I set off before the Christmas break this year with high aspirations of gallery visits, an intellectual reading list and a general full-on immersion into everything cultural. The reality, as so often happens was a heady mixture of family reunions, social engagements and hunting Japanese bargains at Dover Street Market.

Fortunately the first week back in January I had booked a short trip to Venice, four days of nonchalant meandering around this beautiful Italian city built on water. The place was amazing (my first trip) incredible architecture, a million churches, fantastically overpriced Gondolas and an awe inspiring display of sunglasses.

The highlight of the trip however was a visit to the Punta Della Dogana, an incredible contemporary art gallery on the banks of the Grand canal. Part of the Francois Pinault foundation and something I had been particularly looking forward to seeing, the gallery housed a range of pieces from international contemporary artists including Subodh Gupta, Chen Zhen, Paul McCarthy and my favourite Maurizio Cattelan.

The building itself was pretty spectacular, reimagined by Tadao Ando – who has collaborated with Francois Pinaut in Venice before – the architect had managed to beautifully combine the old and new; maintaining the essence of the original building. His new vision created a modern, visually imposing interior that acted as the perfect canvas for such a collection. It reminded me of everything I love about the Tate Modern here in the UK.

In regards to the collection, I knew I was in for a treat the moment I entered the first room. The untitled work of Maurizio Cattelan featured a full size, taxidermy horse with it’s body jutting out of the brickwork. Creating a paradoxical trophy (normally its the head that sits on the wall of a dead animal), I loved the imagination and dark sense of humour I took from the piece. Others highlights included Edward Kienholz’s Roxys, an  “environment tableau” offering his twisted version of a 1940′s house of ill repute – it felt like staring straight into the set of a David Lynch nightmare. There were a series of Jeff Koons sculptures, inflatable toys mirrored to perfection out of Stainless steel and a selection of works from Paul McCarthy that reminded me very much of some of the Chapman brothers’ work from the mid 90′s.

I am a great lover of contemporary art and find it incredibly inspiring when thinking about my own work and the broader field of branding. It’s the sense of storytelling; quite often contextualising a thought or feeling which in essence has been explored before and representing it in a way that simply has not. It’s here I find the parallel with branding; communicating a companies values often not a million miles away from their competitors – variations on trust and openness immediately spring to mind, and telling that story in a way that delights, intrigues or dare I say shocks.

It’s so easy to find yourself looking through the usual design books and blogs for inspiration when starting new projects, but why not cast the net slightly further a field? By looking outside our immediate world the constraints for creativity can suddenly feel so much more imaginative and challenging.

If you are looking for something unusual to occupy your last weekend of January, look no further than the South Bank Centre. 

Southbank Centre’s Festival for the Living ends this weekend and has an array of exhibits, talks, workshops and literature that all have to do with peoples attitudes towards death.

You can get a day pass for £12 that allows you into all of the talks and workshops for that day.  The main exhibit this weekend, is Boxed: Fabulous Coffins from UK and Ghana which has elaborate and interesting coffins from some of the famed coffin makers in Ghana and the UK.  I will definitely be heading over there on Sunday to check out some of the coffins including the one shaped like a Mercedes-Benz, and the flying kite.  Sounds interesting and one of those “only happens in London” kind of things.  To make things better this event is one of the free ones offered during the festival.

If you’re ever in New York and missing the smell of the countryside, check out the ‘Earth Room’ – a room filled with 127,300 kg of earth.On display to the public since 1980, this second floor Soho gallery has been host to 197 cubic meters of natural earth. The lack of any other visitors, as well as the moist, warm air give the place a quiet and heavy atmosphere, where it feels like nothing has moved in the last 31 years. The white gallery walls are a stark comparison to the living, black soil that sits at it’s base – this really is a strange, but oddly enchanting place. Cameras aren’t allowed so these are the best ones I could find on the internet.

Walter De Maria, The New York Earth Room, 1977. Long-term installation at 141 Wooster Street, New York City. Photo: John Cliett. Copyright Dia Art Foundation. Main Events and Public Programs Overview Visitor Information Artist Biography 141 Wooster Street New York City

It felt a bit like the natural opposite of Richard Wilson’s 20/50 (1987) installation that uses recycled motor oil.

