eBook - Call to Adventure

Whilst the MShed museum project has been put on hold due to red-tape and white snow, i have had a chance to put together a collection of photographs documenting the Call to Adventure exhibition from last month in the Colston Hall's Glass room.

Please take a look!

Merry festivities to one and all.

Evening Post article

Mural will welcome visitors to city's newest museum

A VIBRANT mural – Window on Bristol – is set to welcome visitors to M Shed, the museum which aims to tell the story of Bristol all under one roof.

The colourful artwork will depict many of the city's familiar and quirky landmarks in a unique way.

Painted in bright colours, the commissioned work is the creation of two nationally acclaimed Bristolian artists –Andy Council and Luke Palmer.

Better known in the street art and graffiti world as Acerone, Luke Palmer's latest work mixes monochrome with vibrant colours.

Dinosaurs and buildings are a common feature of Andy Council's work, so the mural will depict a mixture of these elements when it is finished.

The pair have been working on the mural all week.

"We are delighted to have two local artists working in M Shed," said Julie Finch, head of Bristol's museums, galleries and archives.

"Their styles are very different, which makes this collaboration extra special.

"Window on Bristol is a celebration of the city, its past, the present and what could lie ahead.

"Its bold, striking images will animate the Living Bristol Gallery, draw people in, spark debate and will encourage visitors to explore and discover the fascinating histories and stories behind the objects and artefacts on display."

M-Shed, which is to open two years late in spring 2011, aims to tell the story of Bristol, from prehistoric times to the present day, all under one roof.

Three galleries – Living Bristol, People and Place – will feature stories from residents of the city across hundreds of years.

Window to Bristol will greet visitors in the Living Bristol Gallery.

M Shed is on the site of the former Industrial Museum by Prince Street Bridge.

The museum will be free but one temporary gallery could charge to attract world-renowned exhibits such as the Terracotta Army from China or Tutankhamun from Egypt.

There will be a number of the most popular exhibits from the Industrial Museum on display, and visitors can take steam train and boat rides around the dock from the site.

There will also be areas for school children on educational visits.

M Shed progress

Andy Council and Acerone happenings at M-Shed...

MShed

Next week ill be joining forces with the mighty Andy Council and painting a huge mural for the Bristol Museum's MShed. I was intending to keep a bit quiet about it and post a few in-progress shots up here over the course of the week, but the BBC reported on it today so i guess there is no point in keeping quiet...!

Keep a watch on this blog for updates throughout the week.

Mad Props

Every now and then you get a bit of feedback that really makes an impression on you. A big thank you to Felix Grant for sharing this with me and mad props to Dan for persevering and seeing it through till the image was complete. That's the spirit!

After seeing Call to adventure, Dan and I had a conversation about where it is legitimate to put street art. That led to my ongoing "guerilla" posted I do like to be beside the seaside exhibition with Sheila Lindsley. And that led to his asking if he could come with me and help put up one of the images.

It was very cold (just below freezing) and windy. The cold was inhibiting the setting of he spray adhesive, so the image sections were taking time to stick. Fingers were numbing, and we had only two image sections (of six) in place, when Dan said "Perhaps we should do this some other time".

"We could", I replied, "but we've posted a third of the image now, and we lose it if we stop. What do you suppose Luke would do?"

"Hmmm..." he decided "...let's get it done."

Monkey Business

Malachai visit Glass Room

Mix and Match

Acerone at The Glass Room - Colston Hall

The Glass Room

Photograph courtesy of Bill Spencer

Call to Adventure prints now available!

Giclee prints of the 4 'Call to Adventure' canvases available here now!

Refusal of the Call

Acerone - 'Call to Adventure; Refusal of the Call'

Bristol visual artist Acerone brings work based on circular walk around the city to Colston Hall’s Glass Room

Bristol based visual artist Acerone has developed a body of artwork based on a circular walk around the city and his work is being displayed at Colston Hall’s Glass Room exhibition space this November.

‘Call to Adventure’ is a series of 4 paintings derived from 12 photographs captured whilst on a circular walk around Bristol’s city centre over a 12-hour period.

Acerone devised a circular route around Bristol, taking a central point from a map reference and drawing a 1 kilometre circumference around the city. He then divided his route into 12 equal segments, numbered like a clock face, with the relating hour identifying the time the photo was taken from that position.

Taking insight from the Situationist’s practice of the Dérive, the photographs were used as starting points for the paintings, exploring our emotional and behavioral reactions to the urban landscape. The collection can be viewed as a 12 hour visual journey through the city, using visual references to Bristolian architecture as key metaphors that reflect Acerone’s lifework.

Acerone is a visual artist from Bristol with a background of 15 years of creating street art murals. With photography remaining a keystone in the development of his works, current projects have seen him using the camera as a tool to capture intense images of urban life, which are then remixed and replayed as paintings on canvas.

His installation work from the Royal West of England Academy street art exhibition ‘Crimes of Passion’ is part of the RWA permanent collection and in late 2009 he won the first prize award in the ‘Bristol: A Second Look’ competition at Photographique.

