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House Magazine: The Brain Observatory

I went slightly off piste with this one, admittedly... but for the recent issue of Soho House's House magazine I interviewed Jacopo Annese of The Brain Observatory at the University of San Diego, California, about his team's efforts to digitally preserve donated brains in order to extend the realms of knowledge and research into how our old grey matter works. It's still largely a mystery, so the work The Brain Observatory is doing has potential for some groundbreaking discoveries in future. I've always found anatomy absolutely fascinating, so it was a real pleasure to branch out into a bit of (very basic) science writing. Don't be squeamish, it's very interesting...

TEXT:

The Brain Observatory

How one scientific team’s mission to photograph and analyse the human brain could unlock the secrets of our creative minds

Stop for a moment to consider the myriad of cognitive processes you’re currently deploying to read these words, all that wonderful action going on between your ears. Then, when you’re done, consider that conventionally, at the end of your life, your brain will be burned or buried along with the rest of your dead self. It does seem rather a waste – and whether you believe in an afterlife or not, you can’t take it with you.  Enter Dr Jacopo Annese, founder of The Brain Observatory at the University of California, San Diego, who works on the grey matter of a kind array of donors, allowing them to live on in the digital domain. In a process that takes place over eight months, Annese and his team pickle, freeze and then slice to a hairs-width each brain, before dyeing each slice and taking a 1-terabyte sized detailed digital composite image. There can be up to 2,500 slices in a brain and, Annese says, ‘once you dive into the high-resolution histological image at a cellular level, then it becomes an enormous landscape that, despite centuries of investigations, remains still largely uncharted.’

House Magazine: Tereza Zelenkova

Here's the article I wrote for House magazine on photographer Tereza Zelenkova. I posted about her previously as I also filmed an interview with her for House Seven having seen her work at the RCA 2012 show. She's definitely one to watch.

TEXT:

Invoking the occult, mortality and mysticism in her monochrome images, Tereza Zelenkova presents vistas and artifacts from nature that nonetheless shimmer with a mysterious supernatural aura. To her, death isn’t the gateway to another world but the all-pervading full stop to life, and she explores a universe where neither religion nor science can provide us with all the answers. Working with a spontaneity that belies the depth and integrity of the final body of work, she explains that it’s all about the fine balance of intuition and editing...

What made you choose photography as your medium as an artist?

When I was 16 I tried photography and I immediately fell in love with it. I guess I was seduced with the lightness with which one can create an image by using a camera.

Is your technique more impulsive or constructed?

Through the years I have learnt to work quite effortlessly. I realized that if I try too much the results are not as good as if I just get carried away by a moment or an idea. For me, photography is certainly about intuitive knowing rather than rigorous thinking.

Edible Cinema video on Cult Hub

My video on Edible Cinema is featured as part of an article on the forthcoming Edible Cinema Halloween screenings, as seen in Cult Hub Magazine.

VICTOR by Hasselblad

This summer I was very lucky to have been commissioned to write two features for the relaunched VICTOR by Hasselblad magazine. I interviewed Tom Nagy about his epic style of shooting, and Marco Grob about his moving set of post 9/11 portraits for TIME magazine. Both were fascinating people, consummate pros and very generous with their time. You can read these interviews and many more in VICTOR, which is out now. Plus for all you magazine and book pervs out there, it's rather beautifully produced in black hardback. Mmmmmm.

Soho House Video: Tereza Zelenkova, Photographer

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Tereza Zelenkova is a photographer whose work I first encountered at the RCA graduation show this year. Given the massive scale of that show and the amount of things I looked at in such a short space of (press view) time, I'm amazed I remembered anything. But Tereza's work resonated in my mind long after, so I was really excited when she agreed to be filmed for House Seven. I also wrote a short article on her for House Magazine, which is due out soon. To see her work in the flesh, it's not long until New Sensations.

Human is Video of the Week on Crossfadr

 

My music promo 'Human' is video of the week on Crossfadr!

