Olympic Dreams Book Cover by James Dodd

Having realised that most of my ‘we like’ articles are about photography, I started work on a lovely little article about illustration. But that all came to a stop as soon as I saw ‘Olympic Dreams’ – a beautiful series of photographs by James Dodd – that I just had to write about. So it’s photography again!

When I first saw them, these beautiful black and white shots really stopped me in my tracks. I’m now kicking myself that I missed the exhibition in Sheffield late last year. Read more…

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t usually spend much time looking round for new artists or unusual pieces of artwork. However last year I came across the artist Emma Hack, and instantly fell in love her work.

She uses body art on human bodies and blends them into detailed backgrounds to create intricate and fascinating photographs. Through a lot of dedication and hard work her career has developed from children’s face painting to makeup artist to a body illustrator.

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As my third week at Red C draws to a close I can only look back and wonder how it’s gone so quickly. Nonetheless after relocating to Manchester, finding a new flat, and establishing an acceptable groove in my office chair, I thought it was about time ‘the new boy‘ contributed to the agency’s ‘We Like’ page.

So I thought I’d share the work of the satirical sculptor Maurizio Cattelan, (like you do). To say I’ve been a fan would be a bit much but I can definitely count myself among his many admirers.

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It’s rubbish when it rains on holiday. There are two good things, though, about the little weather blip on my holiday. One is that it is giving my balding head a break from the evil rays of the sun… and enabling it to stop looking like it is radioactive… and the second is to take a little time out and share with you one of the amazing things about this place. That thing being the street art that seems to be everywhere you turn in this fabulous country.

One of the things I love about going on holiday, is the moment when I start getting the desire to leave the beach and my trashy novels and grab my camera and just go exploring. This happened yesterday. The weather had become noticeably cooler… no longer were we in the energy-sapping heat of the low 90s… so I took the chance to go walk the streets of central Rio.

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Being a working mum with two pre-schoolers, my cultural references are quite limited as I spend a lot of time reading books with the children (and OK admittedly – CBeebies plays quite a big part).  I’ve always greatly enjoyed the magical and mystical world of children’s book illustrations, an interest which started in my own childhood with my addiction to Beatrix Potter books and the wonderful animal characters she brought to life from her own imagination.

Now in the 21^st century, CGI animation is a big draw to the kids, but the more realistic, the less charm in my opinion.  One of my favourite authors and illustrators is Lauren Child, creator of the Charlie and Lola series.   Her quirky style of writing and engaging imagery makes her books stand out for me as well as for my girls (including my very own ‘little sister Lola’ who is also ‘small and very funny’).

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I stumbled upon a book recently which I simply had to buy for the sheer inventiveness of the images inside it. Mixing sharp humour with a delicious edge of melancholy, ‘Little people in the city’ brings together the collected photographs of Slinkachu, a street artist who for several years has been leaving little people in the bustling city to fend for themselves, waiting to be discovered.

Flicking through the pages of this book is like discovering a whole new miniature world around us… think Land Of The Giants meets the Borrowers in the modern world. As you see page after page of these miniature statues going about their daily lives, whitewashing graffiti and moving into new homes… you really do get the sense that there could actually be miniature people living amongst us.

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Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’ was the book that changed the way I looked at photography and i’m envious of anyone picking it up for the first time. The beautifully sequenced, haunting photographs in ‘The Americans’  break all technical rules of photography in favour of a spontaneous, coarsely poetic beauty that I never seem to tire of. Not bad for a book that’s over 50 years old.

‘The Americans’ was created during a Guggenheim funded road trip across America in 1956 and 1957 in which the Swiss born Frank (sometimes accompanied by his young family) set out to to document “how Americans live, have fun, eat, drive cars, work and dream”. Frank shot from the hip and worked intuitively often snatching shots surreptitiously with his hand-held 35mm Leica, using his unique outsider perspective to expose themes of power, racism, inequality, and alienation. By the end of his 10,000 mile journey (in which he himself experienced prejudice after being arrested under suspicion of being a communist spy) he had made more than 27,000 photographs and had ‘sucked a sad poem out of America onto film’ as Jack Kerouac writes in the breathless introduction that accompanies the book.

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Barbara Kruger was the first truly postmodern artist that I discovered as an art student. Being a fan of thought-provoking art and literature and having experimented with text and image collages I was immediately struck by the power of her work. Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist known for her stark photo-and-text collages that appropriate the language of consumer culture to comment on it. She became an artist in the early 80’s after working as head art director on Conde Nast magazines. Her art continues to speak the language of magazines and advertising, and, in addition to appearing in galleries and museums, it can be found on billboards, T–shirts, and shopping bags. She used the skills she gained as a commercial art director to stunning effect with her provocative ‘found’ black and white photographic images, slashed with red stripes of text bearing now instantly recognisable slogans such as “I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground” delivered in her trademark Futura Bold Italic typeface. These iconic works masterfully employ the look and feel of propaganda, but directly raise questions with the viewer about values, taste, stereoypes and materialism.

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Banksy is probably one of the most famous artists alive. His stencil-style ‘guerrilla’ art became his trademark along with his strong anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-establishment messages. His first pieces appeared on the streets of Bristol and London in early 90’s and many more have appeared around the world since.

Although his art carries strong political messages they are also quite amusing and daring… in 2006 he left an inflatable doll dress as a Guantanamo prisoner in Disneyland to bring attention to the conditions of the terror suspects. He’s also believed to have smuggled a fake picture he created of a smiling Mona Lisa into the Paris Louver museum and hung it near the real one.

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I have a guilty secret. I am now, and have been for the last 5 years, a fully paid up member of the Pet Shop Boys fan club. I am, as my 2006 fanclub t-shirt states, a Pethead. And this book is one of my most treasured possessions.

Catalogue is exactly that: a definitive, visual retrospective cataloguing everything my favourite band have ever done. Literally EVERYTHING…

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