ART BUFFET BLOG

Category: General
Posted by: parag

Dear Everyone

Hello again!! I'm back. We're back!

Apologies for the long gap and thank you for your patience. It's been a tough couple of years but we've come out of it leaner and better placed to achieve our mission.

We are now officially a social enterprise Community Interest Company. We have a new name Art Buffet. Geddit? (Think smorgasbord class and variety, not cheap £5 chinese.) New brand and logo coming....

We're delighted to have a new CEO, Tony Wells, at the helm of our operations. He's is going to have a positive impact on this venture and I guarantee you will feel his presence. I ask you to join with me in wishing him the best of luck.

As for me? Well, I've spent nearly 10 years in the front line where finance and business meets the arts and creativity. I've seen a lot of mumbo jumbo, corruption, insider dealing and general exclusion and lack of transparency that goes on in the commercial world. In the financial sector it's outrageous and it's even worse in the arts.

So now I have a lot to say. It needs to be revealed. It needs to be fixed. The world is going through a lot of change and much systemic unfairness is being revealed, even in democratic countries.

Expect to hear a lot from me! It's going to be strong and it's going to be everywhere. We're engaging in a fight for fairness.

Please join us in this struggle or at least be a cheerleader.

Category: General
Posted by: Samuel

We're proud to present the second installment of our London based artist interview series! This interview takes place with sculptor Jeremy Willett and provides an insight into the way he works, his influences and what he intends to achieve with his work. Jeremy's work fuses sculpture and painting, finding an exciting juxtaposition between the two techniques. He uses a range of mediums that span from Wood to Canvas to Jesmonite and mixes them with a colour pallet that includes a mix of both pastel and bold, bright colours.

We've already got the next interview lined up, so check back regularly to catch the next video and also to get a round up of what's happening in the art world through our blog. If you haven't seen the first installment of our interview series then click here to view the interview with Alice White.

Click read more to see parts 2 & 3 of the interview.

Category: General
Posted by: Samuel

Part of Brandeis University in Massachusetts, the Rose Art Museum is facing an uncertain future that could result in the selling of its 8000+ work art collection. The museum was founded in 1961 and holds some early works by great American artists such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. It's also held some pretty renowned, important exhibitions by artists Joseph Cornell and Dana Schutz including others. It is the universities debt, however, not the museums that is forcing The Rose into an uncertain future. The university is considering the drastic action of closing the museum completely and auctioning off the collection in order to cover the potential $79m debt facing the university.

Category: General
Posted by: Samuel

Roger Hiorn's is one of the four nominated artists

The four shortlisted artists were announced for one of the biggest art prizes of the year have been announced this week and are as follows: Enrico David, Roger Hiorns, Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright. The prize is held annually and open awards 'a British artist under fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding'. The Turner Prize has been running since 1984 and has seen the likes of Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, Anthony Gormley, Grayson Perry and Anish Kapoor take home the prize money. This year the £40,000 prize fund will be split into £25,000 for the overall winner and £5000 for the other shortlisted artists.

Category: General
Posted by: Samuel

Damien Hirst has chosen an unlikely setting for his next retrospective, Kiev in Ukraine. He's picked up on the former Soviet Republic's 'newly discovered interest in contemporary art' and plans to bring over 100 sculptures and installations, plus oil paintings to the city. Many of these works have never been seen before, but as Hirst feels his current audiences are growing tired of his work he sees an audience farther afield can view his work with fresh eyes:

"I've always thought that museums are for dead artists and I kind of was afraid of that. But I think because in Ukraine the audience is so new ... to contemporary art at least ... that makes it exciting, that makes me want to do it." - Damien Hirst

Category: General
Posted by: Samuel

120 Artists works decorate the 'East Side Gallery'

Paintings that adorned the East side of the Berlin wall are to be restored in a scheme to breathe a new life into the dilapidated wall that now serves as one of Berlins main tourist attraction. After the wall was torn down, a group of eastern Berlin artists called the East Side Gallery recognised the wall as the 'worlds largest open-air gallery' and decorated the wall with a series of murals to breathe life into the structure that once split their city in two. The paintings were political remembrances to the purpose of the wall as it stood dividing Berlin's citizens because of political beliefs.

Category: General
Posted by: Samuel

We've got a new project kicking off today! The Art-Switch video blog aims to give you an insight into the working practice of a range of London Based Artists. We kick off today with Alice White, a painter whose work features in the Art-Switch library.

There are more interviews in the pipeline, so keep checking back to see more interviews with different artists working in different mediums. The video has been split up into handy bite sized clips to enjoy at your convenience.

Be sure to click read more to see parts 2 and 3 of the interview.

Category: General
Posted by: Samuel

The Diana Memorial, Hyde Park. But what could have filled the space instead?
The Henry Moore Foundation was set up by famous British sculptor Henry Moore to promote visual art, especially sculpture across two settings, one in Leeds and another in Hetfordshire. Moore himself is famous for his monumental public sculptures that are dotted all around the world so it's fitting that the forthcoming exhibition at the Leeds foundation is going to showcase a range of public art proposals but with a twist: none of them were ever made.

Category: General
Posted by: Samuel

Robert Morris' sculptures often involve audience participation
38 years ago American artist Robert Morris' interactive installation Bodyspacemotionthings opened in the Tate Gallery's (now the Tate Britain) cavernous Duveen Sculpture gallery. Morris didn't consider the English audience ready to deal with such an artwork, branding it too 'rough and tumble' for the typical refined and genteel English citizen as it involved many large scale obstacles creating an assault course. 2500 visitors came to clamber over the climbing walls, Balance on wooden logs and slide down wooden structures resulting in the exhibition being closed down after it created 'pandemonium'. The structures became damaged and people were leaving with splinters after the raw materials used to build the installation became frayed and damaged.

Category: General
Posted by: Alastair

“Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.” Pablo Picasso


Over the weekend I read an article about every artist's worst nightmare. A website accused an artist of stealing copyrighted designs and sent him a bill for $18,000. The catch was that they were his own designs and to make matters worse, the website’s lawyers have started to call his clients to tell them. His clients are taking the accusations at face value and are furious. It seems a deliberate attempt to destroy his reputation.