Matt Collishaw... Weird Lego Art... and Art Car Boot Sale is BACK!

Last night Damien Hirst's publishing company Other Criteria held a launch party at Scott's for Matt Collishaw's eponymous monograph. Friends since their time at Goldsmiths College, Collishaw and Hirst have exhibited together on several occasions.

Although the artist remains most famous for his close-up photograph of a bullet-hole in a head, his work has since moved on from violence and into fantasy. Collishaw's book contains 100 full colour reproductions of his photographs, each offering an interpretation of the artist as Narcissus, a Satyr, and just plain old Matt. The above image, Who Killed Cock Robin? (1997) is an example of the way he explores how a shock factor can "quicken" traditional beauty.

Instead of posting photos of the artists, I thought these little Lego fellas would do the job. In 2005 artists John Cake and Darren Neave immortalised scores of art world figures in Lego for their "Art Craziest Nation" show at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. The model is of a miniature gallery, featuring artwork (Dali's lobster phone, Emin's bed), artists such as Sam Taylor-Wood, Grayson Perry, and special guests such as Brian Sewell, Larry Gagosian... and Lloyd Grossman. There's even a gallery shop. Click here to see the entire model - it's pretty funny.

Their most recent project, Lick Your Selves, involved making fruit flavoured ice lolly versions of Marc Quinn's infamous frozen head sculpture Self (1991), made from nearly ten pints of the artist's blood taken from his body over a period of five months. Cake and Neave seem to be experts in the art of harmless cocking around, which is a breath of fresh air given the dour nature of some of their contemporaries!

There won't be much of that behaviour next weekend, with any luck - it's the Art Car Boot Sale on Brick Lane, brainchild of sisters and co-curators Karen Ashton and Helen Hayward. Fun is definitely the order of the day: there's a barbecue, cocktails on a man-made beach, burlesque performers and the chance to buy a work of art from participants such as Vivienne Westwood and Gavin Turk, as well Mr Collishaw. Last year was great fun and this year looks to be even better - let's just hope the rain stops in time! If it doesn't, at least you can hide indoors at the Fine Art Auction at Central St Martins on Friday. Organised by the college's MFA students, the lots include work by Antony Gormley and Anthony Caro and have all been donated by the artists. The auction will be conducted by Francis Outred, Head of Private Sales in Contemporary Art at Sotheby's, and is being held to raise funds for the Central St Martins MA Fine Art Degree Show in September. Bring your cheque book.

Art Car Boot Fair £2
12-6pm, 8th July 2007.

Fine Art Auction, Central St Martins.
Viewing 5.30-7pm; Live Auction 7-8pm. Friday 6th July

EDIT: A fantastic article on Matthew Collishaw by Guy Kennaway appeared in Sunday's Telegraph. Read it here.

The First Ever London Literary Festival

This inaugural two week festival of literature, creative writing and performance takes place on the that concrete luvvie mecca, the Southbank Centre. Featuring international and prize-winning authors, historians, poets, artists, children's events, highlights include:

• Toby Litt interviewing Steven Hall and Scarlett Thomas, creators of genre-bending "slipstream" fiction, mixing horror, science fiction, fantasy, mystery and realism.

• London Slam Champions - MC Joelle Taylor introduces you to some of the most innovative rhyming and rapping young stars of London's spoken-word scene. If you haven't heard a poetry slam before, you might be nervous that it's something like this. Rest assured things have come a long way since then and the "contenders" in this slam are at the top of their game.

• My personal favourite: The UK's largest ever bookcrossing event - 1,000 books provided by Penguin Books are released, including works by Samuel Pepys, William Blake, George Orwell, Will Self, and Zadie Smith. "Bookcrossing" is the (until recently) underground activity of releasing your old books "into the wild" and tracking their progress and the lives they touch. After reading a book you register it on www.bookcrossing.com, entering the ISBN number of the book, and getting a unique ID number that is then written inside the cover of the book, along with the website address. Leave it in a phone booth, on a train or in a bar, and whoever reads it after you will hopefully go to the website and post his or her review of the book, as well as where they released it. What started out as a nerdy interest in serendipity and altruism is now a worldwide phenomenon, and their most travelled book has changed hands 272 times, accompanied by 272 fascinating journal entries on the website.

I've always loved this idea in theory, but I can't bear to give my books away. Everything I've ever read, from Don Quijote to Patchwork and Quilting: A Step-by-Step Guide, remains on my shelves. My book karma is buggered!

London Literary Festival
29th June - 12th July 2007, South Bank Centre, SE1.

