Ruff at the Gagosians

Last week was the opening reception for Thomas Ruff's exhibitions at the Gagosian. He's showing his space picures at the Gagosian on Britannia Street, and his Nude-series at Davies Street. The Ma.r.s exhibition was quite fun, because you get to wear 3D glasses and I love the space (worht going to the gallery just for that), but with the nudes I can't stop thinking that he might not be as famous if he'd chosen to blow up images of squirrels or sunsets found online instead of porn images. What do you think?

Lizzy & Cecil

I love the Queen and I love Cecil Beaton, so I was thrilled when I saw the exhibition Queen Elsiabeth II by Cecil Beaton at the V&A. The coronation portrait above is just amazing. Go and see it and celebrate the Diamond Jubilee!

Paolo Roversi

In case you haven't seen it yet (I know some of you have), Paolo Roversi's amazingly beautiful fashion photographs are exhibited at the Wapping Project Bankside (next to Tate Modern) until the end of March. A must see! And a proof that fashion photography doesn't have to be crisp, highly stylized and digitally manipulated. Less is more, if you ask me.

UCA Talk

Thanks everyone who came for my talk a couple of weeks ago! I think Jonathan already posted something on the course blog, but here's some of the things I mentioned:

The YouTube video for Out of Fashion can be seen here and if you wanna know more about the project or see some pictures from the exhibitions, check out our Tumblr and Facebook. You can also always ask me, if you want to know more practical things about how to make an exhibition and/or publication happen, I'm happy to help you out.

My project, The Memory of My Wardrobe, can be seen on my webpage, along with other projects I've done during my stay at uni.

For anyone interested in ethical consuming and fashion, the book I recommended is called To Die For - Is Fashion Wearing Out the World, and it's written by Lucy Siegle.

Hope you're getting along well with your projects and enjoying your time at uni!

Arnold Newman's Portraits

Chris Beetles Fine Photographs is currently showing Arnold Newman's portraits of artists, mostly photographed in their studios and working spaces (from top to bottom: Truman Capote, Yasuo Kuniyshi and Max Ernst).

I loved the pictures (classics!), and it reminded me of why I first fell in love with black and white and that I should start taking portraits again. The exhibition is free and open until 11th February, so don't miss it.

Newman has a marvellous portrait of David Hockney (one of the few in colour), looking super stylish, as usual. Speaking of my favourite artist, Hockney's A Bigger Picture at the RA is almost next door, so if you're in London anyway check that out as well. It's supposed to be amazing.

P.S. I'm coming to UCA tomorrow to talk about my project, so see you soon!

Currently at the Wapping Project

Edgar Martin's is currently showing his work This is Not a House at the Wapping Project. It's a project about the mortage crisis in the US that led to the financial crisis we are in now. So it's a lot of pictures of empty half-build houses and broken dreams. These picures, that were first published as a photo essay for the NYTimes, caused a bit of a contreversy, since they were digitally altered - which kind of goes against the ethics of journalism (you can read more about it here). Since you've been working on units about the environment and the city I thought this might interest you.

Also currently at the Wapping project is Bridget Baker's installation Wrecking at Private Siding 661. It's a very interesting site-specific installation (have you ever seen a human transport basket? I didn't even know they had existed until I saw the show!) in the accumulation tower. If you decide come and see it, I recommend you come on a Thursday, because that's when I'm working there. This one's open until 11 February and Edgar Martin's in on until 4 March. Even if you can't make it to these exhibitions, the Wapping Project is a nice place to visit. It's housed in an old hydraulic power stations, there's a nice café/restaurant and you can climb up on the roof to enjoy the view. Nearby is the Thames Path, which makes a really nice Sunday walk!

Portraits

The National Portrait Gallery is currently showing the winners of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize, an annual portrait competition (that everyone can submit to, so remember that! The competition for 2012 opens next spring). Though I wonder how some of the shortlisted images are supposed to be the best of over 6000 entries, there where some really good portraits (like the winning guinea pig portrait above by Jooney Woodward) and the exhibition (as well as the rest of the collection at NPG) is well worth having a look at, not only because there is a portrait of Kiera Knightley that shows that she's actually human and has wrinkles (which sometimes is hard to believe looking at all those glossy Chanel ads, but because one of your tasks is to take a portrait and I find it hard to believe that there would be any other place where you could find such a wide variety of portraits of all mediums - there's not only paintings and photographs, go there and see yourself what other ways there is to portray a person.

The Taylor Wessing competition has become a quite big event and intrestingly an other competition has popped up in the shadow of it. Portrait Salon is a competition for entries rejected by the Taylor Wessing Photographic prize. The exhibition showcases 75 rejected entries and opens tomorrow at Roxy Bar and Screen at 128-132 Borough High Street, SE1 1LB. Gonna go and check out that for sure!