[sketches in a moleskine]

For the most part there’s only a few jobs that come close to the excitement of shooting a feature film (IMO), and one of those includes being commissioned to shoot stills for a feature film. UK photographer Dean Rogers has steadily been adding features such as ‘Control’, ‘This is England’, and ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ to his impressive resume of commissioned work. Check out more of his work on his website: http://www.deanrogers.co.uk

Contemporary Japanese artist Takashi Murakami recently completed a video project in collaboration with actress Kirsten Dunst and film director, McG. The video art sees Kirsten Dunst dressed up in a Japanese princess outfit and singing a cover of the vapors song ‘Turning Japanese’ around the streets of Akihabara in Tokyo. I haven’t seen the footage yet but apparently it will be available on the web in the coming weeks. Interesting. I’m intrigued.

Ever since my wife introduced me to his photography 5 years ago, I have been obsessed with his work. And I think a part of the appeal was in Teller’s ability to produce work that can is admired from a commercial point of view e.g. his Marc Jacob advertising campaigns and also at the same time from a artistic point of view. Ultimately there’s a thin line between the two for him because over the years he’s been able to gain the trust of commercial partners such as Marc Jacobs to produce breakthrough work on a commercial platform. Every time I see a new campaign that he’s been involved in I am stunned. He doesn’t pretend to layer his work with conspicuous sophistication nor does he need to. His photography is striking from the get go.

On the 12th September Juergen Teller was invited for a conversation with Cathy Horyn of The New York Times at the School of Visual Arts NYC. Check out the video.

Fresh from having his solo show opening at the Alison Jacques gallery in London, Morel publishing have released Ryan McGinley’s latest works as a book. McGinley’s latest work includes 24 new colour photographs based on the title of his show ‘moonmilk’. Exploring and using unfamiliar spaces such as caves as the landscape and plotting his models right in the thick of his mise en scene. While he took the art world by storm in 1998 by taking snapshots of his friends in the lower east side of New York, ‘moonmilk’ like his last work ‘I know where the summer goes’ shows evidence that he has evolved his style to a point where he now creates the scene rather than simply catching the moment and the results are quite inspiring. The show’s on until the 8th October.

Alison Jacques Gallery
16-18 Berners Street, London

For those that aren’t in London, check out ‘Moonmilk’ online here.

Spent most of the afternoon down at the shire, Gymea to be exact, hazlehurst community gallery to be more exact! My sister-in-law was curating her first show titled ’shire girls’, here’s an excerpt from the flyer:

“The exhibition explores the connection between environment and identity across a diverse range of traditional, contemporary, interactive and craft based mediums, and takes a witty look at the ‘Shire Girls’ tag.”

An old friend from my film school days, Emma Buckley (Dir. Papercut) also happened to have work in the exhibition – she had an interesting video art installation.

Blanket Mag (Issue 11)

Issue 11 of Blanket Magazine is available now! They’re a high quality bi-monthly online PDF Art magazine, one of the few around making noise and aimed at giving web exposure and the like to current and emerging artists/designers/photographers. Download and have a peek! I’ve been impressed with the quality of work exhibited thus far. They’ve even been kind enough to publish some of my works in the latest edition…(check out page 84 )

Sunday afternoon – Went for a walk around my neighborhood and noticed some interesting street art around the centre of Newtown, some of which might make ‘Banksy’ proud…errrh or not…

If the image is a bit vague, what you’re actually seeing is a student performing a ‘piece’ in protest of the govt enforced merger between COFA and National Art School.

(details: the student is dressed in a skirt with a strap-on dildo and is fornecating with a gorilla on a bed.)