Brighton Fashion Week 2012 - The Brighton Frocks show

Alice Parsons took in the first show at the 2012 Brighton Fashion Week:

The 2012 Brighton Fashion Week ‘Catwalk show’ at All Saints Church, Hove, had all the pre-show excitement, anticipation and awesome looking guests of previous years. Also the same lengthy queue for the bar (allowing more time for outfit perving). And the promise of an entire week’s worth of fashion to follow.

I had the great fortune of being seated on the front row, close enough to the catwalk to see every sequin and goose pimple. Also possibly close enough to be blinded by the whirlwind of an opener that was Celia Arias designs. A display of outlandish characters took to the catwalk. An evil puppet mistress steered a sumptuous Japanese puppet into view. They were followed by a cautious gollum sporting a skull and plastic aeroplane helmet, who checked his surroundings before beckoning a shy green monster onto the stage in Little Sister, Big Daddy style.

Latex was next, Lucky Dame showcased a collection of naughty, nude and pastel colored dresses led on by stunning BFW model Tess Georgia Dimos (pictured below). Despite latex’s saucy vibe, the outfits still had something cute about them, although along with Arias' creations perhaps fall into the not so wearable on a daytime/public spaces basis.

Frantic About Frances followed. The range of vintage style boudoir underwear is glamorous enough to get the sailors wolf-whistling whilst still looking pretty damn comfy. At this point my neighbour turned to me and asked ‘Are the gussets big enough?’ to which I replied ‘Yes, I think they are’, a special moment and a rarity in modern underwear, I’m sure some will agree.  It was also brilliant fun getting into the vintage spirit with a burlesque striptease and union jack waving.

Aneta Mackonyte’s ‘Rainbow Warriors’ are influenced by Tibetan, Mayan and Incan mythology. ‘I am trying to unite my own knowledge and emotions by mixing fantasy and the everyday in a child-like way.’ Mackonyte explains. Happy models, wearing relaxed chunky layers echoed her message. Clashes of tribal prints, bright woven fabrics, bear hats and knotted prayer flags would be great for snugly winter outfits.

Other highlights included feisty punks at Charles of London and Flash Gordon futurism at Shara Haze. The hairy zombie men clawing at us from the catwalk were also a big hit. Student and BFW fan Astrid Harbour commented, ‘What Jylle Navarro created with a pair of knitting needles was absolutely extraordinary’. My only complaint of the evening being the large number of lollipops carried throughout the show and the slightly abrupt ending after the final designer.

This year the models were stronger than ever. Local beauties (stand outs including Ellis Anthony, Desiree Laidler and Liv), many modelling for the first time and doing a spectacular job, were supported by the talented backstage crew as returning BFW model Dimos explains. "A team of hardworking individuals backstage power through the hours to perfect the look on the already very beautiful models. Make-up artists, hair stylists, dressers and designers were all working round the clock to get the models out and ready on time. Backstage madness is always worth it in the end; the models graced the catwalk in their stunning garments. Brighton Fashion Week has done it once again and put on a show to remember."

I quite agree.

BFW takes place every year in May. For more information visit: http://www.brightonfashionweek.com/
Follow Tess Georgia Dimos on Facebook. Follow BFW on Facebook.

Review by Alice Parsons. Photos courtesy of Theresa Power and Brighton Fashion Week.

The Drawing Circus - Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Bobbysix's Alice Parsons got her sketchpad out at The Drawing Circus recently. Read all about it:

Rapunzel let down your hair, Briar Rose awaken, Rumplestiltskin dust off your breeches, sharpen your pencils and let the drawing begin. Composed of a company of artists, models and musicians, The Drawing Circus create and organize themed life-drawing events and I was lucky enough to attend the latest - this time inspired by the fairy tales of Grimm - at Brighton’s Sallis Benney theatre. So it was that armed with ample paper and ink I had set out on a journey to the enchanted forests of lore with the hope of creating a few decent drawings and the promise of making plenty of bum ones.

