February 2008 Archives
Art on the internet. Some of it’s great, some of it’s instantly forgettable, but there’s no denying that it represents possibilities that artists only fifteen years ago could only have dreamed of, the kind of opportunities that Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar explore in the seemingly never ending We Feel Fine. Please, please, please check it out. It’s astonishing not just for the ambition of the idea, but for the slickness of the execution and, most of all, for the way it presents a snapshot of people’s emotions all over the world - on your screen!
Explore it HERE - click on 'Open We Feel Fine'. The Mission and Movement statements help to explain a little more about the project.
As a shark nerd, I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to mention here on Susology the death of Roy Scheider (above centre), the man best remembered for his role as Chief Brody in Jaws. It was very sad indeed. Growing up, the Chief played a big part in the formation of this peculiar fascination with marine predators. But this is no place for mourning. Instead, let’s celebrate his role in a project that no one believed would ever get finished, the extraordinary determination of its production team, and the unwavering vision of one man in particular: the young and eager to impress Steven Spielberg.
On May 2nd, 1974, filming for Jaws began. It would prove very, very hard. There were three mechanical sharks, all of them called Bruce: one full bodied, one to be shot from the left, and one from the right (see him thrashing about in the surf with his director above). But Bruce rarely worked. The production closed several times for repairs. Days went by without getting a single shot, and on top of that there were all the predictable problems of shooting on the open sea: wet cameras, wet team, the cold, low morale. The whole thing quickly went beyond the June 30th deadline. But Spielberg didn’t want to shoot it in a tank, something the producers were actively encouraging to keep costs down. He didn’t want some fake, half-arsed rehash of Moby Dick. He wanted reality:
“There are two categories, films and movies,” he told them. “I want to make films.”
Of course it would have been much easier to shoot Jaws in a tank. With the film quickly plunging into a director’s worst nightmare, Robert Shaw, who played the burly seafaring captain Quint, called the whole thing “a piece of shit”. Richard Dreyfuss, the nerdy oceanographer Hooper, predicted the “turkey of the year”. All in all, things were looking up for ‘Jaws The Movie’ in the summer of ’74....
Art has an audience, a gallery and a purpose, but Jorge Rodriguez Gerada challenges our preconceptions of all these things in his urban murals that render common people in charcoal on giant town walls. They become local icons overnight. Each protagonist is taken from the streets of his or her own neighbourhood. Days later, their faces adorn one of its walls.
His art is not so much about the charcoal drawing as the process: the search for a city, a building, the person that not only represents the locality but is also happy to have his or her fifteen minutes of fame, and the deterioration of the charcoal because of time or rain. They become David to the Goliath of advertising, politics or even large scale commissioned art in public spaces.
A Cuban living in the U.S., Gerada is fascinated by the idea of personal identity. All his work concerns its fragility and the ease with which it can chop and change. But we won't try and interpret it any further. Instead, we'll leave it to the man himself:
The annual effort encouraging us to wake up and deal with African poverty is nigh. Sport Relief runs from the 14th to the 16th of March and there is a notable Olympian attempting something extraordinary. Bob ‘give us your f@&%ing money’ Geldof and ‘comedian’ Lenny Henry are resting up for Red Nose Day 2009.
So cometh the even year, cometh the man. James Cracknell, the double Olympic gold medalist, is attempting a new world record. He's going to row from Dover to Cap Griz Nez near Calais, then cycle 1400 miles to Spain’s most southerly point, Isla De Tarifa, and then swim the Gibraltar Straits to Morocco. So, England to Africa by man power alone.
“I’m aiming to show how close Africa is to the UK by getting there in less than a week. Africa is not a place on the other side of the world, it's on our doorstep.”
The man is a machine, clearly incredibly competitive, and perhaps his own biggest rival. His currency is winning, and even though his gold medal years are behind him, Cracknell will be wielding his superpowers once again. This time, though, he won’t be crushing the dreams of Oympic upstarts, but rather forcing his will onto a nation such that they might act on a simple truth: Ignoring Africa is unacceptable. This attempt is a measure of the man and of the power of sport.
See www.challengecracknell.com for progress reports.
