Friday passed, saw the celebration of Recoat Gallery’s 3rd Birthday. To mark this special occasion, artist’s from their recent Fool’s Gold tour headed up to paint and exhibit some pieces. One of the highlights of the show came from Insa‘s and Inkie‘s massive piece in the alleyway. The background was painted four times and a series of photo’s taken by WCNS’s Alex Martin, transformed it into an animated GIF. Check out more of these grafitti gifs over at Insa’s blog. TenTen from Hamburg and Veuch from Belgium also jetted in, dodged the neds and painted the other half of the alley with their unique style and really completed the piece.

To complete the event, Insa painted a Mercedes Benz and this was offered as a prize through the raffle. Congratulations to Nick Mangos, who scored the winning ticket – not bad for £1.50! Can’t wait to see it driving around Glasgow.

We would like to offer a big congratulations to Amy and Ali (above), owners of Recoat. We wish them twice as much success for the next three years as the past three have provided. Be sure to check out the Fool’s Gold video tour below, made possible by them and new Glasgow productions company Pigeon Promotions.

There are also more photos from the night, over at the fashion blog, Style Scanner.

Fool’s Gold European Tour and Exhibition from Pigeon Promotions on Vimeo.

From their forthcoming exhibition at SWG3 Gallery, Lila de Magalhaes and Michael White  present a series of performative objects consisting of new sculptures, paintings and video work to create the context for a one-off collaborative event.

Lila de Magalhaes, born Brazil, 1986, has exhibited with The Duchy Gallery and was selected for New Work Scotland at The Collective Gallery, 2008 for which she was also undertook a residency at Studio Voltaire, London.

Michael White, born Ayrshire, 1987 was selected for New Work Scotland, 2009 and has exhibited in group shows in Glasgow and London.

“As early as I can remember I was always fascinated by any record that had a synthesizer on it. The sound itself seemed to have such a strong, purposeful, and intellectual quality about it that tended to cut through everything else. When I was young my Dad bought The Music of Cosmos which was the soundtrack to the groundbreaking Carl Sagan television series. It introduced me to the music of Vangelis as well as classical composers like Toru Takemitsu. The music was just so evocative of the vastness of space and scientific discovery that I just used to sit by the speakers and listen intently to every sound. Later when I heard Kraftwerk and Detroit Techno for the first time those electronic sounds resonated with me. From my home in Australia, Detroit seemed like a vision of an exotic Bladerunner – like future – the crumbling auto industry had left in its wake a decaying urban centre, deserted and boarded up, but out of this environment came a group of pioneers who were making this wild new music with archaic synthesizers and drum machines. For me it just seemed to click. The re-appropriation of urban space was always a strong element in the early Techno movement. Utilizing car parks and abandoned warehouses for all night-parties of machine music just seemed very sci-fi to me at the time, almost post-apocalyptic.”

He also makes lovely models of retro synths

Check out more at his folio – danmcpharlin.com

“The majority of my work is inspired by the scientific. I like to look for patterns in nature and I use a microscope to examine various collected materials. The minute cell structures of a fish scale inspired a whole range of prints for my recent degree show. I also explore scale in my work and make the very small, very large (some of my cell structure prints are over 130cm tall). I find screen printing to be an enormously expressive medium for my work and I relish the potential for it’s translation into textile print design. Textiles featured heavily in my show both as the actual imagery and as the format for some prints.”

Madeleine Ritchie has just graduated in Illustration from GSA Vis Com. She plans to continue her love of screen printing and will also be housing an installation in a tree at the revered Secret Garden Party festival. You can see more of her work through her site: madeleineritchie.co.uk

Lucy lives in Glasgow, where she occupies her time as a visual artist, illustrator, and primarily musician. Lucy performs and records with Kenneth Wilson in the band, Trees, as well as in collaboration with other improvisers and musicians. She has just finished her illustration degree at The Glasgow School of Art, where she created a temporary record shop.

“I most recently exhibited a ‘by donation’ cd shop at the Glasgow School of Art degree show, in which all artworks and covers, of which there were 35, were designed, and hand printed by myself in editions of ten. The project began life as an investigation into the phenomena of underground culture and shifted focus to the independent record shop as a pivotal space for the dissemination and exchange of subcultural music and ideas.”

“Record shops are community centres just as much as they are music retailers with individuals reciprocating obscure and treasured information, learning, discussing, dispersing myths and lore. They are places in which access to such coveted knowledge can inspire one in to acting, to quote artist Emma Hedditch, it is this knowledge which “transforms, teaches, and inspires us into acting, making, performances, making and recording sounds”. My hope was that the project could instill the sense of excitement and discovery that I had experienced in record shops, and all that I feel I had learnt and been inspired to do from visiting them.”