Soft smoke crawled across the theatre stage, a band of merry players improvised eerie flute led music. In the centre of the dark room Grimm’s forest waited, occupied by lithe nymphs, a gentleman wolf and a slightly saucier Red Riding Hood than children’s books would have you remember. Jake Spicer, a talented artist and ambassador of drawing took to the stage (dressed as a hobbit) to explain the day’s events. There would be five acts, each based upon a fairytale by Grimm. Life models in fantastical costume would undertake a series of long and short poses, moving about the space while we the audience would attempt to capture their likeness.

The battle for the best position was a tough one. Easels had been pre-booked and knowledgeable, organized types nabbed the front seats. However this was not a problem, many took to the floor and everybody got stuck in.

We were spoilt for choice. I would begin tracing the outline of a handsome prince, only to be seduced by a passing Nyad. My only frustration being that occasionally a spectacular pose would only last for five minutes, thwarting what might have been a good drawing. This I’m sure, is all part of Spicer’s plan.

“The Drawing Circus has grown over the last two years from collaborations between all of the models, artists and musicians that attend or work at the life drawing sessions that I set up in 2009; the aim of the Drawing Circus is to add an extra edge of inspiration to regular life classes, creating a narrative of poses strung together by music written for the occasion," says Spicer. "It’s been so exciting to watch it grow to the point where we can now bring in hundreds of people to draw and in the not so distant future we aim to take our circus on the road and create a travelling drawing troupe; right now it’s just nice to think that we're probably the only life drawing class with its own resident costumier and composer!”

Interspersed with much needed 15 minute breaks, the drawing circus really puts you through your paces, from tentative line making to messy charcoal masterpieces. It is challenging but ultimately rewarding. At the end of the day, exhausted and covered in oil pastel smears, I looked back through my work (badly rendered hands and wonky faces included) and felt a warm glow of achievement and pride.

The next Drawing Circus event is Grimm's Fairy Tales at the Keystone in Guildford on 22nd April. Details here.

Review by Alice Parsons. Photos: Anna Gibson

John Martin - Apocalypse exhibition

John Martin's Apocalypse is on at the Tate Britain for a few more days. Alice Parsons checked it out for Bobbysix.com:

THE END IS NIGH, YOU WILL BE JUDGED, REPENT!!! These are phrases that spring to mind when looking at a John Martin painting. You feel as if you could walk right into one of his works (some of his biggest paintings must be a couple of metres across each way) and stumble endlessly across the craggy, barren landscapes. Cutting your bare feet on the sharp rocks, dodging lava, desperate for an icy drink and salvation’s touch.

When I heard about his recent exhibition at the Tate, the first major collection of his works in 30 years, I knew I would be going and that I would inevitably be paying the £12.70 entry fee to get in (If that scares you, remember this is also the going-rate to see a film these days – Puss in Boots 3D anyone? No, I didn’t think so). The Tate eases you in with Martin’s gentler works. Serene scenes of Paradise, Eden, castles... nothing too sinister. However, on closer investigation, even the seemingly harmless depictions of London parks and British Tourist attractions harbour foreboding, swirling skies. Silent storms building up in the distance, hinting at what’s to come.

Then it starts to get exciting, John Martin’s ‘blockbuster’ oil paintings take over one room. In their day, they were the equivalent of going to see a new Bond movie. Belshazzar’s Feast (below - possibly my favourite) is breathtaking. I confess now, I wouldn’t have had a clue what was happening if not for the Tate's handy guide, based on Martin’s original descriptive catalogues. So, here follows my rough assessment: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are gently caressed by moonlight in the distance. To their left, the tower of Babel is caught in a raging, lightning-stabbed sky. In the foreground everybody else is running around like headless chickens (there is quite certainly more to it than that). The contrast of light is otherworldly and the Hall of Astarte (seen in the midground) appears to be never-ending. I love that; looking at a painting that doesn't have an ending, it has a story and a world of its own that has been playing out for untold years already and will continue to do so into the future.

