Who wants to read the dusty old classics when you can read them updated with blood and guts being spattered all over the place?

Me Me Me!!! Yeaaaah!

What’s become known as mashups even had an imprint (Quirk Classics) to cater for the likes of ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ or ‘Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters’, and ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ is released this year in big screen movie format but is there room in the genre for a kiddie-friendly version?

Oliver Twist was ruined by that hideous musical film version. The book is dark and grim and unsettling. Fagin alone is enough to strike terror into the hearts of the young, Twist is gunned down, and Sykes meets his doom in a rather grisly manner. JD Sharpe didn’t really have to try very hard to make such a story any darker so instead she paints it with a supernatural brush.

There’s soul stealing, magical keys that strip a human’s free will, werewolves, zombies, cults, vampires, and buckets of blood sloshing about in abandonment. The story has been picked over and the gist remains – Oliver is an orphan, he goes to work for an undertaker, he meets the Artful Dodger and Fagin, is brought into the gang, Nancy and Sykes are still, respectively, flawed and a right bastard, Mr Brownlow is Twist’s savior – but Sharpe has created her own myth involving dark magic and Twist being the counterbalance to it in order to save the world.

It’s not a taxing read despite being nearly 300 pages, the language is ripe and there’s plenty of bloodthirsty description, and the spin given to the story is entertaining enough to keep both young adult and adult readers turning the pages. It would have been more interesting to see how far Sharpe could have pushed it had she been aiming it purely at an adult audience but, as it stands, she’s done more than enough to open the story up to a new generation.

OLIVER TWISTED by JD SHARPE is released 6th Feb.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oliver-Twisted-J-D-Sharpe/dp/1405258179

Words by Dalia Black

The exhibition consists of two groups of works, corresponding to the first two albums by Band Of Skulls. The first series formed the artwork for their debut album, released in 2009, when Richardson’s paintings were photographed and then digitally manipulated to create the cover. The process was extended and developed for their forthcoming second album, for which Richardson worked with the designer Vincent Toi and the creative team at The PHI Centre in Montreal, Canada, who by turn enlisted glass artists Cédric Ginart and Karina Guevin to make a glass sculpture inspired by Richardson’s paintings. The resulting collaboration was photographed and became the cover image for the album.

Heavily influenced by painting masters including Cy Twombly and Lucian Freud, Richardson’s large-scale abstract paintings exploit the medium of oil on canvas to explore the nature of the human form, whilst making use of the visceral quality of the medium against the rough texture of the linen on which she works.

Richardson’s work is concerned with the ambiguous and the abstract, as well as the nature of symmetry and reflection. Music is a key part of Richardson’s life, and she acknowledges a strong link between her musical and her artistic outputs. The relationship between the two mediums is a reciprocal marriage of creativity, with the music informing and inspiring her paintings, and the paintings lending the music a visual identity.

Londonnewcastle Project Space, Redchurch Street, London
2nd – 12th February 2012

It made sense that I hadn’t heard of Superdoll Collectibles, it is part of an elite underground collectors scene after all. We were greeted by a long dining table of
miniature china dolls (known as Sybarites) wearing the most intricate mini couture gowns I’ve ever seen – not that I’ve seen that many but still, it was impressive. Each doll is around 17″ tall, matte white and made of resin, and can take up to 200 hours to make (yes…really) and sells from between $20,000 to $40,000 (yes…really).

The crowd was a mix of art dealers, journalists and stylists. There was a nice chilled mood at the event, if not a little weird by the fact it felt like we were gate crashing some well dressed doll’s dinner party. But we soon got over that and enjoyed the incredible presentation and champagne that just kept on flowing.

By Georgia Boal-Russell

MMA fighter, Roger Gracie, stars in 180NHM film fueled by Relentless Energy Drink.

The Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion and MMA fighter, Roger Gracie, talks about the pressure of coming from a fighting legacy and his motivations in exclusive interview footage in a 180NHM film. 180 seconds long, the film is an energetic yet thought provoking portrait of an athlete who personifies the Relentless Energy Drink “No Half Measures” ethos.

Roger Gracie is a man who knows a thing or two about not accepting compromise. Shot in Gracie’s Gym in New York, his film is a startling look at the vigorous psychical torment that Gracie puts himself through in order to be one of the world’s number one grapplers in both MMA and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Roger comes from a long line of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu masters, and in the field he is seen as a modern-day hero. He talks about the pressure this puts on him as a fighter and the weight his name carries with opponents in this revealing and action packed short film.

