The Deptford Project

In between pound shop visits in Deptford and Dalston for a fun little project we are working on with YCN for the forthcoming edition of 'Ideas Illustrated', Anna and I grabbed a jacket sweet potato and a cuppa aboard The Deptford Project Train... Phew that was a long sentence. Designed by Studio Myerscough, the colourful edition to Deptford High Street, certainly brightened up my day. Check out the site for the proper blurb. Deptford - It's coming up, it's coming up.

Whoooo

Don't you just love it when you meet people who are on the same wavelength and you sit and talk through ideas for a project and it feels a bit like there is magic in the air. Well that's what happened yesterday when Anna and I went to meet up with Chloe Richardson (Stylist) and Julia Kennedy (Fashion Photographer)...Even if I was totally hungover, with a bruise the size of a large fried egg on my leg and no recollection as to how I got it. I am fairly certain that a big adventure is about to begin...

Sometimes it Helps to Look at Ice-Cream Upside Down...

Summer is very much coming to an end despite the sunny few days we have had over the last couple of weekends. Researching a window display I am about to embark on, I wondered whether an upturned, melting ice-cream was a bit of a morbid way to describe the transition from hot to cold. I decided I could put a bit of humour into it and make the ice-creams into characters with wooly hats, a bit like Mr Potato Head or something. However, the thought of a lonely melting ice-cream that some poor kid has dropped and the rivers of creamy liquid filling the cracks in the pavement, always makes me feel a bit depressed. I decided to go with the idea anyway and see how where it took me. Looking for a good shape to build a prop, I consulted Google Images. My-oh-my was I in for a surprise. Melted ice-cream doesn't have to be sad, it can be glossy and sexy and super-alluring and it would seem that other artists, designers and makers would agree with me. I have always been a huge fan of ice-cream and ice-cream imagery but up until now, mainly when the ice-creams were the right way up...

(They are all easy to find if you search for 'melted ice cream' in Google images apart from the second and fourth one which were under 'dropped ice cream')













And yep... I know this one isn't really melted but I just had to include it as it is f*****g cool! And for anyone that follows this blog at all, my second ice-cream throne!

love you longtime

It's been so long. Bad Anna.
Today I'm playing catch up, tax, emails, phonecalls, nails! Because the last few months have been hectic! We have been making and creating delights left right and centre. There has been little time to play on the blog. But here goes.
Yesterday I adopted 3 'NEW' letters. Saved from the land fill they will have a new lease of life one day, feeling them big time, and so was everyone else as I left work, asking me are you putting them in the bin? Are you mad? Dear oh dear!
Other from the usual bin raiding Lauren and I spent last week juggling the last few days of Orange work at Peepshow and making a castle for YCN. We spent about 6 hours trying to find plastercine. Sadly it seems kids don't play anymore, just sit on their xbox or playstation. We went to 4 different Woolworths, a W H smiths, Early learning centre and a few pound shops. Eventually we found this set (such fruity colours) and then revelled in covering our mountain in the stuff. It smelt really nice too...!
I have spent a lot of time playing with Ruairi's puppy. She is called Beans and so cute I cant leave her alone! Makes me want a pet to call my own. I keep telling everyone about a hedgehog I found for sale on the gumtree. £50 for a little african hedgehog. Apparently it was 2 years old and not getting along with the owners baby! It was so sweet. But my room is to full of stuff for any pets just yet. Maybe when I move to somewhere bigger everyone can come check my city farm all adopted from the gumtree.

London Sweats No Fresh Country Air

Our mission: To take Tom shopping and give him a good, smart look. What a day to choose... I do not envy anyone working in central London in the heat. As well as finding him some dapper garments, I also managed to find myself some stuff including a shirt that is a good compromise for the blue/flowers western shirt I was after. It reminds me of mini-milks with reindeer antlers.



I also noticed this signage on Argyll Street that I have somehow managed to miss in the past. Good-ol' Coney Island style sign-writing. I need to go back to New York. My friend Leo was telling me he went to one of the sideshows when he was out there recently. We always managed to miss them and I know we were missing out big time, damn-it. Soon soon.



Now I am home and sorting images and ideas for a couple of up and coming projects. I fished these books out for inspiration:



My re-discovered love for Hairy Diamond's 'Givin up' has finally got Dizzee Rascal's 'Dance For Me' out of my head thankfully. Also I just checked out Bryony's video for Rod Thomas' 'Same Old Lines'. It cracked me up...Watch for yourself, she certainly had sock puppets coming out of her ears at the time of making:



If only he had a live sock monkey performance at Green Man Festival next weekend. I am off on Friday for just under a couple of weeks to be part of the management of the festival and listen to some more lovely music. Particularly looking forward to seeing Caribou (whose album artwork is pretty pretty pretty too) and sitting under one of the beautiful, solid oak trees in the fresh night air with a big cup of cocoa and a massive wooly jumper.

Lauren Likes

Jo Ratcliffe. A LOT.

A General Tip-off.

Today proved that I should never dress too fancy when I don't know where my day might take me. My soft new black jazz pumps and sparkly gold jumper wouldn't be my normal choice of outfit for skip-raiding but when you get a tip-off like we did, I'm not one to give a shit about breaking a nail or similar (actually funnily enough Anna did break one today on our mission). So we found a skip of mannequins...Or more like a skip of many ideas and dreams that awill finally come to life. Funnily enough Nick at YCN had tipped us off earlier about a project through YCN which sounds RATHER exciting. If you're reading this Nick...are you thinking what we're thinking? Mannequin legs? Maybe not but oh well. So yeah by the time I got home very late tonight, I looked slightly suspicious carrying various limbs and packaged heads into my house in the pouring rain...I am now utterly bedraggled and in need of my bed, which I can confidently say I will not be sharing with a mannequin or two, like those freaky doll-lovers. I gave them the sofa. Oh dear. a shock for the household when they awake too. I just hope the film 'Mannequin' wasn't based on a true story...

GeT iNsPiReD - Yayoi Kusama and Hew Locke

If you haven't been to a good exhibition in London recently, I seriously suggest you head down to the Victoria Miro Gallery on Wharf Street, N1 (Just off City Road) to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition.

I have been a MASSIVE fan of Yayoi Kusama since her show at the Serpentine Gallery back in 2000. She has a condition which causes patterns to continue off the surface where they exist and engulf the surrounding space. Much of her work explores this hallucinogenic effect. Not only is the exhibiton worth a vist but the Victoria Miro Gallery is such a beautiful space, airy and light with a lovely outdoor area:





Alternatively go and see the Hew Locke show, How do you want me? at the Hales Gallery in the Tea building on the corner of Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road. Anna and I were also lucky enough to have our very own private view of the exhibition before the actual Private View took place. His work is very Political and heavily adorned with all sorts of symbolic objects. Many of which are very kitsch, gold, plastic and right up our street. It had a good write-up in Grafik Magazine this month too:



On our way home we had to do a bit of prop collecting in Clerkenwell and we bumped into a funny chap and his life size puppet entourage. It was for an advert apparently but I didn't quite catch which one. Prize for the first person to notice it on telly. Check out the magic hour light. My favourite as I am sure anyone who follows this blog has gathered by now!