The ever-blurring line between art and advertising

Lowe London has released a new television spot for John Lewis, a Christmas ad that sees a pile of gifts from the store piled up and then lit to cast a shadow of the pressies’ intended recipient against the wall. The spot is elegantly shot but instead of making me want to rush to John Lewis, it immediately made me think of the work of YBA artists Tim Noble & Sue Webster, who famously created Dirty White Trash (With Gulls) in 1998, amongst other artworks incorporating the use of shadows.

Tipping Point – The Most Expensive Guinness Ad Ever

The domino effect in full swing: a scene from the new Guinness ad, Tipping Point
Tipping Point, the most expensive Guinness ad ever made – written by Abbot Mead Vickers and shot by Nicolai Fuglsig – is due to premiere tonight on ITV1 at 8.30. Shot up an Argentinian mountain, the ad shows a community coming together to create the mother of all domino-toppling spectacles…

Subway Sect: Kevin Shields & Brendan Lynch in conversation

Kevin Shields and Brendan Lynch in the Primal Scream studio. All images courtesy Maria Bartolo
Subway Sect is a new radio series, produced by Maria Bartolo and CR’s Eliza Williams, which is airing on Resonance FM, London’s art/experimental radio station, over the next six weeks. The shows aim to explore the complex relationship between art and music and take the form of a series of conversations between artists, musicians, writers, designers, djs and music video directors.
The shows go out each Wednesday at 1pm on Resonance (104.4 FM or online at www.resonancefm.com) and we’ll also be bringing you transcripts of highlights from the shows each week on the CR blog.
First up on Subway Sect is musician Kevin Shields, who has been a member of My Bloody Valentine and collaborated with Primal Scream and has also produced a number of solo projects including the soundtrack for Lost in Translation and acting as ‘noise consultant’ on Douglas Gordon and Phillippe Parreno’s movie Zidane (A 21st Century Portrait). Shields is in conversation with record producer Brendan Lynch, who has worked with Paul Weller, Primal Scream and The Rakes amongst many others. The show was recorded at Primal Scream’s recording studio in north London early this year.

“You’re a big man but you’re in bad shape…

…with me it’s a full-time job. Now behave yourself.” It’s turning into Michael Caine day here. Following on from Gav’s post about the posters for Zulu, below, we thought you’d also like to see this new print featuring the location of a seminal scene from 70s Brit gangster flick, Get Carter.

Seductive stuff

Seduced exhibition catalogue cover
Kerr|Noble has created this rather beautiful catalogue to accompany the current Barbican exhibition, Seduced; Art & Sex from Antiquity to Now. As its title suggests, the show includes artworks stretching back 2000 years, all exploring the most enduring of artistic subjects. Kerr|Noble’s book has a suitably fleshy coloured cover, and the use of Swashbuckle font adds an elegant flourish to the text. Swashbuckle is also used by the designers in the exhibition graphics.

Zulu Nations

Original UK poster promoting 1964 classic film, Zulu
When the film Zulu was released in 1964, it made a star out of up and coming british actor Michael Caine. Contrary to popular belief, the actor doesn’t utter the phrase “Stop throwing those bloody spears at me” during the film and if you don’t believe us you can check yourself as the film has just been repackaged in a DVD comprising two discs – an occasion that we thought would be a good one to mark by digging out a selection of some of the catalogue of posters created to promote the film as it was rolled out in various countries back in 1964…

One To Watch: Sarah Ginn & Mandy Smith

Sarah Ginn and Mandy Smith, a creative team at Wieden + Kennedy’s London office, feature on our One To Watch page in the current (November) issue of CR. Here is our full interview with them and a selection of work from their book…

Boogie nights

In time for the weekend, an exhibition of photographs at Allan Tannenbaum at The Dray Walk Gallery at the Truman Brewery in London reminds us that, try as we might, we’ll never be able to party quite like they did at Studio 54. Is that Tony Blair back left?

The (far too) Big Apple

The half-metre tall, New York book from Gloria publishing on its “tower” display stand. At nearly 800 pages thick it comes in at an indulgent 100,000,000cm2 of printed material. But once you’ve quelled any nagging ecological concerns, where the hell are you going to put it?
We know that NYC is big. A big city, a big attitude etc etc. So if you were going to do the place justice in print, you’d make an inordinately big book, right? Well, luxury publishing house Gloria have done exactly that: they’ve collected together 1200 photographs that best define the city and, in the third oversized edition from the company (which has already produced a fantastic tome on Pelé and a not-so-interesting book on, er… Superyachts) they’ve risen to the challenge of trying to evoke the ultimate metropolis on paper…

Burning Issue

In a desperate attempt to impress our readers, we decided to set fire to the cover of the new issue of CR…

Pimp My Pump

While a spanky new Nike iD studio opens up in London’s Nike Town, tonight (see previous post), a very different expression of sneaker customisation will be arriving in Manchester’s Thunder Egg store – in the form of exhibition, Pimp My Pump….

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