Remember the classic titles from the original Superman film, with each line coming at you from the depths of space leaving a laser like three-dimensional trail? Kyle Cooper, in respect to those original titles, reinterpreted the idea for the 21st Century update Superman Returns and, by capitalising on new technologies, took us round planets and into solar systems on a one man solo flight through space. Watching the sequence reminds me fondly of all the times I’d creep downstairs as a child before anyone was up, slip the dusty Superman VHS into the recorder, and sit there, entranced by the story I knew almost better than my own name. And don’t pretend all you guys didn’t do the same...
It’s this kind of emotional resonance that Cooper, the man behind such legendary title sequences as Donnie Brasco and David Fincher’s Seven, aims for in all his work, and it’s the reason his new company, Prologue Films, has that name: for Cooper, the film titles are not simply a means to deliver information, but the first scene of the story at large - a prologue, much like Stephen Frankfurt’s eerie sequence for To Kill a Mockingbird (see below), a piece of work that continues to influence Cooper even today:
“Achieving that poetic intimacy and melancholy, that’s very difficult,” he recently told Eye Magazine. “But the thing is, we have a tremendous platform, yet what are doing with it? There’s something redeeming about always doing the best you can. Doing something positive that advances other kinds of messages and doesn’t just entertain the culture - it does matter.”
Cooper won’t ever underestimate the significance of good design in film.
“The best thing about Detroit is the people. They have to be some of the warmest people you’ll ever meet, and some of the strongest people you’ll meet.
“When somebody says, ‘W’re gonna do such and so,’ you say, ‘OK, that’s just talk.’ But when you do it, that’s when it means something in Detroit. That’s that working town ethic. It’s a put up or shut up town.” THEO PARRISH
In 1987, a group of street artists in Detroit created posters featuring photographs of various disintegrating downtown structures and attached them to each of the buildings with the caption Demolished by Neglect. Once a glorious metropolis held aloft by a thriving American automotive industry, by the 70s Detroit was in terminal decline; the departure of Motown in ’72 was, to many, a symbol of the impending degneration. Yet, out of the empty boulevards and tangle of desolate freeways emerged musicians whose influence resonates just as strongly today as it did twenty years ago, musicians who epitomise our own belief that it’s not the external resources at your disposal that matter, but what you feel inside: imagination, creativity, determination.
More on Detroit and the pioneers of techno will follow. In the meantime, here’s a great video following Theo Parrish, who moved to Detroit in ’94, around the city with his beloved field recorder.
Digital’s good. Analog’s good. Combine the two, and what do you get? Lots of things actually, among them the various creations of 45 iPod, an inventive little company that transforms old vinyl and cassettes into protective cases for both Classic and Nano iPods. The inspiration came from the realisation that the centre hole on a record matches the dimensions of the Classic touchwheel exactly, and so old vinyl is thus contorted into the shape of an iPod holder, with the centre hole framing the wheel exactly. They do a similar thing with old cassette tapes for the Nano. It’s analog meets digital in the truest sense.
The list of available cassettes and records to choose from is limited - the modest collection includes such luminaries as Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, Culture Club and Stevie Wonder, to name but a few - so the next step, surely, would be to allow people to send in a record to be reborn as a case. But then, who would be willing to part with those treasured twelves in the first place? Oh the conundrum: to have it spinning on your 1210 or adorning your own digital library?
Stevie Wonder it is then...
Just the other day I came across a copy of Colors magazine. I’d never seen it before. Strange, because it was launched in 1991, and has been published quarterly in multiple languages ever since. Shame on me. Anyway, each issue is dedicated to a particular subject. It was Colors that was responsible for famously doctoring the face of the Queen to look like a black woman in its issue on race in 1993, and it was Colors that caused uproar when an issue on AIDS discussed the disease in the kind of blunt and forthright manner that no one else dared adopt; a picture of US president Ronald Reagan engineered to look like an emaciated AIDS sufferer reflected their approach.
The latest issue is about money. As usual, a new micro site has been constructed online to introduce readers to the subject. Go to www.colorsmagazine.com, (make sure you do) and you’ll be presented with some graphic copy on money and how it forms the subject of this month’s magazine. Of course, they don’t tackle the issue of money as you might expect them to. Instead, they had some bank notes analysed to see what substance they could find. Some you’d expect, and some you wouldn’t, but each discovery corresponds to a different section in the issue, and the result represents a crazy reinterpretation of finance today. It's clear from issues both present and past that whoever conceived the original concept for Colors was either a) dreaming, or b) an impossibly imaginative, creative and determined individual.
