Audrey Kawasaki’s show “Watching Shadows” or “Kageboushi”  opened last night at the Space Yui Gallery in Japan. The exhibition included some of her signature paintings of dreamy-eyed girls, who have a sense of innocence, yet paradoxically possess a touch of sensuality as well.   However, it seems that in this body of work, although subtle, her characters are maturing in front of our eyes, perhaps with a hint of what’s to come.  No canvas pieces in this show, but Audrey explores her lasercut technique further with two beautiful and intricate pieces.

http://arrestedmotion.com/2009/05/openings-audrey-kawasaki-%E2%80%9Cwatching-shadows%E2%80%9D-or-%E2%80%9Ckageboushi%E2%80%9D-space-yui-japan/

Graffiti artist Banksy has pulled off an audacious stunt amid tight secrecy to stage his biggest ever exhibition.

A burned-out ice-cream van is among 100 works Banksy has installed at Bristol’s museum, replacing many of the museum’s regular artifacts.

The reason the museum was closed was kept secret from top council officials.

Banksy said: “This is the first show I’ve ever done where taxpayers’ money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off.”

Staged in the council-owned City Museum and Art Gallery, Banksy v Bristol Museum features animatronics, installations and a sensory display.

“This show is my vision of the future, to which many people will say: ‘You should have gone to Specsavers’”, Banksy added.

The exhibition and its location have been a closely-guarded secret since October, with just a couple of museum officials in the loop.

“I think we may have dragged them down to our level rather than being elevated to theirs,” said Banksy of the subterfuge involved in staging the show in his home city.

Museum director Kate Brindley said it was a huge relief to finally be able to talk about the exhibition, and admitted they had taken a “risk”.

Plans for the summer show were kept from Bristol City Council chiefs until Friday – the day before it was due to open.

Bristol has had a love-hate relationship with Banksy since he started stencilling on the city’s walls in the 1990s. There is likely to be criticism of the decision to stage an official expo of his work.

“We ran a bit of a risk,” said Ms Brindley, “but we knew that it was just the right thing for the city.

“Equally there’s so many people in Bristol who just love Banksy, and internationally. He’s a megastar.

“We’re a gallery that wants to work with contemporary artists – he’s our home-grown hero.”

The artist himself was involved in setting up the exhibits and came to the museum to oversee its installation, but staff were unaware who he was among the crew setting up the show.

Although Bristol has seen work by Banksy adorn the city’s walls, this is his first official indoor exhibition in the city since 2000.

That show was held at the Severnshed restaurant on the waterfront and featured several paintings which have since gone on to sell for thousands of pounds at auction.

Banksy has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles and Bethlehem.

He became famous after a series of “guerrilla” stunts which saw him paint the West Bank barrier and put an inflatable figure of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner at Disney World.

It was Bristol where he first made his mark though, with a series of graffiti paintings on iconic local buildings such as the city council headquarters, an M32 bridge and the Thekla floating nightclub.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8094839.stm

Bela Borsordi collab with Paul Graves. View more here.
Great photographers.

Street artist ABOVE has kicked off his new European art tour in Copenhagen, Denmark with The Naked Truth.

Denis Rouvre Photography.

AMAZING!

Andrey Razoomovsky

North Carolina-based uLiveandYouBurn creates havoc in the city with the creation of these wicked street monsters. He takes urban elements, such as traffic cones and trash cans, and turns them into Frankenstein-like beasts!

uLiveandYouBurn is constantly pushing the boundaries of acceptable art. “I’ve always been creative artistically, and lately I’ve come to really not like rules. So I try and break them at every opportunity.”

Poster Girl is a series of works by influential graphic artist Jasper Goodall, that explore themes of fetish and fantasy. Whilst the work itself can be seen as erotic art, it is equally about looking at the world of fetish and erotica with an appreciative yet critical eye. It is erotic art but it is also about erotic art – the images are a result of Goodall’s musings on erotica and sexual fetish.

Much erotica and pornography, because it’s very nature is to be risqué to the wider community and because many still see it as taboo, doesn’t have to try too hard to be interesting. Our feelings of arousal, guilt or discomfort when viewing a sexual image means that erotic art in it’s basic form – voyeurism of the sexual figure and or the sexual act, is fascinating in itself. This fact, Goodall believes, has lead to much repetition both in imagery and subject.
Sexual proclivities and fetishes (and the resultant artwork/photography) seem to follow certain themes that are sometimes repeated so often they become sexual clichés.

Some of the pieces on display here are purely about Goodall’s interest in the fetishisation of otherwise innocent materials like rubber and PVC. Or about how the colour pink has become associated with sexy-ness (along with it’s sexual partner black) and how the shininess of polished latex becomes almost fluid in it’s texture when stretched over a body. Shininess itself seems to have become sexy, whether it’s on a human body (suggesting lubrication) or whether it’s a shiny new car or i-phone, people often refer to shiny objects as being sexy.
The images are made in part from photographs of nail polish, to visually refer to sexual fluids, lubrication, and sweetness as well as referencing glamour and self decoration.

Other images are less direct and are a response to notions in sex and fetish that result in clichéd role-play. For example the naughty nurse, the naughty nun, the kinky policewoman, the innocent shepherdess, the cheerleader, the schoolgirl etc.
All these often repeated themes/costumes/fetishes interestingly share similar ideas: either innocence corrupted, mothering turned sexual or authority and power bent or discarded in sexual abandon.
‘Bad Bambi’ is a re-working of the idea of the chaste nun, shepherdess, schoolgirl or cheerleader, falling from innocence. These fetishes all focus on the sexual thrill imagined in the corruption of the chaste or innocent.

It is a re-presentation of these clichés, what Bambi might have turned out like when she grew up and lost her innocence. She has the same surprised expression first seen on many 50’s pin up girls’ faces when they are shocked and surprised at their own naughtiness or when witnessing a suggestive act. The implication in these images is that the subject’s shocked look is as much about their illicit enjoyment and guilt in whatever is taking place as it is about the act itself.

Innocence’s opposite fetish, dominance, is represented here by the animal and the Gorgon – sometimes seen as a symbol of the dangerous fascination exerted by woman, with her deadly stare and mysterious hair, or by classical scholars as a symbol of divine femininity. Possibly derived from an actual ritual mask, it is thought that the head of Medusa was used in early matriarchal societies to keep men at a safe distance from sacred ceremonies and mysteries reserved for women. The fetish of the dominant, aggressive female who has become goddess-like in her being is as often repeated as the submissive or corrupted innocent.

The pieces are all of a model holding an image in front of her. This device references peoples’ ideas of fantasy and reality. Dressing for sex, and indeed any dressing up – be it for a party or for more kinky reasons, is all about creating an image. With our clothes we create a persona; in sexual dressing that persona more often than not brings the dresser and viewer closer to those ideas involved in sexual fantasy (some being the often repeated fantasies of lost innocence and corruption mentioned above). For a period, the world stops being reality and your fantasy is made real, only to evaporate again in the morning…

I have to get my hands on that Medusa print ASAP!

The WWF “Give A Hand to Wildlife” campaign was developed at Saatchi & Saatchi Simko, Geneva, by creative director Olivier Girard, copywriter Jean-Michael Larsen, art director Nicolas Poulain, with body painter Guido Daniele.