Anti-Olympics Poster Competition - The Results

Having announced an entirely unofficial and not entirely serious Olympics poster competition back in December, the deadline for publishing submissions has arrived (changed for tomorrow's Countering the Olympics Conference in Whitechapel, which I'm speaking at). I'm pleased to share some of the excellent designs, most provided anonymously, that I've been sent.

As 'lawgraduate' points out in a comment to my original posting, the London Olympic Games (Trading and Advertising) (England) Regulations 2011 do not apply to "advertising activity intended to demonstrate support for or opposition to the views or actions of any person or body of persons" or to "publicise a belief, cause or campaign". These were only published on 1 December 2011, which is why I missed them, but they relate primarily to an attempt to control 'ambush marketing' by companies inside the 'event zone'.

However, several of these designs definitely are "a representation of something so similar to the Olympic symbol" under the Olympic Symbol etc. (Protection) Act 1995 that they could be illegal if someone were to "incorporates it in a flag or banner". It's something of a legal minefield and I'm not a lawyer, but whatever way you look at it, I doubt whether you'll get past G4S security into the Olympic stadium with a t-shirt bearing any of them. Anyway, enjoy:

A comment on the potential overall cost:

From the frankly obscene:

To this more cerebral comment on Olympic brand enclosures:

Thanks to everyone who sent in an entry (if 'teacherdude' wants to send me his original,I'll stick that up here too). I'll have these turned into PDFs shortly.

UPDATE

(Most of) the posters are now ready as PDFs. The set are available here or individually:

Olympigs - A4 | A3
CCTV - A4 | A3
"We Don't Want Your Olympics Here" - A4 | A3
"Go Ahead, Arrest Me!" - A4 | A3
Siege City - A4 | A3
Potential overall cost - A4 | A3
Brand Enclosures - A4 | A3

Today's "Writers: Pictures in a Tunnel" Exhibition

Even after 25 years in the city, there is so much I don't know about London - for instance, that Leake Street in Lambeth, under Waterloo station, is an unofficial 'authorised graffiti area'. Marc Vallée, who with Brian David Stevens held a 'pop up exhibition' there today, told me the rumour that the pedestrian-only tunnel is still leased from owners Eurostar by the artist Banksy, who hosted the 'Cans Festival' there in 2008. Whether this is true or not, graffiti artists are quite obviously tolerated - nobody bothered to even glance up from their work as two police officers walking through while we were there.

The lunchtime exhibition included images of some of these 'writers', the result of Marc's decision to work with Brian to document the London graffiti scene after eight years of photographing political protest and dissent (which is how my mate Cilius and I know him). Some of the images from this new project can be found here and on Brian's 'Drifting Camera' blog here: my more amateur efforts from Leake Street and the exhibition itself can be found in this Flickr set and below.

Artist Offends The German Police!

From Agence France-Presse (AFP):

BERLIN — A prize-winning lifelike sculpture of a squatting policewoman urinating has whipped up a storm of protest in Germany, where it went on prominent display last week.

The work entitled "Petra" by 27-year-old German sculptor Marcel Walldorf is made of silicone and metal and has pitted public officials against art world aficionados in the debate over what is acceptable in the name of high culture.

It depicts a young female police officer in full riot gear crouching to pee, with exposed buttocks and a small gelatin "puddle" affixed to the floor of the gallery at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, eastern Germany.

The work entitled "Petra" was completed one year ago and has captured a 1,000-euro (1,328-dollar) prize by the prestigious Leinemann Foundation for fine arts.

"It shows very well the difference between the public sphere and the private sphere," the jury said.

But Saxony interior minister Markus Ulbig, who is responsible for the state's security services, told the German press he was "shocked" by the sculpture, which he branded "an insult to police officers."

The GdP police union also blasted the piece, saying it "breached the limits of artistic freedom."

"There have of course been letters of protest, particularly addressed to the artist," a spokeswoman for the Academy of Fine Arts, Andrea Weippert, told AFP.

But she insisted that the public response had been "overwhelmingly positive".

"People who visit the show are not offended," she said.

She said she was surprised by the attention given to the display of "Petra" in Dresden as it had already been featured in smaller shows in the cities of Berlin and Leipzig.

"The artist is exploring a taboo zone. 'Petra' is not a provocation," she said. "It is an observation of society."

Former Foundry Bar Gets Anti-ConDem Makeover

There are those who look back with fondness on the Foundry, the dingy bar, venue and art space on Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch that closed in May and is due to become the site of a depressingly corporate 18-storey hotel. My own recollection of the bar, based on the occasional and reluctant visit, was that it was a complete dump, the artwork was awful and it was full of pretentious tossers pretending that cod-bohemianism is somehow revolutionary. Well, I suppose that appeals to some people.