Relentless Energy Drink explains. “The 180NHM film is an intense and exciting project to be involved with. Our vision was to portray Roger as more than just a fighter, to go deeper into why he fights. It’s about creating a documentary that gets under the subjects skin as more than just an athlete and looks at their personality, drive and motivations.”

www.relentlessenergy.com now.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Skulls have long held fascination and dread for many, featuring in art and literature and film since the art forms began. From high culture (Hamlet contemplating the skull of poor Yorick) to popular (Skeletor in He-Man) and beyond, our heads stripped of flesh have symbolised much and our obsession with them show no signs of abating.

Faye Dowling has compiled ‘The Book Of Skulls in an effort to, presumably, give some idea of the span of their popularity and also a potted history of various skull-enthused movements. From the Crystal Skulls of Aztec/Mayan civilisations to The Grateful Dead and to modern artists like Dali and Damien Hirst, Dowling has kept the writing to a minimum and gone heavy with images. Some are lighthearted (skulls as cherries – below) to the more disturbing. She covers tattooing to spraypaint, oil on canvas to sculpture – it’s a short but essential exploration of this enduring human symbol.

Someone in Hollywood clearly thought so and thus we’re given a prequel, directed by Rupert Wyatt (known for not very much) and starring James Franco, John Lithgow, Freida Pinto, Tom Felton and Andy Serkis in motion-capture as the ape, Caesar (oh, how clever).

The premise is to show just how this ape-overtakes-human malarkey began and which provides an actual believable premise – the scientific workings of Will Rodman as he tries to find a cure for Alzheimer’s which his father (Lithgow) is struck down with. The experiment goes wrong, the test apes are put down except for one baby ape whose mother was a test subject. The ‘cure’ repairs brain tissue and increases intelligence and baby Caesar is going to be the lucky recipient of brain power that grows exponentially as he gets older.

Eventually Caesar grows too wily and too aggressive (he is a teenager, after all) and is put into a sanctuary run by cruel wardens where he meets and wins over his fellow inmates, and then all hell breaks loose.The main problem is that by the time that hell bit happens, you’re practically asleep in your chair as the set up into the action is paced slower than a wet week. Of course, Wyatt probably felt that to have a believable outcome from a credible premise the audience needed to be taken on the same journey as Caesar himself.

Lithgow, as the ailing father deep in the disturbing clutches of Alzheimer’s, provides the film’s only gravitas, leaving his co-stars fighting to give their one-dimensional characters any depth. Pinto and Franco are decent actors but the material they have to work with is flimsy and, at times, haplessly cheesy. Felton dials in a performance that’s every bit as camp and pantomime as Malfoy’s scowling theatrics and Tyler Labine (as a lab technician) chews through the scenery. His crucial to plot demise actually provokes a hooting cheer from the audience.

In fact, far too many scenes were greeted by laughter and the kind of whooping that normally accompanies films like Scream, where the helpless, dumb-ass cheerleader gets an axe through the head after shrieking like a banshee for 15 minutes. To say this is a camp film is making an understatement. The CGI (done by Avatar’s crew Weta Digital) is omnipresent and, to give credit, the humans work well alongside it, particularly Franco, when they could so easily be either upstaged or out of their depth.

However, things do get extremely silly in the third act. From Caesar’s first uttered word – a growl turning into thundering NOOOOOOO that would put Richard Burton’s gravelly tones to shame – which elicited howls of laughter in the cinema, to apes climbing over the Golden Gate Bridge and attacking helicopters. It’s so heavy on the CGI that most of the picture has that light haze which seems to appear when there are too many edges to define and by blurring by a millimetre means 20 less hours slaving over a hot computer. Andy Serkis/Caesar also gets sublimely ridiculous. In Tim Burton’s attempt, Tim Roth oozed malice and psychopathic tendencies so magnificently it was, at times, chilling to watch. Here, Serkis turns the cranky Caesar into a cartoon gangster and, at one point, Derek Zoolander with all that posing and preening atop of cars. Add in some kind of moral/ethical dilemma and police with really bad aim as they try to fell him with bullets and you’ve got an audience mostly sniggering to themselves.

This is by no means a summer blockbuster of worth – it’s neither a successful drama nor a cracking actioner. It’s dull, long winded and apart from some well done computerised monkeys, there’s so little to entice you to watch that this may actually make Burton’s Planet of the Apes that one step closer to good.