Venice, Documenta, Basel

Once in a decade, these three major European shows coincide. The Venice Biennale is like an Olympiad for artists rather than athletes. Britain is represented by Tracey Emin, who spent nearly all her budget renovating the pavilion, pictured above. Emin will be the second woman to produce a solo show for the UK a the Biennale, following Rachel Whiteread in 1997.

Titled Borrowed Light, Emin's show exhibits work using a wide variety of media, from needlework, photography and video to drawing, painting, sculpture and neon. She has described the collection as "pretty and hardcore". Heaven forbid she shouldn't mean all things to all people! I didn't make it out to Venice but from what I have seen most of her work is fresh and interesting, though some critics are labelling her offering as "stale", and even "old hat". It may not have the relevance those middle-aged male journos were looking for, but their lazy bitchiness is a little pathetic. You've got to laugh when even the British Pavilion commissioner, Andrea Rose, has to reassure visitors that the show is "remarkably ladylike. There's no toilet with a poo in it".

People came back raving about the Russian and Italian pavilions (featuring Alexander Ponomarev and Francesco Clemente respectively) but Artempo over in Palazzo Fortuny had mixed reviews, despite boasting work by James Turrell and Lucio Fontana. Times critic Waldemar Januszczak has made an interesting video tour of the Giardini here.

By comparison Documenta 12 over in Kassel was a great big wet fart, and almost everyone I've spoken to who went along has a miserable opinion. How this could happen with work from over 500 international artists and five years planning I don't know.

Basel, however, is an entirely different bag of walnuts. This is where serious money changes hands. Many artists rely on their exposure at Venice to encourage sales over in Basel, though this year proved trickier as few private collectors are interesting in forking out for the ubiquitous video-art installations. Many were also disappointed by the absence of US institutions browsing the goods, though almost all European museums were represented. ArtForum have provided an entertaining photo diary of the fair's parties and events here.

Gianfranco Ferré (1944-2007)

A master couturier and designer, Sig. Ferré passed away on Sunday after suffering a sudden brain haemorrhage. A trained architect, Ferré was adored by fashionistas for his structural clothing and razor-sharp tailoring. He became one of the few Italians ever to head a French couture house when he was named Stylistic Director of Christian Dior in Paris in 1989, passing the reins over to British talent John Galliano in 1997. "An intense pursuit of beauty. That's the essence of my story," he once said. "I see my clothes as pieces in a mosaic. Every creation, every collection captures a wealth, a crescendo of emotion and experiences". I'm not sure he would have got all that had he spotted me in my beloved grey unitard. Evening wear is different matter though!

Chasing the Surreal

For many art-lovers, endless reproduction on biscuit tins took the shine off Monet's watercolours. Much the same thing happened to Dalí when his posters were ubiquitous in student bedsits. If you want to talk surrealism these days, you need a new angle. Perhaps this is why Tate Modern's current exhibition of more than one hundred works by Dalí focuses on his films as well as paintings, photographs and drawings. His collaborations with Luis Buñuel, Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock and the Marx brothers provide a fascinating insight into his peregrine imagination. The above picture is a still from cinematic masterpiece Un Chien Andalou.

There is much debate over what it means to be surrealist in contemporary art. Many cite American artist Matthew Barney's epic Cremaster Cycle (1994-2002, pictured below) as a updated system of surrealist aesthetics that explores the processes of creation. The cycle unfolds not just cinematically, but also through the photographs, drawings, sculptures and installations the artist produced in conjunction with each of the five episodes.

Elements of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non-sequiturs are not the only remnants of the Breton-led cultural movement of the 1920s; our fascination with the twilight world of suspended dreams continues into the 21st century. Artist Oliver Clegg uses old drawing boards instead of canvas as the base for his oil paintings of children's toys from a bygone era. The ambiguity of surface is explored further in Clegg's etchings, where the plates are printed onto pages of nineteenth century diaries and commonplace books, as pictured below. His fluctuations between tradition and the avant-garde lend these pictures a dream-like ambiguity that is defiantly unresolved.

Clegg's contemporary Alastair Mackie is interested in steeping his subjects in a state of "ephemeral splendour and aversion". A Stetson (pictured below) fashioned from hundreds of tiny US bomber model aeroplanes makes a strong political statement but also carries surrealist overtones by turning a familiar object into a new and potentially threatening creation. Long after Man Ray's unsettling Cadeau and Meret Oppenheim's sinister furry tea-cup, artists can still rely on incongruous surfaces and images to provoke that most tantalising of sensations half-way between pain and pleasure, or what Burke called "delight".

Dalí and Film, Tate Modern. 1st June - 9th September 2007
Alastair Mackie in Medicine Now, Wellcome Collection. Opens June 21st.

Summer reading...

