Gilbert and George

Gilbert and George
Their approach to art has always been anti-elitist. Adopting the slogan ‘Art for All’, they aimed to be  beyond the narrow confines of the art world and open new ideas of what art could also be. A new definition. Although they work in a variety of media, but have always referred to all works as sculpture. Between 1970 and 1974 they made drawings (referred to as Charcoal on Paper Sculptures) and paintings to give a more tangible form to their identity as ‘living sculptures'

Whilst still students, Gilbert & George made The Singing Sculpture which was first performed at Nigel Greenwood Gallery in 1970. For this performance they covered their heads and hands in multi-coloured metalised powders, stood on a table, and sang along and moved to a recording of Flanagan and Allen's song "Underneath the Arches", sometimes for a day at a time. The suits they wore for this became a sort of uniform for them. They rarely appear in public without wearing them. It is also unusual for one of the pair to be seen without the other. The pair regard themselves as "living sculptures". They refuse to disassociate their art from their everyday lives, insisting that everything they do is art. They were listed as among the fifty best-dressed over 50s by the Guardian in March 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anthony Caro

Antony Caro

Anthony Caro encountered modernism when working as an assistant to Henry Moore in the 1950s. After being introduced to the American sculptor David Smith in the early 1960s, he abandoned his earlier figurative work and started constructing sculptures by welding or bolting together pieces of steel such as I-beams, steel plates and meshes. Often the finished piece was then painted in a bold flat colour.
Caro found international success in the late 1950s. He is often credited with the significant innovation of removing the sculpture from its plinth, although Smith and Brancusi had both previously taken steps in the same direction. Caro's sculptures are usually self-supporting and sit directly on the floor. In doing so, they remove a barrier between the work and the viewer, who is invited to approach and interact with the sculpture from all sides.
In 1982 Caro was trying to organise an exhibition of British abstract art in South African townships when he met Robert Loder. In 1981, when staying in New York State, the pair developed the idea of running workshops for professional artists, which became the Triangle Arts Trust. They held the first Triangle workshop in 1982 for thirty sculptors and painters from the US, the UK and Canada at Pine Plains, New York.
In the 1980s Caro's work changed direction with the introduction of more literal elements, with a series of figures drawn from classical Greece. After visiting Greece in 1985, and closely studying classical friezes, he embarked on a series of large-scale narrative works, including After Olympia, a panorama more than 23 metres (75 ft.) long, inspired by the temple to Zeus at Olympia. Latterly he has attempted large scale installation pieces, one of which, Sea Music, stands on the quay at Poole, Dorset.
In the early 2000s, his work featured nearly life-size equestrian figures built from fragments of wood and terra cotta on gymnast's vaulting horses. In 2008, Caro opened his "Chapel of Light" installation in the Saint Jean-Baptiste Church of Bourbourg (France), and exhibited four figurative head sculptures at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In 2011 the Metropolitan Museum of Art installed five works by Caro on their rooftop. As of 2012, Caro was working on an immense, multipart sculpture that would occupy three blocks of Midtown Park Avenue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley

Gormley's career began with a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1981. Almost all his work takes the human body as its subject, with his own body used in many works as the basis for metal casts.
Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live." Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside."His work attempts to treat the body not as an object but a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical – a trace of a real event of a real body in time.
The 2006 Sydney Biennale featured Gormley's Asian Field , an installation of 180,000 small clay figurines crafted by 350 Chinese villagers in five days from 100 tons of red clay. The appropriation of others' works caused minor controversy and some of the figurines were stolen in protest. Also in 2006, the burning of Gormley's 25-metre high The Waste Man formed the zenith of the Margate Exodus.
In 2007, Gormley's Event Horizon, consisting of 31 life-size and anatomically correct casts of his body, four in cast iron and 27 in fiberglass, was installed on top of prominent buildings along London's South Bank, and installed in locations around New York City's Madison Square in 2010. Gormley said of the New York site that "Within the condensed environment of Manhattan's topography, the level of tension between the palpable, the perceivable and the imaginable is heightened because of the density and scale of the buildings" and that in this context, the project should "activate the skyline in order to encourage people to look around. In this process of looking and finding, or looking and seeking, one perhaps re-assess one's own position in the world and becomes aware of one's status of embedment." Critic Howard Halle said that "Using distance and attendant shifts of scale within the very fabric of the city, [Event Horizon] creates a metaphor for urban life and all the contradictory associations – alienation, ambition, anonymity, fame – it entails."
In July 2009, Gormley presented One & Other, a Fourth Plinth commission, an invitation for members of the public, chosen by lot, to spend one hour on the vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square in London. This "living art" happening initially attracted much media attention. It even became a topic of discussion on the long-running BBC radio drama series The Archers, with Gormley set to make an appearance as himself.
In March 2014 Gormley appeared in the BBC Four series What do artists do all day in an episode which followed him and his team in their Kings Cross studio, preparing a new work - a group of 60 enormous steel figures - called Tanker Field. The work is to be shown at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anish Kooper