New Music Video! 'Human' for bassDrumsnareDrum

Here's a music promo I made for 'Human', a fantastic track by bassDrumsnareDrum, featuring the magnificent moves of artist and dancer Roberto Ekholm. Thanks also go to Matthew Holder and Jake Ridley. You can by bassDrumsnareDrum's new EP featuring 'Human' on iTunes now.

Soho House Video: Gavin Esler teaches Lessons from the Top

A short video I made for Soho House following a talk Gavin Esler gave for Books for Breakfast there last week. After all those episodes of Newsnight, he's an amazing speaker, so I kept things simple and let him do all the hard work.. His book Lessons from the Top explores how leaders and influential figures have harnessed the power of storytelling on their way to success, and how we can learn from their techniques (and mishaps). Well worth a read.

Exhibition: Head & Whole 2 at Abbey Walk Gallery

 

I'm delighted to have two prints showing in Head & Whole 2: Talking Heads at Abbey Walk Gallery, curated by Linda Ingham. It opens to the public today and there are some really interesting events going on to accompany the exhibition. Go see!

Soho House Video: Edible Cinema

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Combining two of my favourite things - food and film - Edible Cinema is a hugely fun concept from the folks at Soho House to bring a new taste dimension to the film experience. Here's a short promo I made to capture the atmosphere and concept at their screening of Spirited Away. Bon appetit!

i-D Video: Tom de Freston, On Theatre, at Breese Little

In our snap happy age it’s reassuring to know there are still people out there who’ll painstakingly mull over a single image for weeks before they’ve even got to the time-consuming stage of picking up a paintbrush to commit it to canvas. Makes you think there must be hope for us yet.

With its long and complicated history involving multiple reinventions and reincarnations, painting resonates heavily with its own meaning as a medium as well as the stories and opinions that the artist is trying to express. So working as what he provocatively calls a “contemporary history painter”, Tom de Freston plunders these narratives and melds them with scenarios from literature and his own imaginings to create paintings that startlingly depict historically grand themes from a modern perspective.

Here he talks i-D online through the process of translating ideas into brushstrokes, and gives us a sneak peek into his studio and the processes behind his work.

Tom de Freston, On Theatre runs until Saturday 15th September at Breese Little, 30d Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DU.

Text and Film: Laura Bushell

Music: bassDrumsnareDrum

Music Video for bassDrumsnareDrum... coming soon

Some stills from the music video I made recently for bassDrumsnareDrum for the release of his EP on 6 August, featuring the dazzling dancing skills of Mr Roberto Ekholm. The video itself will emerge shortly..

FAD Video: Jacob Hashimoto, The Other Sun, at Ronchini Gallery

Here's a recent video interview with artist Jacob Hashimoto for FAD. His latest exhibition consists of hundred of handmade kites strung from the ceiling of Ronchini Gallery in Mayfair - time consuming, but worth the effort!

Jacob Hashimoto
The Other Sun
Until 28 August 2012
Ronchini Gallery, Mayfair, London

House Magazine: Jacob Hashimoto

Here's a short piece I wrote on the installation artist Jacob Hashimoto for issue 21 of House magazine:

Text:

Working with delicate bamboo rods and Japanese papers, Jacob Hashimoto creates gravity-defying collages of dozens of small handcrafted kites that amass in gallery spaces like kaleidoscopic clouds. Hashimoto asserts that his work is neither painting nor sculpture, but something in between. Using colour and monochrome to equally ethereal effect, he contrasts a feeling of mass with an airy lightness and sense of fluctuation, resulting in hypnotic interactive installations that echo patterns and forms from nature.

Jacob Hashimoto

Ronchini Gallery London

29 June - 1 September 2012

i-D Video: Jenny Saville at Modern Art Oxford & The Ashmolean

Flesh is monumental in Jenny Saville’s paintings, something you can only truly appreciate when you’re dwarfed by a two metre high canvas that’s been slathered, scraped and smeared in fleshy tones and visceral reds.

