So Debs & Strapper from Wrekon invited us down to Endorse It In Dorset to set up “Old Boney” the High striking test your strength machine. It’s probably its last outing for the year, with the winter providing the time to tweak improvements to its set up and signage. Endorse it was one of the nicest festivals we’ve been to this year, lovely site and a great misx of some of the friendliest people we’ve had swing our hammer. Thanks to all that had a go, we had 48 people win prizes and 37 very strong men ring the bell, with one girl Kattja so close to doing it as well. Sunday is ladies day at the festival where the lads dress as women and with a punk/rockabilly line up there were some stunning outfits as you can see above.
Stavanger report
So the project i was working on in Bergen was postponed due to the sad imbecile who decided to try and go down in history through incredible acts of stupidity and cruelty in Oslo last week. I won’t dwell on it but the best thing we can do in reaction is to ignore the sad fuck and commiserate with those affected. Anyhow after a brief stop in Bergen i flew to Stavanger to paint the canvases bought during the Outside in show, luckily the postponement gave me extra time to furfil the mountains of orders placed at the gallery. Thanks Stavanger i feel really loved. Of course because i was stuck in the studio the sun decided to shine, why o why couldn’t done that for the last time when i was stuck up a cherry picker for 60 hours. Today it became too much and i had to get out on the street and put something up (as you can see above). The police even drove past, slowed down waved and continued on their way…you gotta love this town.
Banging them out in the Numusic office.
This week Stavanger was host to the tall ships race, the harbor was chock a block with boats of all shapes and sizes, with the largest tall ship in the world in attendance. Walking along the harbor side was like being transported back to the 1700’s a really cool festival.
Movie “On the hop”
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/26645639 w=400&h=225]
Dotmasters “On The Hop” from Martin Hawkes on Vimeo.
A Reed Production, in July in Stavanger. The weather wasn’t ideal….it was Horrible to be honest so hats of to Martin Hawkes for sticking with it! God knows how many frames were shot during the 25 hours as he battled it through the weather with me. The last rising sequence was bracketed for the light conditions and merged, I know there around 1200 frames in the last 6 seconds of the movie. think the film is quite beautiful, thanks saft.no!
More shots of the wall can be found here
Just updated the Unfairground website, with pics and new sections about the venues in the unfairground you can check it out here www.unfairground.org
So it was with full fear we went to bergen to paint a wall with Eine and Steph. Not because they are scary but because we were attempting to paint a bloody big wall in the wettest part of the west coast. Famous for the rain, the town had experienced almost 2 months relentless rain pior to our trip. Ben arrived and the clouds parted….lucky basturd! I was straight (?) from Glastonbury and Ben and steph from Roskida, battle weary and soaked the sun made a decent change. Ben smashed the wall in 3 days. Contraversial calculate cash.
It’s been a hard week, 16 hour days in the wind and the rain, and all too seldom the sun. After 3 days helping Ben Eine in Bergen (traditionally the wettest city on the west coast) in the blazing sunshine, i was hopeful that Stavanger would deliver the same. WRONG! The building above is the Lervig brewery, yes i got given the keys of a brewery and painted a bloody wall. Talk about couldn’t organise a piss up in a… Mike, the master brewer even offered me use of the company fridge! Hard to get enthusiastic for getting drunk in the rain 8m in the air in a cherry picker…..DAM. Dodging raindrops the size of 50mm shells meant working through the night, in the vain hope that the forecasts were right. WRONG! But its nearly there and i”ve only a day more tweaking and introducing some stencil elements. The still above is from Martin Hawks, (Saft films) during the week he road tested some new camera equipment out and produced some stunning time lapse (with a difference!!) . He must of shot 1000’s of frames and each nights brought its own weather logistics, cameras don’t seem to like the rain much either. But wait till you see it…..beautifully filmed. Thanks to Carl for the shots below…again stunning, and of course the Nuart crew, and Reed productions for setting the whole thing up.
Why oh why?
Outside in Stavanger
Arrived and had 24hrs to paint the stuff i was going to show. An all nighter and some of the next day and the wall was hung with minutes to spare. Busy beyond belief, the prizes left over from Glastonbury selling out in minutes. Sold allot of work, funny been working in Stavanger for 6 years now and never really had an product to sell, suppose the folk here have been waiting cos there’s not much left.
Thanks to all who came and supported the event, thanks to all those who bought some work, and thanks to Tore, Randi, Susan, and of course Reed Projects who made it all possible.
you can check out more photographs of the show at the nuart flickr page here
Outside in
So in Stavanger again, this time for a different reason, Nuart happens later in the year. This time for Reed productions first sale show at Skur 2 in downtown Stavanger (do they have a downtown?) Anyway a great line up for this sales show featuring allot of work from Martyns own collection as well as work by Dolk and myself made especially for the show. Opens the 1st of july and looks to be a busy night. There are a few other events happening over the next two weeks in Bergen and stavanger but will post more as they happen.