The beauty of Colors is that it’s a socially conscious publication dedicated to the world. Sounds a little inflated, no? Yep, but it succeeds by looking at things in an entirely different way to everyone else: by harnessing creativity. Issues that bore us to death on a day to day basis are here reinterpreted and presented in a way that captivates the mind. Hell, just the idea of dedicating each issue to a different topic had me sold. Colors takes a simple idea - dedicating each volume to one subject - and uses it to discuss and raise awareness of globally prevalent issues impacting on the world around us. And, as Reagan and the Queen have shown, they aren’t afraid to put their necks on the line.
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Last month, Colors was dedicated to the blind and visually impaired. Why? Because there are over 40 million blind people in the world. That’s a huge number. Again, it’s about finding a way to talk about things that we’d all rather not talk about. The magazine was packaged in a braille front cover and printed in black and white from beginning to end: Colors without colour, if you will. It also came with a CD containing all content recounted in audio in four different languages, inspirational stories of people who have made something of their lives despite visual impairment. People like Tcha Limberger, the blind violinist who’s short piece moved me to the point that I promise (to try) to never moan about a lack of resource ever again, because we have everything we need. An extract from Tcha’s piece makes the point, I think. Look out for future issues...
“I was born blind and, like my brother, premature. My parents used to give him lots of attention so I became independent. My mother insisted that I study in a normal school. I took up violin when I was 17. It’s a ruthless instrument. It either sounds right or totally wrong. I am constantly researching. I experiment. I try different instruments and styles of music. What matters is to share, to meet other people. I’d like my music to be therapeutic. If I’m not able to find solutions for other people’s problems, my role is to recharge them so they feel inspired to continue in whatever they must do.
“My body is an instrument that allows my soul to express itself. I try to play authentic music with a personal touch. Jazz is music to be worked on. One always has to try to improve his knowledge and skill. I am in a perpetual self-construction process, I don’t want to stop and tell myself I have achieved something. I don’t have a specific goal. I only want to let my music grow. Some people say, “Tcha doesn’t play music, he is music.
“Being blind makes it easier for me to concentrate. I don’t know what kind of musician I am. I play the music I like and that’s it. If I were told that I could recover my eyesight, I would refuse. Learning to see would be too complicated. I don’t feel like I’m missing something.”
So says Mike Snelle of East London art dealer Black Rat Press. But affordable to who exactly? Judging by the £1 million worth of fees accumulated during last week’s Bonhams ‘Urban Art’ auction, affordable to a minority, that’s who. Nick Walker (see below), a British artist, sold Moona Lisa, a spray-paint-on-canvas piece from 2006, for £54,000, more than ten times its upper estimate. Other lesser known artists sold pieces for similarly inflated prices. And no prizes for guessing who’s work sold for the highest . Yep, Banksy’s Laugh Now, a chimpanzee with a sandwich board over his shoulders, fetched £228,000. An upcoming exhibition of Banksy’s work at the Andipa Gallery, London, prices Banksy’s Bombing MIddle England at £300,000.
How strange to see works created for the street, for mass democratic viewing, being removed from their intended setting and placed in the hands of a private owner. Banksy argues that ‘street art’ shouldn’t be sold by auction houses and that any shows in established art galleries have nothing to do with him: “It’s all stuff they bought previously. I only ever mount shows in warehouses and war zones.” Street art for sale? An interesting paradox.
Elsewhere on his site, Banksy continues to list his influences with stories about the writers that inspired him. I don’t remember seeing any of these in an auction house; must have missed it...
"In 1974 a 33 year old man named George Davis was convicted of robbing the payroll of the London Electricity Board in Ilford. He was nailed on the evidence of cops who were outside the bank at the time of the robbery and was sent to prison for 20 years.
However, his friend Peter Chappell was convinced Davis was innocent and inspired by discrepancies in the police statements and the fact that none of the bloodstains at the scene matched with the defendant, started calling for Davis' release. Chappell enrolled some friends and embarked on one of the largest sustained graffiti campaigns Britain has ever seen. Over the following months 'G DAVIS IS INNOCENT' appeared on walls, bridges and tunnels from one side of London to the other, some of which are still visible today.
