Dearest Heart

Dearest Heart
Leeds Town Hall Vintage Fair
16.10.2011


I went to the Vintage Fair in Leeds town hall I ran in two lovely ladies. Dawn Balmforth & Leonie Fay Pickard and I got introduced to their great stall of goodies. They pick and alter vintage items which they are personally in love with and want to give a good home to. They are trying to make this passion in to a great business and I knew it would   succeed so had to be involved. 


Leeds Corn Exchange Vintage Fair
18.02.2012
Now a different location and a different feel but the ladies are still there selling their wears. The building is beautiful and I see many familiar faces from the past fairs. I think there are some new changes in 2012 much more reclaimed materials being used to create new things like bags and cushions which I think is a great recycling technique. These lovely ladies are working towards making their business official and a website will be following but I can only wish for a store in the future so you can all get absorbed in the experience, that is Dearest Heart.




For the time being see their facebook page,
https://www.facebook.com/dearestheartvintageclothing

3.8 million dollar bag anyone?

Ok so I am a major bag lover, with my every day Oliver Bonas being my new favourite, but I already have my eyes on yet another brown Fiorelli that looks like every other bag I own. However I just saw March's issue of Time magazine where I was blown away by the latest over extravagant and completely useless accessory.

"1001 Nights Diamond Purse", valued at $3.8 million. This heart shaped bag has 4,500 diamonds, of which 105 are yellow, 56 are pink and 4,356 are colourless, the total weight is a whopping 381 carats. It was made by 10 artisans from the Dubai based designer, House of Mouawad which has been around since 1890. Now tell me something, this bag that apart from being bloody ugly would be impossible to actually use, not to mention a complete risk against your life. Please bring me something, leather smelling and big enough to fit like 200 objects of my everyday crap in and I am good.

Raiding the Past : Understanding the Present

Now normally 60s 70s fashion isn't my thing by I enjoyed Dominic Lutyens talk due to how much contextual knowledge he has to surround his areas of interest. He backed up the growing Eclectic culture by challenging it against modernism, in the same way the new black and gay rights movements were battling against the establishment in the early 1970s.

With the origin's of style established he threw the audience in to Kitsch culture, one of my true favour          words in describing the way some people choose bad taste. After looking in to it further I established the opposite of bad taste this sort of heightened beauty, and I found both in Tom Fruin's Glass sculpture.

Over the top, multicoloured shed, the best example of clashing ideologies I actually like.

This example also links on to Dominic's next area of interest the nostalgia of art deco, and the aspect of escapism it offers. I found plenty of graphic examples of art deco being revived as well as plenty of truly visionary work for it time.

I found a personal interest in the early Gay Pride movement as I have worked my local gay pride event in Brighton for years (as security but hay). The brake throughs represented in the fashions worn were something sensational, and lead to the creations of style icons such as David Bowie perfect example of Glam Rock, then Mick Jagger as a fine example for Androgyny.

It wasn't just music but design that was influenced by style, from boutiques such as Mr.Freedom and John and Molly Dove's famous lip t-shirts; to architectural mysteries by Robert Venturi. Celebrities working their ways in to aspects of social change better than any politician. Dominic had tens of examples of great works of culture. The 60s an 70s were a true turing point for a more independent and more adventurous wave of style.

Grayson Perry - The Walthamstow Tapestry

Grayson Perry originally specialised in controversial decorative ceramics but recently has moved on to create a giant 15m by 3m tapestry now displayed in the  Victoria Miro gallery in London.
It's a complex collection of a life journey from birth to death surrounded by brand imagery that literally effects every aspect of someones life.
The contrast between the traditional method of communicating a storyline through pictorial images, compared to the modern use of brands and technological content creates a ironic final appearance. The clash of colours and controversial nature of the representation of such a negative society today makes it difficult to except this work without dividing it up and looking at each section critically. The pure size and mass of content involves makes this tapestry a collage of clashing story lines and controversial effect. I personally can only see the beauty in it as a hole; as a complete collection, as if I look to closely I might loses track of the detail and craftsmanship and only focus on the harsh realities of its contents.

Linn Olofsdotter

Linn Olofsdotter is a women of many talents which she has applied, not just in her art but made them ready for commercial use in Levi designs, Gap t-shirt logos and CD covers to name a few. She has a very fresh style using bright neon colourssometimes juxtaposed with very dull backdrops, like in my selected group of pictures. The attributes of the figures stand out due to the inky green and brown backdrop that they are swimming through.

The contents of her work can seem very natural, she uses themes of nature and animal life but stuffs her designs full of patterns made up from similar materials, yet they explode of the page, quite literally. The first image is of a merwomen slouching somehow gracefully across a dim sky, her tail extending across the page nearly four times as long as her torso. Unlike other surreal work, Olofsdotter’s use the human body is not shocking in it manipulation but fanciful in its composition. The lack of faces, or just single features, draws similarities from early surreal work with distorted facial expressions and combinations of eyes or appendages.

I plan to keep a close eye on Olofdotters work, because as she becomes more commercial with applications of her artwork she loses a bit more of the unusual or uncanny theme, which makes surrealism surreal.  

OBEY THE GIANT

RICK POYNOR, OBEY THE GIANT - REVIEW COMING SOON

Rick Poynor Uncanny: Surrealism + Graphic Design

26.01.11 -  2:30 Huddersfield University

 Rick Poynor is a british writer and international speaker who studies graphic design, typography and  other visual cultures. At his lecture on Surrealism and Graphic Design, Rick described his commissioned exhibit in the Czech republic and all the research he undertook to complete it. Rick split this talk in to sections he thought were important in the surrealist movement:

permanent revelation
the exhibition
the polymorphous image
the surreal body
cabinet of wonders
the liberated letterform

Rick tracked the surrealist movement through the decades and all across europe, not just with local surrealist designers in Czech Republic but across Poland and in it's high in the art capital of Paris. Rick has a unique enthusiasm for a movement which has always been more shocking than pleasing. The Uncanny, not just the title of the lecture but the theme, the feeling of familiarity yet unknown at the same time and by bringing the subconscious thoughts forward you can get the raw ideas. Rick proved that surrealism has a rich history and is still influencing design today, coming all the way from the early works of Dali, all the way to Ed Fella's pictorial letters of the 90s.