Anish Kooper
Anish Kapoor became known in the 1980s for his geometric or biomorphic sculptures made using simple materials such as granite, limestone, marble, pigment, and plaster. These early sculptures are frequently simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic and brightly coloured, using powder pigment to define and permeate the form. "While making the pigment pieces, it occurred to me that they all form themselves out of each other. So I decided to give them a generic title, A Thousand Names, implying infinity, a thousand being a symbolic number. The powder works sat on the floor or projected from the wall. The powder on the floor defines the surface of the floor and the objects appear to be partially submerged, like icebergs. That seems to fit inside the idea of something being partially there." Such use of pigment characterised his first high-profile exhibit as part of the New Sculpture exhibition at the Hayward Gallery London in 1978.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, he was acclaimed for his explorations of matter and non-matter, specifically evoking the void in both free-standing sculptural works and ambitious installations. Many of his sculptures seem to recede into the distance, disappear into the ground or distort the space around them. In 1987, he began working in stone. His later stone works are made of solid, quarried stone, many of which have carved apertures and cavities, often alluding to, and playing with dualities (earth-sky, matter-spirit, lightness-darkness, visible-invisible, conscious-unconscious, male-female, and body-mind). "In the end, I’m talking about myself. And thinking about making nothing, which I see as a void. But then that’s something, even though it really is nothing."
Since 1995, he has worked with the highly reflective surface of polished stainless steel. These works are mirror-like, reflecting or distorting the viewer and surroundings. Over the course of the following decade Kapoor's sculptures ventured into more ambitious manipulations of form and space. He produced a number of large works, including Taratantara (1999), a 35-metre-high piece installed in the Baltic Flour Mills in Gateshead, England, before renovation began there; and Marsyas (2002), a large work consisting of three steel rings joined by a single span of PVC membrane that reached end to end of the 3,400-square-foot (320 m²) Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. Kapoor's Eye in Stone  is permanently placed at the shore of the fjord in Lødingen in northern Norway as part of Artscap Nordland. In 2000, one of Kapoor's works, Parabolic Waters, consisting of rapidly rotating coloured water, was shown outside the Millennium Dome in London.
The use of red wax is also part of his repertoire, evocative of flesh, blood, and transfiguration. In 2007, he showed Svayambh (which translated from Sanskrit means "self-generated"), a 1.5-metre block of red wax that moved on rails through the Nantes Musée des Beaux-Arts as part of the Biennale estuaire; this piece was shown again in a major show at the Haus Der Kunst in Munich and in 2009 at the Royal Academy in London. Some his work blurs the boundaries between architecture and art. In 2008, Kapoor created Memory in Berlin and New York for the Guggenheim Foundation, his first piece in Cor-Ten, which is formulated to produce a protective coating of rust. Weighing 24 tons and made up of 156 parts, it calls to mind Richard Serra’s huge, rusty steel works, which also invite viewers into perceptually confounding interiors.

In 2009, Kapoor became the first Guest Artistic Director of Brighton Festival. Kapoor installed four sculptures during the festival: Sky Mirror at Brighton Pavilion gardens; C-Curve at The Chattri, Blood Relations (a collaboration with author Salman Rushdie); and 1000 Names, both at Fabrica. He also created a large site-specific work titled The Dismemberment of Jeanne d’Arc and a performance-based installation: Imagined Monochrome. The public response was so overwhelming that police had to re-divert traffic around C Curve at the Chattri and exercise crowd control.
In September 2009, Kapoor was the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. As well as surveying his career to date, the show also included new works. On display were Non-Object mirror works, cement sculptures previously unseen, and Shooting into the Corner, a cannon that fires pellets of wax into the corner of the gallery. Previously shown at MAK, Vienna, in January 2009, it is a work with dramatic presence and associations and also continues Kapoor's interest in the self-made object, as the wax builds up on the walls and floor of the gallery the work slowly oozes out its form.
In spring 2011, Kapoor's work, Leviathan, was the annual Monumenta installation for the Grand Palais in Paris. Kapoor described the work as: "A single object, a single form, a single colour...My ambition is to create a space with in a space that responds to the height and luminosity of the Nave at the Grand Palais. Visitors will be invited to walk inside the work, to immerse themselves in colour, and it will, I hope, be a contemplative and poetic experience."
In 2011, Kapoor exhibited Dirty Corner at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan. Fully occupying the site's "cathedral" space, the work consists of a huge steel volume, 60 metres long and 8 metres high, that visitors enter. Inside, they gradually lose their perception of space, as it gets progressively darker and darker until there is no light, forcing people to use their other senses to guide them through the space. The entrance of the tunnel is goblet-shaped, featuring an interior and exterior surface that is circular, making minimal contact with the ground. Over the course of the exhibition, the work was progressively covered by some 160 cubic metres of earth by a large mechanical device, forming a sharp mountain of dirt which the tunnel appears to be running through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