In his lifetime Martin drew up engineering plans for the improvement of London’s sewers, the Thames Embankment and even a metropolitan railway, but his plans never got off the ground and were criticised by others. Shunned by the Royal Academy, who felt his ‘blockbuster’ paintings were not sophisticated enough for the elite of the art world, Martin was always something of an outsider. Looking at The Great Day of His Wrath, I really can’t imagine why. Martin’s final work, The Judgement series, is comprised of three large paintings. The Tate has set up The Last Judgement, The Great Day of His Wrath, and The Plains of Heaven on one wall facing tiered seating. Every 30 minutes the lights go out and an interesting experience takes place. Some kind of clever projection light-show illuminates different sections of the paintings and then slowly warps and distorts parts to mimic lava flow, earthquakes or ash falling. Little animated lightning forks poke about and the whole effect is rather hallucinogenic. Unfortunately the overexcited actors they’d recorded over the top narrating were indeed a bit over-the-top. But then I’d probably get carried away if you asked me to act out a bible-bashing Victorian pastor.

Martin’s figures are not great. They don’t have memorable faces, they’re a bit soft and squidgy and I sometimes felt that they spoilt what would otherwise have been a great painting for me. That’s not to say that I don’t think he should have painted people, full-stop. They are the best scale markers for his epic work imaginable. Without the tiny figures of Adam and Eve being cast out of Eden in The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (top), we would have no sense of their plight, of the fear they must have been feeling on seeing the expanse of dead land they had been cast into.

I want to wear John Martin’s paintings as fabulous evening gowns, swim in the still lakes and frolic in the green fields. Because not all of Martin’s paintings feature the end. Some depict the calm after the storm. The misty morning that marks the start of a new world. In Fantasia, the bit after A Night on Bald Mountain, when the devil hears the church bells and goes back to bed and all the nuns come down from the nunneries chanting Ave Maria... PHEW, safe again.

I celebrated my survival of the apocalypse with a suitably mammoth scone piled high with clotted cream and strawberry jam in Tate Britain’s very reasonable cafe.

John Martin: Apocalypse is only on at London's Tate Britain until the 15th of January, so don't delay. Admission is £12.70, while concessions can get in for £10.70.


Review by Alice Parsons. All images kindly provided by Tate Britain. 

Bobbysix.com's End of Year Review 2011 - Alice Parsons

Today, Bobbysix's resident artist, reviewer and all round lovely human-being, Alice Parsons, tells us about her 2011. Be sure to keep an eye on Bobbysix.com later in the week as we'll be bringing you the overall winners of album/film/gig/song of the year:

Top 5 Albums
1. Wasting Light - FOO FIGHTERS
Not that I need any more reasons to suspect that Dave Grohl is a god but, Rope and White Limo offer pretty conclusive proof.
2. Skying - THE HORRORS
Beautiful album cover and beautiful trippy sounds. Still Life in particular.
3. Queens of the Stone Age - QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE
Avon do do do do do doooo
4. Suck it and See - ARCTIC MONKEYS   
5. The Peoples Temple - SONS OF STONE

Top 5 Gigs
1. DISTANT WORLDS -  The Royal Albert Hall, London
A full orchestra playing the haunting music of the Final Fantasy games. Yes I am a nerd... that is fine.
2. OK GO - Koko club, London
Two feet away from Damien Kulash *sigh*   
3. CHASE AND STATUS- Brixton Academy, London    
They really know how to put on a show.
4. RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS - O2 Arena, London
Okay haters, I agree about the new stuff but the oldies are still classic. Really strong performance, to my surprise.
5. TELEPATHETIC - various Brighton venues
Admittedly my brother’s band but brilliant nonetheless.