Photo: Art News London

Firstly, the trees in Central Park have been changing since I arrived:

and 10 days later:

It’s taking longer fro me to get used to the way things are done in America.
How direct the advertising is for example:
But my faith in humanity was restored however when I visited the New York gem that it the ‘The Highline’:

A beautiful park above the streets of West Manhattan, created along an old freight railway track. It’s a peaceful break from the traffic below and has been expertly designed to include things like this window that simply looks out onto the street below. You can’t help but sit there and wait for rush of traffic below every time the lights turn green. http://www.thehighline.org

Now I know that Americans can sometimes come across a bit too patriotic for our stiff British attitude, but if it means my milk look as funky as this, then that’s fine by me.

On a last, more cultural note, do you recognize this?

This is a shot of the slide at Carsten Höller’s solo exhibition at the New Museum (www.newmuseum.org), a gallery in the downtown neighborhood of Bowery. The exhibit features a number of different works, including a full-size mirrored carousel and the ‘psycho tank’ (a pool of highly salinated, skin temperature water that is supposed to be void of any sensory experience), but the slide is undoubtedly the main attraction. It runs across three floors, the exit being in a strobe lit room with life size fluorescent crocodiles, hippos and some other creatures I couldn’t work out. Höller has definitely succeeded in creating an overall experience that makes you feel like a kid again, even if some of the pieces seemed to lack any real or worthy purpose…

I’m going to try and feature a range of things here from New York, but as an official ‘alien’, I may need some help. If there’s anything you know about and can recommend, then just post it below.

Gone are the days when curating was reserved for those academic art experts. Thanks to the web, there’s now endless websites dedicated to collecting the weird and wonderful.
I want to point your attention to a website I came across where you can browse websites that feature collections/archives of anything and everything.

Here’s a few of my favourites:

A collection of drug bags:
http://babylonfalling.tumblr.com/clayton_patterson_dope

Sad stuff on the street:
http://sadstuffonthestreet.com/

Some cracking postcards from the states:
http://bad-postcards.tumblr.com/

And a huge collection of cat purrs. Genius:
http://www.ronsen.org/purrfectsounds/

Check out loads more at the website of all websites:
http://www.delicious.com/MarcFischer/public_collectors?page=1

WARNING: These unique collections make a few hours pass very quickly.

Blast No. 1: Review of the Great English Vortex, June 20, 1914 (Edited by Wyndham Lewis) The Poetry Collection, State University of New York at Buffalo © Wyndham Lewis and the estate of Mrs G A Wyndham Lewis by kind permission of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust (a registered charity)

There’s something very exciting happening down at Tate Britain at the moment.

The rallying cry of The Vorticists is ringing out around the capacious halls of the gallery and some of the most controversial British masters are out on display.

But who are The Vorticists?

The Vorticists were a small group of radical artists who formed, briefly, in the run-up to World War I. Lasting a mere 4 years this movement was short-lived, but by no means short on strength or impact.

Vorticism is credited to Canadian-born, but British educated and raised, Wyndham Lewis. A talented painter, Wyndham struggled to fit in to the traditional artist scene in London at the turn of the century, however around 1913 he discovered that by combining his love of both Cubist and Futurist art, he could create a unique abstract geometric style that was to be coined ‘Vorticism’. Wyndham went on to publish the ‘BLAST’ manifesto which was a series of essays expounding his new movement.

Wyndham Lewis Workshop circa. 1914-5 © Wyndham Lewis and the estate of Mrs G A Wyndham Lewis . Photo: By kind permission of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust

Vorticism attracted a host of similar-minded artists such as Edward Wadsworth, Helen Sauders and David Bomberg.

This loud, proud and breakthrough movement is celebrated in the Tate’s exhibition with some examples of the most provocative and powerful masterpieces from this noble group of anarchists.

The exhibition runs until 4th September 2011. You can also, in the meantime learn more about The Vorticists by watching a great new series that’s currently on running on BBC Four (and on iPlayer) called British Masters. Written and presented by Dr James Fox, the first episode in the series explores the motivations and talent behind one of the most brief, but powerful, artist movements in history.

