Alien Sex Club

British multi-media artist, John Walter has launched his new project ‘Alien Sex Club’ exploring the relationship between visual culture and HIV today. It will feature artists, HIV specialists, clinical academics and scientists, in collaboration to produce a public programme free and open to the general public.

As an immersive experience, it's ability to raise awareness and address this complex subject, is only heightened. The visitor will discover large scale installations inspired by the shapes of ‘cruise mazes’, spatial forms found in sex clubs and gay saunas. Amongst other traditional forms of art viewing, one will be able to get lost in maze and drink in the performance bar whilst watching video art as well as live performances.

"The exhibition aims to use art as a way of addressing increasing rates of HIV diagnosis in gay men in the UK and open up a discussion about that, to update the discourse about art being a political tool by doing activism in a new way, not the 80s way,"

Walter says, explaining that, "because HIV has changed in that time due to changes in treatment and the (in)visibility of HIV - I'm using a maximalist aesthetic to look at HIV as a web of interconnecting problems, whereas artists like Felix Gonzalez Torres were using a minimalist aesthetic to address it earlier in the AIDS crisis."

The exhibition will run in the summer of 2015 at the Ambika P3 Gallery in London.

Charles Lim

Artist, Charles Lim is representing Singapore in the 56th International Art Exhibition, the Venice Biennale. On display is a body of work developed since 2005 titled SEA STATE, a project in nine parts that explores the political, biophysical and psychic contours of the Southeast Asian city-state, through the visible and invisible lenses of the sea.

Lim’s practise is an intimate engagement with the natural world and our ways of monitoring it’s movements. SEA SCAPE for example, is particularly inspired by the World Meteorological Organization’s numbered code which measures the varying states of sea conditions from, calm, to moderate, to the phenomenal.

Likewise, Singapore is a place of radical changing experiences, from the physical effects of tropical forces on an urban city/island located along the equator in an era of climate change, to the fast-paced infrastructures of global capitalism in the context of post-colonialism. It is furthermore, the centre of world exchange and debates, representing a host of modern anxieties that Charles Lim characterises through the symbolic interplay between nature and culture.

Ultimately, what is immediately apparent in reading SEA SCAPE is how it portrays a national imaginary, reflecting both Singapore’s aspirations and realisations. As the artist himself maintains:

“Singapore reclaims and recreates itself constantly - this is the paramount expression of its will.

SEA STATE converges these debates into the transnational space of the sea as it incites responses, contexts and dilemmas, then, of this time, our time.”

FRESH May Playlist

1) Circuit Breaker by WILDCAT!  WILDCAT!

2) Concrete And Clay by UNIT 4 + 2  3) Borderline by TOVE STYRKE

4) frankie wants to be alone by MY LITTLE AIRPORT

5) Run by SAN CISCO  6) Feel It Again by LONE COAST

7) Bassically by TEI SHI

8) Ain’t That Easy by D’ANGELO AND THE VANGUARD

9) She’s a Witch by GENGAHR  10) Dancing Anymore by IS TROPICAL

INSA Space GIF-ITTI

British artist, INSA’s GIF-ITTI is a revolutionary way to engage with the public sphere, where online meets street art and can reached unprecedented numbers of viewers worldwide.

His psychedelic works are painted on layer by layer, each being photographed before they are re-painted and then finally turned into gifs to be shared on Tumblr. His most recent ambitious creation takes it one step further, creating a 14,000 square metre mural on the ground in Brazil, photographed from a satellite 4 times.

The result is a staggering and inspirational view from space: A unique piece of digital art.

"[The] internet has changed our view on art," INSA says in his video documenting the process of his new work. "I wanted to cross both worlds and make work that existed in online space even more than it existed in real space."

Carsten Holler: Decision

Artist, Carsten Holler puts the fun in art viewing with his upcoming exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London opening on on June 10th, set to bring in a new group of art enthusiasts. If you ever wanted to rediscover your inner-child, here is your chance. The Belgian artist has been commissioned by the Southbank gallery to create two 39 metre-long, 15.5 metre-high installations titled "Isomeric Slides" to produce "an emotional state that is a unique condition somewhere between delight and madness".

Yes you heard us right. Giant slides facing the Thames River. Sold? We are. 

