The Freeborn Exchange

Another 'so long London' post, this one takes a look at a lower key exhibition than all those in the V&A (but nevertheless well worth looking at), The Freeborn Exchange at Chelsea College of Arts back in April. Gavin Freeborn is a London-based Irish photographer I met while we were both working at the University of the Arts London. He mounted an exhibition and pop-up photography studio at Chelsea, one of UAL's campuses, showing a host of his portraits exchanged in return for objects, experiences, skills and hospitality all over the world. Complementing Freeborn's portraits was a room filled with work by UAL staff and students which touched on travel and exchange, while you could propose your own exchange for a Freeborn portrait in the show's pop-up studio.

Yes for Love

On 22 May Ireland votes on whether or not to change its constitution to enable same-sex marriage, which would take the country a massive step closer to the equality that same constitution speaks of for all of its citizens. The answer is obvious and the opinion polls are in favour of equality, but there is a big difference between having an opinion and getting out and voting. Yes for Love is an online repository of pro-equality avatars by a host of great designers, artists and illustrators that you can choose from to use on your social networks to spread the love. I've picked out just a small selection of them, you can browse through them all and pick your favourite(s) to show that you support equality, whether or not you can vote on 22 May (but this goes without saying: if you CAN vote, then DO vote!)

Irish Design Haul

Well, this is a post that's almost one month too late. Sorry. Better late than never though, right?! At Christmas time I got some fab presents, and quite a few of them were great products by Irish designers. (Let it never be said that I am difficult to buy for.) Pictured above and listed below are the items in my excellent Christmas Irish design haul (clockwise from top left):

Summer Screen Prints

From today until 20 August Londoners who were on-the-ball enough to grab tickets before they sold out (not me) will enjoy new, old and iconic films screened each evening in the courtyard of Somerset House. This is the 10th year that the folks behind Film4 have presented Summer Screen at Somerset House, and to celebrate they've enlisted Print Club London to curate Summer Screen Prints. Summer Screen Prints brings together 16 artists and illustrators to each create a two-colour screen printed poster for a film in the programme, with varied and wonderful results.

Here's the Heads Up #21

Here are a few upcoming events in Dublin and London (including one I've got going on in LSE's new student centre... ahem), should you want to spend some time indoors and away from the warm weather...

Mirimalism - the Photography of Miri Berlin

Berlin-based photographer Miri Berlin does an envious amount of travelling, taking photos of architecture and cities around Europe and even further afield in Japan and Israel (where she is originally from). With a keen eye for the beauty of minimalist and Brutalist architecture and the patience to wait until the sun comes out before she takes a photo, Miri's work is bright and bold, but with a quiet confidence and a calm feel. My favourite collection of hers is 'Mirimalism', her shots of minimalist or Brutalist architecture cropped to let in the vast blue sky above. Click through to see more (do it! They're fab!) and keep an eye out on Miri's website for upcoming work exploring Berlin, Tel Aviv and the city of Sarajevo.

If Artists were Architects...

Barcelona-based illustrator Federico Babina has something of a preoccupation with architecture, creating series of illustrations on architectural alphabets, the architecture of cinema and more. I recently stumbled upon this one, named Archists, which imagines a city of buildings designed by famous artists in their trademark styles. A simple concept which is delivered in Babina's trademark charming style, click through to see some of my favourites.

Make Your Mark: Public Vote

Recently the O2 Academy invited artists and designers from all over the UK and Ireland to submit work to be considered for permanent installation in the Glasgow music venue (there's info on the competition here). While the artworks for display will be chosen by a panel of judges including Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos, the winner of a public vote will also win a prize! As I Like Local has been chosen as a media partner for the competition you can vote here: just click through to see the many submissions and pick your favourite before 14 August!

