WORLD NAKED BIKE RIDE 2012

In the run up to the World Nude Bike Ride, we are inviting our models to ride their bikes to Islington Mill and model with them. They will be mostly people organising this fabulous event here in m’chester. So be prepared to the challenge to draw bikes for a month and also to ask the question:

Manchester Nude Bike Ride is on Friday 1st of June 6-8pm starting at all saints park with a body painting starter. Join this movement! And bare as you dare!

See some pictures from this event around the world.

DRAWING LIFE COOKING at Allery Gallery Art Festival Whalley Range m’chester

part of Allery Gallery Art Festival this 1st of June til the 5th in Whalley Range, m’chester….

Come, draw and be part of a live art performance.

Draw three naked vegan cooks while cooking your lunch!
discussing veganism and body politics.
Spoken word, choreographed and final group exhibition.

11-1pm – drawing life cooking
  1-2pm – food made in art
  2-7pm – life exhibition

Cost £10 - Including lunch + paper.
All price includes life drawing, performance, vegan lunch, large papers, boards and final group exhibition.
Please, bring your own vegetable inks and paintings, pens and pencils made of recycling materials, local hand-made charcoal, brushes and used tea bags.

15 places only ~ booking essential.
Email:  lifedrawing.plus@gmail.com

Tuesday 5th June 11am-2pm  +  2-7pm exhibition

Creative Corner Cafe -
Milton Grove -
Whalley Range -
Manchester -
M16 0BH

co-organised by life drawing+ and naked vegan cooking

 life drawing+ 
Life drawing sessions are run by artist àgata alcañiz every wednesday 7-9pm at Islington Mill Art Studios, James Street in Salford M3 5HW.

They are formal but… expect the unexpected!!
Now and again are linked to Salford and Manchester art and cultural scene, so the sessions have become pure dada explorations when everyone in the Northwest paid tribute to dada artist KURT SCHWITTERS.
Right now the sessions are having Manchester Nude Bike Ride organisers modelling with their bikes up to the running of the World Nude Bike Ride on Friday 1st of June in All Saints 6-8pm.

 naked vegan cooking 
It’s a group of young people who loves cooking vegan food naked, for themselves, their friends and lovers. They also organise events around body-positivity.

PAELLA B’THDAY PIC-NIC PARTY !!!

Hi!

àgata speaking. I invite all the regulars of the life drawing sessions to my 40th b’thday.
This will be in 2014. Meanwhile paella birthday pic-nic party this sunday 13th at the banks of the river Irwell INSalford. See map for directions n terms and condition at the bottom of this invitation. 1pm onwards. Hope you can make it _à

How life friendly can the ARTS be?

STRATUM

We’ll finish April with a special: we’ll complement our study of the classical male body canon with the impressive installation STRATUM by renown artist Susie MacMurray.

We have a young man as a model. He has a body which resembles the classical male figure canon and he’ll be posing some of the most famous classical sculptures of all times. His name is Oliver Robert.

Oliver will pose:

• 5 minutes the Greek’s sculpture Doryphoros by Polykleitos
• 5 minutes the Greek Discobolous by Myron
• 5 minutes the Baroque’s sculpture David by Bernini
• 30 minutes the neo-classical Pastoral Apollo by John Plaxman
• 1 hour the Renaissance David by Michelangelo

Oliver Roberts is a 23 year old part-time fitness model and personal trainer. His statement does not differ much from the mind-body ancient Greek philosophy:

For me, personally, the gym has never been about achieving aesthetics. The natural high I get from being fit and healthy is something I’ve continued to look for through throughout my life in sports and fitness and It’s something I teach. The body will only develop to the same strength of the mind that is controlling it, so for me the gym is as much about pushing my own limits of determination, sweat and due diligence to achieve a physical success that i can take with me into all other aspects of my life. When you’re in good shape, you don’t walk through life, you run through it.

STRATUM
We’ll visit Susie MacMurray Stratum’s site-specific installation in our break at 7.45pm at the attic of Islington Mill in the 5th floor. This astonishing installation consists in 80Kg of feather down. It was commissioned to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this historic cotton mill building last year 2011. The installation is open by appointment so make use of this great opportunity. The installation space will be open for us!

