Stephen Wright my bonkers neighbour in East Dulwich

Dismembered dolls, toothpaste tubes, false teeth, crockery, plastic cutlery, beads and glass eyeballs - right round the corner from where I live....

All manner of seemingly worthless objects are integral to the work of Steven Wright. 

Largely sculptural and nearly always with an added bumpy dimension simply because of the nature of his chosen medium, his work explores the notion of more is more. Very much reminiscent of Mexican and folk art, the work is vibrant, exciting and mad, he says he is very much inspired by 'spiritual, iconographic and religious significance of the Folk Art object'.

There is a small gallery space in Brixton village showcasing some of his pieces but more excitingly his Dulwich home (bequeathed to the National Trust) is open to visitors by appointment. His home is named: 'The House of Dreams', but I can tell you - I'm not sure how comfortable I'd rest at night if I had some of these images behind the old eyelids....I am going to pop round one afternoon on the way home from Sainsburys and tell him he's bonkers and I love his work.

Yes Steven - like that one I do most Sunday mornings past your house on the way to Sainsburys .

Brunswich hOUSE cAFE

Vauxhall is grey. No one can argue against that I'm sure, it's pretty good for a wild night out on occasion but aesthetically it's drab, dingy and seems perpetually shrouded in cloud. There is, however a beauty of a spot which is a colourful and exciting respite from all that - Brunswick House. An old reclamation site housing hundreds of ornate door knobs, brass knockers, tiles, lamps and antiquities of all description.























In the midst of all the artefacts is a lovely restaurant which in contrast is nothing but contemporary.
I had an excellent steak there last week and all the other dishes look pretty tasty. Just look at the poor building surrounded by all that concrete...so anyway if you're heading that way on a night out it's well worth popping in for a drink at the very least.

Rivioli Ballroom

We went for a big old jive last weekend at London's oldest ballroom in south London. It's super cool, you arrive, learn a few basic moves and then the band comes on and everyone forgets the steps and ends up just spinning about and standing on each others feet but having a great time anyway. I'm also well chuffed with my dress which is from Joy and is a bargain as well as a beauty. Ravioli/Rivioli website here

Wave OUR flag.

Yeah the union jack looks nicer but our lovely flag was no where to be seen today and it's St Georges day! People can't wait to rush to the pub for a Guinness on St Patricks and The Walkabouts across London shudder under the footfall of crazy Australians on their day but we're ashamed or can't be arsed or something?  The less often we get our flag out for a good reason the more likely it will become synonymous only with racists. boo. drink some tea, eat some fish and chips, make a song up about the Queen, watch some Monty Python - do anything just do something.

rabbit bin bag.

I saw this photo on a blog today and I made my own rubbish bunny, he's on my desk full of banana peel and coffee cups and is destined for the recycling bin anytime soon, see yaaaa.

great posters. sweetcorn festival? count me IN!

what? a trapeze you say? yes a trapeze. in Regent's park? Oh right.

link to book here

Musical Jelly

Following my future trend prediction about Jelly - I've found this : Noisy Jelly is a project by Raphaël Pluvinage and Marianne Cauvard, two students at L’Ensci Les Ateliers. They experiment with agar agar jellies, placed upon sensors that convert their vibrations into music with the help of arduino processing. - I rinsed this explanation from their PDF of the whole project which you can view or download here

12 ways to achieve the very best glamour shot...

what an amazing collection of photos - click here.
I can't bare to sift through the whole lot, so here's just a couple stomach churners.

amazing Russian Illustrator.

http://www.tzeh.ru/

Ta pet.

Thanks for reading my blog, this week I've racked up a few new countries Honk Kong included. I know who you are Honk Kong holiday maker and the sooner that crazy (probably still alive inside) Japanese tin of anchovies you've promised me  arrives  at my house the better. x
Hi Russia! WhoTF is in Russia? mum?

A chair made out of books.

This makes me sad.

