10Nov09
The Family play a sing song. Photo by The Family
On Thursday 5th November I was once again part of The Family for The Event. There’s something I really like about dressing in dungarees – which I haven’t done since I was about 10 – and marching around Digbeth! Other highlights include dropping in on an event about saftey in the community where we rescued some puppets and eating blue food, which tastes loads better than its plain counterpart
mmm, blue food. Photo by The Family
You can read more about my day with The Family on their website
04Nov09
Tomorrow I’ll be joining The Family at Birmingham Backpackers in Digbeth to take part in the activities as part of The Event. Ana summarises it all rather nicely:
…we’ll be spending the next 5 days changing our name every 6 hours, wearing hand decorated dungarees, playing thought-stopping games, eating brightly coloured food, asking questions, strengthening our Dantien, collective dreaming, strumming red, yellow, green and blue ukuleles, finding portals, calling rainbows, going to the top, chanting punk meditation, making friends, sleeping in pods, giving out flowers, love-bombing, and having all the fun we can cram into the day.
(Not a cult)
If you came to The Family Fun Day in September you’ll know what we’re all about, but either way come on down!
06Dec08
Last night I went to the opening of Shezad Dawood and Henrik Schrat’s exhibition at Eastside Projects, which included a talk beforehand.
Whilst the talk was great and the exhibition itself is a definite one to see (they’ve made the space look like a Western movie) there’s one thing that really ticked me off. Schrat, in describing the one-day comic called his comics ‘Art Comics’. This ticked me off as saying that separates comics from art, which I don’t think is fair on comics. For me, art is an all-encompassing term. Within it you have art forms, like theatre, sculpture, music etc and within them you have subsections, for example, contemporary, classical, abstract etc. In that context comics are an art form.
I liked that Schrat did ponder over how the pieces would be received from the comic art and the fine art community and, but taking comics out of their usual context (comic book shops) and putting in an unfamiliar context (galleries) does not make it any more or less ‘art’.
17Nov08
I saw this (via here):
And I instantly saw this:
The Shape of Digbeth, ladies and gentlemen, is a cat. If you should encounter this cat please have a supply of catnip with you.
01Nov08
On Thursday 23rd October I was at Eastside Projects for a talk about the commercial art world. It was lead by Simon and Tom Bloor, Gavin Wade and Ruth Claxton with input from Liz Rowe.
The overall notion of what they were saying is that there needs to be an air of professionalism about your work. If you’re having a solo show have some say, or even full control on how it’s promoted, right down to the typeface on the flyer. When selling your work don’t just sell a picture/video/sound piece, sell something more. The buyer needs to feel like they’re making an investment in something great.
Something that really made me think was the talk on selling your artwork in the commercial art world. It seems to be better to have a gallery represent you rather than to sell it direct. I didn’t understand this at first: wouldn’t a buyer want to have that personal touch they get when buying from an artist/real human being? Well, from the points raise I can see how that can negatively impact on your reputation. If a buyer wants to invest in quality in a sense they can judge this by what gallery their work has been in. This is especially true in situations like Zoo Art Fair, where potentially you have a few seconds to grab and hold peoples’ attention.
![hellocatfood posted a video: [Warning] Contains lots of flashing](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4119/4908683008_78e25c4388_s.jpg "hellocatfood posted a video: [Warning] Contains lots of flashing")