Album Cover of the Year:
Bon Iver – Self Titled LP. Artwork by Gregory Euclide

2011 in Words
In order to remember what I’ve been doing with myself in this the year 2011, I had to have a little dig back through the pages of my big wave calendar in search of clues for the exciting events and glamorous parties I have surely attended. I was surprised to find that my only engagement in March was a visit to the dentist (clearly this was a big month for me). Luckily I had been more diligent across the rest of the year in noting my activities. Here follow a few of my 2011 highlights. Excellent year!

Item of the Year:
My vintage Moroccan Rug from the Atlas Mountains (found in Brighton). I am in love with it. It is joy in rug form. Also my suede peep-toe cut out wedges in pale blue from Office.

Art Highlight
Visiting the Mucha museum in Prague was really inspirational for me. His work is incredibly iconic and seeing the original sketches and poster prints just made me appreciate his skill even more. He was also super prolific, how can anyone produce so much work and still each piece be unique and worth looking at? I lost a lot of money in the gift shop as usual.

Brilliant Event
My lady friends and I took in our first Chap Olympiad. What a day. Gentlemen and Ladies, all decked out in exquisite vintage ‘chap’ attire (and sporting well groomed moustaches, well the men were anyway) enjoying Pimms and tea cakes whilst sheltering under brollies to watch the chaps compete in a number of daring events including ‘Swooning’, ‘Shouting at Foreigners’, ‘Not Playing Tennis’ and ‘The Umbrella Joust’. A top day of japery and high jinks was enjoyed by all. I will see you at the next one!

Alice Parsons - Contributor
Not only is Alice a genius illustrator/artist (she came up with the fantastic blog header at the top of the page), but she can write too and has also been known to do a spot of modelling. Is there no end to her talents?

The Museum of Everything

Making her writing debut for Bobbysix, Alice Parsons tells us about, well, everything...

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Museum of Everything. Having visited their website and rootled around for a bit, I was no closer to knowing exactly what ‘everything’ consisted of and how anyone might hope to fit it into a museum. But I was drawn in by the site's witty, friendly humour and still eager to pay a visit to Selfridges in London for a peek at the unknown.

Tucked away in Selfridge’s Ultralounge, my first impressions of the exhibition were that of entering someone’s slightly crumbly and decrepit old house, packed from floor to ceiling with weird and wonderful creations. Excited by this, I whipped out my camera and gaily started snapping left, right and centre, until eventually noticing the cheeky signs that stated I would be fined £1000 for any photography. (photos: kindly provided by the Museum of Everything, fines: currently unpaid). This set the tone of the one of the quirkiest exhibitions I’ve been to in some time. So what was going on here? We were greeted by a miniature construction site. A row of perfect, tiny cranes dangling their hooks over the banisters of a fake upstairs. Its creator, German artist Roland Kappel, was described by his plaque as a construction site obsessive whose passion for cranes and diggers harks back to his childhood of urban renewal and his own architectural practice.
 

Continuing through the labyrinth of 400 drawings, paintings and sculptures, I arrived at the spectacular work of Paulus De Groot. These were big, bold acrylic paintings; the type where the paint has been piled up so thick, you could stick your finger in and then lick it. Paulus is inspired by sex and horror movies, I instantly got the horror vibe. Each of his works housed a brightly coloured monster, the FANTASTICALLY named ‘Vampier met bloed aan de tanden’ (go on, say it out loud – it’s fun) aka, vampire with blood on the teeth (above), was easily my favourite piece of the exhibition, with his massive fangs defined by pitch black outlines. I didn’t get the sex bit until the museum’s founder, James Brett, pointed out a craftily disguised (but pretty big) penis attached to one of the monsters

After spending some time reading the artists' information and watching the short movies displayed on iPads in some of the rooms, it became apparent that the artists were working in creative studios dotted around the globe. James told me that, in fact, all of the art in the exhibition had been created by ‘outsider’ artists who have psychological, physical or learning disabilities. He explained that these talented, previously undiscovered creatives were able to produce their work thanks to the support of these studios such as Herenplaats (Netherlands) and Atelier Yamanami (Japan). He had also firmly chosen not to explain this on the website. As, really, should it make any difference to people’s opinions of the art on display? People might bring to the exhibition their preconceptions of how the art would look and what they expected to see there. You wouldn’t think this way before visiting the Tate, so why not turn up and think as you find?

