Graffiti Word Search

We are proud to present a short film featuring Shesh, Tizer, Zics & Keim hitting up the offices of one of the most well known search engines out there (renowned for their crazy office spaces) with a giant graffiti word search...

Come and see us at 100% Design Stand 0145

It's London Design Festival and once again we're at 100% Design - stand 0145.

Swing by for a game of table tennis with the team while we showcase the Heinz project we've just completed in the Netherlands.

We'll also have a showreel of our other recent projects, sweet treats and awesome tunes.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Tweet us @acrylicize if you're planning a visit.

Phone-free at festivals signals creativity and expression

Taken from James' Huffington Post blog.

It is with a heavy heart that I write this piece. As the summer is drawing to a close, with it departs one of the highlights of my year...festival season. 

For those who are prepared to brave the elements, don't mind getting a little closer to nature and can live without a hot shower for a few days, the rewards are plentiful - Music, Art and all out good times. It's pure indulgence that brings people together in a truly unique way with everyone seemingly at their happiest and most creative.

There's something about the open air, the lack of any real time frame or responsibility, the experience of discovering new music and meeting new people around each corner that makes a festival such a special place. It's this pure indulgence that appeals to me every time - a feast for the senses; the taste of cider, the feel of grass under your feet, the fresh air, the insane sound systems, the guys with the crazy outfits, the art installations, the muffled bass heard from the distance, the sound of zips running up and down of tents, the crackle of fires all of which form shared experiences based around a wealth of different art forms.

For me it's as far away from the static, serious environment of the gallery space as can be, creating an opportunity to really engage with the creativity on offer as opposed to just standing and looking. Of course music plays the lead role in all of this and the shared energy of a group of people experiencing a piece of music together can't be compared to the traditional institution of the Art gallery. However, for me the essence of involvement and accessibility is something that inspires me to make music and art. Each time I go to a festival it's like recharging my creative batteries.

Talking of batteries, when I think about what contributes to this sense of freedom and expression I notice that one thing is missing - mobile phones. Whether it's because you choose to leave them behind or because you can't get signal, there is a sense of phone freedom at festivals. At the recent Shambala festival, heads were up, people were looking around noticing their environment and each other.

Shambala is renowned for being a getaway for those looking "to play, to reinvent, revitalise and then to return to the world fuelled-up on the beauty of being alive", in their own words.

There was definitely something in the fact that the mobile phone shackles had been lifted and for those four days the festival benefitted enormously from it.

Being a slave to your phone has always been something that troubles me, something that shows no sign of going away any time soon. When you walk around London at any given time you see peoples faces buried in their screens - messages, games, networking, socialising, banking, shopping, music. The whole world has been condensed into a small plastic box and I am no exception. All we hear are the virtues and benefits of this ubiquitous mobile culture; information in the palm of your hand, your future partner maybe one click away, shopping made oh so easy by advertisers knowing exactly what you like. But we rarely hear about what we lose out of this.

I've never understood how spending your precious time stacking icons of fruits on top of each other does much good for the world. Nor how, instead of watching live music, it is better to watch it through your phone screen, desperately trying to film it over the shoulder of the person in front of you. This misses the energy and reality of the moment only to leave you with a low-res version taken on a camera and microphone that can't deal with the frequencies that you'll probably never watch back... 

When I looked around this summer in festival land, I hardly saw anyone filming the music, just saw lots of people enjoying it, living for the moment and sharing the experience with others. It was reality in the old fashioned sense, a world away from devices and the results were genuinely spectacular. I know this can never be a reality in the modern world in which we live but getting a slice of it every summer in order for live creativity to blossom is, in my opinion, something worth holding on to.

So there we are, another year, another festival and I'm already thinking about next year. It's time to batten down the hatches and bed in for the winter but fear not, there's always a light at the end of the field... and it won't be from a mobile phone.

100% Design

Hard to believe a little over a year ago we were packing up and dismantling our exhibition stand from 100% Design. Since then it has been a hugely successful year, not just in terms of the business we got out of it but the hugely enjoyable experience of meeting like-minded people and getting them excited about what we do. 

A year has passed and we're now gearing up for the same event, though this time on a bigger scale. Our stand has doubled in size, enabling more opportunity for the layout of the space - it's an exciting stage to be at! 

We're very accustomed to working with blank canvases and this is no exception. This isn't just about making a stand aesthetically pleasing - this has to tell a story, our story. 

This year we are bringing a little flavour of our studio to the show… come say hello you can catch us at stand O145.

Crack in the wall

Here's a sneak-peek shot of another of our latest pieces. A crack hand-carved in to the curved wall as part of an ongoing series of works in South London. The piece represents a fault in the earth's opening, releasing gas particles. 