Far more impressive is the 'Great Brain Robbers' mural by Dr D that has been plastered on the front of the now empty building - a brilliant piece of anti-government propaganda. See here for more pictures.

BP - Licence to Spill

On Monday evening, as celebrations for 20 years of BP 'support' for British Art got underway with a Summer Party at Tate Britain, Liberate Tate disrupted the proceedings inside and out by pouring hundreds of litres of 'oil'(molasses) and scattering thousands of feathers in an 'art performance'. The action follows last month's disruption of Tate Modern's 10th Birthday celebrations, which involved hanging dead fish and birds from dozens of giant black helium balloons.

The Tate Summer Party had been planned to be in the museum gardens and involve speeches from BP executives. However, due to the rumours of disruption, Tate was forced to hold the entire event inside the museum and no speeches were made.

Liberate Tate is a network founded during a workshop in January 2010 on art and activism, commissioned by Tate. When Tate curators tried to censor the workshop from making interventions against Tate sponsors, the incensed participants decided to continue their work together beyond the workshop.

See also this from Harpymarx

Art Against the Wall

According to Amnesty International. "visit Bethlehem today and taxi drivers vie to take tourists on a 'Banksy tour'".

As well as stencilling and plastering the city's walls with brilliant artwork and Israel's illegal separation wall with vast murals, Banksy and 13 top international street artists have joined Palestinian artists to sell their art in Santa's Ghetto, a former fast-food restaurant in Manger Square in Bethlehem, raising over $1 million for local charities.

Some of their artwork is featured in an exhibition at Amnesty International's Human Rights Action Centre that runs from 2-11 June.

On Thursday 10 June at 7pm, the Centre also hosts the launch of William Parry's new book Against the Wall: The art of resistance in Palestine, with a panel discussion that includes the author and Peter Kennard, the photomontage artist known for the iconic images he created for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s and more recently for the Stop the War Coalition. Parry's book features prints from the exhibition and graffiti written by people from all over the world on Israel's Wall in the occupied West Bank.

Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, EC2A 3EA
The exhibition is open from 9.00am - 6.00pm, Monday to Friday, and entry is free.
More information here.

Waiting - Five Women's Stories Of The War On Terror

In Waiting, a new play by Victoria Brittain, five women speak and sing their stories telling of the unseen fallout of the war on terror.

Friday 12 March and Saturday 13 March
7.45pm
Purcell Room,
Southbank Centre,
Belvedere Road,
London SE1 8XX | Map

These are stories of real women from cultures as varied as Senegal, Jordan, Palestine and the English Midlands. They mostly came to the UK as refugees, or married refugees, but after 9/11 the world they loved here vanished overnight. One after another they were engulfed by private terror.

Directed by Poppy Burton-Morgan 'Waiting' is a powerful new work of verbatim music theatre, with an original score by Jessica Dannheisser. Performers include Juliet Stevenson, Gemma Jones, classical soprano Anna Dennis and mezzo soprano Carole Wilson, accompanied by cellist Oliver Coates. Video, projection and lighting design is by William Reynolds.

After each performance, Victoria Brittain chairs a debate discussing the issues raised during the evening. The panels include Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Gareth Peirce, Manjinder Virk, Riz Ahmed, Salma Yacob, Vanessa Redgrave and Moazzam Begg.

For more information see the South Bank Centre website

A Couple of Hours at Whitechapel Gallery

I was over in Whitechapel yesterday, too embarrassed to turn up more than an hour late for the Climate Camp meeting at the Rag Factory off of Brick Lane and too frazzled by the novelty of a hot August afternoon to cycle any further east towards home. So I popped into the recently expanded Whitechapel Gallery, which I used to visit regularly many years ago, back when the London Metropolitan University up the road was still the City Polytechnic. And what a surprise its cool, calming galleries turned out to be: no pretentious conceptual art, just paintings, some abstract but mainly figurative, from the long-running East End Academy exhibition and from the American artist Elizabeth Peyton.

Walking into the ground floor gallery, the first painting you see is Andy Harper’s ‘Feast of Skulls’ (above), a mass of black, pink and red that looks like fractal from a distance but is a mass of intricate detail of hundred of flowers. My other favourites included Guy Allott’s landscapes framed by a hole seemingly blasted through a tree, and Emily Wolfe’s almost photo-quality paintings of everyday household objects.

Upstairs, the collection of mainly small, intimate portraits by Elizabeth Peyton was fascinating for her choice of subjects, some historical and others artists and musicians, including David Hockney, Mick Jagger and Liam Gallagher. Peyton certainly has a way of capturing the angular, feminine male faces of people like Jarvis Cocker, turning them into whey-faced Pre-Raphaelite figures that are rather more interesting than the more simian features of Gallagher.

It has been a long time since I’ve spent an enjoyable hour in just one exhibition and clearly, I need to make more random decision like this in the future...