The Cribs

Looking back through my photos from Berlin I found the perfect photograph to turn into a poster for The Cribs. This rather amazing/disgusting public toilet in a squat in central Berlin seemed quite appropriate as a symbol of the kind of raw punk undertones present in their sound. I imagine that as a young band they probably played some real dives and had dressing rooms that were probably just as filthy.

All I really did to the original photograph was change the colours so that they were really saturated and in-your-face then added some text. Simple, my quickest poster yet.

Before

After

BERLIN * BARCELONA * NEW YORK

Whenever I travel I try to be disciplined and keep a visual diary. Admittedly this tends to take the format of rough drawings, notes and found ephemera while I'm actually away, ready to be refined and finished once I am home. This is partly because drawing on location can be a tricky business depending on the weather or the amount of nosy tourists around, usually though it's because I'm just too busy enjoying myself! Below are some pages from the visual journal that I started in Berlin when I was there earlier in the year. Quite typically I nowhere near filled the sketchbook so I've decided to add to it when I go to Barcelona and New York in a few months time. I'm hoping that this journal will provide me with some fresh inspiration as I am keen to head in a new direction with my Masters work in the new year.

Emilio Vedova: Berlinische Galerie, Berlin

'Vedova was made an official artist-in-residence in Berlin just two years after the construction of the wall in 1961. Working in a studio formerly occupied by the Nazi sculptor Arno Breker, he created the Absurd Berlin Diary 64, a colossal assemblage of jagged wooden pieces, aggressively painted in clashing colours, which conveyed the trauma of the divided city. Hung from the ceiling or arranged untidily across the gallery floor, often linked by hinges like parodies of medieval polyptychs, the panels also illustrated the artist's desire to liberate art from its conventional setting in a frame on a wall.' Read more here.

Berlin