Little illustration

The Black Crow

Friends: Wei-Ning Yang

Wei-Ning is a Taiwanese girl who has been living in Milan the past two years, she is currently doing the Visual arts and curatorial program at NABA with me and part of my group of friends that I call family here. Apart from having admirable style and knowing where to find shoes for cheap, she is also a very talented artist who experiments with video, print and illustration. I am hoping to show some more of her work, but here is some postcards that she made based on one of her videos. As friends she gave each a few as gifts.  These scans do not seem to capture how wonderful they are. 

"Monument" a few days later

The thing about making public sculpture is that you are sure that someone will vandalise it. In our case we expected it to last only day. So of course I felt delighted to see the sunglasses  a few days later lying there like an old carcass.  

'Monument'

 by Edna Gee, Leah Corra Messersmith and Edith Poirier.

So finally after a few months of trying to find dates to work and so forth we have managed to finish this work.

This idea came out of workshop done with Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas at NABA where we were asked to work within the neighbourhood Ticinese in Milano. We were confronted with the idea of public sculptures which relates to collective memories of neighbourhoods. Ticinese today however is more of a passersby street then a socially interactive neighbourhood, or at least that is how we as foreign students relate to it. We all live around this area which connects us with the centre.  One of the things one sees  when passing through this neighbourhood is not a strong political inclination, but trendy people and street vendors selling these colourful sunglasses.  A lot of people here wear sunglasses, even inside.

These sunglasses are more or less 3 x 2 metres (slightly smaller) and are made out of plastic, cardboard, scotch tape and some wooden sticks to reinforce the structure. The cardboard we got from the local supermarket for which we did not pay a cent. Our biggest expenditure was the scotch tape. So here we have it a new monument for the neighbourhood, one which is held together by scotch tape. Come to think of it a lot of things here in Milano seem to be held together by scotch tape maybe that is why scotch tape is so expensive ;)

The process of us carrying the structure from NABA towards Piazza 24 Maggio, was almost for me the most wonderful part of the artwork. It turned out 2 people carrying one arm, the other arm by another 2, and 3 people carrying the big frame. We had to walk from Via Darwin all the way through Corso San Gottardo (which is quite a busy street) all the way to the piazza. So people saw first these two curious long arms coming by followed by the big frames – a kind of "what is this? Aha!" moment.

So the whole process was a little haphazard and sometimes difficult with us not having a space to work or money to buy materials (or a natural feel for structural complications) but I am quite happy with the result and the fleetingness of the end.

Thanks to Carlo Spiga, Jessica Rucinque, ZackWood and Mitch Wood for helping us carrying it and assembling it in the piazza.  And thanks to Edith and Leah for the collaboration, I would definitely do it again.

For more image click here.

Artissima 18, Torino

Performance at Artissima for the Mr.Freedom Summit. I will post a little bit more on this soon.

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New work - "Find us/Picnic"

Ok so the title is still in progress and the whole concept  is lacking something (still searching how to evolve the concept  more) but today I did this as part of an ongoing obsession with things such as sequins and our ever expanding digital life. 

Final mix of Summer basics series, 2010

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Fashion illustration, Summer basics series, 2010

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Fashion illustration, Summer basics series, 2010

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Fashion illustration, Summer basics series, 2010

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Online portfolio

This blog is more to show some work that is more informal and the processes of my work. To view my art you can view my online portfolio. It forms part of a great website called Art.co.za which contains a lot of portfolios of artists in South Africa  of all kinds. It also shows all the exhibitions going on in South Africa.

Fashion illustration, Summer basics series, 2010

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A little research for mass media studies

Read about the artists  Eva e Franco Mattes, quite controversial artists know for works  such as  Darko Maver and Stolen Pieces, and I am no fan of stealing but I really like the way they play with ideas of reality and  poke fun at the systems of the art world. Kind of reminds of an exhibition I saw in Rotterdam about the artist who forged Vermeer's and sold it to the Nazi's. Also read more about it here. 

Old scetches: 2010 Fashion

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Quilt making

Cutting squares

Allestimento - Star Museum

Once upon a star by me, Edith Poirier, Wei-Ning Yang and Carlo Spiga.

As part of our exam we had to for groups to create a display with the theme stars. We decided to make the project  part of an ongoing exploration of the neighbourhood of Affori, a historical farmer’s village which now forms part of the city of Milan.

Within the neighbourhood we wanted to make a series of activities with the involvement of artists, reactivating buildings with flags designed by artists and other projects. The navigation would be aided with maps which will be distributed at points such as the Villa Litta (Library).

The display for the exhibition is focused on the history of Cooperativa di Stella (Cooperative of the stars). The display is placed within the elevator of the building which creates a sense of travelling up in space, or through history.  

Computer Graphics - Discovering Helvetica

Project for computer graphics - designing a poster for the film Helvetica.

Here is one of a range.

Some works in progress

Curatorial project - NABA

The process of putting up an exhibition as class project. See the information here. I wrote the introduction.

Fashion sketch - 2009

Amaforeste:Animal Workshop

Workshop with Hagit Pincovici forming part of NABA's participation in Milan- FuoriSalone.