Who:
Richard Gaston is a young photographer based in Glasgow.

EDINBURGH by Richard Gaston

Why we like it:
Gaston uses light and colour in a unique way, creating his own quirky style which is perceptible across his work.

Hidden treasure:
With summer now at an end, we liked the picture below and remain optimistic for an Indian summer this autumn.

SVEN COOLS by Richard Gaston

More: Website | Flickr

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Want to take a look at more suggested blogs by artists? Look here.

Letitia Lehner (aka konkurbiene) is a designer who creates a selection of work from graphics to photography and some moving stuff in between. Click on the image above to see more of Letitia’s work.

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Made to exhibit at the London Design Festival ‘Yolk’ was made to sit comfortably between fine art, product design and installation. A prototype with many possible directions.

Click on the image above to find out more about the work.

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Within my current body of work I am interested in exploring the tension between reality and representation by constructing transitional, three-dimensional map-like objects.

The act of mapping is a powerful tool for constructing new realities out of old facts, to visualize alternative worlds and to enable interrelationships between previously unrelated layers of information. Maps are evolving structures, rhizomatic in nature, able to unfold identities, to give room to exploration and procedures of relating.

Cognitive and mental mapping allows for new images of space, time and relationships to emerge and to illuminate a path through the memory structures of our minds. It is precisely this ‘potential to reveal’ that I am interested in, this tension between reality and representation that fascinates me. Engaging with the landscape – may it be mental or physical – and changing perceptions by expanding the field to include differing viewpoints enables me to uncover previously unseen or unimagined realities and foster connections between fields.

I specialize in a technique often called flameworking, lampworking or scientific glassblowing and within my current body of work I have started to investigate a little explored combination of scientific glassblowing and Neon sign industry skills to create unique new work.

Due to the nature of illuminated sign technology and a lack of scientific glassblowing know-how within the Neon industry, Neon signs are usually constructed from single, continuous glass tubes, using lead-free or soda-lime glass. These types of glasses are often referred to as ‘soft’ glasses due to their lower melting temperature. Shapes are achieved with bends only and connections with other glass tubes are rare. In my work, instead of using traditional ‘soft’ glass common in the Neon sign industry, I am using ‘hard’ borosilicate glass. This allows me to extend the main illuminated body with further detailed glasswork that would be difficult to achieve in soft glass.

The resulting work is a unique combination of illuminated sign and scientific glassblowing skill.

See more work by ukedjulia here.

Ingleby Gallery, Until 25^th September 2010

On seeing Iran do Espirito Santo’s exhibition at Ingleby, a friend commented that the work had ‘no temperature’. At the time this laconic remark was heeded unquestioningly, seeming as it did, to surmise the work on show with a concise precision. Only later did I considered the potential implication of such a response- what is it to be without temperature? Is it comparable to lacking a pulse? Or even being devoid of a heart? 

Using a stark, minimal palette of black, white and intermittent shades of grey, Espirito Santo’s sculptural objects, photograms and wall-painted works are executed with a clinical precision- free from trace of human hand or emotional expression. He plays with contrasts and contradictions; razor-sharp lines sit alongside fuzzy edges, some surfaces reflect, others absorb and certain works treat the permanent with temporary gesture whilst others bestow permanence on the ephemeral.

Two photogram series demonstrate his scientific sensibility- seven different shades of grey resulting from staggered exposure times make-up Standby, whilst Twist depicts a quintet of identical sheets of paper, folded five separate ways to create a series of distinct new forms. Pencil graphite has then been applied to add a further grey shade to the fractured geometric shapes- creating a cryptic tonal interplay across the series. Photograms, created by placing objects directly onto the surface of photosensitive paper before exposing them to light, were famously utilised by Man Ray in the 1920s. However, whilst his Dadaist predecessor playfully explored the arbitrary potential of the medium by adding and moving objects around mid-exposure, Espirito Santo employs a far more rigid, controlled approach. Exposure times are calculated and recorded, and shapes and tones meticulously measured, in order to produce results that appear to have been pre-determined far in advance. 

Sitting proudly at the gallery entrance is the exhibition’s poster-boy, Water Glass. An item of exceptional, austere beauty- it sits like a rare, untouched gem upon its white plinth. On closer inspection however, the glass, apparently filled to the brim, appears impossibly perfect– causing critical suspicions over the integrity of what its title claims it to be. By revealing it to be solid crystal, the exhibition floor plan decisively and disappointingly shatters its intriguing ambiguity (further disappointment regarding its presumed rarity is to be had in discovering that, as one of an edition of 25, it has 24 identical twins being admired elsewhere). 

This procedure of taking banal, domestic items and transforming them into precious objects of desire recurs in the artists practice; an awkwardly outsized pencil formed in stainless steel lies discreetly upstairs, whilst further works see lightbulbs cast in solid glass and tin cans enlarged and finished with black gloss. In creating these preserved representations, he bestows an alternative value upon these familiar forms and a practical lifespan far greater than their traditional expectancy. However, this immortalisation process also effectively robs the object of its fundamental function, creating in it a sense of melancholic redundancy- turning it into an impotent fetish; a pencil that can’t write, a frozen lightbulb that doesn’t light, a glass that won’t pour.

En Passant 5, a dramatic gradated greyscale wall-painting encompasses the entire first floor gallery space. Created by a team of assistants over the course of two weeks, the works consists of one horizontal and three vertical striped walls. Evocative of Robert Irwin and Michael Asher, it embodies established minimalist principles, creating in the viewer a heightened awareness of the relationship between the work and the environment in which it is shown- as well as their own self in relation to both the work and the space. The human endeavour that went into its production is belied by the mechanical precision and consistency of its final appearance and any domestic warmth of the household paint is lost in its harsh industrial pallor.

Espirito Santo’s work has a cool, slick elegance that whilst proving alluringly seductive, initially seems ultimately primed to deliver a cold-shoulder.

But then the natural light outside shifts.

A new sun causes the walls upstairs to dance and ebb producing an effect that both destabilizes and thrills- elsewhere an ember of vivid light refracts in the crystal glass. It becomes clear that the artist has consciously considered and employed light, not only as a producer, but also as an ongoing catalyst to alter and affect the work after its completion. It is perhaps this factor that gives the work life and temperature- provided, that is, you’re in the right place at the right time to see it.

See more work from Katie Johnston here.

Grass Routes by Libby Day