Page after page of blood on the sidewalks, pensioners being flung through the air by yummy mummys driving Chelsea tractors at breakneck speed to get little Tabitha to ballet on time, shopkeepers wailing on schoolkids with rolled up copies of The Sun, gutted pigeons….

Actually there is a dead pigeon in Patrick Dalton’s photography. But it’s poetic. And it fits right in with the strange and wonderful things Dalton has captured around the capital from eyebrow-raising shops to laugh out loud typo-filled signs. Londoners have a black sense of humor. Gallows humor. And Shit London encapsulates all that’s naughty, wrong and brilliant about our fair n’ filthy city.

Shit London is now available to buy. £8.99

www.shitlondon.co.uk

www.anovabooks.com

ABSOLUT has always challenged conventions through creative collaborations with artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Douglas Gordon and Louise Bourgeois. ABSOLUT BLANK is a daring new chapter for ABSOLUT.

“In ABSOLUT BLANK, ABSOLUT has boldly made its iconic bottle into a blank canvas to inspire artists throughout the world to collaborate and fill it with creativity. We brought together artist collaborators from a variety of disciplines and watched the journey from pure white canvas to exceptional pieces of art. The result depicts how artists and creativity are inspired through ABSOLUT,” says Mark Hamilton, Global Marketing Director at The Absolut Company.

The 18 artists participating in ABSOLUT BLANK represent a variety of creative disciplines; from drawing, painting and sculpting to print making, film making and digital art. Among the artworks are UVA’s high intensity, bright and striking light installations, Mario Wagner’s cut-out imagery and the graphic design of Robert Mars, the colorful painting of  Dave Kinsey and the detailed work of Good Wives and Warriors, best known for making labor-intensive, imaginative, intricate and large-scale drawings with titles such as ‘Giant Squids Attacking the Earth’.

“With ABSOLUT BLANK, we want to inspire and contribute to a global creative movement. Ultimately, our mission is to make the ordinary and the world more vibrant and exceptional,” Mark Hamilton continues.

ABSOLUT BLANK is created by ABSOLUT in collaboration with TBWA\Chiat\Day, New York.

ABSOLUT BLANK UK
To celebrate the launch of ABSOLUT BLANK in the UK, ABSOLUT will preview all of the content on their Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ABSOLUTUK) on the 13th July.  The campaign will see seven of the artist collaborators (David Bray, Aesthetic Apparatus, Dave Kinsey, Good Wives and Warriors, Mario Wagner, UVA and Thomas Doyle) create their ABSOLUT BLANK masterpieces, giving viewers a chance to see what happens when these creative’s are presented with an ABSOLUT BLANK canvas.

TV will air from the 20th July with a 60” & 30” creative in addition to spectacular outdoor sites throughout London and the UK. Special behind the scenes footage will also be launched on ABSOLUT’s Facebook page giving viewers the chance to see how the artist collaborators transformed their ordinary BLANK canvas to the extraordinary. This will include interviews with the collaborators and the processes behind their creation.

Friends of ABSOLUT BLANK on Facebook will be automatically entered into a prize draw which will see a lucky winner win a specially commissioned piece of ABSOLUT BLANK artwork.

“We want to continue the conversation with our consumers online and ensure that they can interact and get involved with the ABSOLUT BLANK campaign. Twitter and Facebook provide the perfect platform for this; allowing us to extend the reach of the global campaign on a local basis,” says Adam Boita, Marketing Manager at Pernod Ricard UK

Visit http://www.absolutblank.com.

Join ABSOLUT’s  UK Facebook page on: www.facebook.com/ABSOLUTUK

For press images or further information visit http://press.absolut.com.

Full list of participating artists in ABSOLUT BLANK:

Adhemas Batista
Aestethic Apparatus
Brett Amory
Dave Kinsey
David Bray
Eduardo Recife
Fernando Chamarelli
Good Wives & Warriors
Jeremy Fish
Ludovica Gioscia
Mario Wagner
Morning Breath
Robert Mars
Sam Flores
Thomas Doyle
UVA
Zac Freeman
Marcus Jansen

It doesn’t matter whether your knowledge on Emin is negative, positive, extensive or non-existent, regardless of circumstances, I guarantee any art-based audience will take away a personal feeling or attitude to life when viewing this must see exhibition this summer.

