MERRY CHRISTMAS!

At Wired Canvas we decided we wanted to go all out festive this year for our Christmas Card, so we donned Santa hats, tinsel and festive knitwear and had a quick photoshoot. Lucky people who get to have a picture of us on their mantelpieces this Christmas – we’re almost jealous! Needless to say we have realised that we are naturals in front of the camera and will be venturing into the world of catwalk modelling in 2012.

America’s Next Top Model, eat your heart out…

We hope you all have a wonderful festive break and look forward to a great new year.

Rob and Alice xxx

We did photoshoots in parks, drew plenty of brains / wrestlers / sharks / hoovers, used a vintage Rolleicord for lots of the portfolio images, spent a long time brainstorming taglines and ate a lot of cake in between. The launch might have overrun a tad, but what you’re looking at is our brand spanking new site in all it’s glory!

A few new or refreshed features that you might notice (or recognise!) include:

• New footer illustrations/taglines*
• Our hilarious comedy copywriting skills. Ahem.
• Lots of new things in the portfolio; we have narrowed it down to just a handful of our favourite pieces and re-organised everything by client so it’s hopefully easier to browse through
• Approximately 30% added jaffa cakes
• “What we do“; because we know you’re desperate to know more about “behind the scenes” at WC
• Added shop, for all your kitchenware needs
• Updated Blog – we’ve taken all the old blog-posts from our old website, given them a makeover… and promise we will start blogging again soon!

The site is running in WordPress, an open-source CMS system that we have a bit of a crush on. It makes it really easy to update content, in particular blogging, so we have no excuse not to blog more often. If you’d like to be kept up to date, you could always subscribe to the RSS feed.

Finally, and most importantly, there’s lots of photos of our lovely faces for you to enjoy – evidently we are both naturals in front of the lens…

* We don’t want to give anything away but *nudge nudge wink wink* the straplines are very ‘clickable’, some might say…

Bow Arts Trust are shortly throwing open their doors to the public for their Open Studios programme, so nosy parkers like us can explore the artists’ studios. We’ll be there Friday night, hopefully see you there.

You can download the PDF brochure HERE!

We just launched a new website for Bow Arts Trust (and when I say “just launched”… I mean about an hour ago). We’ve done a complete rebrand for them and built them a new website; we will cover it in detail in our portfolio section but in short we are chuffed to bits and have already had some great feedback today.We created four different “brands” for the four strands of their organisation; Bow Arts as a whole, Studios, Education and their gallery, The Nunnery, which has resulted in a very colourful website!

Needless to say we are very excited to be working with Bow Arts as an organisation – partly because their practise and ethos is exactly the sort of background that Wired Canvas also comes from so we feel right at home – and partly because their initials, BAT, allow us to make lots of Batman/Batmobile/Batcave jokes.

I thought I would make a quick blog post about my new obsession; something I only discovered since we (Wired Canvas) relocated to East London.

Roller derby was a middle-of-the-road women’s spectator sport back in the 1970s but was revived in Austin Texas a while back with a twist; these days the girls dress in rockabilly punk outfits and skate under alter-egos such as ‘ Deadly DeVito’, ‘Blaze of Gory’ and ‘Cat Aclysmic’. It’s fast, aggressive and probably the most fun I’ve ever had watching a sport (read as: the only fun I’ve ever had watching a sport).

If you’re around East London tomorrow, and fancy sheltering from the rain and shouting at a room full of terrifying girls on rollerskates then make sure you pop along. Get your tickets beforehand though; there won’t be any on the door.

A large scale photography project, involving the residents of the Balfron tower:

The residents (and a few randoms) were asked to stand in front of the tower for an hour where they would take photos every few minutes.

Here are a few randoms:

Have a look here for more about what the project is about:

http://balfronproject.co.uk

Final exhibition to be displayed a the Nunnery gallery, 183 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ

On the 6th – 26th January 2011

After months of hard-work, b-side multimedia arts festival finally came around last week. Keen to see our work in action, I hopped on the No. 1 Bus to Portland and had a nose around.

Firstly, I learnt that I am the proud owner of (perhaps) the most famous hand in Weymouth and Portland:

I followed my hand and the first piece that I found was Melissa Bliss’ ‘Birdsong’ in the beautiful walled garden:

A short walk away was Hywel Davies’ beautiful sound installation wind chimes:

The wind was very low so unfortunately I didn’t get to hear the wind chimes very much… not that I was complaining about the weather:

Ivon Oates’ piece ‘Portland Rock’ had haunting recordings appearing from “within” fishing boats and other familiar Portland sights along the shore:

Charlie Henry’s Beachcomber’s Museum:

Then I found Victoria Gardens and met up with artist Melanie Thompson who explained her work to me, which was based around the bowling green, the ex-Mortuary (now used as a shed by the gardeners) and the Strangers Cemetery. She let me go inside the Mortuary and locked the door behind me… (yes, I was locked inside a Victorian Mortuary)

…which wasn’t actually anywhere near as traumatic as I thought it would be. In fact it was quite lovely, once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness.

In the cemetery, Melanie and her assistant Claire had organised a group of local volunteers who were cutting away the ivy and rubbish from the long-forgotten gravestones. This was one of my favourite parts of the day!

After tea and cake in the Bowling Club with some of the locals and artists, I headed back to Weymouth and spotted Andy Whale’s bus stop photographs of local people:

By the time I got back to Nothe Fort in Weymouth it was getting dark – just right for the spooky lantern-lit atmosphere:

Matt and Rob Vale’s giant projection piece within the fort was incredible and magical but unfortunately I didn’t really get any good photos, so here is a video of their last performance to give you an idea of how amazing it was:

Finally it was time to head home to Poole. All in all a great little festival – roll on 2012!

Firstly we sent off the brand new (and chunky, at a whopping 24 pages) Activate Summer newsletter:

Also for Activate we produced 3 sets of postcards and posters that advertise local youth dance groups:

And finally for Wave we have been working on a flyer for the annual Dance & Drama Conference:

I worked at the Kube gallery (or the Study Gallery as it was known then) as a technician/tutor from 2003 – 2006.

I first moved to Dorset in 2003 which also coincided with a job opening at the Study gallery… I decided to check it out first to see what it was like before applying. From that first visit I knew it was a special place and I had to do anything to get the job… I spent hours on my application.

The gallery (Kube or Study) has a way of getting under your skin -  the same faces would pop up again and again – we all knew why we were there.

The people I worked with were my extended family.

The gallery hosted music, art, performances, workshops all in a beautiful architectural space, a home. A home where what was going on at that moment made you feel special.

All of this made the wages more than worthwhile!

In the last year the gallery’s programme has become what we knew it could and just at this point the funding was pulled by Bournemouth and Poole college.

At the moment I feel like someone very close to me is dying and despite the shouting, the action and all the emotion it will happen anyway. But that is not a reason to lie down and accept this…

We can all do something:

Sign the Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/online/33348.html

Join the Facebook Group:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=199890648226

Come on the March:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=223144731378&index=1

Comments about the closure:

http://www.kubepoole.org.uk/commentary.aspx

Dorset Echo:

http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/4834691.Poole_s_Kube_closure_lamented_by_Arts_Council/

http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/4828552.Online_uprising_to_save_Poole_s_Kube_gallery/

http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/4790979.Arts_boss__Shape_up_and_keep_Kube_open/

http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/yousay/yourletters/4832763.Kube_route/

http://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/yousay/yourletters/4812391.Can_lottery_cash_save_the_Kube_/