Omnipendent

This Summer marked the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain which is being celebrated at its original site on London’s Southbank with a four month festival of British culture and creativity that runs until September 4th.
There are many diverse installations around the site including a series of stunning images by leading photographer Robert Wilson on the open upper terrace of the Hayward Gallery.

His work, Helmand, charts the harsh realities of life in Afghanistan’s conflict zone. Shot over a two week period in 2008 , and published as a book later that year, the series is shown here for the first time in an entirely public setting. It is impossible not to draw comparisons between the concrete walled landscape of the Southbank Centre and the functional nature of wartime environments. Recording the daily lives of the troops and civilians alike, the project is both tender and confrontational.

Omni printed around 30 images at varying sizes up to 200cm x 130cm on vinyl which were mounted to Di Bond with an anti graffiti seal and fixed to the concrete walls. We have rarely seen such detail and quality in photographic images, especially given the nature of the locations. Robert certainly pushed our techniques to the limit but it was well worth it as the results are quite amazing. We look forward to working with Robert and his team again in the not too distant future.

Since 1948 The Aldeburgh Festival, in Suffolk, has been primarily about music, after all one of its founding fathers was Benjamin Britten, however there has always been a strong visual arts presence.
Over the past few years a number of leading contemporary artists have taken up residence in the area and, being a fairly tight knit bunch, they started talking about having a group show.

The Aldeburgh Festival presented the oportunity and so Snap, featuring work by 12 artists, all with ties to East Anglia, was born. With artists including Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume and Abigail Lane (who organised the show), there were echoes of the legendary Freeze show back in the 1980’s, which launched the careers of many of the “YBA’s”.

Omni’s main contribution to the festival however was the production of Snap:The Portfolio 2011, an edition of 50 prints by each of the 12 contributing artists, to celebrate the exhibition and raise money for the event, published by the Paul Stolper Gallery. Printed at 4 sheet billboard size on blueback poster paper the edition eschewed the more tried and tested printing processes in favour of a more radical approach - in the true spirit of Snap.

Watch Me Move at the Barbican is the most extensive exhibition ever mounted to present the full range of animated imagery produced in the last 150 years. It brings together industry pioneers, independent film-makers and contemporary artsists including William Kentridge and Natalie Djurbeg alongside the creative output of commercial studios such as Walt Disney, Aardman and Pixar. Cutting across generations and cultures, the show features over 170 works, from iconic clips to lesser known masterpieces.

The signage in the galleries certainly matches the impressive and fascinating content of the show. Omni produced and installed a vast amount of vinyl graphics using metalic, fluoresent and even light sensitive vinyl for which, being unable to find a material that met the designer’s specification, we silk screened a special coating on to a stock vinyl which did the trick.

For an installtion by artists Igloo (Bruno Martelli & Ruth Gibson) we transformed one of the gallery spaces into something resembling the room of a derelict house, printing and installing wallpaper on the walls, ceiling, door and graphics on the floor.
Watch Me Move is certainly one of the most interesting and challenging gallery installations we have worked on for some time and we look forward to similar projects in the future.

Watch Me Move : The Animation Show
15 June - 11 September 2011
The Barbican Art Gallery
Photo Credit : Lyndon Douglas

For Nicky's first project we produced and installed wallpaper images in the waiting areas of the Oxford Eye Hospital. The works used only the sky and clouds from paintings selected from the nearby Ashmolean Museum Collection, including Summer Sunset attributed to John Constable. These were enlarged to ‘life size’ containing no recognisable landmarks or anything to represent scale, thus creating an ‘Everyman’, ‘Anywhere’ impression of the world beyond the walls of the hospital.

Nicky’s second commission was at the new Pharmacy Manufacturing Facility at Guy’s Hospital, where wallpaper and vinyl graphics on the windows were created for key areas of the staff room and receptions in the Link waiting Area. The work used the inspiration of Venn diagrams to create an abstract analogy where people and prescribed drugs are combined and can produce unexpected results.

Venn diagrams use circles to represent sets, the position and overlap of the circles shows how items relate to each other, most of the ‘action’ is in the overlapping areas. When a drug does not ‘work’ for a person a ‘Special’ must be prepared to meet the patient’s specific clinical need, a prime function of the Pharmacy Manufacturing Facility.

Following a successful racing career and a spell at stud at Overbury in Gloucestersire that has yielded five bonny foals it was felt that, at the grand old age of sixteen, Days Of Grace deserved a comfortable retirement. She is now enjoying life in the paddocks at The Durdens stables, just a stones throw from Epsom racecourse. She has made friends quickly, particularly with a chunky Welsh Cob named Archie.

Just a paddock away, Daisy’s first born, Mogok Ruby has also recently retired from racing and, at time of writing, a new home is being sought for him as a riding and possibly eventing horse. Having enjoyed many successful years on the racetrack Mogi rather “lost his mojo” over the past year and so a new home and career awaits. After a short break to enable him to grow into his considerable frame, Daisy’s fourth foal, Mi Sun Donk, is now back in training with Brett Johnson at the Durdens racing yard.