One thing keeping me busy over the festive season was working for Crisis Action designing the branding and online delivery of a new campaign called Sudan365: A beat for peace. The clever campaign uses drumming to raise awareness of the critical political situation in Sudan.

Saturday 9 January 2010 saw the global launch which achieved phenomenal press coverage. Sudanese communities and activists around the world joined together to call on international leaders to take urgent diplomatic action to prevent an escalation of conflict in Sudan that could lead to massive human rights violations. The beat started up in Sudan and will be echoed by people from all over the world: from Nairobi to New York, London to Tokyo for the next 365 days.

Famous drummers from Radiohead, The Police, Pink Floyd, Snow Patrol and the legendary musicians Mohammed Munir, Yehia Khalil and Mustaffa Tettey Addy have all lent their support and feature in Jamie Catto and Splinter Films’ brilliant launch film which you can watch here.

Visit sudan365.org to find out more and to join the global beat for peace. The campaign also has its own Facebook group and YouTube channel.

Personal thanks to Richard Howard of Flowlabs for amazing development work on the website!

I’ve added some old book covers to the Some Dusty Things section of the site.

PRS for Music Foundation (PRSF) is an innovative funding body that supports a huge range of new music activity in all genres across the whole of the UK. PRSF run the UK’s biggest music prize - the New Music Award - which fosters the experimental, the ambitious and the unusual. As part of their 10th birthday celebrations, David has designed their new logo.

David has designed the identity, printed, and digital outputs for Performance Matters which was launched this week. Performance Matters is a creative research project bringing together artists, curators and academics to “investigate the challenges that contemporary performance presents to ideas of cultural value”. The three-year project is a collaboration between the Live Art Development Agency, the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Department of Drama, Theatre and Performance at Roehampton University.

At the heart of the project is the Performance Matters website, which has information about collaborators and events, news stories and updates on activities, as well as being a space for expanded writings, ideas and images about and around the issues at the heart of Performance Matters. The website will move through three themed years of interlinked research activities, and the design will mutate and evolve over the three-year time span of the project to reflect this.

Judging by the content that’s already on the site it should be well worth keeping an eye on.

www.thisisperformancematters.co.uk

I have added some new work to the ART section including ‘The Last Thing I Remember’, a new painting in a series tentatively titled ‘Ordinary Monsters’. More paintings in this series can be seen here…

The Last Thing I Remember (2009)

David has designed the publicity for a forthcoming sculpture show at the Royal Academy of Arts. Wild Thing features the work of three pioneers of modern British sculpture, Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Eric Gill. The poster features Epstein’s amazing ‘Rock drill’ (1913-1915) (surely the inspiration for the Star Wars Battle Droid!) The exhibition opens on 24 October 2009. For more information or to book visit the RA.

The poster for the upcoming exhibition, featuring Epstein's 'Rock drill'...

Remarkably similar!

Art critic Simone Pereira Hind has written this lovely review of SALON16 for the summer issue of local magazine N16…

Sim and Steve visit SALON16

Sim – Well here we are at David Caines’ home on Lordship Road, temporarily transformed into a new art venue and hosting the exhibition We Who Are Not as Others. Have you had a good look around?

Steve – I have. David is showing his own paintings, his brother Matthews’ Jacob Epsteinesque sculptures, and photographs by David Swindells, Tess Hurrell and Kalpesh Lathigra. The work is immaculately presented in the garden, garden studio and in parts of the house. The staging is intimate without being domestic.

Sim – What’s the title all about then? Looking around I’m struck by the idea of ‘outsiders’ in much of the work, such as in Lathigra’s photographs of Sioux Native Americans. The subjects seem alone and lost in the landscape, ironic given that they are the indigenous people. And Swindells’ photos of London clublife star larger-than-life characters like Leigh Bowery, who dare to be different. I’m particularly drawn to his YMCA-style go-go dancer print. Very sexy, but weird to think the guy is dressed as a ‘Red Indian’, given that I’ve just been looking at Lathigra’s work.

David’s work reminds me of one of my favourite films, Freaks, Tod Browning’s 1932 film set in a freak show in which he cast real sideshow performers with deformities. As well as alluding to circus perfomers David’s paintings often represent groups of seemingly disparate people; an aviator, a contortionist and a shaman for instance, who seem unaware of each other, don’t relate to one another, yet share a space on the canvas. I heard someone describe the work as poignant just now and I think that’s true.

Steve  - Without wanting to get too deep, it seems like a comment on the human condition, that in the end we’re all alone.

Sim – Oy, oy Steve. Cheer up, it may never ‘appen. Come and have a look at Tess Hurrell’s work if you’re going to get all earnest on me. As well as being technically accomplished her images are truly enigmatic. In the three photos entitled Basic Needs she transforms mundane objects -  wipers, a chair and an umbrella into mysterious objects of beauty and her Drawing Light No. 1 suggests the sublime in spite of its exposing its own construction. They’re beautiful.

Steve – You know, thinking about it, We Who Are Not As Others is also a reference to these artists kicking the mainstream and taking control of showing their work, rather than relying on the vagaries of the art world. It’s the enthusiasm of people like David Caines that helps guarantee a thriving art scene in spite of the much-discussed financial meltdown at our midst. I’m happy to report that this may be the first of many shows that David plans to curate in this space.

Thanks to all who helped make the exhibition such a great success, especially the hundreds of people who visited the show and the artists who took part - Matthew Caines, Kalpesh Lathigra, David Swindells and Tess Hurrell. A special thank you to Simon Dormon for the modifications to the house, and to Sybil, Jackson, Dylan, Jonathan Kahn, Anna, Sally, Jax, Shirley for their support and encouragement, and Simone from N16 magazine for her kind words.

PLANNING YOUR VISIT TO SALON16

INAUGURAL EXHIBITION – ‘WE WHO ARE NOT AS OTHERS’

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS: David Caines, Matthew Caines, Tess Hurrell, Kalpesh Lathigra, David Swindells

WHEN CAN I VISIT?

Salon16 is open to the public from SATURDAY 20 JUNE – FRIDAY 26 JUNE 2009.

CAN I VISIT AFTER WORK?

Yes – on WEDNESDAY 24 & THURSDAY 25 JUNE Salon16 will be open from 10.30am – 9.00pm.

WHERE IS SALON16?

Salon16 is in the home of artist David Caines in Stoke Newington. The address is 88 Lordship Road, Stoke Newington, London N16 0QP. Just knock on the basement door and you will be shown around.

HOW DO I GET THERE?

Stoke Newington does not have an Underground Station. Nearest stations are Angel tube, then take bus 73 or 476 to Stoke Newington Church Street, OR Finsbury Park tube, then take bus 106 to Lordship Road. Buses 67, 149, 243 also will take you there.

HOW DO I FIND OUT MORE?

Call David on 0787 988 3593 if you’d like to find out more about Salon16.

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