Warhol + Debbie Harry x Amiga = Awesome

Here is an old clip of Andy Warhol painting Debbie Harry on an Amiga computer, because it is awesome.

That is all.

Street Art in Tehran

Found this great post over on the bad banana blog yesterday. Just some examples of some of the cool street artworks that have been seen in Tehran over the past few weeks. There's more over here.


Also, if you're on twitter, I highly suggest you follow the author of the bad banana blog, Tim Seidell. You can find his account here. Here are some examples of his tweets:


Anyway, check out his blog for more great stuff. That is all.

I'll be back later today with an image dump...

New York Advertising Takeover

A pretty cool thing happened on Saturday in New York. Apparently over 120 illegal outdoor advertising sites were taken over by artists, and used as al fresco canvases for amazing design and artworks. There seems to be a problem in New York (and other cities presumably) with media companies installing outdoor advertising without council or landlord permission. These companies then make money from companies that are advertising on these illegal media sites.

So in response to this, a bunch of artists and designers, led by a guy called Jordan Seiler, got together and whitewashed 120 of these illegal sites. When they were done, they painted on these newly-claimed canvases with designs of their own. The results were quite spectacular:



It's always great when a group of people can come together and have a positive impact on their city. Hopefully all of these artworks are preserved, and the corporations don't just plaster more ads on top of them. And let's hope that the law doesn't get involved and charge anyone with 'destruction of public property' or whatever. I've always thought that when you treat street artists like criminals, they're going to produce work that looks like it was done by criminals (ie tagging, and quick scribbled designs). But if you respect their work, and recognise them as artists, then they'll create work that makes any given city a more beautiful place. And that can only ever be a good thing.


For more pictures of the "New York Street Advertising Takeover" as they called it, click here and here. And to see Jordan Seiler's site, click here.

Oh and p.s. sorry for the lack of posting this week. I've just been busy with other stuff and, well, lazy..

In Praise Of Invader

I'm sure some of you will be familiar with the work of Invader. I first noticed his stuff when I was staying in Paris for a summer a few years ago. I was walking around the Marais with some friends, and we spotted a small mosaic in the shape of an alien from the famous video game Space Invaders.


As soon as we had seen one of these mosaics, we began to see them everywhere. I eventually found out that the artist had placed them all over Paris, as sort of a large scale scavenger-hunt game.


I was also told that people had started to imitate Invader (like any good artist) and had started making their own mosaics. Usually I'd say that this would be annoying for any artist, but Invader seems like the kind of guy that would encourage a massive proliferation of space invader aliens all around the world.


After checking Invader's website, I discovered that he has been placing these invaders all over the world. According to Wikipedia, he has been putting up these mosaics since 1998, and has done so in over 35 cities around the world.


As you can see from the map above, Invader has never visited the Middle East. Do you think we could get him to throw up a few space invaders around Dubai? Would anyone notice? I guess we might see them if they were in malls, or maybe around Bastakiya or JBR Walk, but anything on Sheikh Zayed Road would need to be pretty massive to be noticed.

Maybe one of the art galleries in town could have an exhibition of his stuff? He's put on exhibitions before, and we've currently got some of Futura's work here in town, so why not?

So if anyone knows Invader, or anyone knows anyone who runs a gallery and would be interested in contacting him for an exhibition, leave a comment below. It'd be awesome to see some of Invader's work here in Dubai

Art Cars

Just saw this over on TrendLand. Some guys are using old 80's model BMWs as canvases and putting them on display at a gallery in Manhattan.



Their works are inspired by artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Frank Stella. I think the exhibition opened yesterday, and runs for 2 weeks, so if you're in New York, make sure you check it out. Can you imagine how much fun it'd be to get a car and just go crazy with it? Not too sure what I'd put on mine to be honest. Maybe something like this painted comic-book style:


Anyway, it's good to see some artists out there who are just having fun..

Futura in Dubai

Firstly, I just wanted to apologise for the lack of posting recently. I've been running back and forth between Dubai and Abu Dhabi on family business, so I've been a bit lazy.

But the wait has definitely been worth it. Those of you who read Kanye West's blog, or Hypebeast, will have seen that the legendary, internationally acclaimed graffiti artist Futura is coming to Dubai. He's coming as part of an exhibition being put on by Krunk, on March 19th, at Cuadro Fine Art Gallery. For those of you who don't know, Cuadro Gallery is in the DIFC. Futura's work will be shown alongside work from artists Phil Frost and Stash. The exhibition will run until June 17th.


