The ever expanding creative initiative Art Below, is taking over the London Underground one step at a time. You will already likely be familiar with the quirky art works often displayed in regular advertising spaces across tube platforms, but now commuters at Kennington Tube Station will be greeted with a bounty art work created by up 16 MA students at the City & Guilds of London Art School. Twenty A1 sized panels inside the 2 passenger lifts (normally taken up by advertising) are currently dominated by a varied selection of works.

Maggie Kennedy, ‘Before the Fires’

Marie Thurn Und Taix ‘Untitled’

This is the first time that the Art Below collective have transformed a lift into an art gallery and the display has been commissioned especially to co-inside with the City and Guilds MA Fine Art Show. The unique exhibition runs between 9 and 12 September 2010, when the students are also showing their work in the Georgian surroundings of the school’s historic site on the edge of Cleaver Square. So if you find yourself jumping on the tube at Kennington in the next few days, be sure to absorb some of the culture from this arty lift below!

The Fairtrade Mad Artist Tea Party opened at London’s Future Gallery over this bank holiday weekend to the delight of eager edible art fans. The show really did pull in quite a crowd, and it’s no surprise considering the fun original concept and the talent involved including Pete Fowler, Stuart Semple, Bompas and Parr, Jon Burgerman and Peat Wollaeger (stenSOUL).

If you missed the exhibition here are a few snaps of the delectable creations…

An Installation by The Jellymongers (Bompas and Parr) using a crystalised Fairtrade sugar coat on porcelain objects.

EYEZ of the cake by US-based stencil artist Peat Wollaeger (stenSOUL) in colaboration with bakery Bea’s of Bloomsbury.

Captain Fairtrade by artist and cartoonist Pete Fowler is entirely edible from head to two. The cake was created by the talented Michelle Wibowo.

Artist Jon Burgerman createt this cute confectionous burger cakes in collaboration with Crumbs and Dolls…’Can’t say FAIRer than that’.

Stuart Semple’s Cake’tastic creation; ‘Cloud Kukoo Land’ takes pole position in the centre of the room. The work encourages the viewer to ask the age old question; ‘is the myth of love fair?’ The cake was made in partnership with Paul Baker.

The Fairtrade Mad Artists Tea Party is sponsored by Tate & Lyle & teamed the UK’s most creative bakers with artists and creatives, challenging them to create with sugar. For more information on future events visit the website.

Curatorial duet George Major and Hanna Sorrell of itinerant art gallery Squid & Tabernacle, must feel quite at home in their Dalston shipping container by now. Their previous three exhibitions have all been staged in the claustrophobic pod, which has proved to be a remarkably versatile space throughout the course of the year.

But now as they say, ‘all good things must come to an end’ and so it is time for Squid & Tabernacle to find a new home, but not without one final fantastic finale exhibition to give the shipping container the farewell it deserves. From September 2nd S&T present; Matthew Coombes: Come What Will.

Incorporating sculpture, sound and installation, Coombes’ multidisciplinary practice is concerned with concepts of boundaries and permissions, exploring the continually surprising and intriguing effect of discord between that which is expected and what is delivered.

For Come What Will, Coombes brings together elements of his practice drawing upon typically unacknowledged everyday materials. In the subversion of their origin, the delineation of art object and originator becomes perverted, imbuing the work with a sense of unease.

Show: Matthew Coombes: Come What Will
When: 3rd-26th September 2010
Private view: 2nd September 6-9pm
Where: Hartwell Stree, London
Website: www.squidandtabernacle.com

Related content:

• An Interview with Squid and Tabernacle
• Squid & Tabernacle present Rachel Price: Planning Permission

I’m absolutely loving The Mad Artists Tea Party concept dreamt up by the one and only Miss Cake head of quirky subversive blog, ‘Cakehead Loves’ in association with the sweetest of brand partners, Tate and Lyle sugar. For a start, what’s not to like in the name? Mad, art, tea and party, all of my favourite things rolled into one extravaganza of ‘pop biscuits & toffee shocks’!

The project pairs the UK’s most creative cake makers with artists and creatives who want to ‘create with cake’ – and really, who wouldn’t? The next event for you diary is a Fairtrade Mad Artists Tea Party at The Future Gallery, curated by Curator of Cake Lily Vanilli.

The edible exhibition will focus on the meaning of “fair” and all proceeds will go to charities Richard House, We Make Peace and the Fairtrade Foundation.

So if you love cake, love art and love madness, The Mad Artists Tea Party is certainly one arty project you want to be in on. Check out the website for further info and updates:

Fairtrade Mad Artists’ Tea Party – from Friday 27th to Sunday 29th in association with…

Establishments in the newly connected areas anticipate a significant increase in visitor numbers and with East London being a thriving artistic hot spot, the cultural economy is bound to benefit. In celebration of this fact comes CultureLine, a grouping of 10 museums and galleries which can be found along the length of the rail road.