The vandalism culminated in Chappell and four others breaking into Headingley cricket ground in August 1975 the night before a test match between England and Australia. Using plastic cutlery from a service station they dug holes in the pitch, filled them with oil and painted 'Sorry it had to be done, but George Davis is innocent' in large white letters on the wall as they left. The match was postponed and Chappell got 18 months for criminal damage.
The campaign brought the case to the attention of the Home Secretary who after a police inquiry released Davis two years into his sentence using the highly exceptional and controversial Royal Prerogative of Mercy.
The fight to free George Davis was one of the most spectacular campaigns ever fought against injustice, an achievement only slightly marred when a year after his release Davis was found guilty of robbing the Bank of Cyprus for which he served six years, and three years after which he was caught red-handed robbing a mail train.
George Davis is now a free man and happily married to the daughter of a North London Chief Inspector of Police."
Somewhere in the world, as you sit at your desk staring at your screen, counting down the hours till you can go home, there’s an expedition going on, an adventure that makes your own mundane existence pale in comparison: a trek across Africa, perhaps, a row across the Pacific, or a circumnavigation of the globe using nothing but man power. More often than not, the intrepid souls involved are hellbent on achieving something no one else has done before. Which reminds me, oddly, of a Stephen Fry TV sketch I once saw on the subject of language:
”I can say this sentence and be utterly confident that it has never been uttered before in the history of human communication: ‘Hold the news reader’s nose squarely waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.’ Common words, but never before placed in that order. A unique child, delivered of a unique mother.”
The point - an obscure one, I’ll admit - is that, because there are so many campaigns going on, it can be difficult to know which are the real deal, the life threatening, character defining, might-die-alone-with-a-frozen-heart style leviathans of human achievement, or which are the comparatively trivial exploits whose value lies solely and exclusively in the fact that they have ‘never been done before’; the kind that might get Kriss Akabusi’s tongue in a twist on Record Breakers.
I put Matvey Shparo and Boris Smolin firmly in the frozen-heart category. Their mission? To become the first men in history to ski to the North Pole in the unrelenting and flawless blackness of a polar winter which sees no sunrise or sunset between December and March every year. That’s darkness 24 hours a day.
Shparo reveals the over-riding - and somewhat unsurprising - emotion:
“Fear. Our main problem is fear. Fear prevents us from sleeping. Fear does not allow us to rest.”
Fear, then, of attack from polar bears, fear of falling through the thin ice while trying to sleep, fear of depression and paranoia caused by a lack of exposure to sunlight. These are the added trials and tribulations that make what is ordinarily a harrowing experience in the summer into a killer expedition during winter. And it didn’t take long for their fears to be realised: having spent 3 nights over Christmas stuck in a tent because of horrific snowstorms, they awoke on Boxing Day to bloodcurdling howls and the sight of an adult polar bear clawing its way through the tent. The bear crushed gasoline cans, spilling petrol all over their food, and damaged a sled before they managed to scare it off with gunshots. Shparo now sleeps with a gun at arms length at all times.
The great Sir Ranulph Fiennes, perhaps moved to action by the sheer magnitude of their task, has been tracking their progress and continues to send messages of support:
“I have felt on my own back all amenities of the Polar route, but the time of realisation of our two Expeditions is not the same: spring and winter. And this makes much difference. 30 years have had to pass in order for mankind to dare such an attempt. My young colleagues, I am together with you in spirit. Take care. I wish you great success.”
The daunting and, to be perfectly honest, terrifying thing is that they are out there as I type and as you read, probably trudging along in the dark as we speak, or perhaps trying to divert another hungry bear as it ambles, teeth bared, through their camp. We salute their unparalleled resolve and determination because we are at once inspired by their efforts but riddled with guilt for our incessant moaning about our hard lives and the horror of the English weather - which is actually pretty good today.
Shparo and Smolin want to do something ‘unrivalled and unprecedented.’ My loose definition between trivial and frozen-heart expeditions can thus be redefined: Exploration is not simply about achieving something that no one has done before; it’s about achieving something that, in your heart of hearts, you believe no one will ever achieve again.
There's another one below right in the thumbnails. Such lovely family pics these...