Make Your Mark

Glasgow's iconic music venue the O2 Academy on Sauchiehall Street is looking for some new permanent artworks and has invited artists and designers from the UK and Ireland to submit ideas. Four panels will be displayed in the venue's main auditorium and the winners will be selected by a judging panel including Alex Kapranos from my favourite Glasgow band Franz Ferdinand. Along with having your work displayed in the venue, there are gig tickets £1000 up for grabs for each winner. There will also be a public choice award with gig tickets and £500 for the artwork that receives the most public votes. Deadline for submissions is 30 July, for more information and templates visit Talenthouse.

Update on 1 August: The deadline for this competition has been extended! You can now submit your ideas until 6 August and the public vote will run from 7 to 14 August!

Design for Children

This article was first published in Architecture Ireland #269

To date, this column has always focussed on design for adults, be it the visual communications us adults consume, the furniture we sit on, the lights we read under or the events we attend. But it's not just the older and taller members of society that use design, and with the recent Children's Books Ireland (CBI) conference in Light House Cinema, it seemed apt to take a closer look at design for children. In fact, when we consider the importance we place on instilling a love of reading, or sport, or music, or nature at a young age, should we not be doing the same with well-considered, attractive design too?

You're All Just Jealous of my Jetpack

Last week I headed along to Analogue Books for a talk and signing by cartoonist and illustrator Tom Gauld. Scottish-born Gauld has just published a collection of cartoons drawn for the Guardian newspaper called You're All Just Jealous of my Jetpack, and a group of about 20 people squeezed into Analogue on Thursday evening to hear a bit about Gauld's work over a beer. The cartoons featured in the collection are all drawn to sit on the letters page in the Guardian, so always take their inspiration from the comments and complaints of Guardian readers. Though their starting points come from readers' rants, they sit really well out of context and are really funny all in their own right. See below for the cartoon that the collection's title comes from, and read more cartoons over on Gauld's tumblr page. The book is available in store in Analogue and from other retailers listed on Gauld's site.

Intricate Illustrations by Mister Mourão

"I'm into obsessive drawing", says Portuguese-born Barcelona based Vasco Mourão (Mister Mourão to his fans, a group I am definitely a part of). Mourão, who originally trained as an architect, creates wonderfully intricate illustrations of reimagined cityscapes, piling details on top of details to amplify the essence of a city. Above and below is his illustration of New York city commissioned by the New Yorker magazine which I stumbled upon recently over on Architectural Review. Further down you'll see Mourão's illustration entitled Is it just me or is Barcelona falling apart?, where his ordinarily tight drawing style becomes fractured and flies apart, like a new form of urban sprawl. One of his more recent commissions is captured in video at the bottom: a drawing curving through 100 metres of wall space in a hotel hallway in Barcelona - a curly cityscape at first tightly packed together but gradually fragmenting towards the end of the space. I could wax on, but I think the illustrations and video speak volumes for themselves. See more of Mister Mourão's immensely skillful work at his portfolio, as well as his daily drawing blog.

The High Street by Alice Melvin

Once I moved to Edinburgh one of my first ports-of-call was Analogue Books, an art and design bookshop on Candlemaker Row. Analogue is a great spot to spend some time in, with a fab selection of art and design books, magazines, zines and even a small selection of beautifully illustrated children's books. One such book which caught my eye was The High Street by Alice Melvin, a fold-out book charting a little girl's afternoon searching the high street for the list of things she needs to buy.

So Close by Yellowhammer

Image via Yellowhammer

Yellowhammer, or Alan Nagle as I imagine he's known to his family, is a designer and illustrator based in the midlands. Along with client work Nagle's produced a whole range of beautiful giclée prints, many based on Irish wildlife. Perhaps my favourite so far is called 'So Close', and shows a crafty fox looking to get his paws on an unwitting chicken behind a fence. Like a lot of his work, it's a bright and bold look at the animals we share Ireland with, and this print has particular humour to it, with the fox pacing around while its victim is totally unaware. Though I'm not a country-dweller, my older sister and her family are, and foxes grabbing their chickens are the bane of their country life.When I spotted the print on the wall of the Bow Street branch of the Irish Design Shop, I couldn't help but think of my nephew Charlie getting angry about the bold foxes :)

