Inside Design with Bill Amberg Studio

Exhibition open 22st Feb – 6th Mar 2013
Private View 21st Feb 6pm – 9pm
In conversation with Libby Sellers 28th Feb 7pm – 8pm
Bill Amberg talk 6th Mar 7pm – 8pm

See the video from this event here.

In the first of a new series of exhibitions to be held at Great Western Studios, Bill Amberg will bring to life in the project space the story of five different artistic collaborations in leather. He will exhibit a Charge bike (with customised leather pan saddle, handle bars, rat traps and mud flaps), a herring-bone parquet floor, a wall-mounted shelf table (using the same techniques that were developed for the Shard reception desk), a pair of paneled doors and, finally, a table top desk showing various material combinations.

Look out too for the Wagamama design project, showing the work in progress behind the design of their take-away packaging; plus a unique Johnny Walker Blue Label bag which will included leather maps, casing and full design process description and materials. A visual treat and an exploration of design at its finest, these design stories will be told through a combination of materials, sketches, tools and objects.

Amberg has an encyclopaedic knowledge of leather – the texture of different types of skins, how they feel and how they can best be used to create everything, from the 300sq/m floor in Selfridges mens’ shoe department to the lift interiors at the Shard, the perfect bag for cycling, or a myriad of stylish storage solutions for pens to computers. This is where his design genius lies. Amberg will explore his ethos of developing a product successfully through the process of making it.

This exhibition will also look at the importance of craft and how vital it is in the development of a design.

By way of background, Amberg grew up in Northampton, the home of the British shoe and leather industry. His mother – a maker and an architect – would buy scraps of leather from the market for her son to transform into his very earliest creations. In Australia, in the early 80s, Amberg met the inspirational mentor and leather worker, Gay Wilson. It was there that Amberg acquired his fundamental belief in craftsmanship and a respect for leather as a multifaceted material.

During his long and illustrious career, Amberg has worked with many great designers and architects – Paul Smith, Donna Karan, Romeo Gigli, David Chipperfield, Norman Foster, Renzo Piano – to name but a few. In 1986 Amberg created his first leather floor for an architectural practice, quickly becoming the master of bespoke leather in interior design. He has completed a variety of exceptional commissions from leather panelling the Maltese Falcon super- yacht to the stunning, leather-lined fumoir bar in Claridges.

Whether via his classically designed bags or inspirational interiors, Inside Design will illustrate the secrets behind Bill Amberg’s unique vision.

Further information: www.billambergstudio.com

The Art insider presents… How to get ahead in the art world

Seminar: Every first Tuesday of the month
Next session: Tuesday 7th Jan 2013 6.30 – 8.30pm
Location: Gallery & Project Space

The Art Insider is a brand new forward-thinking company providing bespoke mentoring, group seminars and a comprehensive range of associated services for visual artists.

It is run by a friendly team of practicing visual arts specialists, dedicated to facilitating the professional development of artists and supporting the progression of studio practice.

The Art Insider provides artists with the knowledge, skills and confidence to navigate successfully within the fine art industry. The Art Insider exists to bridge the gap between studio practice and successful commercial enterprise.

This session provides a better understanding of the marketplace, of appropriate representation and looks at generating interest in order to make a living from the commercial art world.

Areas Covered:

– The ability to talk about your work
– The ability to engage in professional relationships within the arts
– A basic understanding of how the art industry works – know what you are operating within.
– The range of opportunities available to artists – Where to look for sources of information – Identifying your aims and objectives
– How to create a workable and realistic schedule of activity
– How to create income streams and activities to spread over a workable time frame
– How to plan strategically for financial gain

School for artists| professional development for artists | The Art Insider

Professional career development for artists . London based School for  Artists advising on marketing, exhibitions, web design, photography  video and jobs in art.

Further information: www.theartinsider.co.uk
info@theartinsider.co.uk / t.02082799916

Atrium: A showcase of art & design

Friday 7th Dec, 6.30 – 10.30pm
Saturday 8th Dec, 12.00pm – 6.00pm

Set within the frame of Great Western Studios’ dramatic atrium, a new collaboration opens.

Resident artists and designers are presenting a showcase of their own work, celebrating a diversity of media. This is a unique opportunity to meet exhibitors and to buy directly from them. It will be open to the public Friday evening 7th December, and Saturday afternoon 8th December.