Susie MacMurray’s work encompasses drawing, sculpture and architectural installations. A former classical musician, she retrained as an artist, graduating with an MA in Fine Art in 2001. She now has an international exhibition profile and shows regularly in the USA and Europe as well as the UK.

An engagement with materials is central to MacMurray’s practice. Her role is one of alchemist: combining material, form and context in deceptively simple ways to stimulate associations within the viewers’ minds and to elicit nuanced meanings.

Working in installation and sculpture she has gained a reputation for site-specific interventions in historic spaces. Her work frequently references the history of a space and seeks to merge the particularities of that history, the specifics of site, and the inherent references attached to materials in an attempt to gain insight into the relationship between place and people.

Drawing is an important part of MacMurray’s practice. In addition to her large scale pen & ink work she extends the possibilities of making drawings using unconventional materials including rubber tubing, hair and wax. She also makes pen & ink drawings on a more intimate scale and produces sculptural wall pieces and other work for private commissions.

www.susiemacmurray.co.uk
www.theaesthetictrust.co.uk

CLASSICAL MALE FIGURE

This wednesday 18th we’ll look at the classical male figure from ancient Greece and other neoclassicism movements.

As we saw last week, classical art was characterised by its naturalism depiction. Naturalism in Greek art was a growing tendency that inevitably led to the disappearance of the pre-conceived posture of the archaic kouros.

ARCHAIC KOUROS: Kouros of Tenea

The classical figure began to be conceived with greater freedom and more naturalistic observation of the body appeared. An example is The “Doryphoros” by Polykleitos ( the Spear Carrier) one of the best known Greek sculptures of the classical era in Western art and an early example of Greek classical contrapposto.

The Greek sculptor Polykleitos designed a work as an example of the “canon” or “rule”, showing the perfectly harmonious and balanced proportions of the human body in the sculpted form. A solid-built athlete with muscular features carries a spear balanced on his left shoulder. A characteristic is the classical contrapposto in the pelvis; the figure’s stance is such that one leg seems to be in movement while he is standing on the other.

That the work partly results from direct observation is indicated by the articulation of the body, suggesting an exact moment in action, in the detail of the hand grasping and muscles tensed or relaxed according to weight distrubution. That a proportional scheme is also present is indicated by the fact that altough of “heroic” size the figure retains a human proportion within itself.

Assuming it is a faithful copy, compared to figures of a later date, the planes of the body are simplified tending to stress individual parts with a resulting lack of sensuousness in the surface.

Lacoon and his sons, ancient roman sculpture

David by Michelangelo, Renaissance sculpture, 1501-1504

David by Bernini, Barroque sculpture 1623 -1624

Drawing by English John Flaxman, neoclassicism, 1794

Pastoral Apollo1824 by John Flaxman

FEMALE BODY IN CLASSICAL ART

This Wednesday 11th of April we’ll be exploring the female body in classical art: from ancient Greece to neoclassicism.

Phryne as Cnidus Aphrodite by Praxiteles
Cnidus Aphrodite, marble sculpture, Roman copy of the 4th century BC Greek original by Praxiteles

The Winged Victory of Samothrace
Dating to around 190-220 BC, the Winged Victory of Samothrace shows a female figure– the Greek goddess of Victory (Nike)– standing on a base resembling a ship. The massive sculpture, shown permanently at the Louvre in Paris, stands over 18 ft high. It is made from a heavy block of Parian marble and was excavated in 1863. The head was never found.

Venus de Milo
This sculpture is one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Created at some time between 130 and 100 BC, it is believed to depict Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love and beauty (Venus to the Romans). From an inscription that was on its plinth, it is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch. It is currently on permanent display at the Louvre in Paris.

Crouching Aphrodite
This marble sculpture of the second century is a Roman copy of the Hellenistic model of the third century BC. It depicts her as bathing, crouching with her right knee close to the ground. A large number of copies of this type of Crouching Aphrodite/ Venus have been excavated on Roman sites in Italy and France and a large number of them are in prominent collections. It indicates that this type of Venus had been very popular in Hellenistic cultures and later in Roman Empire.