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Courtyard Rooms, South Wing, Somerset House, London

Horiyoshi III, the internationally renowned tattoo artist currently has his first exhibition in London at the esteemed Somerset House.

Horiyoshi belongs to a royal line of horishi tattoo artists: those specialising in the traditional full-body tattoo called Irezumi. This exhibition studies his paintings on silk as well as displaying tattoo instruments and paint brushes.

Kokoro means ‘heart‘ and ‘feeling‘ in Japanese and through the paintings exhibited Horiyoshi III preserves traditional Japanese culture and mythology through incredibly beautiful silk paintings. Each painting shows typical Japanese images such as dragons, koi’s and white phoenix’s, but each one is depicted is varying sensitivity, intricacy and harshness depending on the story told. The diverse nature of each painting gives the exhibition an eclectic feel considering that most of the paintings are all the same size and repetitively placed beside one another. The varying brush strokes and colours used also add to this fantastic effect.

Having “vowed to never be lazy until the day I die”, he still tattoos six days a week after thirty years of practice. You can see a video of Horiyoshi III at work here which The Guardian recently made.

After meeting Ed Hardy (the exhibition opens with a quote from Hardy about Horiyoshi’s pioneering impact on tattoo culture and history) and becoming close friends, Horiyoshi started to use the electric needle alongside using traditional techniques and pioneered a new form of Japanese tattooing.

The exhibition is free and runs from now until until the 1st of June, it is open every day from 10.00-18.00. More information can be found here

It’s only by invitation, so if you too want to be blinded by the mirror of smoke, the blue fish shark tower, the dilatante scum scraper, the ordained premadonna… CONTACT US ASAP: rm@sangbleu.com

Alan Vega and his band Suicide are widely regarded as the godfathers of “No Wave.” The group’s seminal 1977 album Suicide is cited as an important influence by musicians such as Joy Division, Nick Cave, Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, The Horrors, The Cars, and Bruce Springsteen. Vega studied art in the 1950s under Ad Reinhardt and Kurt Seligman and was involved in the Art Workers Coalition. In 1969 he founded MUSEUM: A Project of Living Artists, an artist-run 24-hour multimedia gallery in Manhattan. Vega’s own artworks consist of light sculptures constructed from electronic debris. Previous honorees include activist and art historian Julie Ault (2010) and filmmaker and choreographer Yvonne Rainer (2011).

This event is held exclusively for the Friends of Artists Space. A limited number of tickets are available. Please contact: friends@artistsspace.org to inquire about tickets or how to join the Friends of Artists Space.

http://artistsspace.org/

The incredible photographs by Diane Arbus are about to reside in the Fotomuseum in Zurich until the end of May. Two hundred photographs will be on display showing Arbus’s world of couples, children, carnival performers, nudists, middle-class families, transvestites, zealots, eccentrics, and celebrities. Arbus’s spectacular ability to showcase a total honesty in her subjects found around New York still remain unbeatable in originality, as well as existing as a piece of amazing 20th century American history.

Find out more here:http://www.fotomuseum.ch

The exhibition runs from the 3rd of March until the 28th of June 2012

Olive Oatman was kidnapped from her Mormon family in the Gila River (present-day Arizona) by the Yavapai Indians, while her family were traveling across the South West of America in 1851.
Most of her family were murdered but her and her sister, Mary-Ann were kidnapped by the Yavapai. After receiving harsh treatment by them for a year she was ransomed by a band of Mohaves. Olive went on to be accepted into the Mohave lifestyle and spent four years living with them. This was most famously acknowledged with her blue chin tattoo.
Mohaves considered tattoos to be a form of identification in the afterlife. The tattoo was secured by pricking the skin in small regular rows with a cactus pine until the skin bled freely. The cactus spikes were then dipped in weed juice and blue stone powder which was then applied to the pinpricks on the face. These chin tattoos indicated that the woman was ready to embark in adult tribal life.
Chin designs with the Mohaves were chosen by the tattooists and were based on the shape of the face. Narrow faced people usually wore designs of narrow lines or dots to accentuate the length of the face. Patterns for broad faces tended to have wider lines and cover more of the chin, making the face look even broader.
Olive was ransomed in 1856 by the United States Government at Ft. Yuma. On her discovery she was apparently found in nothing but a skirt made of bark which fueled suspicions of debauchery and sexual exploits.  Considering her puritanical upbringing, Olive’s experience was deemed as outrageous. An ambitious Methodist minister named Royal Byron Stratton wrote a scandalous book about her story which was named Olive and Mary Ann. The book sold 30,000 copies, a huge best-seller for that era. Rumours of her mothering two children by the chief’s son circulated but she denied this thoroughly.

Her story gripped the country so much that in the 1880′s, the “tattooed captive” became a popular circus theme. Their stories turned provocatively, on the notion that people of colour could transform whites into people of colour  ethnically and decoratively, as a means of exploitation and degradation.
Images and stories of Oatman’s tattoo fed the new America’s fear and ignorance’s towards the First World. In many ways Olive’s tattoo has captured a rather colonial view of the First World as terrifying primitives. Rather than a rather uplifting story of acceptance of this new culture and lifestyle bestowed upon her. Olive often proclaimed her love for the Mohaves in interviews and her brother indicated that she would weep night after night after leaving them. It has been said that she was the first white woman in America’s recorded history to have a tattoo.
Much material written about Olive appears to be confused and sensational but a  comprehensive book, The Blue Tattoo has recently been written about Olive’s life. Check it out here.

The classic Belle de Jour will be having a matinee showing at the beautiful art deco Rio cinema in Dalston, London this Sunday.

You can buy tickets here and find out more: http://www.riocinema.org.uk/

Here are stories I’ve captured during this trip. “

watch the complete series here:

http://builtonrespect.com/?p=1306

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Travelin’ Mick is a photographer and journalist, who has been relentlessly roaming the world in search of the last remaining tattoo cultures of this planet to record and thus conserve them for posterity.

By visiting and documenting the last remaining traditional tattooing practices on all continents, he tries to preserve those cultures and show them to the world in images that express the beauty and pride of ethnic groups and traditional communities, who still bear the marks of their people.

Now let me start with an overall impression and I’ll get more specific as I keep posting: I arrived on the Wednesday. Went directly to the Salem show at the Delano (Hosted by the Hole). Caught up with Fabiola (first and last time I saw her of the week!), watched the show, then went to see Harif and Dani at the Soho house. I slept in a derelict room of the Shelborn Hotel and still made it to the fair on the next day though. Liam and Danny had not arrived yet. I saw a lot of very beautiful things things and basically from there onwards, everything is a big misty chaos of memories.

S♠LEM

A R T B A S E L

Olafur Eliasson
Your plural view
2011
mirror, stainless steel, aluminium
78 1/2 x 76 x 74 inches; 199.4 x 193 x 188 cm

Tomas Saraceno
As yet untitled (3+5 module makrolon cloud)
2011
acrylic, polyester rope, acylic hardware
cloud of 3/ 43 1/4 x 37 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches; 110x 95 x 65 cm
cloud of 5: 57 x 45 1/4 x 43 1/4 inches; 145 x 115 x 110 cm

Kumie Tsuda
Walking and memorizing (Echo Park)
2011
ceramic
176 x 173 x h. 19 cm
Tomio Koyama Gallery

more posts on the same topics soon!