Seven/Eleven by Keep Sketch

11/11: print by Dave Comiskey based on Spinal Tap, who always believed in turning it up to 11

Seven/Eleven is the latest project from stationery/design/funtimes initiative Keep Sketch and its collaborators. Keep Sketch celebrated this year’s edition of Design Week by assigning each of seven designers and illustrators a date of the festival (5 – 11 November) to base a three-colour archival giclée print on, with Alex Synge, Fuschia MacAree, Kathi Burke, Stephen Maurice Graham, Dave Comiskey, Mark Crawford and Ross Henderson producing an amazing series. The inspirations - and final prints - are varied, from celebrating the lives and deaths of different prominent figures (or illustrator Kathi Burke celebrating her own birthday on 6 November), portraying the events of interesting dates in history, or simply turning it up to eleven (see above, by Dave Comiskey). All seven awesome prints – produced in editions of 30 – are on display in the Irish Design Shop in the RHA until the end of Design Week (Sunday) and are available to buy for €20 each, which you should because they really are awesome :)

Here's the Heads Up #13

Fuschia MacAree at the Bernard Shaw

26 October - 19 November:
Fuschia MacAree at the Bernard Shaw, Dublin 2
Blessings and Curses is the first solo exhibition of uber-talented illustrator Fuschia MacAree. It runs for three weeks in the Bernard Shaw in Portobello, do go if you can.

31 October:
Eva Franch at IMMA @ the NCH, Dublin 2
As part of the Irish Architecture Foundation's series of talks entitled Agents of Architecture, director of New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture Eva Franch comes to Dublin to speak on the evening of 31 October. The event is free but booking is essential here.

You Are Here

Vanessa and Andreas from New Zealand and Denmark

Since 27 July I've been watching and reading about the Olympics on a daily basis. Other than the spectacle of it all, I suppose there's something cool about this being a major event not only here in Portugal but at home in Ireland too (as well as everywhere else). For the same reason I took a much bigger interest in Euro 2012 than any previous tournament, and about the same amount of interest in the Eurovision as usual (a lot). So now onto the Olympics, which I have fairly well covered between Eurosport, live streams and twitter. This post would have been drafted a little sooner only I was hypnotised by the men's Horizontal Bar final: they just kept swinging round and round and round...

Mr. Spoqui & Me

You may remember a post from a month or so ago about Mr. Spoqui, a family zine full of 'a lot of love, creativity and non-commercial purposes'. Well they've just released their latest issue which takes a look at ceramic and it features a pattern I made based on Lisbon's tiles (above), along with a short interview about my tile obsession enthusiasm! The issue also features comic strips, interviews with ceramicists Ben Fiess and Lili Scratchy, photos of work by Giorgio di Palma and team Spoqui themselves and more. If you're that way inclined, you can buy a copy (or even a subscription) over on Mr. Spoqui's site.

Vincent Fornier's Brasília

Still thousands of miles away, you nonetheless feel a little closer to Brazil when you're in Portugal. The two countries share much of their history, share their language and more. Recently, at Primavera Sound in Porto, Kings of Convenience thanked the Portuguese for their part in creating Brazil's beloved Bossa Nova music (though that may have been clutching at straws...)

Orfeu Negro & Orfeu Mini

I've spotted books published by Orfeu Negro in various bookshops in Lisbon and can't help but linger over them every time. This Portuguese publisher has been re/producing books exploring critical thinking on various art forms since 2007, such as Le Modular/Modular 2 by Le Corbusier, The Empty Space by Peter Brook and french writer Jacques Rancière's Le Destin des Images, with a beautifully-designed cover by Portuguese studio Alfaiataria, pictured above.