Explore the central atrium and its adjoining studios and gallery to find work from over 30 exhibitors. Among them you can find Jimmy Turrell, a graphic designer who combines digital techniques with handmade collage, screen printing, drawing and painting. His clients include The Guardian, Green Peace and Nike. Wendy Bain is a colourist who works with oils, acrylics and gold & silver leaf. Her paintings capture the energy and mood of landscapes with colour and movement. Julie Goldsmith is a sculptress. Her totemic figures are talismanic and poetic.

ilovegorgeous are designers of beautiful vintage-inspired clothes for girls. They will be selling samples from previous seasons’ collections. Shiv is an illustrator; working with photography and Photoshop, she creates a realistic feel within an abstract subject matter. Her clients include Sony Music, BMW and Camel.

This event promises to be an open and accessible market place with unique works on offer. In addition to the examples given above, you can also find visual arts, mosaics, ceramics, printing, photography, jewellery, leatherwork, textiles, millinery, fashion, costume, architecture and landscape design.

Come celebrate in a creative community. With the Atrium Café offering food and drink, it is set to be a vibrant and enjoyable experience.

Point of Departure

Exhibition runs: 27th Nov – 4th Dec 2012
Location: Gallery & Project Space

Point of Departure presents an opportunity to view work by second year master’s students from the Royal College of Art’s celebrated Ceramics and Glass programme at a pivotal point in development.

The programme itself has been described as a site for discursive practice, where cultural, social, personal, historical and aesthetic concerns intersect. An overarching belief that the skills of making and thinking can develop in tandem, and that the made object is a vehicle for expression that can engage with the individual and society, lies behind much of its students’ output. The artists do not see ceramics and glass merely as a fixed set of media, instead prizing and celebrating diversity and breadth whilst embracing connections.

As work in progress, Point of Departure includes eighteen individual artists’ investigations taking form. It gives a rare insight into the thinking behind the works at this ‘point of departure’. The exhibition reflects recent discoveries within the students’ artistic journeys as they establish individual identities.

The work itself covers a wide spectrum – from design for manufacture, the unique art object to installation. Themes being dealt with range from the body, the domestic and the architectural, at the core of which is material understanding.

Helle Bjerregaard
Rachel Hopkins
Sabina Stumberger
Kane Cali
Rosanna Martin
Ester Svensson
Kevin Callaghan
Enrique Perezalba Red
Luke Twigger
Eunghan Choi
Helena Plado
Cristina Vezzini Olivia Fink
Shane Porter
Jonathan Wade Lydia Hardwick
Mella Shaw
Yiru Wang

Darren Almond Studio All Things Pass Exhibiton

All Things Pass opened with huge success at the Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin. Almond’s diverse body of work incorporates film and video, drawing, painting, installation, sculpture and photography.

Almond’s diverse body of work incorporates film, drawing, installation, sculpture and photography. His subjects are as diverse as clocks, train plates and bus shelters. They reveal feelings about the passage of time, themes of personal and historical memory, movement and space.

In 1998 the artist initiated an experiment, which he called Fifteen Minute Moon. This became the starting point to an ongoing series of works, now known asFullmoon photographs.

Often travelling to inaccessible locations, Almond takes his photographs at night. The only source of light is the full moon. The landscape becomes visible by using extended exposure time and turns a dark night into a light day, often appearing ghostly.

The first Fullmoon photograph is a fifteen minute exposure taken at Montagne Saint- Victoire in Provence, thus conjuring the shade of Cézanne. The remote places in Darren Almond’s works reference painters, photographers and writers such as WG Sebald, John Ruskin and Carleton E. Watkins, JMW Turner as well as Caspar David Friedrich’s famous Baltic sea paintings.

In his continuous journeys Almond creates meditative landscapes, turning the invisible visible. The artist depicts the notion of isolation, complete silence, beauty of nature and thus reflects on time and history; themes reminiscent of the romantic 19th century painters.

Recent settings include the British Islands, Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains and the Yellow Mountains in South East China.

All seven new works Fullmoon@Eifel have been taken in 2010. The large-scale landscape photographs emit a mystic and at the same time warm aura; reminding us of nature’s power and peacefulness.

Darren Almond’s Fullmoon series might suggest a journey beyond time; capturing moments that are spatial in dimension, because here time comes to a standstill.