The line runs from Dalston Junction in North-East London to West Croydon in the South-East. CultureLine attractions, are all within walking distance of stations along the line and include the likes of the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill and the elegant English domestic interiors at the Geffrye Museum in Shoreditch, to a celebration of local people at the Museum of Croydon and an international programme of contemporary and 20th century art at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Amongst the 10 CultureLine institutions visitors will find an array of fascinating curiosities including George Washington’s false teeth, a marine iguana from Darwin’s expedition to the Galapagos Islands, the purse of the suffragette who threw herself under King George V’s horse and the oldest tunnel in the London metro system!

The CultureLine group includes:

- Hackney Museum – Dalston Junction station
- Geffrye Museum – Hoxton station
- Wesley’s Chapel – Shoreditch High Street station
- The Royal London Hospital Museum – Whitechapel station
- Whitechapel Gallery – Whitechapel station
- The Women’s Library – Whitechapel station
- Brunel Museum – Rotherhithe station
- Horniman Museum – Forest Hill station
- Crystal Palace Museum – Crystal Palace station
- Museum of Croydon – West Croydon station

www.cultureline.org.uk

The weather might not be up to much but it’s still summer and everyone likes a trip to the seaside so what better way to spend a lazy sunday than with a trip to the beach? Not the coast mind, this beach is in Whitechapel of all places. Scrivener’s Cove is a little-known writers’ and readers’ retreat that pops up intermittently in cities such as London. The pop up beach will be run by the Whitechapel Gallery, supported by Stanley Picker Trust, offering a relaxing space in the heart of the East in Altab Ali Park. So why not bring along a picnic and beach towel, a novel (or a trashy mag!) and spend the afternoon in the sand?

Activities include literary volleyball, where teams of writers with contrary agendas battle it out on a paper ‘court’; a snack bar selling books, magazines and fanzines; a range of seaside chintz and postcards; crafted crustaceans; a rockpool of authors’ epigraphs; a crop of vhs seaweed; art publication sandcastles, and beachcombing for holiday novels. If non of that makes sense you’ll have to head down there to check it our for yourself.

A Day at the Beach in Whitechapel
Sunday 22 August, 1pm – 5pm

Check out NewSpeak, an online arts project created by Immo Blaese for the 10th Web Biennial at the Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum.

The website is a virtual world of colliding words & messages that seems to represent the incessent influx of information that is constantly being fired around internet space. It’s really quite mesmerising to watch.

The concept of the project is to pick up on George Orwell’s idea of “Doublespeak” a language which deliberately reverses the meaning of words and limits our expressions. NewSpeak is based on live Twitter and Flickr feeds, combining an image with a tweet in order to address questions on how we validate information and how social networks change the way we express ourselves.

In an age where social networking has rapidly become such a huge platform for engagement, having changed so much in terms of how we interact and live are lives, Newspeak is a really interesting & thought provoking online, artistic initiative.

http://newspeak.zonkzone.net

For this Friday 23 July, The Serpentine presents a premiere screening of The Future’s Getting Old Like The Rest Of Us, directed by B.S. Johnson.

The film is a 16mm, conceived in the format of a TV Play and set in a care home for the elderly. Blurring the boundaries of documentary and fiction, the script was based upon transcripts from a discussion group held with the residents across several Camden’s Care Homes.

The screenplay was developed in a close collaboration between Beatrice Gibson and writer and critic George Clark taking B.S. Johnson’s 1971 experimental novel House Mother Normal as its formal departure point.
The plot follows the logic of a musical score with the script having been edited into a vertical structure, featuring eight simultaneous monologues.

The Future’s Getting Old Like The Rest Of Us will be screened in the Serpentine Summer Pavilion on Friday 23 July at 8:30pm and there after, screenings will take place in the Sackler Centre for Arts Education from 24 July to 19 September. For more information and to buy tickets visit The Serpentine Gallery Website.

The Central Illustration Agency (CIA) have just launched their very first book, ‘Lisence to Inspire’;a collection of work from some of the world’s most inspiring illustrators and the story of the agency that represents them.

The book holds a stunning collection of eclectic artwork and fascinating interviews from the world’s most talented illustrators and industry innovators. An invaluable resource for art buyers and other professionals within the creative industries, this is likely to soon become a recommended text for art students and particularly those who wish to work in the industry.

With inclusions from a diverse range of artists from Jonas Bergstrand to Sir Peter Blake, the book is packed with beautiful images and thought-provoking words. Created by the wonderful Central Illustration Agency, who have been associated with the brightest talent in illustrative art since 1983, this book is a real coffee table classic!

You can nab your own copy from Amazon now.

Nowadays the Royal Academy recieves close to 10,000 annual submissions from professionals and members of the public hoping to make the cut for the presitgious Summer Exhibition. Unfortunately, only about 10% of these ever make the final cut. Two years ago one Rocco Sciaraffa, an amateur photographer, having had his own work rejected, was inspired to create an opportunity for all these works to be displayed.

In an interview with the Times, Sciaraffa said; “I saw that there were so many great pieces of work here, which the public might never get to see…I felt there had to be an outlet for all this rejected art.”

Subsequently, the Summer Gallery was born. Rejected art works are displayed in an online gallery enabling all artist to display their work to a wide audience. There is no fee for uploading up to 10 pieces, only a 10% commission charge if a work is sold on the site.

Why not take a browse now and see if anything catches your eye?…www.thesummergallery.com