What I found was a range of art, some of which I wasn’t so keen on and some of which I loved. Like the clay figures of Masami Yamagiwa (above), peering out at me from nooks and crevices in a plain brick wall, boring their little eyes into me. A readymade pocket-size tribe ready to pounce. And the work of Japanese artist Shunji Yamagiwa, whose huge inky black, splattery drawings of trucks I would happily bankrupt myself to own. The good news is, you can take a piece of art home with you if you pay a visit to the Shop of Everything on the next floor up. I couldn’t resist grabbing a Paulus de Groot postcard and some exhibition stickers. I haven’t decided where I’ll put them yet, maybe on my desk somewhere so I have something pleasing to look at when I procrastinate. As I left Selfridges, I took in the window display by Stefan Häfner entitled ‘City of the Future’, three sculptures of stacked-up, floating, urban flats of the future (below). Beautifully detailed, carefully made and very inspiring, ladies and gentleman, I give you The Museum of Everything.

The Museum of Everything is open until 25th October 2011 at Selfridges and Co, 400 Oxford ST, London W1U 1AT. Open Monday – Saturday, 9.30am – 8.00pm and Sundays – 11.30am – 6.00pm.

Review by Alice Parsons

Getting To Know... Owlstation

The beautiful and lovely Alice Parsons (above) is a fantastic artist and illustrator who works under the name of Owlstation. She tells us about herself and her work:

Illustration is very impressionable! There are books from my childhood whose illustrations can take me right back to how I felt the first time I read them. Stormy skies, crumbling towers and beautiful princesses from fantasy books, to the cheeky Tiger in The Tiger Who Came To Tea. And the forbidden book - Hansel and Gretel, that had to be hidden on grounds of the illustrations being too scary.

I would describe my style as developing. I love mixing up media and am happiest collaging together interesting scraps of paper I’ve collected, then working back into them with pens and oil pastels. But I like to try out new styles as much as possible, incorporating photography, painting, sculpture and injecting a bit of humour. I use a computer to prep my images for the web but like to do things by hand wherever I can, I think there is something that can be lost when hand crafted images are manipulated too much in Photoshop. I don’t think I’ve found my style yet.

Recently I have taken inspiration from owls, archaeology, punks, chaps, fashion, native American Indians, vintage bits and bobs, typography, lizards, monsters, other artists and new bands. I also like a nice museum/gallery trip when the chance arises.

Brighton is my home and I could never live away from the sea. However I would love to do a big load of travelling and take my sketchbook along with me when I do. I would particularly like to stay on a ranch and play at being a cowgirl. I think a stint of horses, fireside singalongs and baked beans would suit me very well. I may have seen too many Howard Keel films.

I've been working on a new header for Bobbysix (you can see it at the top of the page). I am also looking at expanding my illustrations to T-shirts and making the crossover into animation.

It might surprise people to learn that I have next to no patience when it comes to painting. I greatly admire anyone that can produce a painting larger than A5 and still feel like doing another one afterwards. Two years ago I started painting a surfing frieze for my brother. It’s still not finished and it niggles away at me like a loose tooth. But I have been much more disciplined of late and examining and emulating the painting styles of artists such as the Disney concept artist Mary Blair.

In the future I would love to have my own studio and see my illustrations everywhere – on album covers, T- shirts, fashion prints, story books, articles. Aim high, I say. I love collaborating and am always open to new ideas.

Check out more of Alice's delicious work or send her a message via her website and her blog. Also, follow her on facebook to keep right up to date with her amazingness.


Interview by Bobby Townsend.