Solar Rock Lights

In the name of my current obsession with fake stones and rocks I’m drawn to these solar powered garden lights. I’m thinking they might be a super cute way to light my work…but the solar powered aspect might be a little tricky to work with in a gallery space. Perhaps the lameness of solar powered lights indoors is part of the charm….

I’ve been reading Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality. The piece is broadly concerned with simulation, theming and fakes/replicas, and in the context of this, he mentions Superman’s home city of Kandor on the planet Krypton. With his home now destroyed, Superman keeps the city of Kandor, miniaturised, in a bell jar locked in the Fortress of Solitude, to visit whenever he feels like it. The current Group Show I’m involved with, To the East the Mirror, takes a line from the poem Envoi by Octavio Paz as it’s title. Another line from the poem immediately caught my eye and reminded me of Superman:

(To the North, the crystals of non-knowledge

a landscape to be invented

Visit Mike Kelley’s vision of Kandor here

Tropical Toiletries - revised version.

This B&W version of the tropical toiletries drawing is intended for the artists book and group exhibition i’m part of. More news soon on this venture. The drawing is also developed from the iPad drawn colour image below as it has been mediated through Adobe Illustrator’s ‘Live Trace’ - this has made the lines into vectors which could then be used at any size without pixelation

I’ve recently become obsessed with Crazy Paving. Well actually fake stone/rock in general - cladding, plastic rocks for aquariums, in themed environments and in toys and games. This particular instance came from the Sequoia Lodge at Disneyland Paris, an “exquisitely recreated forest lodge inspired by America’s vast national parks”. So far i’ve been working on iPad and illustrator drawings with it.

Augmented Reality 4D theme park

(via Augmented Reality 4D Themepark Lets Visitors–Or Their Avatars–Play @PSFK)

Work in progress: Alpine Air

Part of the series I’m working on that explores simulated environments. Graphics are appropriated from cosmetics and cleaning products and presented as idealised landscapes.

Revision of the tropical toiletries drawing - I’ve decided to separate the imagery and only have one set of motifs per drawing. I’d quite like to exhibit this digitally and play with it in motion so that the layers hang in space

Found this blog while I was searching for Alpine scented toiletries and cleaning products for something I’m working on. This ‘virtual curatorial space’ seems really resonant with the way I’m making work at the moment

‘Tropical Toiletries’ reflects my current interest in theming, simulation and collections/repetitions of objects. The montage is built up of images of tropical environments traced on my ipad, taken from domestic products and cosmetics. It’s an illustration of my tendency to become obsessed with a place or culture and try to collect objects that will build a feeling, a sense of somehow being submerged in that ‘thing’.

Incredible. A recreation of the Disneyland/World attraction Pirates of The Carribean, the inspiration for the film series, using a computer game. A simulation of a simulation of a construct. I love it. It’s also making me want to learn to use Motion to construct digital grottoes….