Lucy Duncombe and Hanna Tuulikki – Mind Less Mind Full

“The project is a response to the life and works of British experimental film maker, Jane Arden. The results form the basis of an audio visual performance piece scheduled to take place at an exhibition in London, August, 2010, curated by Charlotte Procter.
As musicians, visual artists and illustrators, Hanna and I both have a fascination with the voice and the relationship of sound to image. As vocalists we are drawn towards experimentation both within song structures and free improvisation and this practice is informed by the idea that song can be understood as a sculptural process that finds expression using the materials of the body, and thus, vocal sound making or song as portrait of the self. John Cavanagh on oscillator”

You can see more of Lucy’s work at daphneofthedunes.blogspot.com/ and she can be contacted via lucy-duncombe@hotmail.com

Jude Browning’s work caught my eye during the GSA degree show. I’m a big fan of her collage work and the balance between white space, colour choice and shape. The organic appearance of her creations really lure your eye to explore further when you start notice juxtaposing objects such as planes, piers and abstract shots of, what appears to be, concrete architecture.

“My practice is concerned with the disruption of the “act of looking” and the appropriation of knowable themes and genres. This body of work scrutinizes an established concept of the exotic conveyed in the ubiquitous and tacky Tiki style and deliberately mimics a misguided and materialistic understanding of foreign culture. I am specifically interested in the crass subtext of clichés found in commercially rooted imagery. Through exaggerating a representation of cultural tropes and concepts of community I attempt to critique the techniques of (certain recognized) relational artists by drawing parallels between art of this kind and the appeal of experiential commodities. By creating a sense of over-abundance that blends together fragments of colour and form in an incoherent mish mash it becomes hard for the viewer to read the image as a whole.”

“I have recently graduated from painting and printmaking at the GSA and plan on staying and working in Glasgow for another year before going on to study an MA in art writing. My understanding of culture informed by my upbringing inspires my work. I spent my formative years flitting between countries such as Nigeria, Venezuela and Mexico and as a result have an understanding of what it is like to watch these cultures from an outsider and an insider perspective, as well as value the implications of a Western presence.”

Five Crusoes from Judith Browning on Vimeo.

Five different film versions of Robinson Crusoe layered on top of each other using Premiere Pro. The versions consist of a black and white TV series (1964), a version directed by Luis Buñuel (1954), a version starring Pierce Brosnan (1997), “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964) and “Robinson Crusoe on Sin Island” a French porno (2005). The soundtrack is created using techniques that mimic the films construction.

Jude can be contacted via jude.v.browning@gmail.com

Lachlann Rattray is an illustrator from Glasgow. He has a crude, psychedelic style which to me, resembles the dark archives of a humorous, yet bad trip in mind expansion.

“Basically I hate being bored, I think I am inspired by absurdity I also like getting a reaction. My style is pretty infantile and over the top i like my artwork to have a sense of humor and if it doesn’t make me laugh while I am making it then its probably not going to turn out well.”

“I have been exhibited in New York, Italy, Glasgow and Edinburgh and recently I was shortlisted for both the world animation and tv.sme.sk/ viewers award at this years Fest Anca animation festival in Slovakia; I was also asked to contribute to the most recent Beautiful/Decay underdogs book which was a lot of fun. I really enjoy being asked to participate in shows and exhibitions its nice to know that I am not the only person that A1 posters of star trek characters with bulbous eyes is a good thing.”

Check these links for more of Lachlann’s work:

* artworks
* t-shirts
* magazines
* animation
* political cartoons
* computer programs

French born artist, Joey Villemont, moved to Glasgow in September 2009 to do his Masters in Fine Arts at Glasgow School of Art.

Joey considers himself as a “shaper” or a “builder”, in the way he crafts and builds things with a non-standard idea producing artefacts that in a way talk to each other, questioning and answering their own shared activity, presence and value.

Joey has alot ahead of himself in the near future: “I’ll have one fresh artwork (LES REVEURS) exhibited as part of the MFA degree show at CCA opening on the 14th of June (in Oliver Braid’s display).

NATURE BOY is my new project which will be on display at Mulhouse 010 art fair in France starting the 13th of June, Which I could describe as ‘the meeting between Kurt Cobain, Eden Ahbez and Henry David Thoreau and animals under a bridge in Aberdeen.’

I’m in the process of opening a wild exhibition space in Glasgow with my partner Camille in 2010, to bring French and European and international blood in our city along with locals !

(I am also) launching a brand new way of curating on the internet in the first half of june 2010, another surprise !”

Be sure to enjoy more of Joey’s folio at: joeyvillemont.net

Nick Van Woert is a sculptor from Brooklyn, NY. His astute interpretation of contemporary sculpting has produced some impressive and striking works. He has exhibited all over America in the past five years and has a solo exhibition in Amsterdam this year.

Maria Zaikina collection “Landschaft Mit Haus” examines the effect of viewing scenery and landscape during high speed travel. When you view her full collection of paintings the horizontal lines mimic the blur of movement and the different choice of colour palettes bring to mind the isolation of lonely homes we pass on our travels.