Franko B in conversation with art critic and historian, Edward Lucie Smith.
6.30pm, Thursday 2nd June. The Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ
Discussion will revolve around the theories and concerns which inform Franko B's work and his current exhibition at The Nunnery, 'I Still Love'. This will be followed by a screening of a documentary accompanying his recent solo exhibition in Milan.
I STILL LOVE is Franko B’s first solo exhibition in London for seven years and features a new series of embroidered canvases, never before shown in the UK. The canvases, which depict animals, flowers, portraits and the male body, as well as images of torture and war, return to the central themes of Franko B’s work – death, eroticism, intimacy, pain and compassion. These recurrent motifs find a delicate new means of expression through the exclusive use of red and white cotton on unprimed canvas.
Franko B was born in Milan in 1960 and has lived in London since 1979. He graduated from Chelsea College and has been producing work across a diverse range of media since the early 1990s. Since 2009, he has been Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Macerata, Italy. Franko B is the current Artist in Residence with Bow Arts Trust.
Edward Lucie-Smith is an internationally known art critic and historian, who is also a poet, anthologist and a practising photographer. He has published more than a hundred books in all, more than sixty of them about art. Lucie-Smith’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and in Britain he was for many years a well-known broadcaster and journalist. He currently writes regularly for Art Review.
Doors will open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start.
Following the talk and screening, the exhibition will remain open until 9pm.
To reserve a place, please RSVP to nunnery@bowarts.com.
Gallery open Friday – Sunday, 1-5pm | Exhibition continues 6th May – 5th June 2011
Entry is free
Watching movies like "Just Wright", "Jumpin' The Broom" or even "Love Jones" shows love at its best especially "black love". Love is so beautiful it is like a sweet soliloquy serenading nature. But have you ever stop and said to yourself if love is like this,Why am I 30 something and single? I can relate to this question and many other questions that run through your head. Every little girl has a fantasy of meeting Prince Charming and being swept off her feet. But what if Prince Charming never comes and in the end you wonder has your clock ran out. Was your glass slipper misplaced in the lost and found? And was Prince Charming searching for the slipper. Maybe or Maybe not but being 30 something and single is not the end of the world. In my own personal life I had to come to grips that I was looking for love in all the wrong faces and places. I was hoping the guys I selected were Prince Charming. I was hoping they would see my value and love me for me. However, every Prince was more like a diversion of the real King God has for me. My version of Prince Charming was a toad and I end up settling for their half baked love. I was wondering why they could not see my value, in reality I did not value myself so I tolerated (condone, authorize, put up with) things. I began to abuse myself by not seeing my own worth. So my twenties rolled by me and I still found myself still single while my friends had a man or got married. For a minute, I thought something was wrong with me. How can I be 30 something and still single? Well, I started to do a self evaluation in 2010 then God showed me how I was living for everyone else instead of myself. The covers came off in 2011 and God revealed to me I was a pushover, people pleaser and did not see the value in myself. The truth hurt me but it did set me free. So,now just like you I am 30 something and single. Does this make me less of a catch because I am in my 30's and a single mom? Not at all, I have found my worth in God and value myself now. The blindfolds came off in May so now I appreciate the diamond I am and see the shine I have on the inside. My shine got so much swag it sparkles on the outside. Therefore being 30 something and single has so much potential. My goals are clearer and I am more focused. My career path is about to flourish. All I have to do is let God do His thing while I soak up the sun and ride the journey. Now being single has great new possibilities to enjoy life, tour the world and be bigger and greater than I could ever become....Marriage will come I have time and so do you!
In an effort to reduce my Mocha intake, I didn't commit to actually drinking more water, instead I commited to just make it readily available at my desk. Low and behold... it's working! It used to be that I would consume one 16-20oz coffee for the drive in, another 20oz Mocha for my morning workload, and then maybe another large Mocha for the ride home! Now I skip the home coffee, treat myself to one Mocha for the ride in, make it last halfway through my morning workload, then switch to water. And the warmer weather is naturally making me skip the afternoon Mocha in favor of something icy-cold instead. These changes, combined with my recent bout of nausea, have already taken the tension in my snug waistband down a notch.
Franko B Summer Salon
Saturday 25 June, 3-7pm. SE1 Project Space, 46 Willow Walk, London SE1 5SF
Part of Bow Arts Open 2011.
- All welcome -
Franko B has been running his ART POLITICS SEX Salons at Bow Arts Trust over the past two years, and at other venues across Europe since 2003. The event attracts a regular group of artists and art lovers who want to share their views and their creativity with others. (Read more about ARTS POLITICS SEX here.)
Review by Steph Hurst for Spoonfed:
I Still Love is Franko B’s first solo exhibition in London for seven years. His latest body of work at The Nunnery Gallery is a series of larger-than-life images stitched onto canvas with yarn. The Nunnery (actually a former nunnery, with the architectural interior to prove it) lives down a long alleyway of artist studios, lit by a constellation of dangling fluorescent lights. This bright, high-ceilinged space provides a good home for the, ahem, well-hung embroidered canvases.
The front gallery is quiet and blanched with a muted palette of bone-coloured cotton on unprimed canvas. The aesthetic is minimal and features portraits of torture alongside a bird and a blank canvas. The grouping of these images becomes an overture for the rest of the show.
The nave gallery introduces playful, erotic imagery. Twinkies kissing. A robin perched on a branch. A double hanging (as seen in the front gallery) is re-appropriated in bright red Egyptian cotton, accentuating the colour contrast. There is language in the sharp elbows of the bold contour lines—in the curves of two penises kissing. They almost seem to be moving.
The images are both appropriated and personal. “I don’t want to work with images that repulse me,” Franko says, “but with images that I can’t forget – that are ingrained in my memory.” I have seen some of this work in his studio – subjects projected onto canvas with an old-school overhead projector. He condenses the original images to produce flat, stylised renderings. Grouped with the occasional flower or bird, war and brutality comprise the majority of the images. Arranged together in one place, they seem to engage in conversation.
The back gallery is the noisiest – floor to ceiling with 22 square canvases including several military portraits, a triptych of Tom (and the rambling scar on his abdomen), a couple of hangings (the thick red noose and the negative space), and my personal favourite, the spectacular sprawling of barbed wire.
In a recent documentary of I Still Love at PAC Milan, Franko says, “I’m an artist who works with single images. When I choose which image to work with, I choose one that has touched me or that keeps my attention. This might be two cute boys kissing and I feel some emotion towards it, or a child who has just escaped and survived an attack on his school, which has killed most of the other children. To me, it has the same effect.” The results are eye-catching (and highly collectible).
Franko’s distinctive branding – where classical meets queer – appears in the exclusive use of red and white. He’s been tagged a New Romantic, and I Still Love doesn’t deviate, but evolves the artist’s multidisciplinary approach… in other words, it works.
Franko B – I Still Love is at the Nunnery until 5th June 2011.
Thursday 2nd June
Franko B will discuss the theories and concerns which inform his work and the diverse range of approaches he takes to producing art. There will also be a screening of a documentary accompanying his recent solo exhibition in Milan. Doors will open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Following the talk, the exhibition will stay open until 9pm.
To reserve a place, please RSVP to nunnery@bowarts.com.
Franko B - I STILL LOVE - exhibition open 6th May - 5th June 2011, Friday-Sunday.
The Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ
I so enjoy receiving little crafty preschool gifts that I had no hand in researching, setting up, executing, or cleaning up after! :)
Thanks to everyone who came.
The exhibition, I STILL LOVE is open now until 5th June 2011 - Friday-Sunday, 1-5pm.
Artist's talk 8th May, 2pm
The Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ
