Alida Rosie Sayer’s Glasgow School of Art degree show played host to a meeting between typography, the third dimension, style and wit.

via cmykern

untitled and fa.fn 10, oil on canvas from photo collage, Karim Hamid.

An excerpt from the artist statement:

I am most interested in the process by which the female figure is objectified by the archetypal male gaze. Art history is a rich source from which to cull a broad sense [sic] in the singular pursuit of the idealized female form. The goal in my paintings and photo collage is to exaggerate and distort that emphasis, to give it an alternative life and function.

via booooom

"Dressed up to the nines"

—Series: Colloquialisms i hope never to learn the etymology for.

The clay-skinned figures rendered in Juergen Grewe’s muted paintings seem defeated, resigned to going through the motions or surviving the moment. Their ice blue, sepia tinted, lazy teracotta or afternoon violet skin tones breathe disinterest.

I have written about Kate MccGwire’s compelling, tactile sculpture before, and nine months on I am no less of a fan. My favourite pieces have a carefully crafted liquidity or are reminiscent of museum taxidermy, preserving and presenting fantastic specimens that never were.

I’m excited to see that she will be exhibiting a show entitled Strangeness and Charm
at Viktor Wynd Fine Art in London from February 5th to 14th March. See you there?

Happy Post-Valentine’s Day - unless, of course, it isn’t.

Untitled, ‘Happy Accidents’, Matt Stuart

Matt Stuart “can’t hide behind lights and technology, [so is] reliant on a small Leica camera, patience and lots of optimism.”  He’s currently exhibiting at Hoxton’s KK Outlet.

via creativereview

Hiena, Oil and charcoal on linen, Antony Micallef

Mixed messages: Intercourse minus identity; a doe-eyed scavenger; a moment in motion; a plaything posed.

also at fuanntassic

Automat (I), 2008, oil on canvas, Michaël Borremans

I’m learning that there’s a particular kind of artwork, and therefore often artist, who is able to draw a response from me that I don’t encounter in any other situation. When a work offers me promise, threat and darkness I respond with excitement, trepidation, desire, denial and regret.

Michaël Borremans painted scenes, with their curt palette, broad strokes and inscrutable protagonists are prime examples.

via file magazine

work in progress, Caitlin Hackett

The current ‘Myths and Monsters’ exhibition at London’s Hornimann Museum held promise until a little research revealed its sanitised ‘family friendly’ slant. Caitlin Hackett’s drawings and paintings bring the ‘human’ and ‘animal’ together with the kind of force I find appealing: extreme.

Forms are contorted and subverted with real illustrative skill and an obvious love of victoriana.

something so utterly sublime, pencil and gouache on book page, Olivia Jeffries

Olivia Jeffries’ works reuse the careworn pages and covers of found books. Her drawings are charming, but it’s the ghostly imprint of illustrations from facing pages, her canvas’ smoothly disintegrating corners and the evocation of the familiar smell of damp, faintly mouldering book paper that I’m drawn to.

As a child, my elder brother’s bedroom was a geometrically convoluted loft space, the eaves of which hid afterthought cupboards and half-finished cubby-holes through which streetlight would leak at night. Inside (and strictly against my brother’s instructions), I’d find boxes of old books - the names of which I’ve long forgotten - clad in old-fashioned and uninviting yellowing glossy dust jackets that crinkled when I eased each book open. I read them regardless, mostly for the mystery of their provenance.