The new Imperial War Museum Logo.
Originally, beautifully, simply and perfectly designed originally by Marcello Minale ( Minale Tattersfield) has been overhauled by the new design by Hat Trick. It is apparently reflective of the fragmentation of war.

Marcello is slagging it off on this design blog if you fancy a read.

In the same way that this new logo makes me sad, this comic made me smile today. Good old, ridiculous, anal designers. I get it and I love it.

Kerning definition & examples click here (no one is going to click).

Kerning example here (no one is going to click so why bother)

Horniman Museum

This little jewel of South London has been hiding away in Forest Hill forever, the cheeky devil. I lived in Oval and Dulwich years ago and it's only now 6 years later and living in Peckham that I've been told about it. Without bothering to look anything up, from memory this Horniman person sailed the world collecting weird and wonderful artifacts including rare and wonderful bits, bobs, taxidermy, art, skeletons, paper mache, dead dogs, jellyfish, keys, armoury, potions, snake skins, heads on a rope and the like to bring adventure and wonder to the people of Forest Hill, who unlike him, were extremely unlikely to go any further than the Number 39 to Aldwych. The collection is similar to The Oxford Pitman Museum and there seems no rhyme or reason to the layout - there are pufferfish displayed alongside ornate trinkets
and so on..
There are also gardens and an amazeballs conservatory where you can sip tea and try desperately to forget you're in Forest Hill. Well worth a visit if only for the aquarium. Hold your horses, it's only small, you can wander around it in half an hour but it's great nonetheless. The jelly fish tank, like some sort of undulating aquatic lava lamp will have you mesmerised for oh at least 7 minutes. No really it's good.

what I did last week when I had an afternoon off.

started off really scary but didn't get much less frightening after some decoration, something to sling in the cupboard and forget about or perhaps get out to scare kids next hallowe'en. Was fun though,

2 weirdo old men and a fox on London transport.

old man in dressing gown photo (c) Carl Bartram 2012
pretty dark.

draw Something.

Just fifty days after its release, Draw Something had been downloaded 50 million times. according to Wikipedia (must be true). I'm not really in to apps, I spend enough time 
on my phone checking emails, texts and facebook notifications to be playing games as well, however this has caught me completely. I'm currently engaged in 10 games with friends 
and family.
Here's a few screen grabs (click home button and lock button on iphone simultaneously) 
of my recent games with a few from google images thrown in...

someone here has obviously invested in a stylus.

and someone here has yet to cotton on to the basic premiss of the game:

There's a great piece in The Guardian about draw something this week. Article here

I want to live here.

I BLOODY LOVE THIS SO MUCH!

From a campaign Ogilvy Canada did for Kraft foods Shreddies cereal. Everyone knows Shreddies, 
I had some this morning which reminded me to blog about this. Shreddies are a bit boring - they are square, they are dry and they are pretty plain tasting and marketing them in a new and exciting way was a tough brief.

Ogilvy and Kraft launched a 'new product' called ‘Diamond Shreddies’ with a massively increased perceived value - simply by turning the Shreddie/Shreddy whatever on it's side on pack.. They actually achieved significant sales of these ‘New’ Diamond Shreddies.

Kraft even did a series of consumer tasting sessions and unbelievably during research many people actually believed Diamond Shreddies taster far superior to the original boring square Shreddies!
Love it.


Ogilvy Diamond Shreddies ad.

This is the whole talk by Sutherland from Ogilvy on Intangible Value which is really interesting...
value? film

Cream pies blow up dolls and Bugsy Malone.

Secret Cinema hardly has to lift a finger to transform The Troxy for their Bugsy Malone night that I attended last week. The interior is perfectly suited to tassled flapper dresses and pin striped suited gents. What was impressive were the smaller touches such as the 1920's advertisments pinned up in the female toilet cubicles and the strictly enforced rule that everyone employed to act for the evening stayed in character (and Californian accent) for the duration.
It's just been extended throughout April - expect to get royally creamed.