FILMS/PODCASTS
Eric Thorp
JOURNALIST + FILMMAKER
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
FILMS/PODCASTS
MUCK SPREADER is an intimate video portrait of South London musician and artist Luke Brennan exploring his experiences with grief and creativity.
The film is an insight, in to the artistic practice of one of Graffiti’s true innovators whose need to create can often become a comically bizarre place.
This time around we're joined by Isabella Summers aka Isa Machine. Isabella rose to prominence as part of the band Florence And The Machine and has since enjoyed an extremely varied career that has included collaborations with Cy Twombly and Beyoncé. We talk about her artistic beginnings as part of the South London squat-art collective !WOWOW!
Shepherd Manyika is based in South East London and his work ranges from video to sculpture to performance and everything in-between. He has also worked in arts education for a long time and his projects tend to have a big emphasis on community.
In this episode were joined by artist Adelaide Damoah. Adelaide is a painter and performance artist from London and is also completely self taught. She has exhibited internationally and her work covers issues regarding race, identity and feminism. We talk to Adelaide about her transition from the pharmaceutical industry into contemporary art and the self analytical nature of her work.
Emma Cousin is a painter based in South East London - via Yorkshire - and has been part of all sorts of excellent exhibitions with all sorts of excellent galleries; as well as having a huge amount of experience working in the commercial gallery world.
This time we're joined by Ben Murphy and Nick Thompson of Delphian and Gallery and artist Lucia Ferrari. Delphian is a nomadic gallery, founded in 2017, with a focus on pioneering emerging contemporary art. Their hugely popular open call, which happens annually, has gained them a huge online following and given them the wherewithal to support the winners as well as runners up.
In this lockdown edition we speak to artist Christopher Stead about how lockdown has effected his life and practice and also how it has impacted on his time studying at the Royla College of Art.
We met up with Anna Reading early this year, at her in her studio in Bermondsey, and had a chat about her work and career so far. Anna won the Mark Tanner sculpture prize in 2018 and was part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries the same year.
This time round we're joined by artists Richie Culver. We visited Richie in his studio in West London earlier this year and had a really interesting, fun and at times intimate chat about his life and practice and how he got to where he is today.
Maurice is an artist that has been described as the chief catalyst of comic abstraction and has been the pioneering force behind this wonky, off kilter style of painting and sculpture for the last 20 years or so.
Episode 3 of the ART PROOF podcast with artist Fiona Grady.
The Art Proof podcast is back with its second episode. Art Proof is a podcast focusing on individuals who've often taken an unorthodox path into art, such as recent RA shortlisted performance artist John Costi, who has navigated the worlds of graffiti and even prison to get to where he is today.
ART PROOF: An Art Podcast. Created and hosted by Eric Thorp, Nicholas Stavri and Rowan Newton
WRITING
This year marks 10 years since Hip Hop Connection published its final issue. The UK magazine ran from 1988 to 2009, and in that time it became a major player in the rap world. It was the longest-running monthly periodical devoted entirely to hip hop culture, earning universal recognition and going toe to toe with larger...
Most people just stop making art after art school, because you have to work your arse off in London to just live here," says artist and designer Graham Sayle, his soothing Liverpudlian tone peppered with concern. "Unless you live a completely illegal life - shoplifting all your food, living in a squat - how the f*** do you make art?
Post-Soviet Poland was an explosion of liberty, art and music - and nowhere were these changes more innovative and free than in the country's rapidly developing rave scene. After emerging from behind the Iron Curtain in the early '90s, Poland - which already had a strong reputation for its visual arts and graphic design -...
The UK is on the verge of Brexit, in political deadlock, and public spending cuts continue to bite - things have definitely been better. Saying that, it was under a Thatcher government and in a similar climate of austerity, anxiety and tribulation that an important youth movement was spawned.
DJ and curator Shannen SP has been the host of Hyperdub's monthly club night for the past two and a half years. Since forming in 2004, the London-based electronic label has grown into a celebrated lynchpin of the British underground scene, with Shannen's events - titled Zerø, and based out of Elephant and Castle's Corsica Studios - developing into one of the city's most prominent nights in tandem.
The Prodigy were a formative experience for millions of teenagers across the globe. Whether it was catching 'Charly' on pirate radio or watching them perform 'Firestarter' on Top Of The Pops, catching those incendiary rave shows or watching them at a festival in the 21st century, the band were - literally, in some cases - a gateway drug.
Over the last century cartoons and their cultural iconography have been used as a means of relaying important messages in art. Whether the intention is to give these messages a veneer of childishness - making them easily digested by their audience, an attempt to subvert popular culture, or simply to represent some form of nostalgia or aesthetic; the cartoon in art has endured through the years to become an increasingly relevant medium.