Art gets scientific...

All aboard at Euston Station office

Our long-time collaborators and good friends The Office Group are at it again - this time at Euston Station, taking a Richard Seifert building and doing their thing with the interiors.

Here are some snaps from day one of the install. All our artwork in this building centres around station life and commuter culture. 

We've created a play on sensationalist Evening Standard headline boards, created the next in our series of ticket pieces - this one made from over 30,000 ticket chads - and also created a series of photos taken from the perspective of the homeless: A View From Below.

Lots more on this follow but in the meantime, enjoy the behind-the-scenes shots...

Light play at Savills

Last weekend, with the sun beating down outside, we set about the final installation process for our reception piece for Savills: Urban Perspectives. 

The most important tool on the install? Ice cream …and lots of it. 

This new work conveniently takes full advantage of the sun. It's an installation that references the built environment using the square Savills logo shape within a grid formation, depicting both an aerial view of the city as well as the sea of windows that are ubiquitous in our urban landscape.

Reflections are created through smoked mirrored planes angled to create a constantly evolving piece of work which reflects the space around it and changes with the time of day, lighting conditions and viewer interactions. More on this to follow...

FAB 10.11.12 by SHESH

Creative Director James took some time to paint his new born son a little present. Welcome to the world Freddy Arthur Burke (FAB) It might take you a few years to appreciate but something tells us you're going to love this one day. A fab shesh original. 

HJ Heinz and the Story of Emotive Art

A primary goal for many visual artists, documentary and filmmakers is to provoke emotion from the viewer. The movies we watch, the dramas, and even the adverts are made to move the audience.

JM Fellous once wrote in the The American Journal of Psychology: “Emotional responses are often regarded as the keystone to experiencing art, and the creation of an emotional experience has been argued as the purpose of artistic expression.”

The new Heinz Innovation Centre in The Netherlands gave us a very exciting opportunity to create a 20metre feature wall - the perfect time to express the emotive connotations of a world-famous brand.

Steeped in over 100 years of history, this gave us plenty to work with but we had to incorporate just the right amount of heritage with enough of their innovative and future-centric vision.

The wall was divided into 57 different art-boxes; covering the techy side of recipe testing and Heinz’s innovations in their sector, alongside (and just as important) the retrospective, historical and heritage-based concepts too. This had to create feeling and nostalgia. We tried to achieve this through the use of materials that embody the world of Heinz.

From fabricated fridge doors in evocative aquamarine-baked-bean-can-blue, fit with coloured magnets, to Heinz’s face created using Heinz’s top secret tomato seeds. We also wrote brand mottos like “From field to fork” in forks. There’s kitchen tiled boxes, classic glass ketchup bottles inviting the viewer to read the company motto emblazoned within, even flip-top ketchup lids revealing moving images of Heinz Ketchup factory!

This isn’t just about art anymore. This is about generating feelings, emotions, nostalgia. Advertisers have used the power of emotion to enhance their message, why shouldn’t artwork do the same?

This is wonderfully summarised in the follow-up documentary made in honour of the new opening. A film entitled “The night before the official opening of the Heinz Innovation Centre” saw HJ Heinz himself, (an actor but very believable all the same!) walking around the Centre, testing recipes. His warm and comforting voice narrating the story of the company and his values as he walks. It's emotive, it's powerful.

It finishes with him standing in front of the wall, a moment that made all our hairs stand up on end.

The evocative memories and the story of HJ Heinz encapsulated within the art wall bring back personal feelings of family, the home and family dinners, but also the heritage and ultimately the history of an internationally recognised family brand.

The Heinz 57 Wall is a project we were so proud to be a part of, it’s safe to say we’ll never look at a tin of Heinz Baked Beans in the same way again.

It’s amazing what art can achieve… 

http://www.heinz57wall.com

Silicon Roundabout

‘Silicon Roundabout’ is now synonymous with entrepreneurial businesses innovating at the forefront of technology and design.

Just around the corner from our very own studio, it’s the vibrant and frenetic heart of a creative cluster of businesses in London. And it’s this creativity that we’re excited to be part of, working with some of the biggest names in the tech world, based on the roundabout and across London.

In the last few months alone, we've been creating art for the workspace of Silicon Roundabout stalwarts  Mind Candy (behind the gargantuan game that is Moshi Monsters). Tech companies beyond the Roundabout have also gone for Art at Work, including King (the company behind Candy Crush) and online traffic experts Outbrain.

We’ll be revealing full project shots soon but in the meantime, match the artwork to the brand and let us know what you think on Twitter @acrylicize…

Fall like dominoes

  

Capturing a moment in time is one of Art’s greatest feats, like some of the best split-second photography. For our latest art installation it was this aim we had in mind for a leading real estate developer.

