Going live on NTS Radio The Butcher's Apron Radio Show with real life stories hosted by Emma Gibson with Art Publisher and writer Nadine Monem.
20th November 2-3pm then every 4th Sunday.
EMILY PUGH
While one third of The John Hour Emily Pugh completes the set design for the opening of Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950 opening in May 2012 at the V&A, she experiments with circus tricks for The Glass Magazine.
RAVEN SMITH
Photographer and editor for Nowness Raven Smith launches his beautiful Tumblr this year: I haven't got a tumblr to wear. It's so good we don't even want to share it.
Amongst many bloggers, one of our favourite pieces of Selfridges window coverage is from FRAME magazine.
Highly captivating are the installations by The John Hour, an art collective that was given five windows. Passers-by catch a glimpse of a brass orchestra controlled by an iPod, or hundreds of tennis rackets challenging a Nintendo Wii.
Highly captivating are the installations by The John Hour, an art collective that was given five windows. Passers-by catch a glimpse of a brass orchestra controlled by an iPod, or hundreds of tennis rackets challenging a Nintendo Wii.
Selfridges.com
To coincide with their latest window project - Bright Young Things, Selfridges has asked artistic trio the John Hour to takeover four windows at Selfridges London.
Known collectively as The John Hour, the artists Emma Gibson, Emily Pugh and Raven Smith had their first European show in December 2010 and now have the opportunity to display their work in the windows of the worlds best department store.
Continuing in their aim to challenge the rules of modern society, The John Hour has created four installations featuring paralleled objects, which represent a clash of lowbrow and highbrow culture.
Selfridges Wonder Windows
For our next commission we will be launching a series of Window Installations for Selfridges & Co, London. These interventions, titled 'Beyond Compare' launch Friday 7th January 2011 and run for two months over Valentine and London Fashion Weeks.
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Beyond Compare
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Beyond Compare
The old and new are juxtaposed, as well and the technological and the analogue. In a time of coupling, The John Hour compare and contrast a variety of collected, intricately sourced and beautifully assembled objects. These objects, sometimes found in pairs themselves, evolve through a considered approach to become a visually stimulating metaphor for the way we now live.
Taking over the four windows on Orchard Street and the Main window on Oxford Street, iOrchestra, Tea for Two, Saturday night at the Movies and Game, Set and Match will be presented.
Products by The John Hour will also be available to buy in store for a limited time only. Part of the 'Bright Young Things' scheme, the entire project looks set to be epic.
Products by The John Hour will also be available to buy in store for a limited time only. Part of the 'Bright Young Things' scheme, the entire project looks set to be epic.
Madrid exhibition, December 2010.
The Violence Initiative: Mixed media installation by Emma Gibson, 2010.
The Violence Initiative (a now defunct project headed by the National Institute of Mental Health 10 years ago) envisioned identifying genetically twisted young individuals. The programme aimed to somehow pre-treat dormant mental health issues therapeutically with drugs before they manifested. With the development of FMRI brain imaging we can now provide genetic biomarkers to predetermine mental health issues such as depression.
Alongside depression and mood disorder, the frontal lobes of the brain are responsible for personality, creativity and memory. Without memory we cannot imagine and without imagination, we lose the ability to empathise, or understand another’s suffering. In a world without empathy where do we, as a society, stand?
If you could really see your future nightmares unfold as your life began, would you still choose to have them? With a predetermined future, with each possibility pre-recorded in a lab are we in danger of discouraging progress? The Myth Of The Artist -that ‘fine madness’ associated with so many of our celebrated creatives that are touched by depression and held up as geniuses throughout history- could simply disappear.
Equalisation –a state in which we all become equal in our life histories- could be seen as the de-souling of the human race. Is this process a safeguard for individual mental health or the gradual decomposition of creativity itself?
Artificial Lures -Mixed media sculpture (in windows) by Emily Pugh, 2010.
Inspired by the gentlemen’s activity of fly fishing with its methodically constructed fishing hooks, I have created objects for Garcia Madrid that on one hand lure with their seductive display while on the other are dangerously capturing.
Such tiny imitations of life, traditionally handmade by men since the middle ages, mimic the time consuming patience of the couturier, who creates their bespoke garments with a similar purpose; to exploit the attention and admiration of onlookers. Like the men’s suit, tailored to a client's specific requirements, All dressed up, like bait. each artificial insect is made- to- measure from gathered materials (feathers, fur, shiny synthetics) and uniquely crafted with care.