alternative miss world Andrew Logan

Alternative miss world
What is the Alternative Miss World?
Started in 1972, The Alternative Miss World is not about beauty - it's about transformation - and when it comes to costume absolutely anything goes. Like the real Miss World there is day wear, swim-wear and evening wear and the all important personality interview! But Logan refuses to let anyone rehearse, and anything can - and often does - happen. It's about creative free-reign, about the ordinary becoming extraordinary. Contestants over the years have been famous and infamous, celebrated and unknown, a parade of freaks, fops, show offs and drag queens... including Andrew's many friends and family! The climax is a tear stained coronation with Logan's dazzling Crown Jewels made of broken mirrors

Andrew Logan

He was born at Witney, Oxfordshire, in England. He was educated as an architect at the Oxford School of Architecture, graduating in 1970. As the founder of the Alternative Miss World in 1972 (which he continues to run) he became a key figure in London's cultural and fashion life. He notably influenced film-maker Derek Jarman, whose early film-making work documented the social scene around Andrew Logan and his studios at Butler's Wharf, London. His studios were also where Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood staged the notorious "Valentine's Ball" in 1976, at which the Sex Pistols first came to media attention.
In 1991 a major retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. The purpose-built Andrew Logan Museum of Sculpture, at Berriew in the Welsh Marches, now houses much of his sculpture and painting. It is the nation's only museum devoted to a living artist. His work is also in numerous museums and private collections around the world.
Since the early Nineties, Andrew Logan has continued to exhibit his sculptures and jewellery all over the world including Saint Petersburg in Russia, Lithuania, India, Beverly Hills in Los Angeles and Mexico. His work has been shown in and commissioned by international galleries, including the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, the Flower East Gallery in London, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Hayward Gallery, Bonhams, the National Portrait Gallery, Sotheby in London, the Royal Academy of Arts, and Somerset House.
In London, he has exhibited in diverse venues, including Trafalgar Square, in the foyer of Sadler's Wells Theatre and in West End cinemas. His life-size horse sculptures, Pegasus 1 and 11 were displayed at Heathrow Airport, and his 'Icarus' sculpture hangs in Guy's Hospital. The P & O Superliner Arcadia commissioned him to sculpt his Cosmic Eggs (8 ft. tall), and his Mermaid Chandelier was exhibited at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, USA.
In the new millennium, Andrew Logan created jewelled sculptures for The Magic Flute opera in San Diego. In 2004, Andrew Logan's eleventh Alternative Miss World contest was held at the Hippodrome in London. He went on to give an Art workshop at the Jaipur Heritage Festival in India.
Andrew Logan is also a qualified yoga teacher and gave a Presentation of Yoga art show in London. He then did a jewellery presentation with Emmanuel Ungaro in Paris.
In 2007, Andrew Logan continues to be prolific, diversifying his talent in all mediums. In May, he was invited to be part of the jury for a children's beauty contest in Sochi. In July, his jewellery was auctioned at Halls Fine Art in Shrewsbury. In August, he was invited by Comme des Garçons to Tokyo and Kyoto for their catwalk show, which was inspired by his style and jewellery. He was asked to decorate a guitar for a high profile charity auction held in London. In August, he was invited to participate in three events in The Big Draw: he collaborated with Zandra Rhodes on The Big Picture Frame at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, he gave a presentation of his watercolours in The Newsroom at The Guardian and in Covent Garden.

Andrew Logan's work blends camp pop-art and neo-romanticism to form a quintessentially English 'eccentricity of vision'