With the whole of the Hayward gallery being dedicated to this artist, each set of rooms in sequence tells part of the story about Emin’s career and life up to the present day using a mixture of well known current and brand new work. Although Emin’s work is based upon her own life experiences, she touches on areas of life in general that she has either learnt from or built upon, areas that any human being could relate to.

As you enter the gallery in room one you are completely consumed with the dominating presence of an erected tin beach hut on stilts with no way of access entitled ‘Knowing my enemy’. Emin created this piece as a representation of what one of her father’s stories explained what he wanted most in the world, a place where Emin would hope her father would be happy. This piece seems un-stable, empty but bursting with character, very much like the explained relationship Tracey had with her father.

Alongside this piece are a few of the well-known hand sew quilts by Emin. Known for their forceful attitude to a personal subject set on a very homelike background of a hand-sewn quilt and an obvious choice when next to the beach hut centrepiece.

Leading down a very dark corridor linking to room one you are given quotations in neon lights. There is a slight echo of her quilts here with a use of angry quotations directly alongside very heartfelt ones, each taken from different stories of Emins life.

The gallery makes its ways through rooms two and three, with a variety of new and well known pieces from Emin over the years all linking together creating the on-going story. Both of these rooms create a transition from the hard gritty work and move more into the written and deeply personal artistry of Emin, containing graphic explanation of several detailed and often strange areas of Emin’s life, and conceptually disseminating what this part of her life was built around.

Finally in reaching the top of the gallery in rooms four and five the whole exhibition is brought to the ‘present day’ so to speak, ending on a very bright white set of drawings, sculptures and objects, the final finale of a collection that depicts a life and story slowly emerging throughout the exhibition.

The gallery to say the least will totally consume all your senses and emotions with Emin’s raw personality. It pulls you up against the gritty details and objects Emin has been faced with throughout her life and will ultimately give you the chance to see how it really feels in another person’s shoes. “Trust me”.
Showing from the 18th May until the 29th of August.

Words by Michelle Siddall. Images courtesy of Hayward Publishing and Tracey Emin.

Banksy ‘Laugh Now’ (2002) £95,000

Andipa Gallery, Kensington is holding a selling-exhibition of the artist Banksy’s iconic canvas paintings in their ground floor gallery. Andipa Gallery houses one of the largest collections in the UK of works by Banksy so it good to have a wander around and spot some Urban Art treasures in the collection. The artist uses blatant and ironic statements through a down-to-earth and pragmatic urban art aesthetic and at the same time these works are marketed at the rich in one of Kensington’s most upmarket streets. It’s engrossing to experience this paradox when viewing Banksy’s original stencil paintings in the contemporary gallery of modern and contemporary art, a venue that also houses other big names such as Matisse and Warhol. The art on display is mostly spray paint on canvas; there were also unusual canvases of metal and even an old door. Sneak peek of the Banksy works at the current Andipa exhibition below.

Banksy ‘Every time I make love to you I think of someone else’ (2002) £82,000

Banksy ‘Monkey Guns, Pair’ (2000) £ please enquire

Banksy ‘Go Flock Yourself’ Spray paint & emulsion on metal (2009) £ Enquire

‘Custardized Oil’ (2006) £ Enquire

War Boutique In the basement of the gallery are the potent works of the emerging urban artist War Boutique. The artist was involved in the arms industry as a former armour designer for the government before quitting and becoming an artist with an ant-violence message and is widely known for coining the term ‘Metropolitan Peace.’

One striking installation is Bak-2-skool, an installation first displayed by War Boutique in a South London school shop front. The work features stab vests combined with the school ties and badges of four schools in the area (Peckham and New Cross districts) affected by knife violence. The vests represent school kids who’ve been stabbed and killed while wearing their school uniforms.

War Boutique ‘Bak-2-Skool’ (2008) Sneak peek more of War Boutique’s work below:

War Boutique ‘City Gent Soldier’ (2005)

War Boutique, ‘The Great Game’ (2011) made from military fabrics

War Boutique ‘Beasts of England III’ (2011) All War Boutique works signed, enquire for price. The Banksy & War Boutique exhibition ends 9th July.

Opening Times: Monday to Friday 9:30am – 6.00pm, Saturday 11.00am – 6.00pm Andipa Gallery, 162 Walton Street, London, Tel: 020 7589 2371

www.andipa.com

Words: Jameela Oberman