This is sure to be a great event. I can't believe that I only discovered that it was on this close to the actual launch date. It seems that every week we hear about more and more awesome artistic events taking place in Dubai. Let's hope the trend continues..

In praise of Devin McGrath

I stumbled onto these illustrations from NY-based illustrator Devin McGrath over on Josh Spear's site. This guy has a real knack for creating surreal and creepy worlds involving mutant animals and mildly threatening 10 year olds. I can imagine McGrath would be a good choice to illustrate a children's version of an HP Lovecraft compendium, if they make such a thing. He's got a pretty twisted sense of humour (see the Unicorn piece below), but I really love the guy's use of colour; he's got a talent for making the bright and shiny seem somehow corrupt and sickly.


They've also featured Devin's work over on Juxtapoz and Lost At E Minor, so the guy is getting some good exposure. Hopefully we'll see more from him in the near future.


Also, if you head to his site, check out the guy's bio, it's pretty funny stuff..

Photos from My Name Is Robot

Sorry for the lack of posting recently, I've just been busy with a bunch of things. So here, as promised (on my Twitter account) are some photos from the night itself. There are more on my Flickr photostream as well:






Overall the night was a total success. The crowd was huge, and it was great to see such a wide range of people come out to support a local art show. It certainly encourages more events such as these in the future. My favourite robot in the show was the Chester French robot with the big glasses that you can see in the third photo.

So well done to all the artists, photographers, designers, and supporters involved in making the whole thing such a successful and vibrant event. Let's hope we see more of these events in the future.

What did you guys think of the exhibition? Leave a comment below if you want..

Paul Smith lomo camera

Some of you will be familiar with the joys of lomography. Some of you will be familiar with the Al Bastakiya Art Fair. This means that some of you will be very happy to hear that there will be a 'lomo wall' set up during the art fair. The art fair runs from March 15 - 22, and should be a great event with many different attractions.

If you're not into lomography, or just need a new lomo camera, check this out:


My friends all know that I'm a bit of a gear-head, so this Paul Smith lomo camera went straight to the top of my 'must-have' list. Unfortunately, the online store says they're all sold out, but perhaps they've still got one or two at the Dubai Mall outlet..

Tonight's the night

The time has come people. Tonight sees the launch of the My Name Is Robot exhibition at the Jam Jar Gallery in Al Quoz. There's a map to the location here. It should be a pretty huge night. Judging from the Facebook event page, there could be over 350 people there. So come along, and you just might bump into your favourite blogger...

Great Wave versions

In my image dump last week I posted this re-interpretation of Hokusai's Great Wave Off Kanagawa (click for a larger version):


Here's the original:


A reader called Ben emailed me this version of the artwork:


This next one was done by the ridiculously-talented pair Kozyndan, and keeps up the great work they've been doing that incorporates rabbits:


And this last one was done on a much larger scale, in a Japanese rice paddy field:


That this amazing image has inspired so many re-interpretations and re-imaginings is really quite incredible. The image itself is quite small in real life apparently, but the effect it has had on illustration and art is immeasurable.

Anyone else know of some other cool versions of the Great Wave? Leave a comment if you do...

UPDATE: Found some more:



I'll probably keep posting more versions as I find them, so keep checking back...

The robots are coming...

It's getting closer guys. This looks like being a really great event, and judging from the calibre of artists participating, the work should be excellent.


Find out more about the event, and read some bios of some of the artists here. If nothing else, it's a good chance to get your face in the pages of Ahlan or something, if you're into that sort of thing...

Art attack

I had some old friends from London in town the other week, so I took them out to lunch at the XVA Gallery in the beautiful Bastakiya precinct:




The courtyard area in the gallery is really nice, and the food is great too. I think it may have won best restaurant back in 2006 according to Time Out Dubai, but I can't be sure.

One thing that caught my eye in the gallery was a piece by an artist called Jennifer Maestre. I had seen her work a few months earlier on Boing Boing, and on a few other blogs, so I was quite surprised to see one of her creations here in Dubai. The piece at XVA was similar to this:


Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of the piece itself, but I'd encourage you all to head down (or up) to XVA and check out some of the work.
In the entrance to the gallery area, they had this amazing chair created by young artist Noel Duigan:


Click here to read a short interview with Noel, and see some more of his designs. It looks like he's leaving Dubai to head home to Sydney, which is a shame, but it seems as though he'll maintain a retail presence in Dubai.