Nothing beats seeing her paintings for real, yet this is her first exhibition in a public gallery in the UK since she hatched fully formed and critically acclaimed from the YBA hype of the 90s. A studio dweller rather than a publicity magnet, Saville has developed a body of work that’s as much about the anatomy of paint itself as it is about the anatomy of the (mostly female) body, and the results are both stark and intricate.

Ask today’s upcoming painters who inspires them and many will name check Saville. Along with this solo show at Modern Art Oxford, two of her drawings sit alongside the likes of Titian and Veronese at the Ashmolean. Not many contemporary artists could hold their nerve in such company, but Saville does.

i-D online’s Laura Bushell met Saville at the gallery to talk about YBAs, bodies and babies.

Jenny Saville is at Modern Art Oxford and The Ashmolean Museum until 16th September 2012

Text and Film: Laura Bushell

Music: Peppi Knott

ArtSlant Review: Show RCA 2012

Zemer Peled, ceramics, photo by Laura Bushell

(Originally published on ArtSlant)

When the RCA say that their 2012 graduation show is the biggest in their 175 year history, they’re not joking. Held simultaneously across their Kensington and Battersea campuses, this sprawling show brings together works from over 500 students across fine art and design disciplines including (but not limited to) painting, jewelry, photography, sculpture, visual communication and printmaking.

 That’s a lot of ideas to negotiate in one show, and due to the nature of its layout (in fine art, mixed together and packed in), some pieces inevitably come off better than others. For visitors it’s a case of just getting in amongst it, then seeing what leaves a lasting impression following this brain-melting visual and conceptual onslaught. So to begin at the beginning with pieces that still resonate since:

Conceptual jeweler Hannah Louise Pittman took tiny casts of empty pill packet cavities for Prosperity Pills, her incarnation in sterling silver of the daily task of warding off the chronic pain disorder she contracted during her studies. Each tiny silver pill shape becomes part of a personal amulet; a positive outcome from an otherwise negative experience.
 

Clifford Chance Exhibition Opening

Last night was the opening reception of 'A Question of Sport: LGBT artists and their relationship to inclusivity', curated by Michael Petry for Clifford Chance in Canary Wharf. 

I worked as Editor on artist Roberto Ekholm's new video 109C, inspired by diver Tom Daley. See below for some stills, video to follow...

Photos: Show RCA 2012

From the top: Maja Johansson, Min Jeong Song, painting installation view, design installation view, print installation view, Tereza Zelenkova, Zemer Peled and Alessa Tine. All 2012 graduates of the various schools at the Royal College of Art.

All images copyright Laura Bushell.

i-D Video: Grayson Perry on Taste, at Victoria Miro and on Channel 4

Here's a video interview I did with Grayson Perry for his new exhibition of tapestries at Victoria Miro and the accompanying documentary on Channel 4.  We talked about taste, television and tribes for i-D online.

Grayson Perry wants to talk about taste: the good, the bad and the sometimes unfathomable. It’s a treacherous terrain to negotiate, let alone find a consensus within, since one person’s expression of refinement can be another’s gaudy nightmare. Grayson Perry believes our in-built inclinations are tied up with class, so in his latest quest to chronicle contemporary life through art, he took to the roads of the UK to seek out class tribes who could best encapsulate the taste of their particular strata of British society. The result is a series of narrative tapestries charting what he labels “a contemporary Rake’s Progress”, plus a TV series documenting the empirical research that was sewn into those threads. Now whether you’ll prefer the fine art tapestries in the London gallery or the reality TV on Channel 4, comes down to your own perfectly honed taste...

 

The Vanity of Small Differences at Victoria Miro runs from 7th June until 11th August 2012. Watch the first episode of ‘In the Best Possible Taste – Grayson Perry’ on 4oD here. victoriamiro.com