Alongside this work, he will be showcasing other interactive works based on the process of decision-making, which places agency onto the audience. Among these includes a ceiling-mounted timepiece titled “Pill Clock” that will drop a load of unidentified pills onto the public who are able to swallow one with the help of a drinking fountain nearby if they so wish. According to Holler, this produces a type of ‘active uncertainty’ fuelled by a natural curiosity turned into a game of risk and joy for the viewer.

Carsten Holler: Decision opens on 10 June and runs till to 6 September at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank. 

FRESH April Playlist

1) Hunny Bunny by GIRLS 2) Fireball by Rayana Jay 

3) Why iii Love the Moon by PHONEY PPL

4) River BY IBEYI  5) Without a Plan by LUSINE

6) Mean Streets by TENNIS 

7) Slipping away by TANLINES 8) The Lonely by THE UGLY CLUB

9) Change by KETO

10) Grizzly Bear by ANGUS AND JULIA STONE

FOOUND

Creative industries thrive on spaces that nurture collaborations and communities as platforms for artistic exchanges.  Geneva’s newly opened FOOUND takes on the historic baton-pole from Andy Warhol’s own fabulously seductive and seminal NYC Factory, within which he created some of his most famous pop art, serving as a meeting place for the intermingling of musicians, artists, sexual radicals and film-makers alike.

FOOUND is a beautiful concept store on the rue Jean Gutenberg 16 just 5 minutes away from Cornavin station and also housed in an abandoned factory whose primary objective is to promote and sustain young Genevan artists and entrepreneurs.

It is a large-scale space boasting 500 sq. metres and two floors, filled with little niches of craft shops, artist ateliers, restaurants and cafés, but also hairdressers, nutritionists, yoga and Pilate’s instructors, and a tattoo parlour. There’s even a flashy international architecture studio called A-Bureau sitting comfortably next to a few experts in astrology.

Although, ‘eccentric artist types’ might come to mind, FOOUND is not a self-contained artistic hub but is open for business. Run by the practical mind of ex-retail marketer Fanny Arnaudo. Prepare to be blown away by the thoughtful retro-interior Swedish designs that are almost too perfectly selected and arranged to the oh-so-trendy 3D printers that will make you a toy on the spot.

Part-exhibition, part-marketplace; Here are 21st century crossroads which join the commercial with creative ideas. Open to the public and very much for sale.

Prue Stent

Prue Stent is a 21-year-old photographer based in Melbourne, Australia that has blown us away with her playful depictions of texture, illusion and life. Her work touches upon themes such as femininity and female identity.

Her ‘Pink’ series visually communicates the social constructs of colour and gender to address issues of perfection by depicting the female body, adorned with non-conventional materials in non-conventional positions. Whether her photographs show breasts or hands dripping with a cotton-candy liquid, or diaphanous material floating in the wind, an extension of the body itself, movement is intermingled with a tactile sensuality creating a viewing space of new imagined realities.

FRESH March Playlist

Grab your roller skates and hum in the sunshine with Brigitte or throw a barbecue party with classic Billie Davis on stereo. Here's to angsty warm morning walks with springtime breezes and the sound of Honne's futuristic soul tunes to calm our nerves. March, we've been expecting you..

1. Just Once by SHURA 2. Float Forever by PEACE

3. Chemistry by DREAMWIFE

4. Let’s Go by MATT & KIM 5. Black Honey by TEENAGER

6. I Want You to Be My Baby by BILLIE DAVIS

7. All in the Value by HONNE

8. You Have Another Lover by KILL J 9. J'sais pas by BRIGITTE

10. Another Love (Zwette Edit) by TOM ODELL

Molly Goddard AW15

Girly tulle and diaphanous fantasy is embodied in the designs by East London British designer Molly Goddard who once again melted out hearts as she shined through the BFC courtyard show space at Somerset House during London Fashion Week. Her work thematically describes coming of age and nostalgia taking inspiration from party dresses and Sunday best through clothes that are conflicted with the beauty of her delicate technique and a charming awkwardness of her fabric combinations and poofy silhouettes.

She is a young bright thing, only just graduating from an MA at Central Saint Martins in 2012 and loves to show off her arts heritage. For her AW15 presentation, we were treated to models clad in beautiful ball gowns in the middle of a life drawing session. The street-cast gang of girls actively being creative and generally just having fun is a truly refreshing mode of positive fashion display. We can’t wait to see what she does next.