London Calling @ Beady Minces

I got a chance to head down to the Beady Minces Gallery in Venice for apart's London Calling exhibit today. I heard a lot of good stuff about this show so I'm glad I got a chance to check it out before it was over.

This exhibit featured a lot of international artists. I saw a lot of great stuff. I saw this great photography called "MPH 6" by John Counsell. Basically it was a shot of someone or something moving through a forest at high speed. Click here to check it out. Also pretty cool was a sculpture(?) by Dominic Allan called "Here's Looking at You Kid," essentially a mannequin of a little girl covered with like 30,000 plastic googly eyes. I noticed almost all the googly eyes were identical with slightly larger pairs placed randomly throughout. Weird. Luis Perez's "Classic Mini" painting (seriously, it's a painting) was pretty amazing as well. Check it out here.

But my absolute favorite was a massive wallhanger by Sean Alexander called Red. Basically it was a huge portrait of Michael Caine which was made of strips of wood textured.... paper? I guess. It was very cool. Turns out that without even knowing it, I was sort of familiar with Mr. Alexander's work. He’s the guy behind the album cover for Paul Weller's Illumination a few years back.

After Beady Minces, I was also able to make it down to West L.A. to see the Year of the Rat exhibit at GR2. Also very cool. I’d been meaning to check it out since it opened last month, I'd just been a little busy. But, I got down there and sure enough, they were partying like its 4706 up in there. GR2 is an interesting place. I suppose it's a store since they sell various items, such as my super useful Nyokki! Egg Pet Plant and stuffed flowers by Takashi Murakami but it's also a mini-gallery. They had some very interesting pieces. I absolutely loved this piece from Andrew Holder. This one was really cool too. Man, I really wish I had some additional wall space at home.

The London Calling exhibit runs from March 10 to April 6th (tomorrow). So much like the Giant Robot show I previously wrote about, if you’re only now hearing about London Calling, chances are you missed it. You snooze you lose again, suckas!

Year of the Rat runs at GR2 through April 16. Check it out!