Hasta La Ideas

Continuing his curious exploration of alternative uses for animal bones, Portland’s Stephan Alexandr recently released his latest artistic creation—the Fangblade. Carved from alligator jawbones, the handy letter-openers still sport vestigial teeth to remind its user…

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More than 300 graffiti artists and illustrators will visit Bristol this weekend for free annual urban street art festival Upfest.

From May 25-27, artists from Europe, Asia, the US and Africa will paint 20,000 square feet of artwork on boards, buildings, a subway train and a skate park in Bedminster, south Bristol.

Events will take place on North Street and at Raleigh Road venue The Tobacco Factory (home to a market, cafe and creative spaces), which will host RnB, beatbox and hip hop performances as well as a live illustration battle and a graffiti workshop for children and adults.

The festival is raising funds for the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACOA) and is sponsored by art pen makers POSCA. Artists attending include Faith47 from South Africa, DALeast of China, C215 from France and Italy’s Peeta.

Upfest started six years ago as a paint jam between a small group of artists. As word of mouth spread, so did the number involved. “There hasn’t been masses of publicity about the event – it’s mostly been artists telling each other and the number has grown to around 320 this year,” says founder Stephen Hayles.

“As it got bigger, we thought it would be nice to help raise the profile of NACOA and hopefully raise some money,” he adds.

Most local residents are positive about the festival, says Hayles, and its success has helped Bedminster secure a place on Mary Portas’s pilot high street renovation scheme.

“Not everyone likes it, but it brings more people to Bedminster and even those who don’t like all of the artwork appreciate the talent and creativity it takes to paint a 30-metre high building,” he adds.

For details visit www.upfest.co.uk

Images (from top): art by Soulful Crew, Soker, Lokie and Inkie created at last year’s Upfest. Photography by Paul Green.

Out now, the May 2013 issue of Creative Review is our biggest ever. Features over 100 pages of the year’s best work in the Creative Review Annual 2013 (in association with iStockphoto), plus profiles on Morag Myerscough, Part of a Bigger Plan and Human After All as well as analysis, comment, reviews and opinion

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

CR for the iPad

Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month.

As the Museum of London Docklands turns ten years old today, artist Chris Naylor has unveiled a cityscape made of 2,186 sugar cubes, referencing the museum’s focus on one of the most significant – and shameful – trades to have shaped the city…

Weighing in at 13kg the sugar sculpture pays homage to one aspect of London’s history of trade and commerce, a subject at the heart of the Museum of London Docklands.

Since November 2012, the story behind London’s links to the transatlantic slave trade has been examined in the museum’s permanent exhibition, London, Sugar and Slavery: Revealing Our City’s Untold History.

The museum is also housed in one of only two remaining warehouses – used for storing sugar – on Docklands’ north quay by the West India Dock Company, originally built in the 1800s.

Out now, the May 2013 issue of Creative Review is our biggest ever. Features over 100 pages of the year’s best work in the Creative Review Annual 2013 (in association with iStockphoto), plus profiles on Morag Myerscough, Part of a Bigger Plan and Human After All as well as analysis, comment, reviews and opinion

You can buy Creative Review direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe, save money and have CR delivered direct to your door every month. If you subscribe before May 3, you will get the Annual issue thrown in for free. The offer also applies to anyone renewing their subscription. Details here

CR for the iPad

Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month

A production still from 2012 episode of Art in the Twenty-First Century that featured Glenn Ligon.

The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will honor artist Glenn Ligon with its SMFA Medal. First presented in 1996, the award honors individuals “who have made a significant and lasting impact on the art world, and recognizes their commitment to diversifying and communicating with the world through art.” Past recipients include Alex Katz, Kiki Smith, Ellen Gallagher, and Robert Rauschenberg. Ligon will receive his SMFA Medal (complete with red ribbon) this evening at a gala that will take place at the museum and benefit the school. Guests can assess potential future SMFA medalists during a pre-dinner silent auction of student work.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

There’s more to the Met this spring than PUNK. Writer Nancy Lazarus headed up to the roof.

(Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art)

And how many rains must fall before the stains are washed clean? This question, posed by Pakistani poet Salima Hashmi, is at the heart of Imran Quereshi‘s latest work, created for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s roof garden. “This is an open space, and there will be lots of rain, so we’ll see what happens,” noted the artist.

During a rooftop museum press conference on Monday morning, the brisk weather cooperated, with partly sunny skies. But the theme of global violence and regeneration still casts a dark cloud over Qureshi’s artwork, on view through November 3.

Born in Hyderabad and now based in Lahore, Qureshi said he worked with the color red more as a political statement than to depict blood, but that changed in 2010, after a suicide bombing in his neighborhood. “When I saw TV images after the bombing, the area had transformed into a bloody landscape within seconds. I was thinking, how could a landscape full of life change so quickly? For me, this altered the meaning and symbolism of the color red.”

The artist specializes not only in expansive installations but also in miniature paintings in the style of the Mughal court. He said he’s fascinated by the New York City skyline, and for him the rooftop perspective reminds him of landscapes and miniature paintings.

Assistant curator Ian Alteveer said it took Qureshi about ten days, including breaks, to create his roof garden work. The artist used high-grade acrylic, rich in pigment and waterproof, so it did withstand the monsoon-like rains of the past weekend.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.