"I decided that I wasn't going to turn the camera away, or shut the door, or shoot from the waist up." LARRY CLARK
If that’s how you choose to shoot a film - if you opt for bare loins, incestuous abuse and teenage suicide - then, to get your film shown in the UK, punching, wrestling and attempting to throttle the man in charge of your distribution company - the one person with the power to say no - would probably be something worth avoiding. Unfortunately, Larry Clark (pictured in everyday dress above) punched, wrestled and throttled Hamish McAlpine, head of Metro Tartan, the UK distribution company for Clark’s controversial 2002 film, Ken Park.
The film was banned in the UK. Surely not. It was banned in Australia, too, and with no hint of a scuffle. Clark gets a bad press all too easily. Take that altercation with McAlpine: on the surface, it could be construed as a crazed act from an artist on the cusp of rejection; look a little deeper, though, and you discover that it was anything but - Clark’s assault had nothing to do with the film and everything to do with McAlpine voicing his support, in conversation with Clark, for Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. And so it is with his work: loaded with potentially controversial content, but never simply for its own sake.
His own 38 minute entry for the Destricted Project, a 2006 feature film created to explore the increasingly merged boundaries between pornography and art through seven shorts from seven different artists, is a case in point. Despite the list of high-profile entrees (Matthew Barney, Marina Abramovic, Richard Prince, Sam Taylor-Wood and Gaspard Noé), Clark’s piece was the only one to escape widespread criticism, and it does it by extending the brief to incorporate prevalent social issues. Throughout his career, from his first photographic series, Tulsa (see above), through his feature films and right up to his current exhibition here in London, he has demonstrated a fascination with the youth of today, particularly those from impoverished backgrounds, and the real and present dangers impacting on their lives. Reality has been an ever present in his work. There was nothing fanciful about those early Tulsa pictures (1963-1971), nothing exaggerated, nothing artificial. Clark was simply documenting his own existence and, in doing so, revealing a dirty American underbelly that society was all to eager to sweep under the carpet: “I was coming out of the 1950s where everything was repressed. Back then in America there was no talk of drugs and things like that. It wasn't supposed to exist, but it did.”
It’s been the same with his films. The events in Kids, the film for which Clark is perhaps best known, were based almost entirely on real people and events witnessed during a three year period in which Clark immersed himself in the New York skate scene. The only thing not true in the film is the girl who gets AIDs from her first sexual encounter. Although people watching it might think it obscene and contrived, it was real people dealing with real problems. And that’s how he approached the Destricted Project, as an opportunity to investigate something more important than just sex as art. Clark views pornography as something negatively affecting young people today because of its widespread availability: “I’m curious about the fact that kids nowadays see it. I have a daughter of 21, a son of 24, and I’ve been taken aback by what they’re exposed to. The innocence I had as a kid just isn’t around anymore.” To investigate, he interviewed a bunch of young American men about their relationship with pornography. He then picked one who would be free to have sex with a female porn star of his own choosing. Clark filmed it. The resulting sequence, preceded by interviews, makes for sad and, at times, tragic viewing: young men psychologically confused by the pornographic stereotypes paraded as normal. Again, these are real problems affecting young people today - problems that most won't dare discuss.
Last week, I ended up - I’m not sure how - at the opening of Clark’s latest exhibition, Los Angeles 2003-2006, at the Simon Lee Gallery in London. The series of pictures follows a four year period in the life of Jonathan Velasquez (above), the young adolescent who inspired Clark’s last film, Wassup Rockers, and it's a series that once more reflects his enduring fascination with the marginalised youth of today. In following Velasquez so closely, and in placing hims so clearly in the context of an uneasy social environment, the pictures constitute an intriguing narrative in which we wonder just how the subject will turn out in the end. What will happen to him? Will he fall foul to some of the ills commonly affecting other young kids in South Central? Clark has followed Velasquez as he navigates his way through one of the most difficult periods of anyone’s life, a period during which people balk at nothing but rarely think about the consequences of their perceived omnipotence. When you’re young, you honestly think you can get away with anything; and rarely do you think about the significance of some of the choices you are forced to make.