Robot invasion

A friend of mine has been asked to submit something to the My Name Is Robot art show that is running from the 19th until the 22nd of February at Jam Jar Gallery here in Dubai.

The idea behind the show is to get a range of different artists to decorate one of these guys in any way they want:


The robot was designed by UK artist Martin Simpson. It looks like it's going to be a pretty cool exhibition, and MTV Arabia is going to be filming part of their Weyakoum programme there as well, so if you come down to check it out you might end up on TV! This is exactly the type of stuff Dubai needs more of, so make sure you drop by at some stage..

Icarus and Ulysses

I was listening to Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks of 2008 earlier, and there was a track called "Upon Viewing Brueghel's 'Landscape With the Fall of Icarus'" by a band called Titus Andronicus. Apart from striking me as probably the most ridiculous name for a song that I've heard in a long time, it made me want to see this painting for myself. So here it is:


The great thing about this work of art is the fact that Icarus is so small, you can barely see his legs poking out of the water near the stern of the ship. The total indifference of the farmer just makes Icarus' death so pointless. It reminded me of this short story by Borges, called The House of Asterion, which totally flipped the perspective in the old myth of Jason slaying the Minotaur. Borges' short stories are so face-punchingly awesome; if you have the chance to buy one of his collections, you really should.

While we're on the subject of Greek mythology, I just heard a track from the new Franz Ferdinand album, called "Ulysses". I was literally listening to the track over on The Hype Machine, when I was looking at BOOOOOOOM.com, and they had just posted the video of the same track. In their words, the "video makes this song 10,000 times better." I think the track is pretty great on its own, especially the crunchy synths that kick in at about the 40 second mark. Pitchfork have given the new album a decent review, so hopefully we'll all be hearing a fair bit of this album this year:

Speaking of street art

While we're on the topic of amazing street art, the guys at Good Magazine have worked with the Wooster Collective to gather some of the best street art from around the world. Click here to check out some more examples like these:



It's great to see that street art can be more than just paint on a wall.

And keeping with the subject matter at hand, here's a great article by legendary street artist Banksy, concerning the need to preserve true street art. Banksy wrote this article before the Commonwealth Games were about to begin in Melbourne, and the local authorities were painting over all the street art in the city centre. His argument against destroying this art form makes perfect sense in my opinion..

Stop motion masterpiece

A friend of mine sent me this incredible stop-motion video created by an artist named BLU. He/she uses the walls of Buenos Aires as a canvas to create an epic story. Check it out:

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Product envy

It seems like there are thousands of sites out there that just list things that I really want to buy. Acquire is probably the best example of these sites. Every day there's some new product that I can't live without for like 20 mins. Example: this sled by Porsche Design.


I live in Dubai, and the closest we get to snow is the Mall of the Emirates, but I really, really want this sled. So I'm not too sure how much the sled costs, but I'm guessing it's out of my price range. Plus it's totally useless. Click here for more information about the sled.

So what do I actually need then? Headphones. I saw these headphones from a Parra x Perfect Unison collaboration about 2 months ago:


So, needless to say, they're stunning. According to High Snobiety (probably the best streetwear site on the internet), they're made of 9 single layers of Norwegian Birch wood. They're a limited edition of course. I only have two problems with these headphones:
1. You can't adjust them, which means if my head turns out to be larger than the average Norwegian, I'll feel like my head's in a vice.
2. The price: around US$445, which hurts.

So I need to find an alternative. Which is where good old Nixon comes in. The kids at Nixon have been making great watches and other accessories for a while now, and have just started designing headphones. I was on their site when I saw these:


Pretty great, right? Simple, clean, eye-catching design, and all for the low, low price of US$100. So I'm definitely leaning towards the Nixons at this stage. Plus the Parra headphones have probably all sold out anyway.

While we're on the subject of cool product design, I saw this link to the 100 best-looking cereal boxes over at (the always great) Bad Banana Blog. There are some great examples of old-school typography and illustration there, of which this is just a small sample:


Looking through that collection got me thinking about some more stuff regarding package design, but I'll be back with that later...