Edward Wadsworth Rotterdam 1914 George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film (Rochester, USA) © Estate of Edward Wadsworth. All rights reserved, DACS 2010

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska Ornement Torpille 1914 © 2011 Art Gallery of Ontario

The installation was part of our ongoing work for Deloitte, with a brief to brand the security check-in area of the main event. Considering the profile of Davos and the incredible, if not slightly random list of attendees (David Cameron, Bill Gates and Robert De Niro to name a few) we were keen to do something pretty spectacular with the space.

Our final idea was to construct an enormous 440m² anamorphic installation, transforming the boring, functional corridors of the security check-in into an immersive, typographic experience. Titled ‘A new perspective can change everything’ a Deloitte message ‘Stay a step ahead’ was woven into a broader story, encapsulating the forward thinking ambition of Davos and the World Economic Forum as an organisation.

So, what was it like creating a 440m² anamorphic installation your client and prime minister would be walking through? Alas to say it was pretty interesting. With absolutely no means of testing before the event went live and no plan B my nerves were running pretty high on route to see the space for the first time – the mountboard mock ups I had stuck together before Xmas were suddenly feeling quite inadequate.

Thankfully the installation came together and looked superb on launch, quickly becoming the visual talking point of the event. From day one the Deloitte installation was featured on a number of international news sites as stories from Davos unfolded. I’m pleased to say that after some pretty extensive searching the Deloitte installation was the only company space to achieve this recognition.

A huge thanks to everyone involved in the project, some superb work from Eskimosquare and their 3D visualising skills and some incredibly accurate production from our friends in Switzerland Messerli.

Here’s a video of the main anamorphic in all it’s deconstructional glory. I shot this film at 5am on a hotel porters trolley so please excuse any wobbles.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I came across this rather interesting video on the Guardian website yesterday. The video takes a look at artist Richard Nicholson a photographer and print artist who is undertaking a project to capture on film, the ever-more scarce photographic darkroom.

When recently having a clear out in the studio I came across a number of boxes of negatives, test prints and slides which made me wonder what being a professional designer or photographer was like before digital.

Looking at the now unfamiliar, clunky and dated design of the darkroom equipment makes me realise how very quickly digital photography superseded analogue techniques of yesteryear. When you take a brief look at photographic history you realise just how recent a phenomenon digital photography is. While the camera obscura was used as early on as the 16th century to form images on walls in darkened rooms, photography wasn’t really made available to the masses until the early 20th century, with the introduction of cameras such as the Kodak Box Brownie. The first commercially available digital cameras however, came about in the early 90′s. In less than 20 years has digital photography become so much a part of our everyday lives, that it is hard to imagine a world without it.

You can watch the video here.

The collection of prints is being exhibited at Riflemaker Gallery, London until 5 March 2011. Some of the images from the series can be viewed online here.

Last night my husband and I attended the Fine Cell Work launch of the new major exhibition of quilts at the V&A Museum. This was a massive fund raising event, attended by hundreds of patrons and friends of the charity. Chief Inspector of prisons, Lord Ramsbottom was in attendance, and gave a glowing speech about the work Fine Cell Work is doing. A small red quilt made by prisoners (shown behind Lord Ramsbottom in the photo) was auctioned for more than £5500, and the Fine Cell Work cushions were selling like hot-cakes. Overall it looked like a resounding success.

The quilt exhibition was worth a visit, it featured a quilt stitched by the prisoners of Fine Cell Work, as well as a quilt made by convicts on their way to Australia, creating a strange feeling of synchronicity through the ages.

I’m shown here with the Executive Director of Fine Cell Work, Dr Katy Emck, who is thrilled to be working with The Partners and keen to continue to build the relationship with us.

The event, ‘An Experiment in Collaboration’, was designed to explore the creations that would evolve from non-traditional collaborations. Jerwood invited 6 artists to participate in the experiment, who were then free to select who they would like to collaborate with. The chosen collaborators ranged from an architect to a computer games designer and even a biophysicist. They then all displayed the results of their collaborations.

The catalogue that we produced to accompany the event was the final collaboration of the show: if visitors wanted a catalogue, they had to make it themselves. Huge B1 sized sheets of paper were accompanied by a simple instruction sheet detailing how to cut, fold and bind, and use the varying tools laid on in the gallery to create their own unique catalogue. The result was 1000 unique catalogues.

Here are some pictures from the event and some of the catalogues that were created: