A Review of The David Shrigley Show at Manchester's Cornerhouse.

Back posting in the new year. New year, New work, New approaches, fuck it I may even change my profile picture........

Christmas Killip.

Last post of the year goes to Manchester based photie artist Ed Watts and his irreverent take on the work of one of this years Deutsche Borse Prize nominees Chris Killip. MERRY CHRISTMAS KILLIP can be seen HERE .

New Cliches of Photography #30

Burka babes......

Daniel Gordon

I first came across the work of Daniel Gordon when I was looking on Google for stuff by Douglas Gordon. It was a happy search engine hiccup. Appropriation. Taking images again often from online and turning them into 3D then the camera is needed to turn them back into 2D. That's the interesting thing for me, the camera is still as much an integral part of the process. Why do I like that ? is it because I love the art and craft of fine photography?  Is it because  perhaps his work can be seen to be exploring ideas such as photography's roll in the modern image savvy world  when digital imaging can take on the job of representation? Do I like his work because it is perhaps a 'kick back' at slick perfect picture making, a bit 'make do and mend' like knitting and baking. Is it because he is the Kirstie Allsop of photography?
The reason I love the work of Daniel Gordon is all of the above but mainly because he makes nuddy women out of old magazines.

Fourteen Nineteen.

People sometimes send me in submissions. I don't get as many as I did back in the photo blogging heyday which I think was a couple of weeks in 2009 but I still get some. I got one the other day from a third year student who manged somehow to use an email address I couldn't reply to. They also sent me nothing to look at and when I searched online they had no website.
That is how not to get yourself out there or how to operate in 2012. Photographers Alex F Webb and Lewis Chaplin  are frighteningly pro-active. They are two halves of the online gallery Fourteen Nineteen which they say of "we attempt to provide a sincere, engaging platform for interacting with the next generation of torchbearers for contemporary photography."  They also find time to study (Alex is still a student) they publish indie photo books counting Ryan McGinley amongst their fans and set up exhibitions. No wonder the young pups got no time to brush his hair. 

I'm tired just writing about them.

Cats.

“My wife Yoko first brought Chiro home from Kasukabe when she was just a four month old kitten.”
– Nobuyoshi Araki, Itoshi No Chiro (Chiro, My Love), 1990

Oh no I hear you scream bloody cats on the web. Get used to it, there may be a few more around here over the next couple of weeks. I love cats me. Dogs are OK but they can be prone to eat their own shit. Cats don't even like to look at theirs.
 Araki loved his cat so I'm in good company. Thought I'd make some cat work, so I've been looking at cats in Art as well as all that 'Cats in sinks' Internet shite .
 THIS series by Araki is a good place to start. It's as good as animal photography gets. "Never work with animals or kids" they say. Animals because it's hard, kids because it's Britain and you would probably get nonced off but that's a post for another day.

Anyway more cat stuff coming up. I'm just a smitten kitten me.