Both the series of photographs and the 4 canvases make up the body of work that is Call to Adventure and will be displayed at The Glass Room gallery at Colston Hall, Bristol from Friday 5 until Sun 28 November 2010.

Call to Adventure

Glass Room presents: Acerone - Call to Adventure

At the Colston Hall's new gallery space in Colston St, Bristol.

I've been working on this series of pieces since the beginning of the year, so really pleased that im finally getting the work out of the dining-room-studio and on display. Its based on the theory of the Derive; the Situationist practice of drifting about a geographical space that began in France in the 1950's. The work mixes photography with painting and uses ideas and narratives taken from mythology, fairy-tails and psychotherapy...

More on this soon!

Opening evening - Thursday 4th November 2010.

Show then runs from 5th - 28th Nov inclusive.

50 Images

50 images documenting our Distance Travelled in 24 hours getting this show up...

Dicy, Acerone, Ziml - Distance Travelled exhibition, Centrespace gallery, 1-6th Oct 2010.

All Things are Changing; Nothing Dies

The piece i made for the 'Distance Travelled' exhibition explained in a little more detail...

Using the cemetery as a background for four paintings depicting the words Work, Beloved, Self and Home, ‘All Things are Changing; Nothing Dies’ is an installation that responds to Joseph Cambell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the methods of gestalt therapy developed by the late Paul Rebillot in the Hero’s Journey process.

This piece uses the environment of the cemetery as a metaphor for change; steering away from the notion of ‘the end’ and instead focusing on new beginnings. Light trails flash through the scene, spelling out the words Work, Beloved, Self and Home; core aspects of each individual’s lives that will be affected by change.

How do we embrace these changes? Should we spend our lives grieving for what once was, or accept the call to adventure and become the Hero in our own journey…?

The giclee print for the above image measuring 88cm x 30cm, is a high quality print on 310gm fine art acid free archive stock paper, and is an edition of 8.

6 of these prints sold at the show; If you would like one of the final 2 prints available for £95, please click here. Many thanks to all who have supported me by buying a print.

Distance Travelled preview

I'll be uploading a full documentation of the works that Dicy, Ziml and I created for the Distance Travelled exhibition, but in the meantime here is a great slideshow of images from the preview evening by Lillput

The show is on until Weds 5th October.

Work Beloved Self Home

Work Beloved Self Home, (2010) Acerone

Things are hotting up in preparation for the 'Distance Travelled' show im putting together with fellow TCF brothers, Dicy and Ziml. We have had months to think about and prepare for this, but as all true artists will know, the best work is made in a mad rush in the few days before the hanging and opening...

We have some pretty big ideas ready to roll so be sure to come down and see the Centrespace Gallery transformed in a way you will not have done before. To get your name on the preview guest-list email us at:
invite@dicyacerziml.co.uk

The above photo is a hint at the direction im going in with this body of work - inspired by the writing of Joseph Cambell and the Gestalt Therapeutic processes developed by the late Paul Rebillot...

Time to get deep!

Distance Travelled

In September 2009, I worked alongside fellow TCF artists Dicy and Ziml on producing the Triple Drop show at the Centrespace gallery here in Bristol. Almost exactly one year one and we're are back again with a brand new body of work that is going to dominate the Centrespace in a way you have never seen before...

We have been working away at this show since the beginning of the year so expect to see some ambitious pieces for all of us. Distance Travelled is a metaphor for our group reflection upon the influences we have had from our pasts, how those experiences are affecting the work we are producing right now, and our ambitions and dreams for the future.

Readers of my blog are invited to the private view on October 1st at 7pm. Admission is by invite only so please email invite@dicyacerziml.co.uk to put your name on the guestlist.

See you there!

Back to Nature

I spent this bank holiday weekend getting back to nature in the New Forest, camping in Tipi's with my family and the in-laws/nieces and nephew. The kids went wild for it; we dressed up as native American Indians complete with face paintings, made dream catchers and tipi paintings, made up names for each other (of which i became Big-Frog!) and told traditional native American stories around the camp fire. It was magical....

...and very cold.

Once the little ones were tucked up in sleeping bags, i put another log on the fire and made my first successful(?) attempt at star-trail photography. I made a couple of mistakes before capturing this one - mostly under exposure from f-stops being too high, but when exposure times are around 30 minutes you cant really afford to keep on reshooting more and more shots if you want to get some sleep! I was reminded of Felix Grant's recent post reminiscing upon past days where his pocket money would only stretch so far as to allow one roll of 12 exposure film per fortnight to be developed - so he rationed himself to shooting less than one frame a day. I felt a bit like i had to ration these shots too, but it was time that was limiting me here, not money.

My mistakes meant that it took me nearly two hours to get this shot. Now i had found my 'perfect exposure' (f4, 20 mins, 100iso - Canon 10-22mm lens @ 10mm) i knew that i could increase the length of the star trails simply by stopping down a few stops and increasing the exposure to around an hour - and still get the same light balance in the foreground...

...but that would mean staying up for another hour at midnight and by now i had run out of firewood. No chance of that so back to the tipi i went. I did however learn a lot from this 3 frame shoot and will be a little more clued up for the next time i am out in the country in the middle of the night with my camera kit!

