BigShinyThing

Jonny Woo curates a ‘hotlist’ of East End performers and makes special mention of Ryan Styles, Jeanette and – you read it here first – Underconstruction’s Lisa Lee.

The Underconstruction crew perform as part of TimeOut‘s On the Up festival at the Vortex in Dalston, 2nd August.

Spotted in Shoreditch. Niiiice.

An installation of new works by Peter Kennard and Cat Picton Phillips with original works by James Cauty and DFace at the Leonard Street Gallery, E2. Go See.

Antisocial flyer photography by Simian Coates. Model Kelli Jean Drinkwater at Ugly. Antisocial is on Saturday nights at Bar Music Hall, 134 Curtain Road, Shoreditch. Cover photography of Island Life by Jean-Paul Goude. Of course.

This is nicely positioned on the side of the White Cube gallery and directly in front of our favourite posh eatery, Cru. It’s one of a pair commissioned from Banksy by Bono for his editorship of The Independent but we like it anyway.

Accompanied by Pure Evil bunny rabbit.

One faux Christmas tree, fully decorated and with flashing lights, just twinkling on the pavement. Why is it there? And is it still? Update: no.

CutUp have a new exhibition opening on 4th November, at Seventeen – 17 Kingsland Road, E2. They’re clearly not anti-corporate enough to refuse sponsorship for the show from Leffe…

Bigger photos are available on our Flickr photostream.

The rumour that the rest of these painted letters, by Eine, read ‘Arse’ [photograph depicts shutters painted with letters spelling out 'holes'] proved sadly untrue. It’s a simply a cute little East End alphabet on shop shutters.

Posted on Wooster.

A master class in targeting. Hoxton bar Dreambagsjaguarshoes loans out its bar as a media space to promote major studio films to the very demographic that frequents it. Other times of the year the bar hosts art exhibitions but when cult films like Donnie Darko and comic book adaptation Sin City are released, the bar provides the perfect space to market them. This doesn’t just entail tacking up a few posters, the entire space is given over to the look and feel of the movie: walls are painted with artwork and sculptures of major characters loom at the bar.

Photo courtesy of Cluster.

A month after I posted this, the owner of dreambagsjaguarshoes, Teresa Letchford, was profiled in The Observer. She sees her portfolio of businesses (her and her partner also own a fashion boutique and coffee shop up the road called No One) as ” … a live magazine – complete with fashion, film and social pages.”

Situationist graphic design collective CutUp feature in this week’s Design Week:

…CutUp, a group led by ‘J’, a recent graduate in graphic design from Camberwell College of Arts. Critical of the way advertising has come to dominate our visual space, this collective of four is attempting to disrupt and raise awareness of the ‘colonisation of public space’ by reconfiguring billboards.

By stealth of night, members of the group cut up large-scale outdoor posters, out of which they then create a new image, which they hope will give the public pause for thought about the nature of the images that are being imposed upon them.

CutUp searches hoardings, carefully selected for tonal values, a quiet location and low positioning, and then carefully removes the posters. These are then cut up into a patchwork of little squares, numbered and scanned into a computer. The squares are reworked into a new image, which is then secretly and painstakingly replaced on another billboard.

Of course, slicing up and reordering expensive advertising is illegal, and CutUp could face prosecution for criminal damage. The group is currently working on a series of four ‘reordered’ billboards in London’s Shoreditch, to co-incide with an exhibition of its work at the Kemistry Gallery.

CutUp’s first piece, in 2003, was a reordering of a Nicorette billboard, transformed by collage to show the haunting, shy smile of murdered child Damilola Taylor. ‘It is the power of the billboard rather than the brand that we are trying subvert,’ says ‘J’.

Cut Up Show runs from 5 April to 30 April at Kemistry Gallery, 43 Charlotte Road, Shoreditch, London EC2A