Let's start October with a pop of colour, courtesy of artist and designer MAMIMU. Inspired by the bright 1980s colours of her native Tokyo, her simple and bold style is infused with positivity. Just what we need as the days shorten and we step into autumn... |
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ArtULTRA's new Artist of the Month is the wonderfully vibrant London-based designer and artist MAMIMU (June Mineyama-Smithson). Working across a variety of media from digital prints to XR (Extended Reality) motion graphics, MAMIMU creates colourful designs and animations that help fulfil her mission to inject more optimism into the world. Since beginning her solo creative career in 2017, MAMIMU has gone from strength to strength – always retaining her signature saturated colours, a delight in simple details, and careful attention to collective emotions. The artworks we are featuring by MAMIMU this October across ArtULTRA’s platforms show her versatility and restless creativity, including a collaboration with the neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart for ITV to conjure happy hormone-inducing animations, and an LED installation ‘Infinity Doors’ inviting viewers to embrace the unknown. For the perfect antidote to the October gloom, visit the ArtULTRA website and our Instagram @artultra_net to view MAMIMU’s uplifting artworks. To explore further, visit her Instagram @mamimutokyo or website www.mamimutokyo.com. |
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The Other Art Fair - London |
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This October, ArtULTRA will be visiting The Other Art Fair, taking place from 14th to 17th October at the Old Truman Brewery in London. Tickets range from £25 for the private view, to £14/£12 on other days for adult/students. There is a beautiful line-up of artists, with over 140 selected to take part. We’re curious to find out what the return on investment for artists who take part in the fair involves… so we will be doing a bit of detective work and reporting back. More on this in our next newsletter! |
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In an age where, to quote Cole Porter ‘anything goes’, art can take many different forms. And don’t get me wrong – I love to go see live performance, video and installation art. It is immediate and absorbing. Even sculpture requires that you get in touch with your own physicality, walk around the work and feel yourself in physical relation to it. But, as an emerging artist myself, I’m still mostly drawn to working in 2D. Maybe it’s because my studio is cramped and I lack the bravery to start blowing glass and carving marble! Nevertheless, I hope to give you a flavour in this article of why working in 2D can be fascinating and rewarding. It’s Time To Find Metaphors … In a gallery space, you might overhear someone exclaim how “precisely” the artist has captured reality. “It looks exactly like an oyster!” a stranger might gasp when confronted with a still life, or a particular portrait might be “hyper-real” or “photographic.” The truth is, however, that not even Chuck Close painted what was really there. Artists paint images of reality, which means that when working on a flat surface they have to come up with marks to represent different light, textures, volumes and space. The journey to find a convincing arrangement of marks - what those in the business call a specific "style" is one of the most fun (and devious) challenges a 2D artist faces! When an artist finds the correct “mark as metaphor”, it can really pay off. Here’s one of my favourite paintings, All Hands on Deck (2003) by Denzil Forrester. Forrester’s bright, sharp-edged marks are a perfect metaphor for the electronic sound system blasting club tracks being mixed by the DJ in the lower left of the painting. |
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Denzil Forrester, All Hands on Deck Invite The Viewer In … A panel is just a panel, and a sheet of paper is only a sheet. Having said that, artists have often delighted in tricking our eyes by creating the illusion of space. Most masterful and compelling of all, is the creation of several interconnected spaces, which lead the viewer's eye from the surface edge of the 2D work into a fictional world. Here is a beautiful example of this, a trompe l’oeil painting by the seventh century Dutch painter Jan Steen. We, the viewers, stand in an antechamber facing an elaborately carved threshold with two Corinthian pilasters and a broken lute. Across the arched doorway is another space – the bedroom of a seductive-looking woman putting on her stockings. Beyond that, is the even more intimate space of her four-poster bed, where a little lapdog lies curled up, and to the left there must be a large window with a view of the outside world. In his precise arrangement of objects, Steen leads our eye into ever-smaller spaces, making us consider how no one is quite immune to the appeal of sensual pleasure. |
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Jan Steen, Woman at her Toilet Introduce Parallel Worlds … Lastly, what most fascinates me about 2D artworks is the ability to create parallel words and suggest synchronicity. I love paintings that make you wonder: am I outside or inside? Is this the present or a memory or a desire? What is the relationship between these two scenes? Triptychs and Diptychs are the most traditional form of introducing parallel worlds, but artists have gone on to make much wackier and unnerving compositions. Take Michael Andrew’s 1962 painting The Deer Park, for example, which was inspired by Norman Mailer's novel of the same title. Rather than try to replicate a narrative, Andrews collides two scenes together: a Soho club and a hunting ground. The painting seems to be more about a particular milieu, or the act of elite socialising itself rather than any individual’s feelings. |
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Michael Andrews, The Deer Park I love the painting’s twilight colours, and its hazy cast of celebrity characters. Whether the people socialising at the club are dreaming of escaping to the country, or whether the luscious green park is a metaphor for the pleasure of hobnobbing, I am never sure. Bea Santos |
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The Business of Being An Artist: Deep Dive on Instagram |
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The second talk in the series Presenting Yourself Online, for The Business of Being An Artist, is a deep dive on Instagram. In a discussion aimed at those who don't have a lot of experience of social media, Alice Black, Founder of ArtULTRA, interviews PR specialist Rioco Green and gets under the skin of Instagram. You can download a free cheat sheet with practical tips to get you started, below. |
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Image credit: Caroline Teo / GLA At the end of September, ArtULTRA’s crack team of creative producers was delighted to be part of the launch of Asphalt Art in London. Asphalt Art is a project initiated in the USA by Bloomberg Associates, and this was its first iteration in England. Working with the brilliant artist Yinka Ilori, we were part of an amazing team that made Bring London Together happen on Tottenham Court Road and in various sites in the City of London. It is no small feat to paint the tarmac of London's busy streets, but the result is absolutely thrilling! The other upsides are that the urban environment feels more vibrant and art becomes part of the fabric of our cities: it is driving footfall and in turn, economic recovery. Thanks to the vision, hard work, commitment and funding from the Mayor of London, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the London Design Festival, we were proud to make an artistic difference. |
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