Ivo is a friend from Cambridge who has recently published his first novel, The Night Climbers. It's a literary thriller about a circle of faux aristos at Cambridge who form a private club - The Night Climbers - and sell on a fake Picasso to an Eastend gangster. Partly inspired by the original "Night Climbers" of the 1960s who famously made dare-devil leaps from college roof-tops, this will be a real hit. Not only is Ivo a talented writer, but in a cultural sphere where good looks are even rarer than charm, the literati will embrace this handsome devil with as many deals as he can handle. If you enjoyed Donna Tartt's The Secret History then this should be the next book on your list.

The event was much more fun than normal book launches, in that it was really a party in disguise. Not a frumpy corduroy skirt in sight, the guests shunned the traditional dress-code of literary gatherings and instead wore skin-tight Azzedine Alaia frocks accessorized with Louboutin toe-cleavage, the anorexic's alternative to the real thing.

The film rights to the book have already been sold, so watch this space. That reminds me... another art world-related book is also in production at the moment, Danny Moynihan's Boogie-Woogie. Directed by Duncan Ward (husband of Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst, whose installation project at Sudeley Castle is featured lower down the page), this film stars Rachel Weisz, Gerard Depardieu, Damien Lewis and Charlotte Rampling. I was going to post vintage nude photos of Monsieur D but sadly I can't find them. A great shame as they were delicious. The New York art scene provides the backdrop for Moynihan's satirical novel that links the fate of his characters with the Mondrian masterpiece of the book's title.

I'm always amazed that there aren't more films about the art world as it's such a rich source for satirical comedy. I can't tell you the number of times I've walked out of a private view and thought, no one will believe what I just saw...

Graduate Shows 2007

What sort of thing do you associate with student art? Is it something like this? Graduate shows have come a long way in recent years and there is constant pressure to put on the most entertaining and left-field show of them all. Proud parents are not usually allowed within a one-mile radius - it would just ruin the cool quotient. Friends of the artist, with their ubiquitous roll-ups (I'm only teasing! We've all been there) shuffle between stands. Dealers mooch about trying to work out who's a good investment. Random suits stand in the middle of the room wondering what the hell they have walked into.

University of the Arts London kicked off the season with photography alumna Poppy de Villeneuve's show on Davies St, which featured intimate portraits of inmates from the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary. Sadly the embassy-grade canapés overshadowed the photography, which is a shame as her landscapes are excellent.

Here's the best of the rest:

Royal Academy Schools Show 13th-24th June. All works are for sale. Every year the flagstoned studios underneath the main galleries are transformed into a stunning exhibition space. This should not be missed.

Postgraduate photography show at Central St Martin's, 18th-21 June. Video and installation also feature in this show of 25 photographers from 12 different countries.

Farnham (University College for the Creative Arts), 6th-9th June. Alma mater to several rising stars.

Falmouth Degree Show, dates tbc. Alumnus and friend Lawrence Owen is now represented by new gallery 20 Hoxton Square (I've never seen as many Turbo-Sloanes in E2 as at their launch party) after working as Damien Hirst's assistant for a year. One day, Lawrence left three of his paintings in a corridor at his boss's workshop. Hirst bought all of them. Fast-forward a couple of months, and Lawrence 's painting is hanging next to Francis Bacon's at Hirst's private collection show, murderme, in the Serpentine last year. It CAN happen folks!

Goldsmiths College, 15th-18th June. Former students include Lucian Freud, Antony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Mary Quant, Vivienne Westwood, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gillian Wearing, Briget Riley... and Julian Clary. But in general we're talking the gold standard. Not that I'm biased! There's a big party on June 14th at Jack's in London Bridge to celebrate - if you want to know what people will be wearing/dancing to/smoking in five years time, buy a ticket.

Now is a good time to mention the prestigious Celeste Art Prize, which collaborates with Goldsmiths MFA Curatorial Programme. The prize is open to all artists living and working in the UK and UK citizens living and working abroad. There are no educational or age requirements. The 30 student and 30 professional artist finalists were given a week long exhibition at the Old Truman Brewery, followed by a further exhibition at Lyon & Turnbull, Scotland's leading auctioneers. During the exhibition the finalists are invited to vote for the artist in their peer group they consider pre-eminent; the spoils are £10,000 for the winning professional artist, £5,000 for the student artist. There is also a £2,000 online public vote. Without doubt one of the best competitions of its kind.

Finally we come to the Free Range show, 31st May - 23rd July. This is Europe's largest graduate art and design show and features work from almost every good art college in the UK, including those already mentioned above. Over 100,000 people went last year, but despite the scale and ambition of the show it actually works extremely well. Well worth a visit if you can deal with crowds.

My God I'm exhausted! As always, email in with any hot picks - it's always interesting to hear feedback from grad shows.

Image by Lucinda Chau at Nottingham Trent University.