'David Bowie Is': a retrospective

The V&A Museum was lucky enough to gain access to the David Bowie Archive to curate the museum's latest attraction.

The sold-out exhibition, titled 'David Bowie Is', features over 300 pieces, including costumes, photographs, album covers and video exerts from films and live performances.

Spanning the career of the Brixton-born musician, the retrospective also includes some more personal items such as never-before-seen storyboards, handwritten set lists and lyrics, as well as some of Bowie’s own sketches, musical scores and diary entries, revealing the evolution of his creative ideas.

The exhibition was brought together by the V&A's theatre and performance curators Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh and will explore the creative processes of Bowie as a musical innovator and cultural icon, tracing his shifting style and sustained reinvention across five decades.

'David Bowie Is' opened on the 23rd March and will run until the 11th August 2013. Find out more here.

Abstract art that comes to life

London-based duo Tim Noble and Sue Webster have recently opened their first solo show since 2006 at Blain|Southern gallery in London.

The show is titled Nihilistic Optimistic and includes six large-scale sculptures built from what appear to be haphazard clumps of discarded wood. When illuminated by a light they create accurate self-portraits of the artists. 

The artists comment: 'Tim Noble and Sue Webster take ordinary things including rubbish, to make assemblages and then point light to create projected shadows which show a great likeness to something identifiable including self-portraits. The art of projection is emblematic of transformative art. The process of transformation, from discarded waste, scrap metal or even taxidermy creatures to a recognizable image, echoes the idea of ‘perceptual psychology’ a form of evaluation used for psychological patients. Noble and Webster are familiar with this process and how people evaluate abstract forms. Throughout their careers they have played with the idea of how humans perceive abstract images and define them with meaning. The result is surprising and powerful as it redefines how abstract forms can transform into figurative ones.'

The show runs until 24th November and you can find out more here.

Giant fish wash up on beach in Rio

This enormous outdoor installation of fish is part of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20)  and was constructed using discarded plastic bottles on Botafogo beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The sculptures are illuminated from the inside creating a pretty spectacular light show at night.

See more over on this Rio+20 Flicker set.

The Think Tank heads off to Nordbygg, Sweden

Did you know that Nordbygg is the biggest building exhibition in Northern Europe? I did (as I have been working on it for a few months)…but last week I attended the fair and was reminded by anyone to whom I said " Förlåt, jag prata inte Svenska" (I don’t speak Swedish) as they immediately wanted to be sure that this non-Swede knew how proud of the exhibition they are.  

Well, they should be…with three halls packed to the brim at Stockholmmassen, just 10 minutes outside of Central Stockholm, this event is full of tools, materials and everything you can think of to do with the building industry. Over three days I had the opportunity to speak to journalists from many Scandinavian publications and experience the building industry from a completely different cultural perspective.  

I had the privilege of going to Stockholm with our client Formica Group to help launch its VIVIX exterior facade panels. Offering opportunities to play with colour and shape, VIVIX panels can complement or add interest to office buildings, public, cultural and sports facilities, transportation centres, industrial buildings, educational facilities, residential developments and more.

Eva Hoernisch, Formica Group Design Manager, Europe, was on hand and together we were able to take a few moments to explore the building materials section. With her eye on colour Eva spotted a stand with insulation sample pieces in the most beautiful colour palette. We were dumbfounded at first as to why insulation would be so colourful until we realised it correlated to different degrees of density. VERY clever!  

With room for FIKA (traditional Swedish coffee and cake), a little of bit of Swedish entertainment and a lot of hard work, being part of Nordbygg was definitely an experience to remember.