Arts Council England employment programme for young creatives

Arts Council England is the place where I would choose to work, if I could...but I cannot do that yet, since due to budget cuts, there are no offers available, and most of their employees' contracts have a good chance to expire in 2013...

What I wish I had before turning 24 though is the chance to a genuine option - Arts Council England launches employment programme for young people, that is an opportunity for some of you out there to see your creativity flourish and not go to waste. Get paid for your work. Rarissimo, don't cha think?

Jerwood Charitable Foundation supporting the creative industries
and you heard right, PAID internships

I said PAID, oh let me say that again, PAIDDDDD....doesn't that sound wonderful? 


Very proud, Arts Council England !

The Bosa Bosa Review editor-in-chief

Create your own Obsessive Artwork

Creative promotion involves a lot of things.

But when a marketing campaign to promote the arts makes the public feel involved, the creative potential of the initial idea becomes unpredictable and all the more interesting.

Recreativeuk.com has come up with something new. REcreative asks you to

create your own obsessive artwork

and submit it here.

The best project will be chosen by a panel of judges including the Curator of the Exhibition Frances Morris, the Directors of Tate Modern and the South London Gallery; Chris Dercon and Margot Heller and Yayoi Kusama's studio.

The artist chosen will win a trip to Tokyo, Japan to visit Kusama’s studio later this year.

Now that is a challenge (for UK citizens and permanent residents). Considering the worldwide Kusama-mania these past few months, the idea REcreative UK had will probably turn into a very successful event.

Tokyo is a great place !

Good luck with your submissions.

P.S. Should you win, feel free to ask questions about Yayoi Kusama's Japan anytime.

Beautiful image from Esmee Fairbairn Foundation - 50 years: 9 stories

Now this is what I call real. Love, passion, work. This is I want to see every day.

Dancer creating her own choreography

See Patricia dancing here

© The Esmee Fairbairn Foundation

Thank you for the beauty of your work, Patricia Okenwa from Rambert Dance Company, the oldest dance company in the UK.

Back in 2004, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation granted Rambert Dance Company Ltd  20000 pounds towards the costs of a programme to develop dancers' choreography skills. Then again in 2010, no less than 151,770 GBP have been invested in the Choreographic Development Programme over three years.

This beautiful video has been created by the Foundation in 2011, on their 50th anniversary.

Yayoi Kusama and the dots obsession - Osaka 2012

The National Museum of Art Osaka is now hosting the works of Yayoi Kusama, avant-garde "artist and novelist", born in 1929 in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. View her works on her official website, on NMAO museum's site and on Asahi Shinbun Daily Newspaper's site (main sponsor).

After curating Renoir, tradition and innovation (2010) and The Complete Posters of Tadanori Yokoo (2010) exhibitions, Masahiro Yasugi, a museum-profit record-breaker at NMAO, has taken charge once again.

Taking photographs is permitted in most exhibition rooms.

With all my love for the tulips, I pray forever by Yayoi Kusama, 2011

草間彌生　《チューリップに愛をこめて、永遠に祈る》

Courtesy of The National Museum of Art, Osaka (current exhibition)

Whether polka dots make you think of Dexter's blood spatter, or are reminding you of Brigitte Bardot's femininity, it is fair to say that they have become Kusama's signature.

Dots: Brigitte Bardot vs Dexter

In terms of style, one cannot fail to notice the resemblance to Takashi Murakami's works. Murakami has displayed his works at the Versailles Palace in 2010, stirring controversy among critics but not so much among young fans. You can see more images in the Guardian.

Takashi Murakami @ Versailles (2010)

Both of them also enjoy a business collaboration with Louis Vuitton.

Many of Kusama's monochromatic works using manga-brush for silkscreen printing on canvas or acrylics on canvas, display women's broken features, which, even though lacking the emotional heaviness of the subject, make us think of Picasso, and his work Weeping Woman (1937) from the Tate Collection.

Women in a Dream [TWZSA] & First Love [SWTUE] by Yayoi Kusama (2005)

草間彌生　《夢の中の女たち[TWZSA] 》＆《初恋 [SWTUE]》

Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman (1937)

© Tate Collection

Patterns like the one below remind of Gustav Klimt's style from the mural painting The Tree of Life at the Secession in Vienna.

I Who Was Looking Hard at God, by Yayoi Kusama, 2011

草間彌生　《神をみつめていたわたし》

The Tree of Life, Gustav Klimt, 1909

The explosion of stickers on white surfaces at Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art (Australia) reveal even more Yayoi Kusama's playfulness, she makes differences vanish and dreams unify all edges.

Installation views of The obliteration room 2011

as part of ‘Yayoi Kusama: Look Now, See Forever’,

Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art, 2011

© Yayoi Kusama, Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc.

