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Book Looking for a book to read, browse or just plain own? Velle has chosen a few books you might feel the same way as we do about them. |
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Head, Heart and Hips: The Seductive World of Big Active
Artist Interviews |
Head, Heart and Hips delivers the aesthetic and collaborative ethic behind Big Active Studio. The London-based company formed in 1990 and has become giants in what they describe as "new commercial art." Early commissions from art galleries and organizations, advertising clients, and clothing brands proved to be a good start for the group. Eventually, Big Active became involved with the music scene in London and was a major driving force behind the production of Scene magazine. Collaboration became a heightened experience with the need for further involvement of like-minded photographers and illustrators-thus, a fresh aspect of the studio's philosophy was cultivated. |
What we get from Head, Heart and Hips is a sampling of successful commercial projects from 1990-2004, plus featured work of seventeen artists represented by Big Active. The common link: sensuality and sex appeal are re-invented. Makeup products are arranged and photographed referring to the human body in suggestive sexual poses; an illustrator's pornographic ideations take on the kind of sensuality observed when watching pieces of wax in a lava lamp weave in and around one another. Always inventive, the collective force that is Big Active proclaims creative independence and shows that not so much needs to be understood in a glance. |
Seductive, disorienting imagery sends the viewer reeling; when the fog clears and we get our bearings, the message at its best is fresh and punchy. We relax and think, "Oh, yeah. I get it. Nice work." |
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Sonic:
Text |
For anyone who is a hound for delicious music wrapped in gorgeously designed packaging, please buy yourself Sonic. This book celebrates roughly 1,000 record covers and other promotional items related to music from around the world. It includes various music genres and for each entry, designers, musicians and package formats are noted. The flow of the book is visually unified and it takes readers on a ride of design. Seeing this collective of notable collaborations between teams of musicians, illustrators, photographers and designers, gives esteem to each particular project. Sonic presents a real treat for an audience who cherishes quality. |
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Wonderland
Editors |
I would love to see artists donate their time to non-creative people to help translate dreamscapes. It is such an easy imaginative reserve to tap into that we all should have the luxury of making a dream or fantasy come alive for viewing pleasure or perhaps for cathartic release. The collection of imagery that is Wonderland is based on the realm of the mind. Imagination at its most indulgent, we are thrown into pages that bring us into what feels like the dark cerebral corners of forty-four artists, representing fashion photography, illustration, fine art and graphic design. |
Each artist is granted a few pages for their work and we are invited to linger in their world for as long as we want. Absorbing all the details of each display wasn't exactly my goal; more so, I skimmed through the book a few times trying to get an angle on whose spread kept pulling me back for more. Again and again I was enthralled with Erwin Olaf's work. Creeeeepy. From him we get a six-page spread of clowns and court jesters doing naughty, intrusive antics to barely dressed men and women. This work disturbs me most, by far. Much like when having a nightmare, I felt anxious viewing Olaf's photographic collages. |
They depict pure madness in a small stuffy set of a dream. Another aspect that sets him apart from all others in Wonderland is how much volume there tends to be in his imagery. During my stay with the work I was hearing horns, noise makers, screaming, hysterical laughter, crying, confetti paper rubbing together in the air, etc. I like being disoriented, I also like being sober and for what Wonderland has to offer, Olaf's work hits it right on the money for my expectations: Not so much pretty, not so much safe, and get me the hell off of his page. |
This first edition of Wonderland came with the DVD Diesel Dreams. From what I gather Diesel funded this project and the publishers at Die Gestalten Verlag were keen to include it. The set of moving images featured 30 artists, each with pieces ranging from one to three minutes time. I appreciated the mixed-up quality of a majority of the work because of the use of medium alone. Dreaming is another version of real time (one of my favorites), complete with physical sensations and emotions, as we all know, and I found myself more convinced of the fantasy by viewing moving images rather than still images. |
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Head, Heart and Hips: The Seductive World of Big Active |
Sonic: Visuals for Music |
Wonderland |
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© Velle Magazine 2005 |
