Skip to Content

339

LivingDesign.info is a creative and inspiration resource dedicated to design and life and everything in-between

LivingDesign.infoLivingDesign.infoLivingDesign.info LivingDesign - Home LivingDesign - Home

Tag Archives: Asia

2 August 1
Comment

Photolog: British Museum

Under - My Musings, Photography, Photolog

Royal Lion Hunt bas-relief details, Mesopotamian Collection

‘Photolog’ is a new series of posts with predominant focus on photographs rather than text. I’ll be posting a selection of images from my photographic endeavors that are mostly around travel, nature, landscape and urban photography.

Starting with one of the world’s greatest museums of human history and culture the British Museum London. Its permanent collection, numbering some eight million works, is amongst the finest, most comprehensive, and largest in existence and originates from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.

The British Museum was established in 1753, largely based on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. The museum first opened to the public on 15 January 1759 in Montagu House in Bloomsbury, on the site of the current museum building. Its expansion over the following two and a half centuries was largely a result of an expanding British colonial footprint and has resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, the first being the British Museum (Natural History) in South Kensington in 1887… more

Bas-relief details, Mesopotamian Collection

Royal Lion Hunt bas-relief details, Mesopotamian Collection

Roman Sculptures

Crouching Venus, Roman, circa 1st century AD

Crouching Venus, Roman, circa 1st century AD

Parthenon marbles from the Acropolis of Athens – 447 BC

Colossal statue of Ramesses II, the ‘Younger Memnon’ – 1250 BC

View more

9 August 4
Comments

Adeel and the miniaturesque craftsmanship

Under - Art, Illustration, Inspiration

Discourse (Diptych) - Engraved Drawing on Vinyl

Adeel uz Zafar is an emerging contemporary artist from Pakistan who is deeply committed to creative expression through experimentation. Born in 1975 in Karachi, Pakistan, Adeel completed his BFA from National College of Arts (NCA) Lahore in 1998, he later returned to Karachi and joined Karachi School of Arts as an instructor.

Adeel started his early career as an illustrator that gave him considerable experience of working with the finest and reputable publishing houses in Pakistan, and provided him the opportunity to make his contributions to a multitude of academic curriculum text books. He mentions his sojourn in the suburbs of Gilgit momentous, where he went as a national illustration consultant for Northern Areas Education Project. The unavailability of conventional art material in that rural and remote area led him to investigate into substitutes for paints and surfaces. Having developed the engraving technique on the exposed photographic sheet by using paper cutter, he scratched drawings onto them mostly based on empirical observation and by modifying them in his signature graphic style. This is something which he considers, has made his place in the contemporary Pakistani art scene.

Discourse (Diptych) - Engraved Drawing on Vinyl

He joined Indus Valley School of Art in 2008 where he exhibited his work, almost after a complete decade from his first college display, in the IVSA Faculty show. The show at V.M. Art Gallery, Karachi in 2009 was a turning point in Adeel’s career which catapulted him into the league of emerging artists of Pakistan. He came up with a humongous scale this time, retaining his hold on the meticulous skill and the objects he made an illustration history with. These props were singular, fluffed cuddly toys, very symbolically wrapped in gauze bandage. He engraved them on large adjoined pieces of plastic vinyl sheet coated with emulsion and acrylic gel. The small toy was blown up to a monstrous size with a pitch black background, and the intricately manifested concealing weave of the cloth opened many connotations regarding furtive and ambiguous identity.

This style and technique was further experimented through a group show of four artists at Art Chowk-the Gallery, Karachi, titled ‘Being a Man in Pakistan’ (2009) – which has initiated a dialogue for the artist to reflect upon various issues, both social and political at times out of the box.

The Lion At Rest - Engraved Drawing on Plastic Vinyl Surface

The Lion At Rest - Details

The Lion At Rest - Details

Adeel associates his childhood memories and his perpetual dealing with subjects for children as the core of his imagery development. He symbolizes this bandaging manipulation as the delusive ipseity. He alters the dainty characteristic by transforming the identity of the object, driving it into a rather serious orientation. Whereas, his flamboyant command over the painstaking patterned strokes may appear principled to miniaturesque craftsmanship.

Recently, Adeel has participated in both national and international art exhibits such as the RM Naeem Residency, Lahore, Pakistan, ‘On the brink’ at Fost Gallery, Singapore and at Slick Art, Paris. He has also been selected for an exhibition showcasing a decade of a new wave of Pakistani artists who have contributed to the ever growing diverse vocabulary of contemporary art that has evolved from South East Asia ‘The Rising Tide – new directions in art from Pakistan 1990-2010’.

Adeel uz Zafar currently works and resides with his wife Nehdia and two children in Karachi.

Persona - Engraved Drawing on Plastic Vinyl Surface

View more here

1 February Share your
thoughts

Richard Mosse and a desire to rewrite traumatic cultural histories

Under - Art, Inspiration, Media, Photography

Undoubtedly, some of the best short-films I’ve seen lately came from Richard Mosse. Born and grew up in Ireland he is now based in New York. Mosse studied at Yale, Goldsmiths and the London Consortium. He is driven by an ambivalence toward photography and a desire to revisit and even rewrite traumatic cultural histories.

Cast Lead

Shot in the ruins of Gaza and the West Bank, August 2009. Cast Lead, the IDF codename for the Gaza war of 2009, is a term derived from Haim Nachman Bialik’s Hannukah poem about a game played with a spinning dreidel made of lead.

Cinematography and Editing by Trevor Tweeten. Colorist and Post Production by Jerome Thelia.

Souffleur

In an article written several years ago, Robert Fisk referred to the wreck of a Nazi-allied Vichy French U-Boat which lies beneath the waves off the coast of Beirut. The submarine was called Le Souffleur, and was sunk in 1941 by British destroyers which had followed it up the coast from Palestine.

Souffleur was made in sixteen hours as part of the 98 weeks workshop, Beirut, September 2008.

Theatre of War

Shot in Saddam Hussein’s hilltop palace in the mountains overlooking the River Tigris, Theatre of War is a slow, virtually static video piece redolent of classical history painting. Audio was recorded at the official US military hand-over ceremony at the nearby city of Saniya. A mullah’s prayer for unity among Arabs is spoken, after which the pan-Arab national anthem, Mawtini (My Homeland) is played, emphasizing Arab national solidarity and a pan-Arab territory. Made in Iraq in March 2009.

Cinematography and Editing by Trevor Tweeten. Digital Color and Post Production by Jerome Thelia.

View more here