My Skype window pings open to reveal a sun drenched room inhabited by a smiling, bearded man in his late 30s, being scaled by two adolescent cats. Journalist and documentarian Lali Houghton - who has just been nominated for the prestigious Rory Peck Award - is in his small, two-bedroomed house in an area called Chorrilos in Lima, Peru.
Blinding, eight foot, fluorescent orange letters spell out the words Strange Days against the jet black hoardings wrapped around 180 The Strand. The intimidating, brutalist building has become one of London's most interesting arts venues in recent years and the latest project it's playing host to proves to be one of the most compelling yet.
There are very few artists that could claim to be truly original and even fewer that could prove it, but no truer a word could be said than when referring to Rammellzee. A revolutionary innovator and polymath lightyears ahead of his time Rammellzee was a pioneering figure in early hip-hop and graffiti culture.
Lucas Dupuy is a painter whose work bucks the current trends in abstract painting to create something strikingly original. His stark, brutalist-style paintings stand in contrast against the brightly coloured, ambiguously blobby, comic abstraction favoured by many painters of his generation.
The somewhat shallow endeavour of spotting something shiny whilst drunkenly flicking through Instagram, in the early hours of the morning, and taking steps to try and blag said shiny thing through the means of sending a slightly deluded email is not always the best foundation for writing a good piece of journalism; but can sometimes result in something far more interesting than first expected.
There is a ghostly nostalgia to Mark Leckey's current show at Cubitt gallery. His latest self analytical exploits arrive in the wake of an extensive survey exhibition, at MoMA PS1 late last year, and revert back to a smaller scale extension in to his exploration of memory and skewed reality.
Chris Burden, who had shocked the art world since the early 70s with his particular brand of cerebral, artistic brutality, died on Sunday the 10th of May at the age of 69 - 18 months after being diagnosed with melanoma.
At times it can seem contemporary art has somewhat lost its way. Something that is fundamentally an extension of the artist can become stagnant and nothing more than a means of generating wealth for those who have invested in it.
It's a cold, grey, November afternoon in Old Street and Clash is waiting for New York's latest, biggest and perhaps youngest, offering to the gods of underground hip-hop, Joey.
In 1995 a group of Atlanta rappers called Goodie Mobb imortalised the phrase 'DIRTY SOUTH' - a term used to describe an evolution in Southern American 'street culture' that would captivate a young America and become one of the most significant and lucrative movements in the history of American popular culture.
At a time where it is becoming progressively difficult for artists to exist in the capital, it would be easy to become envious of artists such as Eddie Peake.
It's rare for an artist to develop a meaningful autodidact practice; especially when such large emphasis is placed on education and the following of the correct channels to establish oneself as a legitimately received artist. Although it's rare this kind of development can forge some of the most interesting results giving the work created and the artist creating it an unflinching authenticity and captivating rebelliousness.
London is a city with a rapidly changing skyline. The Brutalist estates and tower blocks - and the communities that once inhabited them - are being demolished, displaced and in extreme cases killed to make way for 'redevelopment'.
As you enter the gallery you are faced with an alleyway of sight and sound, a percussive journey through the morning after the night before. 'Pub Crawl' maps the artist walking through the streets of the East End, early, on a weekend morning; tapping and stamping out rhythms on the evidence of heavy drinking strewn through the city.
Nostalgia now, more than ever, plays an integral role in popular culture. The constant reinvention, or emulation, of past trends and subcultures can be seen throughout every creative platform, but perhaps most notably in fashion, music and contemporary art.
This week Somerset House has played host to the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair which showcases the worlds most interesting artists and galleries at the forefront of contemporary African art.
Lisson Gallery present two very interesting and contrasting shows, both dealing with identity and human expression. The first show is Tony Oursler's 'template/variant/friend/stranger' which sees the artist using facial recognition technology to comment on the omnipresence of these technologies and the effect they have on modern life.
David Blandy is a man obsessed with popular culture. His work explores the ability that his interests and chosen aspects of counter culture have had to develop, shape and influence his existence as a human being. The idea that ones passions and fascination can completely define a person no matter how alien they are to that persons origins.
London based artists Emma Hart and Jonathan Baldock's first collaboration 'SUCKERZ' is a beautifully grotesque analysis of the absurdly ritualistic world of the dinner party. Their monstrously fantastical creations are displayed, throughout the gallery, in a nauseatingly gastronomic explosion of flesh and excess that explores the physical and mental processes associated with one of the most favorite of middle class pass times.
The work in the show is web based and the artist is using Youtube,in particular, as the medium. The title A/B testing is a method used for internet marketing for companies to test which videos, e-flyers, adverts etc are most popular.
This weekend visit London Art Fair which plays host to the launch of the 2016 Catlin Art Guide; plus the announcement of the shortlisted artists, being nominated, for the Catlin Art Prize.
