Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts

Thursday, 3 December 2015

Happy in Vienna

I thought I’d add a theme music to this post, Röyksopp’s Happy up Here so you can listen while reading.

I took the train from Prague to Vienna last weekend, I’d never visited and it seemed like a good opportunity to catch up with old friends who live here. It was also a good excuse to take the train for a few hours, I always love a good train ride. It was a chance to see what that little part of the world between the Czech and Austrian capital cities looks like while editing some podcast recordings.

I walked around Vienna in the morning a few days ago, and was glad to stumble upon a Stefan Sagmeister exhibit at the MAK, the Austrian Applied and contemporary arts museum. Knowing the famous designer is Austrian by birth, and having seen some of his work on happiness in TED Talks, it was a perfect opportunity to check it out.

It is called The Happy Show and collects the designers thoughts, research, experiments, and ideas about happiness. He famously closes his studio every seven years to take a year off as a sabbatical and many of the works in the exhibition were produced during that time off, some of it while he lived in Bali for a year, which seemed to have been in 2008 or around that time. He shows some of this work in his TED talks, I recommend checking them out.

It was a fantastic and happy morning for me, I’m always happy to walk around the streets of a new city and it was sunny so just that put a smile on my face. The Christmas markets were open with friends and families of locals and tourists walking around having fun and gathering around small high tables to drinks warm mugs of the Christmassy spiced, slightly boozy, and variously flavoured local pünsch.

Rathaus-Vienna

I also love checking out the food of course, and was surprised to see stalls serving warm soup in bread bowls. While I loved the idea, it didn’t occur to me as a practical kind of street food to eat on the go. I stopped to watch some people order and see how they ate it, they turned out to stop at some tables I didn’t see were there at first. More reasons to smile while walking around.

I’d been walking around the centre of town for about two hours when I came across the exhibition, a good time to stop and get warm in the museum. The exhibits also put a smile on my face. One of my favourite pieces was the “How happy are you?” yellow banana flavoured bubble-gum dispensers. Ten of them are lined up in a colorful display, numbered 1 to 10 and asking people to self select how happy they were and take a bubble-gum from that machine. It’s playful, and as Stefan wrote in comments about the piece; it might sound silly to ask though research has shown that people stating they were happy actually made them happier. I enjoyed noticing there were a lot less gum in the 8-9-10 dispensers than in the ones numbered 1-2-3, which were almost full. I stayed around a few minutes and it was fun watching people select it, visitors watched each other and smiled. Happiness, or at least smiles, are pretty infectious.

I mentioned playful already, and to me this was a recurring theme throughout the exhibition, playfulness and happiness are intertwined in their crafting.

I came across a brilliant article, a thanksgiving acknowledgement for the advertising industry by Tom Demetriou, it’s an interesting and fun read I could relate to having lived similar situations in my work too.

He shares this award acceptance speech from Jerry Seinfeld, also a lot of fun. Cynical perhaps, though I mention as relevant in the same post it because he talks about the small moments of happiness advertising can provide.

“In advertising, everything is the way you wish it was. […] In between seeing the commercial and owning the thing, I’m happy”

I’m not sure I see it as happiness when I’m in the thick of working on advertising or marketing a product, though typically a common thread with all great and memorable pieces of advertising is that they put a smile on people’s faces regardless of the product or service being advertised.

Beyond the ironic humour, there is definitely something to be said for appreciating happiness moment by moment, and then to be able to laugh at the irony of the often nonsensical things I do in the world of advertising, which I think also holds true for a lot of people in other lines of work.

The quote from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off comes to mind as a good way to complete this post:

“Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.”

Tuesday, 8 April 2014

New experiences: Patron of the arts

Image credit: Sue Beatrice
I came across a few of artist Sue Beatrice's pocket watch sculptures online via an article online with some photos, and found them really beautiful. Susan specialises in creating Earth-friendly pieces of art exclusively made with natural or recycled elements.

As I understand it, most of her work using natural elements tends be ephemeral, such as with these sand or pumpkin sculptures:
Sand Sculpt USA - NY Aquarium sand sculpture on Coney Island 

And then there are the recycled pieces, this is from her Facebook Page, All Natural Arts:
"All Natural Arts is a celebration of nature in the form of jewelry and other fun and whimsical items. Using sea glass, stones and other natural elements as well as vintage watches, jewelry pieces, and found objects to create one of a kind treasures for you to enjoy or to give as gifts."

This kind of intricate miniature sculpture also happens to be one of my favourite forms of arts, I find them really fascinating. I think the minutiae, skill level, and intricacy involved are mind-blowing.

In this style, there are some really nice pieces in V&A Museum collection in London (miniature ivory sculptures in particular, if memory serves), and the most incredible I've seen are all in the Imperial Palace Museum in Taipei. Their collection is extensive, for example this insanely detailed sculpture carved into a 1 1/2 inch long olive pit:


So in the spirit of doing either random or simply trying on new things to keep life interesting, on impulse I contacted Susan to find out more about her work. After exchanging a few emails and finding out how she creates these kinds of unique pieces on commission, and thinking to myself I've never done anything like this, I commissioned a pocket watch sculpture for myself.

I'm looking forward to seeing the results and of course will share them with you once I have it!

Monday, 7 April 2008

Temporary Autonomous Arts Brighton 2008



Saturday, I went to the latest TAA (Temporary Autonomous Arts) event happening in Brighton (Portslade). The festival was on from the 2nd to the 5th April and my friend Ben stayed there for the whole thing.

In their words:
TAA's are free, open access art exhibitions that take place in disused and reclaimed spaces throughout the UK.

Reclaiming space that has no other immediate purpose, we will be repairing, making safe and improving the building we use before transforming it into a vibrant, organic, techno artistic statement. [...]

Artists, musicians, writers and performers who otherwise would have no outlet, are invited to display their work uninhibited by the normal constraints placed on the current artistic climate. The space will be used respectfully and intelligently, for genuine community development, creating fields of opportunity for a future at no cost or harm to anyone else. We want to exhibit all forms of artwork; drawings, paintings, sculptures big and small, photography, installations and more. Showcasing poets and vocalists, films and performance, words and concepts born out of the free party underground movement. These spaces of reclaimed freedom have been making a significant contribution to an alternative art world.
It was very cool, all sorts of beautiful and sometimes strange artworks were all over the place, from graffiti to metalworks, projection of short films, paintings, live music in the evening, good food, etc. All in a friendly atmosphere with some pretty interesting people, it was well worth it! I'll definitely be checking when it will be happening next year!

I uploaded some pics on Flickr, check them out here: link