Tipis and Star-trails

A Walk in the Park

"A Walk in the Park" - by Tobias Palmer, aged 21 months

My child minder was away on holiday yesterday which allowed me to take a day off of work to spend with my little one. The morning consisted of a failed attempt at going swimming, replaced with a trip to the park collecting leaves and a lot of CBBC show Big Barn Farm. There is only so much swinging, sliding, seesawing and kids TV i can cope with so decided to get a big role of paper and the paints out.

Time to get messy!

What took us about 10 minutes to create took about 2 hours to clear up, but it was well worth it. This is art at it's most innocent, ego free and fun. I loved every minute and so did he...

Happy days.

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." ~ Pablo Picasso

Dirty Dave Dances

All round athlete Dirty Dave throws down some moves under Brunell Way after a 13 hour day building marquees. Respect the stamina.

Part of an ongoing light trail experiment with FLX

Monotone Arrows

A Bear Lived Here

Its been a while since i have painted on Stokes Croft so when i realised i had a couple of days free this week i finally managed to get around to painting a photo-graffiti style street scene on the old Target Electronics building on Cheery Street.

I must give a mention to fellow TCF brothers Paris and Eko who i painted over - their pieces were a couple of the best i have seen on the croft for ages. Paris's space age lettering and retro fade fill-in allongside Eko's classic wigged out letters and 2D b-boy character were the business. But it was time for me to reclaim this wall!

Once i had blacked it out, i painted the white base coat on and returned the following day to add the colours. I soon got sidetracked by my best man who collected me for an evening sampling the real ales and ciders up at the Inn on the Green, but this morning with a very heavy head i popped back down there to add in the finishing touches.

(View larger image here)

The original photograph of the street scene was taken almost a year ago now from the doorway of DHS heating store at the junction of Jamaica Street and Stokes Croft, opposite what is now 'The Canteen'. I had originally planned to add a spoof advert or logo in the over-exposed billboard area above 'Turbo Island', but in the months it took me to get around to actually getting this painting executed i learned of the passing of Bear the Street Poet.

Alan 'Bear' Smith lived in Jamaica Street hostel for around 3 years but was considered homeless with dependancies on drugs and alcohol. He was a face i recognised from the area having worked on Stokes Croft daily since 2005, but the first time we had a chat that went further then the usual "Spare us any cha... - Afraid not mate", was when i was painting the first piece i did here in 2008.

Bear approached me and i must admit to being a little weary at first. But instead of the usual conversation, he began telling me how much he admired the piece i was painting. He told me about how he recognised the photographic qualities of the piece, how it must have been taken with a long exposure, and began to ask questions about my technique and shared some of the ideas he had himself for long exposure photography with added flash. I wasn't expecting that and was quite taken aback...!

Bear hung out with me for a few hours whilst i painted and continued to tell me his story. He was eloquent, interesting and at times very funny. A lot of what he told me was also really very sad. But behind this shadowy figure was a true gentleman who clearly had a massively creative mind. I feel like on that day i took a lot from him, but in retrospect the old saying 'Don't judge a book by it's cover' seems like a real lesson learned.

Another inspirational way of life that Bear lived daily was to busk with poetry. If you were lucky enough to have been in good spirits on a day that you passed Bear and crossed his palm with a little silver, he might well have free-styled a short improvised poem for you. Such was his lifestyle that i don't think much of it was written down and i doubt that much of his work exists on paper at all; but one of his poems 'I'm No Con' was read out at his cremation in January this year. It is a beautiful example of how Bear viewed the injustices he faced in his everyday life and a perfect reflection of the charming fella i spoke to that day - Amusing, thoughtful, intelligent and tragic.

I'm No Con

Through gates of grey I made my way

no bail on this redemption day.

And so I’m made to stand in line

and then to sit, and then to sign.

And reluctantly they invite me to dine

on a microwave meal with no appeal

more reluctantly I break the seal.

But before I’ve had the chance to eat

a faceless voice barks “on your feet”.

And bottom inspectors

like funeral directors

probe naked behinds with their metal detectors.

And as they sing and clichés swing

I’m dispatched as a package to the wing.

And at the top of the end of the stairs

I’m reunited with my dodgy chairs

My second bunk, my ancient isles

those funny little faces, those ancient smiles.

So thanks for the tea, the chips, the peas

the bravest jangling of your bloody keys.

And while you work I’ll take my ears

and ponder on life’s many ironies.

The most profound of all of these

being imprisoned by chimpanzees.

Alan 'Bear' Smith

I received the most touching compliment from a passer-by today who stopped me to tell me that seeing Bear "back on the Croft, where he belongs..." gave him goose-bumps - He used to share a room with Bear back at Jamaica Street hostel. Im unaware that any of my paintings have had that affect on anyone before...

So this one is for Bear and anyone who knew him. Thanks for the time you gave me Bear, your words live on.

On Fire!

Headed out with FLX tonight to continue the ongoing light trail experiment. Here we have your friend and ours, Bboy Ooze Des throwing down some freezes on an old iron bridge...

Yet More Candid Street Portraiture

More Candid Street Portraiture

You Gotta Get Yo'self Connected