This idea of choice is, for Clark and for us, an important one for people of all ages, but more so for younger generations who have most of their lives stretched out in front of them - entire lives at the mercy of a single moment of choice. One choice can change everything. This fragility of youth has formed a consistent backbone to Clark’s work of the last thirty-odd years, and it continues to fascinate him even today. To those that view films like Ken Park as immoral and needlessly obscene, he responds:
“There’s a moral centre to all the films. I think: consequences, you know? Since the Tulsa book I’ve been called many, many names: ‘pornographer’, ‘child pornographer’, ‘garbage’, ‘trash’, ‘he’s romanticising drugs’ and on and on and on. But there is a moral centre to all the work and the moral centre is ‘consequences’. The consequences of everything we do.”
The consequences of choice. Something worth remembering.
This chap is incredible. Most of his work is done using nothing but A4 paper - the stuff we use everyday without thinking - plus a knife and maybe a bit of glue to create incredibly fragile, beautiful, fun and in a wierd way quite tragic creations.
Over to the man himself, Peter Callesen: "I find this materialization of a flat piece of paper into a 3D form almost a magic process - or maybe one could call it obvious magic, because the process is obvious and the figures still stick to their origin, without the possibility of escaping. I find the A4 sheet of paper interesting to work with, because it probably still is the most common and consumed media and format for carrying information today, and in that sense it is something very loaded. This means that we rarely notice the actual materiality of the A4 paper"
For what it's worth, I think he's right. I love all his work but there is something particularly breathtaking about the stuff on A4. Anyway there are too many awesome pictures to show you so just have a look at his very user friendly website:
www.petercallesen.com
Your heart thuds like an analog kick drum, repeated over and over, quickening now and then, but always there, the only rhythm to a dark and silent night. You feel the heat of your breath brewing in the mask that covers your face, but you’ve observed the movements of the guards for days now so you hope you won’t need its protection. You also know it’s rarely that easy. You know you have ten minutes to get in, write and get out.
Similarly masked, a friend lifts the lid on the man hole and you drop inside, into the dark, into the underground.
This is the life of the underground writer, any graffiti artist who chooses to write on tube trains in major cities around the world. And it’s the life that Alex Fasko describes in Heavy Metal, a stunning photographic tribute to the writers that actually live those lives, day in, day out. The book is not simply a case of cold documentation. Instead, it brings to life a foreign existence, a life we really know nothing about. The hushed stillness of the night, the fear of being caught, the preparation, the speed and efficiency of the work, the determination required to succeed: we sense them all in Fasko’s pictures.
And in his commentary at the beginning of the book he provides some illuminating thoughts on the motivations and insights behind his work, issues that will resonate deeply with anyone involved with any kind of personal pursuit that others deem not normal:
“Introspection is no easy exercise, and it’s difficult finding words to describe the long path that brought life to this work. What direction had my thoughts taken?
Where was my creativity driving me throughout the slow and uncertain process of this book taking shape, like a newborn stream, from the very resistances and warnings of both friends (though supportive, at times they were skeptical) and enemies (chasing me day and night). I shall never forget the lights and smells of each shot: the flash popping among metallic dim neons, the pungent odour of acids and tints, my friends’ sweaters adrenaline-soaked by the excitement of capturing beauty. It wasn’t easy. Like that stream, this books is shaped by the stones of unexpected obstacles, by u-turns, sudden rushes, feverish research, and never ending nights of work. Diaphragm open, diaphragm closed, I have done it hundreds of times, bombarding trains, tunnels, human bodies in motion, capturing, fading, incriminating my subject on the spot, and then immediately forgiving. I have been searching for indisputable certainties among the darkest corners of our cities, and found that those corners are not dark at all: they are simply less illuminated.
One thing is sure: I believed in my work. Catching the action, I made it mine; mine forever, my lucid eternal conscience adding colour to the darkness of my nights. And now, holding this book in my hands, with my backpack full of images and stories, I recognise that old instinct of mine that kept me afloat beyond the outsiders’ line. People usually walk above tunnels and rarely venture into the cool breezy caverns that lie stretched underneath our homes. But there is an instinct, a need for resistance against the monochrome of the distant metropolis, a sometimes cruel, non-accepting society.
I wanted to be part of this resistance. I have resisted previous attempts to dissuade me from the future I had chosen for myself. I have resisted with the two weapons I know: my camera, and my never ending drive to capture hidden, underground realities, places of possible unmeasurable interest.
Places where your hopes and dreams find a name, and where colour emerges from the dark.”
In this era of customisation it seems like any product can be adapted to represent its owner. Individuality is currency and people want to be recognised as being unique. Some are braver than others, and for a certain few individuality is a way of life.
