and . . . the inaugural GWS dog show - dogs seem to be somewhat absent, but rest assured they were there somewhere.
Bourne Fine Art in Edinburgh is hosting an exhibition of new work by Emily Young to coincide with the Festival. The show opens on August 1 st and runs until September 6th and is accompanied by a catalogue. Bourne Fine Art's specialism is Scottish Art, so to hand this prestigious slot in their calendar to a non-Caledonian, is something of a coup - unless Emily fabricated that part of her cv in order to get the show.
Summer is traditionally silly season for news stories - you can scroll to the end of this blog entry to get the Great Western Studios equivalent. Elsewhere it seems to be book season. I have already blogged about Tommy Penton's Tate to Tate publication - if you haven't bought one of these already can I encourage you to do so - it's brilliant.
Tamar Zaig - costume designer to the stars - is currently in the middle of designing costumes for Baghdad Express, a short film funded by the UK Film Council and Film London. The story is based around an Iraqi girl who works in her Dad's cafe on the Edgware Road and has to decide between family and a career in fashion.
Alice Alexander née Tait is ex-of-the-studios but hasn't yet been written out of the history. Her prolific illustration skills have recently been utilised on the cover of Arthur Potts Dawson's cookbook - Acorn House the cookbook. Alice was working on this while she was still at the studios so it is essentially a studio product.
Sean Henry also has 2 publications out in the near future. We are approaching the 1 year anniversary of his installation Couple at Newbiggin in Northumberland so in order to mark this a book is being published which charts the progress of the work from conception and sketch through creation and installation to reaction and situation. The book includes an essay by Mark Lawson. Separately a monograph on Sean is being published by Scala in August this tome runs to 160 pages in total and will be available to order through Amazon. The text is written by Tom Flynn promises 4 major chapters on Sean's work: technique and scale, colour and realism, theatricality, and location and environment.
Blue Curry has been pretty busy. He has finished his first year doing his MA at Goldsmiths so has had an end of year exhibition there to mark this. He has also had 3 pieces of work selected for NE4 - the fourth national exhibition at the National Gallery of the Bahamas.
He has also been selected to form part of the cultural envoy selected by the government of the Bahamas to attend Carifesta which is being held in Guyana in August in preparation for the Bahamas being the next host of the event. As if that wasn't enough his work has also been written about in the academic journal Small Axe - it's not online yet but should be soon.
Edward Underwood can add Kunsthalle Basel to his cv thanks to 2 of his pieces being included in the group show Word Event which opened at the end of June and is on until September 28th. Not one to shout about his successes himself - it falls to me to do so in his stead.
From an artist who hides his light under a bushel to one who . . . . Lynn Parotti is always seeking out new avenues for her work and has just returned from exhibiting at the Henley Festival; she also has three pieces of work in NE4 the same show that Blue Curry has work in (see above).
The Sean Alexander/Apart Gallery world wide tour's next destination is Berlin. The Stark building is playing host to a version of the exhibition that has already made its home in LA (twice) and London from July 18th to 21st - coinciding with Berlin Fashion Week. As Sean's work has sold out in the previous incarnations of the show, Berlin will feature new work.
Laura Green didn't win but she was a finalist in the Guasch Corranty International Painting Prize Exhibition.
Thompson's Gallery in Marylebone is spreading out into staging photography shows and included in their inaugural show of photographic images are works by Angelo Plantamura. The exhibition opens on July 15th and runs until July 27th.
Lastly - as promised - a picture of Gordon Langley in fancy dress (of a kind).
