My good friend Henry Iddon has been a busy boy of late, he’s been photographing across the globe from the wilds of Kendal, Mont Blanc in France, Iran all the way to China covering an incredible diverse range of subjects. He’s created a great portfolio of work which can be seen over at henryiddon.com.

He’s a multi talented chap is our Henry, he has been a member of the Great Britain Speed Skiing Team (pb 176kmh), has been involved in mountaineering exploits in Europe, Asia and Alaska, and has had success at an elite level as a racing cyclist.

He’s a thoroughly all round good bloke as well.

His personal work is held in collections by ; Kraszna-Krausz Collection, National Media Museum, UK; The North West Film Archive, Manchester Metropolitan University; Scottish National Screen Archive; George Eastman House, Rochester, USA; State Library of New South Wales, Australia; Banff Centre for Mountain Culture, Canada; Centre for Contemporary Photography, University of Arizona, USA.

Christian Faur has assembled a collection of over one hundred thousand hand cast crayons in order to create his Crayon Series 1 body of work. I’m not entirely sure if they would be classed as sculptures, installations or paintings?

Crayon Series 1 is a series of photorealistic landscapes and figurative images that are formed at the surface of the thousands of tightly packed crayon tips. Very nice indeed.

The point of some of the last posts on this site have been to showcase what people are doing with cutting edge technology, this post is to showcase the everlasting beauty of old school technology. Namely letterpress and the art of relief printing.

I have always loved the process and results generated by letterpress. I still have a couple of mini presses and drawers full of type at my mums house from when I experimented with it an university. Sometimes you just can’t beat getting your hands dirty and being surrounded by physical type and the smell of the inks.

Reverting to Type is an exhibition curated by Graham Bignell & Richard Ardagh, showcasing the work of 20 contemporary letterpress practitioners from around the world.

It looks absolutely stunning, I shall be popping along I suggest you do the same if you’re in or around London over Christmas.

10th–24th Dec 2010 and 4th–22nd Jan 2011
Standpoint Gallery, 45 Coronet Street, London N1 6HD
Open daily 10AM–6PM

Incredible art installation by SOFTlab at Bridge Gallery NYC. The installation is made of over 4600 laser cut panels each a different shape with a unique color. The panels are connected by over 17000 bulldog clips. More images on Flickr.

I only found out about this yesterday, the Anti Design Festival is happening around Redchurch Street in London’s Shoreditch. Apparently there are a host of exhibitions, installations, workshops, performances and talks in Art, Design, Product, Film, Sound, Fashion, Performance, Print and Interactive etc.

This is what the website has to say “As a response to 25 years of cultural deep freeze in the UK, the Anti Design Festival will attempt to unlock creative fires and ideas, exploring spaces hitherto deemed out-of-bounds by a purely commercial criteria. Created initially as a direct response to the pretty commerciality of the London Design Festival, the festival will shift the focus from bums-on-seats to brain food, and from taste and style to experiment and risk.”

Go check it out.

Lots and lots and lots of staples! Baptiste Debombourg has created these incredibly detailed artworks by using up to 35,000 staples. They are a series of two artworks entitled, ” Air Force One” and ” Air Force Two “.

Described on his site as “The protagonist Icarus, the Mannerism of the Renaissance and the symbol of sublime power Air Force One -the plane of the American President- are the main points in this work”. More really nice work on his site too.

Spent an afternoon at the V&A this week taking a look at the Decode: Digital Design Sensations exhibtion that is currently on.

Really reminiscent of the early experimental Macromedia Shockwave and Flash work that came out in the 90′s by the likes of Anti-Rom, Joshua Davies (Who exhibits), Tomato, Show Studio etc.

For me the best work was the Processing exhibits, even though it’s been around for a while I think it’s time is coming and it’s gonna really take off. Worth a visit to the V&A go take a look.

Have just spent quite a lot of time looking at these amazing Icelandic landscape photographs by Rupert Nightingale. Found them via the creative review blog they are absolutely captivating. Almost abstract in feel and quite illustrative, a couple of large format prints would be lovely!

After a successful two week stint at Excel last year, our auto bot was lost for months in a haze of interactive groupies and tech heads. He miraculously returned to us this week nearly a broken man and is now keeping guard at Harvest towers.

Already a firm favourite with clients who can’t keep their hands off him!

When you get just that little bit older (mid 30′s!) and house prices plus starting families influence your decision to move just out of London, you really do forget what you have on your doorstep. Spent valentines this year at Vinopolis on the South Bank trying to become a wine connoisseur but really only managed to get pretty drunk (I recommend you go).

Therefore I had to get my fix of Tate Modern. I am always pretty much blown away just by the scale of the building and become almost childlike with enthusiasm when I enter the great expanse of the main turbine hall. This really is the best art museum in the world in my opinion. 

The sheer scale of the main exhibitions coupled with the new Rothko room and the diversity of the other exhibitions really set this apart from anything else I have visited. When travelling I have mostly tried to marry up relaxing breaks with a bit of culture and have been lucky enough to visit galleries such as the Louvre, Pompidou, Guggenheim (New York), but the Tate still comes out on top every time.

If you live in London or have just come for a visit you simply can’t afford to miss this.