Photographs: Mark Sherwood

YayOi Ku$ama and the dOt$ Ob$e$$iOn - O$aka

Welcome to the Osaka exhibition !

Yayoi Kusama Eternity of Eternal Eternity at NMAO 2012

catalogue, flyer, list of exhibited works, museum events

Exhibition banner stand

Polka-dotted space

more dots

dots are a medium, an equalizer, a standardizer

everything becomes absorbed in this obsessional dotscape

dots reach the upper floors

shapes resembling Miyazaki's Kodama-s show up

they get round & take flight

dotscape trying to escape

The exhibition space ends with a dazzling experience inside Gleaming Lights of the Souls, a Steppenwolf - like gigantic mirror-space of a Magic Theatre (mixed media, 2008).

Related links:

Yayoi Kusama exhibition at Serpentine Gallery, London, 2000

Yayoi Kusama: Flowers that bloom at midnight, by Evelyne Politanoff, Huffington Post, 12 December 2011

Interview Yayoi Kusama, by Helen Sumpter, in TimeOut London, 2012

Love Forever, Yayoi Kusama 1958-1968, MoMA exhibition web page, 1998

There has been a boom in Yayoi KUSAMA major exhibitions in 2011-2012:

Japan:

Eternity of Eternal Eternity, The National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, 7 January- 8 April 2012 (curated by Masahiro Yasugi, supported by Asahi Shinbun Daily Newspaper)

Overseas:

Tate Modern, London, 9 February- 5 June 2012 (curated by Frances Morris and Rachel Taylor, supported by Louis Vuitton, see press release here)

Centre Pompidou, Paris, 10 October 2011-9 January 2012 (supported by KENZO Parfums, see press release here) - see an one-hour video created by the Centre Pompidou here.

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 12 July- 30 September 2012


Gagosian Gallery, Rome, 25 March - 7 May 2011

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 11 May - 12 September 2011

Tadao Ando - Losing Battle After Battle

On 2 June 2011, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Tadao Ando lecture tickets were sold out. Eighteen days later, the Osaka University Convention Center was full and cheerful. Everywhere he goes, young people crowd round him (check out the video with Bono in Dublin, below).

This is Tadao Ando, an Osaka-born genius. We are most honoured to have met him. Tadao has signed for us his Losing Battle After Battle, a book about architectural competitions which Tadao Ando has not won. About ideas, concepts, courage, failure, and the strength to keep going.

Tadao's proposed design for Museum aan de Stroom (1999)

The museum was finally designed by

Neutelings Riedijk Architecten (The Netherlands)

It opened in 2011. View it on the museum's website.

This was Tadao's vision of what Tate Modern should look like (1995)

The building was designed by

Herzog & De Meuron (Switzerland).

It opened in 2000. Check it out on the Tate official website.

You can get more information on this book in English and Japanese here.

We have written in the past about Tadao events here and also published a short post on his fundraising efforts in the aftermath of the 11 March 2011 Tohoku catastrophe.

Related links:

Watch Tadao Ando on CNN:

Tadao Ando © 2006 CNN Talk Asia Program part 1/3

 see also parts 2/3 and 3/3

thank you danone19 for the videos

Watch a short video many Tadao fans love, with Bono from U2 introducing Tadao Ando in Dublin, 2007, here.

Then watch a skillfully-composed video on Tadao Ando's works, Conceptos, which is available on youtube here.

You can buy books on Tadao Ando on amazon.com, here.

Buy Du beton et d'autres secrets de l'architecture by Tadao Ando on amazon.com here.

Enjoy !

Arts and Humanities - Public Engagement & Creative Economy

We learnt with great pleasure from FutureEverything that Lancaster led Creative Exchange AHRC Hub project in the humanities has been awarded 5 million GBP  by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). AHRC announced a 16  million GBP boost for Arts and Humanities researchers and the UK Creative Economy, an investment

reflecting the significant benefits that arts and humanities researchers bring to the creative business

With four leading institutions, University of Lancaster, University of Dundee, Queen Mary, University of London and University of the West of England, and partners including the BBC, Microsoft, TATE Liverpool, the British Museum, the project aims to contribute to the UK cultural platform's openness towards its public.

For more on cultural openness in the UK, visit the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement website.

Learn more about Investment in the Arts in England from Arts Council England, one of the most enviable resources of information and greatest sponsors of the arts.

Globe to Globe

For those of you planning to visit London in 2012, and for those already there, The Bosa Bosa Review recommends: Globe to Globe. The World Shakespeare Festival.

At The Globe.                                                                                                                In 37 languages.

Coriolanus  -  in Japanese  -  21 May & 22 May 2012 at 7.30 pm

Be part of the London 2012 Festival, finale of a 4-year amazing project: the Cultural Olympiad.