Once patterns of natural camouflage, collected materials are used now to engage and seize in a decorative conglomerate of urban detritus. Like the forbidden apple, my replica insects are there to entice using juxtaposing found materials that are wound, bound and transformed into beautiful objects of desire catching many eyes.
Conurbate Capitulate: Photographs by Raven Smith, 2010.
Each action undertaken has a purpose, an ultimate outcome, orientated toward a particular end.
The world we inhabit is a maze; a series of metaphorical, physical and emotional obstacles we’re forever navigating in order to streamline our way through life. Modern life is a journey peppered with pitfalls, obstructions and traps, wherein our ability to overcome each thing thrown in our path become the basis of life itself. A wrong turn; a false start; a missed exit; and we’re thrown into turmoil, desperate to find our way back to our original path.
In Conurbate Capitulate our intrepid explorer navigates his way through the debris of the metropolis, grappling with the municipal hindrances he’s presented with. Each step of the journey is its own encapsulated attempt to overcome the impediments of a suggested distopia. Without inception or destination this presented journey becomes a never-ending visual comment on the infinite restrictions we must endure to survive—our innate need to stay afloat in a submersive culture of detractions.
The photographs here depict seemingly random, absurd and impulsive moments, slanted beyond the confines of natural gravity and yet surrendering implicitly to them. A brick wall floor and a tarmac sky frame our upturned protagonist, literally reflecting the disorder and upheaval of everyday life. Our explorer should fall, gravity dictates that, but he doesn’t fall towards the ground—a battle with gravity itself is fought, won and simultaneously lost as the subject navigates his way through the cornucopia of debris in the modern city.
Gallery Profile
GARCIA MADRID will be the location for the next The John Hour exhibition in Madrid, Spain, December 2010.
The space owner and clothing designer, Manuel Garcia, has invited The John Hour to exhibit in his very creative menswear store/ exhibition space in the heart of an up and coming area of Madrid's city centre.
Some recent interventions and artist exhibitions include:
A particular favourite of ours is this installation based on the story 'Where the Wild Things Are' by visual merchandiser Ivan Latte.
Manuel says of the space, "Garcia Madrid evolves and grows together with collaborators and customers interested in fashion, art and design showing every season that there is a little Garcia inside each of us".
This show will be our first international exhibition in a new type of exhibition space and with a fresh audience. What a challenge, we are VERY excited.
Show runs 02/12/10 - 30/01/11 (Private View Wednesday 1st December 7-10pm) and will run for 2 months over the holiday season.
Garcia Madrid Store Corredera Baja de San Pablo 26 28004 Madrid Spain
The space owner and clothing designer, Manuel Garcia, has invited The John Hour to exhibit in his very creative menswear store/ exhibition space in the heart of an up and coming area of Madrid's city centre.
Some recent interventions and artist exhibitions include:
A particular favourite of ours is this installation based on the story 'Where the Wild Things Are' by visual merchandiser Ivan Latte.
Manuel says of the space, "Garcia Madrid evolves and grows together with collaborators and customers interested in fashion, art and design showing every season that there is a little Garcia inside each of us".
This show will be our first international exhibition in a new type of exhibition space and with a fresh audience. What a challenge, we are VERY excited.
Show runs 02/12/10 - 30/01/11 (Private View Wednesday 1st December 7-10pm) and will run for 2 months over the holiday season.
Garcia Madrid Store Corredera Baja de San Pablo 26 28004 Madrid Spain
RECYCLE YOUR SOLDIERS By Emma Gibson & Emily Pugh 2010. 100% recycled mixed media installation.
Every warrior society has, for thousands of years, experienced a "purification ritual" to help returning combatants deal with their "blood guilt" and to reassure them that what they did in combat was "good." These rituals traditionally involve long periods while marching or sailing home, the cool-down, group therapy period.
The introduction of “conditioning” in modern army training, aircraft, technology & the individual replacement system that hampered bonding and ensured that soldiers often arrived and left as strangers, resulted in the denial of this purification ritual and millions of psychiatric casualties, hence the discovery of PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
It is often said that "All's fair in love and war," but is this a cultural conspiracy?
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