With people demanding that which no one else has, there has to be designers with the talent to deliver extraordinary, inimitable work and do it again and again. I caught wind of Rudey about a year ago having seen his work in a shop window, His talents had been spotted by a 'pooled resources' company representing designers, musicians and artists.
The style of Rudey's work is dazzling, and I wanted to know if custom clothing was his only focus. Making contact with him wasn't easy but once I did, I discovered that for him it wasn't so much about the clothes as the art. His work needed to be seen and what better way than for the people to become exhibits and to create a gallery on the streets.
"I had to figure out how to get my work seen, so I started painting on literally everything. I left a wake of colour pretty much everywhere I went. That decision brought a new style to my work which I like, so now I work on the kind of images that I grew up doing but at the same time I'll be painting a pile of trainers with some really unusual design requests."
The thing I love about Rudey's work is that has a really strong feeling of youthful, almost childlike exuberance. It's a riot of colour that takes cultural phenomena like graffiti and freestyle basketball out their hiding places and into the public eye. Refreshingly though it's not a contrived political statement, for Rudey it just is what it is:
"My work is all about fun, it consists of the colours I love and the doodles I doodle. A lot of it has an urban feel but it's very important to me that its not too serious. I stay true to that but sometimes its a fine line between keeping innocent and also expressing elements of darkness and surrealism that may be neccesary for a certain piece."
Rudey's clients range from Marvel Comics to UK Hip-Hop dance champions Diversity, and he always gets a buzz from the continued individual client work. To get an idea of the grassroots though, have a peep at www.rudeyarts.com For me this shows the real Rudey, a collection of images, doodles, clothing design and fine art that looks incredible whether its on a canvas, on a wall, on a cap or in a sketchbook.
Since 2003 the heated debates in English rugby have raged around the same old themes and posed the same familiar questions. Is the Super 12 champagne game a better brand of rugby than that found in the northern hemisphere where the stakes appear higher and thus the games more attritional? Is promotion and relegation the right way to run our premier league, attract long term investment and build the sport for the future? When will England unleash the potential of their three quarters and deliver the complete performance we as fans crave? All players and followers of rugby have a view and we are all are animated in expressing our heartfelt perspectives.
The joy of being an English rugby fan today is that almost all of us are united in one opinion ... the future is bright, very very bright for our boys in white. The young talent coming through into the senior levels of the english game is quite simply awesome. Watching the England Saxons (our 2nd XV) play this evening I am reminded by the commentator that the average age of the side is 23! As I am sat here typing it is immediately apparent that the pace, flair and potential in the backline is mouth watering - Tom Varndell, he of 10.63 for a 100m in a pair of rugby boots, scores tries for fun (and there's his second of the evening!) - the creative genius of SUSO sponsored Ryan Lamb makes for compelling viewing - the vision and guile of Shane Geraghty (who looks to have turned this evenings game with one ghosting break) makes him a rare breed - Matt Allen, Nick Abendanon, Delon Armitage ... the list goes on and on. And this before we highlight the appetite for work from England's powerful young forwards, the engine room of the future - Hartley, Crane, Kennedy - hardmen getting harder by the day and game. Lest we forget, all of this on top of tomorrow's senior XV offering up the equally young Luke Narraway (first cap), James Haskell, Toby Flood, David Strettle and the electric Danny Cipriani on the bench. Can't wait for tomorrow, can't wait for 2011!
Of course this overflow of talent in our game owes much to the success of the 2003 world cup winning side and the worthy showing of their successors in 2007. Just as the Welsh legends of the 70s continue to attract and inspire a nation of young rugby fanatics today (we'll see just how good they are tomorrow!) Johno and his boys of 2003 have served up a source of motivation capable of carrying the nation to future glories. For those of you that might have missed it - I offer another source of true rugby inspiration - the beauty of Sevens rugby when played by the very best in the world. With the world biggest sevens tournament fast approaching, the Rosslyn Park National Schools Sevens next month (for which SUSO is proud to be a sponsor), look no further than the little Fijian genius for a real source of rugby heaven and inspiration. Only now there are two of them - Serevi and his protege Ryder - two imaginative, creative, determined 7s rugby playing souls built in the image of each other. This is another level of rugby indeed.
