I had a fine time at the Aldeburgh Food Festival the weekend before last. The sun came out in all its glory (lovely for us punters, not so great for the farmers) and I had the fortune to discover the unfathomably delicious fruit cream ices made by Alder Tree. These ice creams are so packed full of fruit like gooseberry and elderflower, rhubarb and ginger, and my favourite of all of them, the summer fruits, that they are not technically allowed to call themselves ice cream. Hence the lovely old fashioned name fruit ices. They seriously reminded me of my childhood…these ices are just like the ones my granny used to make using home grown fruits, cream, sugar and not much more. Delicious.
I was at the Aldeburgh Food Festival demo-ing a few simple recipes using the glut of tomatoes that crop up towards the end of every September. I had a great time making a chilli and tomato jam and fideus, a delectable noodle dish from Veracruz using some local Cromer crab but the real highlight was cooking with the Orford Primary School. Thanks to the enthusiasm and passion of Louise Holland, Jamie Oliver’s manager, the Orford Primary School have a garden where they are taught about growing vegetables, and then how to cook them. Mark Hix and I were sous-chefs to four jubilant kids who barely reached my tummy-button but were nonetheless showing a tent packed with people how to make pizza from scratch. The morning was a total treat and inspiring to see how much children love to cook and eat vegetables when they are involved in the magic of how vegetables are planted and how they grow. If only there were more projects like this up and down the country, kids would learn to love real food again, obesity levels would plummet and the NHS would heave a sigh of relief – wishful thinking maybe but surely not impossible?
Wow – we’ve had so many fantastic entries to our graffiti competition that we’re going to have to spread voting over an entire week! Each day we will post 10 entries and at the end of the week the top 2 from each post will go through to the final judgment by our management team.
Here are the first 10 entries, but remember to keep looking back and voting every day this week.
I am a Mexican who has been living here for 6 years, creating cross-cultural multi-disciplinary art. I am always drawn to the images that our cities hold and the stories behind them; from finding an old woman sewing a hat for Semana Santa while taking the sun in a small street in Seville, to the cherry blossoms on Hackney Road during the arrival of Springtime, or the busy commuters in Euston train station struggling with each other on the hottest day of London’s summer.
Artistic mark making and its creation is the most natural and intuitive instinct that I have at my disposal. Drawing inspirations from both rural & urban environments, I attempt to project into spaces, the techno-organic free flowing formations of curvaceous-linear marks that are prominent within nature.
I then endeavour to offset this with the surrounding metropolitan/industrial landscape. This is conveyed by a format of biomechanical, angle-poised geometric shapes.
My aim is to balance these contrasting factions showing the intricate qualities both environments have to offer, colliding into
a free-style colourfull abstract final outcome. Hopefully unaffected by any preconceived notions the viewer may have.
Influential Artists Include: H.R Geiger, M.C Escher, Salvador Dali, Roger Dean, Francis Bacon, Wes Wilson, Mucha & Andy Warhol.
+Graffiti Artists: Craola, 0ly Bleach, 0.Two, Seak, Seen, D*Face, Jeremy Fish, Alexone, Fybeone and Das Mudwig.”
i much prefer painting large spaces. big is best :] i like the idea of my characters invading, populating and taking over spaces. i am inspired by comics, cartoons and toys. by the 80s, bright colours and kitch. by tattoo art and by everyday life. i try to not let life get in the way of drawing daily..
Last year I painted a large wall piece. Moving away from the canvas was very liberating and now that my big show is over I plan on painting much more on walls and getting away from the comfort of my studio. I actually spent a year in Oaxaca after graduating from university. It was there that I began painting full-time, studying in the La Universidad de Bellas Artes.
I have been going to Mexico all my life because two of my siblings were brought up there. I also have a Mexican uncle and Mexican cousins on my mother’s side. I feel a very strong connection to that country, specifically Oaxaca of course, the arts capital of Mexico. I think the Latino influence is quite obvious in my paintings and South American people always comment on it.
His work is a mixture of organic images / patterns , art influences , graffiti / street art and computer design where the name comes from .(#c0defc is code for a colour in hexadecimal cyfers coming from his tag “ code “ and his initials FC )
The painting often escapes the usual square boundary of a canvass to be applied on to everyday objects found in skips sometimes left abandoned using concrete / silicon , installed in places as ” illegal public art “/ “performances” as if the whole process was more an activity to transform society’s waste into art using public spaces as galleries.
His graffiti / street art work is now mostly based on specific projects usually carried out in different countries mixing the site specific characteristic with recurrent subjects mostly based on cinematic symbols describing the artist background.
After a decade of active graffiti writing and global exploration my work has become strongly site specific.
I treat each location differently. I choose a design that harnesses the potential I see in each space. I enjoy tongue in cheek transformation. Turning things upside down, I put them on their head. By breaking down barriers through simply iconography I am accessible to the masses. I change peoples perception of the world around them. My humour is sophisticated, yet playful. There is lots to absorb, while being bold and simply pleasing to the eye. Lets make sweet music.
To understand a bit about Pure Evil it is illuminating to know that he is a descendant of Sir Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor who wrote the controversial work Utopia and who was later beheaded by King Henry VIII. With this busy background (Sir Thomas was later canonised) it is only natural that Pure Evil should explore the darker side of the wreckage of Utopian dreams and the myth of the Apocalypse, a belief in the life-changing event that brings history with all its conflicts to an end.
In 1990 PURE EVIL left the Poll Tax Riots of London behind and went to live in California where he spent 10 years ingesting weapons grade psychedelics , thinking about stuff , making electronic music and printing t-shirts . Inspired by skateboard culture and the west coast character graffiti of Twist he returned to London and picked up a spraycan and started painting weird fanged vampire bunnies everywhere.
8. Infected By Design
Because of my OCD and an over-active imagination, my artwork comes out in many different forms, but is always the result of having to get every line painstakingly neat! I take inspiration from everything around me, yet at the same time, it’s almost like sometimes I don’t want to take in anything from the world outside, lest it should influence my art, which I try to create purely from my mind. I would love this opportunity to show the world what it means to be ‘Infected By Design’.
To be the best ‘me’ I can be is what causes my inspiration as an artist because it keeps my eyes and mind open, aware of myself, aware of others, aware of the possibility of art, and aware of the essential combination which is life itself. Life and art are inseparable and I’d like to share my experience of this cohesion with the world in a positive and unifying way.
10. Emiliano Mendieta-Band
I’m what we call a brit-mex, that is half british half mexican, and my work goes around this mixed identity, my life experiences and the places I’ve lived in. I was born close to the day of the death and this has been one of the main subjects of my work, death as a source of life and a connection with your past, the story that makes you who you are. I look forward using the space as something that creates an atmosphere rather than just using the wall as a flat surface, floors and roofs can be used as well as the use of papel picado to create something more interesting, something that embraces you rather than something flat on the wall.
Now you’ve seen all the entries, cast your vote on which you think would look best in Wahaca Canary Wharf. You can only vote once on each heat, so be careful who you chose and look out for the next set of entries over the next few days.
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