Tonight The Nines, in Peckham plays host to the launch of The Performance Studio's Autumn/Winter Season with Performances From Parisian artist Arianne Foks and London based artist John Costi. The Performance Studio is an independent, peripatetic production and rehearsal space, founded in 2010 by curator David Thorp.
As performance art grows in popularity, with a new generation of artists, eager to push boundaries and traverse new territory, so does the necessity for new platforms to develop and nurture artists and their practice. The Performance Studio is an independent, peripatetic production and rehearsal space, founded in 2010 by curator David Thorp.
Station To Station is the colossal project, curated by artist Doug Aitken, which has been hosted by the Barbican Centre over the last month. The 30 day project works as an ever changing tapestry of Contemporary art and culture with constantly rolling events and happenings in which no two days are the same.
There is a delicately moving atmosphere to Luke Burton's work. A warm feeling of nostalgia which he describes as a perpetual dusk, of sorts. His exploration into the relationship between abstraction and the decorative, in contemporary art, creates fascinating comparisons within his work.
Broomberg & Chanarin's 'Rudiments' is a darkly comic analysis of the absurdity of combat, the fragility of the human condition and the brevity of life. The shows focal point is a projected film titled 'Rudiments' - a collaboration with a group of adolescent army cadets, at a military camp, on the outskirts of Liverpool.
Floating around the the meticulously polished concrete floors of White Cube Bermondsey it is difficult to imagine anything looking bad in such a perfectly sized and finished space. The faux celestial awe created by the stretching white walls lends itself completely to Gates' work - constructing a catalyst to invoke deep emotion.
THE AGE I DON'T REMEMBER - TEASER from ZZZZZ on Vimeo. As performance becomes increasingly established as a mainstream discipline, within contemporary art, questions pertaining to it's marketability multiply. A practice that is usually ephemeral, by nature, has increased in popularity and in turn so has the need for galleries and dealers to document, own and market the work, in a physical form.
The irksome predictability and accelerated growth of London's gentrification has become a disheartening and complex beast. The surprising outcome of the recent general election highlighted the fact that we are now living in an age of individualism. A generation where a majority of people would gladly shun the idea of leveling the playing field a bit in exchange for saving a few quid.
The ever growing influence of digitised imagery in painting is beckoning in a new era of abstraction. The trend of digitally made compositions recreated by hand or the combination of digital combined with traditional methods are giving a new dimension to painting and producing a whole new pedigree of painter.
Jerusalem Season of Culture is in its 5th year and and has become one Israel's most prolific artistic happenings. The season consists of a hugely varied program split up into festivals and events focusing on contemporary art, music and culture.
Catlin Art Prize, in it's 9th year, has firmly established itself as an imperatively important platform and patron for emerging artists. This year's show of 8 young upstarts previewed last week in the Londonnewcastle space on Redchurch Street - a fitting location to showcase the dazzling maze of inter locking installations.
On entering Maria Stenfors gallery you are instantly unsteadied by a dissonantly aggressive glimpse into the brain of Norbert Delman. A video of a dramatically combative game of basketball plays behind a mesh fence which feels like it should be protecting the viewer from some kind of violent encounter.
If you are anything like me you may find the possibility of having to visit an art fair a slightly jarring prospect.
Addiction is an extremely difficult and sometimes uncomfortable subject to broach. Many of us, at some point in our lives, will deal with some form of addiction or be exposed to and effected by the addictions of others around us.
Ryoji Ikeda's 'supersymmetry' blurs the lines between art, music and particle physics in a complex and disorientating installation, which may actually necessitate a PHD to fully fathom. 'supersymmetry' marks a year of site specific installations, at the top of the Brewer St.
The indiscriminate gentrification of our nation's capital seems to know no bounds. The grotesque, sprawling redevelopment of London is slowly but surely smothering what little life and soul remains, creating a dystopian playground for provincial fuckwits with bags of money and a severe taste deficiency.
With Peckham's proximity to some of the countries leading art schools there has always been, and hopefully always will be, an active and interesting art scene. It's distance from the galleries of the West and East End meant that, until very recently, it has been unsullied by the irksomely fashionable, money driven babylon that is the London art world.
Nowadays when the art world takes an interest in Hip Hop the results, with exception, are usually corny as fuck. It's been a long time since the likes of Rammellzee and Basquiet proved that there was something within Hip Hop culture that could hold the interest of the Art world for more than 15 minutes.
Hey! Ever wondered what it would be like to own the junk of rich, famous, creative and successful, people? Well now you can thanks to Garage Magazine. GM are auctioning off a whole bunch of stuff, belonging to thirteen eminent creatives, in aid of helping out CalArts and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art's Education Centre.
Hitting Camden Town on a sunny Sunday afternoon like overgrown teenage fanboys on their way to their first rap show, and the Bronson mania was already thick in the air.