Festive phone box art

Modern digital telecommunications have made the retro telephone box largely obsolete. However, some have been put to inventive alternative use.

Earlier in the year, it was reported that villagers in England had opened a grocery store inside a phone box.

Today, at The Dabbler, you can find out what Father Christmas was doing on top of this old fashioned telephone box in rural Cornwall.

Meantime, digital artists have come up with even more cleverly creative phone box functionality:

Curious Superhero by Thea Maia - www.maia-arts.com


Introducing The Glamorizer 3000 by april-busy

And, finally, how about this for an innovative, retro-progressive way of brightening up your Christmas: Finn Stone’s fabulous phone box lamp offers the ultimate in arty style for the uber-cool home, or garden... Available to order, at ShopCurious.


Will you?

Bags of DIY style

As part of its Great Transition initiative, the New Economics Foundation (nef) recently held a panel discussion on how to survive financial crisis, climate change and soon-to-be-declining global oil production. One of the speakers was Dame Vivienne Westwood, who helpfully suggested that we stop buying clothes for six months and wear a towel instead of a coat. One of her shrewd observations was “It’s all about do-it-yourself at the moment.”




The DIY design trend has been gaining ground for quite a while now. I’ve participated in this myself, by creating a small range of unique accessories for ShopCurious, including these ‘curiosity clutch bags’, which are made from pieces of recycled vintage fabric, decorated with exotic ‘found’ curiosities - like old brooches, carved jade and unusual pieces of jewellery.

If there’s enough interest, I may create a larger collection – but only using materials that might otherwise be thrown away, or remain unusable unless re-fashioned into new items like these. Anyway, if you buy one of my DIY bags, at least you won't feel guilty about wasting valuable resources, plus you'll be helping to keep small craftspeople employed.

By the way, you can hear the podcast of Dame Viv’s speech on the nef website, although for some reason when I tried it didn’t seem to be working. I hope you have better luck than me.

Will you?

The curious art of camera-less photography

London is in a very arty mood this week. Perfect timing for the Victoria and Albert Museum to launch its new exhibition, Shadow Catchers: Camera-less photography - featuring the curious art of photography without a camera.

The show features the work of five leading artists and includes around 75 photographs that explore the simple and powerful effects of light and science - with results than often appear surreal, enigmatic or abstract.



Apparently, camera-less photography can be made using a variety of vintage techniques, the most common of which are the photogram, the luminogram and the chemigram. The exhibition flyer explains that “These techniques are sometimes used in combination. Many involve an element of chance.”

Hit or miss camera-less techniques were first explored by the pioneers of photography by blocking light, casting shadows on light sensitive paper, or chemically manipulating its surface. These sorts of experiments were rediscovered by 20th century artists, including Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy and revived by contemporary image makers in the past twenty years.






Anyway, to find out more about the various methods and what can be achieved by using camera-less techniques, simply pop down to the V&A, where the exhibition is open from today.

Accompanying the relatively recent works, The Photography Gallery is also showing a display of early photograms from the V and A’s collection, which just happens to be the oldest museum photography collection in the world.

Martin Barnes, the Senior Curator of Photographs at the V and A points out that the exhibition provides a welcome and “surprising alternative to increasingly mass-produced, digital camera imagery.” That being said, ShopCurious managed to sneak in a few shadow catching digital images of the museum foyer - along with these rather animated looking classical statues.





Judging from my initial look around, I'd say there's a lot more to camera-less photography than meets the eye. Definitely something worth investigating further...

Will you?

Flowers, fashion and photography

This is not the Chelsea Flower Show, but the new flower inspired exhibition by seven world class photographers at the Diemar/Noble Gallery in London is well worth a visit.

There’s no doubt that flowery decoration is currently in vogue. However, dismiss from your mind the rails of frilled and floaty floral dresses currently filling our chain stores, and distinguished purely by their prosaic Polyester prettiness.

Aside from their innate beauty, flowers are often awarded allegorical significance by curious minded creative types, and are subject to all manner of intriguing artistic interpretations - as in the fascinating works on display in this show:





Photographer Lisa Creagh wanted to combine the handmade elements of detailed and painstakingly constructed handicrafts (like needlework, lace making, quilting and crochet) with the digital possibilities of twenty first century photographic software.




She sought not only to capture the moment, but to also reflect the ‘rich and elaborate patterns of decorative arts… associated with the seasons and cycles of birth and death’ in her ‘Instant Garden’ collection. One of her digitally stylized photographs (above) is based on the design of a floral Persian carpet, with softly lit flower petals, reminiscent of those in Dutch Still Life paintings.

Neeta Madahar photographed her friends alongside plants whose flowers have women’s names, such as Poppy, Orchid and Primrose. Photographs in her Flora collection are styled in the fashion of vintage Hollywood glamour images, with a little bit of a modern twist.













The sitters for the photos suggested the emotions they wished to convey through their portraits. However, a theme central to all is the rejection of conventional fashion models: the photos are a comment on the requirement for women to live up to fantasy ideals of the female form.



This curiously evocative composition (right) by Dora Maar reminds me of Audrey Hepburn, who was often photographed together with flowers. However, the unique oversized 1930s print on show at Diemar/Noble Photography is of Assia, Maar’s favourite model.

Maar herself, admired in the art world for her avant garde and surrealist imagery, is actually most famous for being the sitter, muse and partner of Pablo Picasso and, of course, ‘The Weeping Woman’.











28 Day Flower Diary by Kate Owens is a series of digital bouquets that mirror Victorian floral arrangements, which were used to express unspoken feelings. Owens wished to make visible the physical, sexual and emotional effects of the menstrual cycle. She wanted to contrast the uncontrollable forces of female nature with attempts to repress emotional urges through occupations such as floristry which, in the past, were seen as a way of keeping women occupied and out of trouble.




My, how times have changed! Nevertheless, expressing a love of all things floral is something that’s probably been a constant through the ages.

Anyway, if you’re a flower fancier, you should definitely check out the Italian garden inspired hand painted bangles that are newly available at ShopCurious – and do pop into the gallery to see these fabulous photos, and many more too.

Will you?

Intelligent design? London Fashion Week goes digital

London Fashion Week’s exhibition has a brand new digital space – where fashion becomes digital art. For the first time ever, there’s also a digital schedule with live streamed fashion shows.

At ShopCurious, we usually create trends rather than following them, which is why we asked members of our group at Polyvore to use their creative skills to make up digital collages showing 'style with brains'. They produced intelligent designs you may not have thought of in your wildest dreams, but are certainly worth considering for the future.

And, finally, a photo of digital diva Susie Style Bubble - just to prove she’s not surgically attached to her computer (only to the digital device at her ear), or is that a laptop she's clutching by her side?

I’d love to hear your views on digital fashion – is it intelligent design? Is this the way of the future? Has it got style with brains?

Do you?