Investream commissioned us to create an installation representing the importance of connections between people and cause and effect, to act as a centrepiece for their impressive West London offices.

Using around 4,000 dominoes, we lined one piece after another in a spiral layout and started the domino effect, with the first few toppling over. 

We were really keen to play with the scale of the building for this project and the sky really was the limit in the firm’s 20m high atrium. The spiral of dominoes takes the eye along the wall and makes its way up the high atrium, reaching for the sky.

Heinz Innovation Centre Grand Opening

We headed to Nijmegen in The Netherlands to celebrate the official opening of the Heinz European Innovation Centre, where our Wall 57 project stands tall.

The impressive new facility will be dedicated to driving innovation and new products for consumers across Europe.

We were in good company with H.R.H. Willem-Alexander, the newly crowned King of Orange, and it was an honour to see Wall 57 receiving praise from royalty, dignitaries and Heinz employees.

To celebrate the opening of the centre, Heinz have released a video revealing the night before before they opened the doors, with Henry John Heinz himself surveying the new wall feature in the building’s atrium.

Watch the video here.

See the wall in full, plus exclusive video footage at www.heinz57wall.com.

All the news from The Other Art Fair

We set up shop at The Other Art Fair over at Ambika P3 last weekend, along with our long-term collaborators The Office Group.

We were there to celebrate our seven-year partnership and took the opportunity to showcase a series of artworks commissioned specially for The Office Group’s portfolio of inspiring workspaces across London.

Our latest artwork ‘Tickets Please’ made an appearance before taking permanent residence at The Office Group’s new location within Euston Station.

Comprised of 29,000 train ticket chads, meticulously laid onto canvas, the piece takes the form of the iconic Monopoly station card. All tickets used during the making of the piece were collected in one afternoon at Euston station, particularly relevant as The Office Group’s latest location.

Check out the piece along with shots of our limited edition run of prints. More on those in the next few weeks…

Generator Urban Design Hostel Graffiti

Progressive global design hostel chain Generator is undergoing a restyle this year at its London digs, with a fresh look, new cosy rooms and hangout spaces perfect for the intrepid traveller.

James and Jerome, aka Shesh and Zics under their graffiti monikers, went into the London outpost for a graffiti session to give the walls a makeover with more than just a lick of paint...

Check out the results of their session, celebrating all things LDN - the first of several phases of this exciting project.

Acrylicize at The Other Art Fair this weekend

This week in the studio we’re prepping an artwork that we’re unveiling at this weekend’s The Other Art Fair.

Made from 29,000 ticket chads collected from Euston Station, the piece will soon take pride of place in The Office Group’s latest building in Euston.

We’re co-hosting an exhibition space with long-term collaborators The Office Group, inviting visitors to explore the concept of inspiring workspaces.

Visit our stand at the show at Ambika P3, Marylebone Road, NW1, London. 25-28 April.
Full details at www.theotherartfair.com.

Stay tuned for the full project details… Hope to see you at The Other Art Fair.

Collaboration Nation - Acrylicize x Alex Fowkes

One thing we’re proud of at Acrylicize is our collective spirit and our collaborative approach to projects, working with talents in the industry beyond the team based at Acrylicize HQ.

On a recent project for long-term collaborators The Office Group, we teamed up with graphic designer Alex Fowkes.

We had been admiring his work, especially his renowned Sony Music Timeline, a graphic installation documenting the company's 125-year musical history, at their Derry Street offices.

We loved his work so dropped him a line and asked him to join us for The Office Group project at 7 Stratford Place, a Georgian townhouse that is now home to newest selection of The Office Group’s impressive serviced offices.

The finished result was ‘IT’S OFF TO WORK WE GO’ (Acrylicize X Alex Fowkes, Screen Print on Mirror, 2013).

The building resides on two streets, Stratford Place and Marylebone Lane, and on both, the house number is 7 – lucky, some might say.

We saw it as a trigger and worked with it throughout the building, tying it in with the Magnificent Seven and, of course, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

For this particular piece of art in the reception area, we worked with Alex to celebrate the much-missed traditional craft of pub mirrors, the kind you would see lining the walls of your favourite local.

In this spirit, we created a mirror overlaid with screen print, referencing everyone’s favourite Disney workers (gotta love their work ethic!), the Seven Dwarves.

As well as a text-based print of the iconic ‘It’s off to work we go’ song lyric, we also incorporated iconic pictorial elements of The Office Group, including their mopeds and anglepoise lamp, as well as the dwarves’ mining tools and oil lamps.

The reference was perfect for the office-oriented space and it gave us ample opportunity to tie in the building’s numeric heritage.