable (our hands were repeatedly frozen into brush-holding shapes)...

Painted by artists from LE GUN: Bianchi, Bragg, Fox, Frost (of heretic), Greene, and myself.

back pages

a first outing in the Guardian's weekend magazine - it's a bad photo but you get the idea. the article is about adultery.

maps

did a little 3 week stint of teaching at Norwich School of Art & Design where the 2nd year Illustration were doing a map project. I enjoyed it and I think learned quite a lot, although I was surprised that some of the students didn't seem incredibly keen on making the thing their own by drawing and exploring very much. I always found that the joy of drawing lies in the fact that in your drawings you're God and 'you can chop your own arm off', as Bianchi once famously put it, and especially in students any polite restraint seems unnecessary if not counterproductive somehow. (But of course I only vaguely remember the happy, stressful confusion that can be student life.)

what's new

I've added nothing to this or any other online environment for a very long time, leaving my 'online persona' stagnant (god forbid!), so I've decided to go with the times and update a little bit...

curious shoes

a picture of Brown's Shoe Shop of Curiosities, opened last August and closed this March by the merry men of LE GUN. It hosted many a wild weekend and much debauchery, exhibited a haunted house in the cellar, and provided a great hangout for locals and visitors alike. Many new friendships and acquaintances with nutters were forged at its demure Hackney address. It'll be recreated in Shoreditch for the exhibition in June however so swing by if you can (more info then)!