animal kingdom

The days go quick in Berlin, it is finally proper spring here. I keep travelling back and forth to Leipzig but I really enjoy getting back here every time. Have spent some days doing up the studio and today I hope to find some furniture and manage to transport it there somehow, something that without a driver's license is kind of tricky.
We went to see an exhibition in the beautiful Schinkel pavillon called Animal Kingdom, lots of short films about animals from artists like Douglas Gordon, Fischli/Weiss and Werner Herzog. But my favourite were two underwater films from Jean Painlevé, one about seahorses, L'hippocampe, and one about the love life of an octopus. Beautiful! I couldn't find them online, but here is another film from him. Was quite nice to sit in the gallery for one and a half hour and watch different animal film, everything from slugs to grizzly bears..

the Elephant Den

This Thursday Emily and I start our residency at Studio at the Elephant and on Saturday we are running a kid+friendly workshop... Come! Come! The details are all below:

THIS SATURDAY 16TH APRIL

THE ELEPHANT DEN

12-5PM: Help us map the Elephant & Castle and leave your mark

THEN! 7PM-LATE: Join us for the launch of LAWAS' upcoming residency at the studio

On Saturday the 16^th of April, PLATS collective will be running a workshop around the building of a big cardboard map complete with a den inside.

Come along to see & help us by adding your home, school or your favourite places to our map. Or, you can just crawl inside the Elephant's den and write or draw your stories and memories about the area.

PLATS is a group of visual artists who work together and produce interactive installations, workshops and events.

The Elephant Den will be run by PLATS illustrators Sophia Augusta and Emily Robertson. To find out more about their collaborative and individual work have a poke around www.seeplats.com

7PM - LATE

The LATIN AMERICAN WORKERS' ASSOCIATION PARTY - OPEN TO ALL with music/dancing/food

http://www.lawas.org.uk/joo/

more fooood.

The latest issue of Scoff! is out now in the Spectator with some of my foodie drawings.

Finally Got It Together

Fabulously Finished. For now.

Check out

Katherineannerose.com

Apropos skulls & drawing

I've just discovered Gerhart Richter's drawings... I don't know how I've missed them. His hand is so clearly his throughout, but it's nice to see it in paper and pencil. I saw one of his pieces at a show about modern drawing from the British Museum's collection which I can really recommend...

Viennese Pathology Sketch

This baby skeleton was playing the violin with a twig and chunk of compost in the Narrenturm in Vienna. It stuck with me. It looks so animated, and a bit buoyant and silly. Then you remember it is the skeleton of a baby, and the whole thing feels quite different.

Thailand Sketchbook #3

Puttin' It Down.

After a good run at Pick Me Up @ Somerset House and hundreds and hundreds of pictures, we can all just sit back and sift through the photos of our's and other's ingenuity.... The photos are all here and prints are available from us, if anyone fancies it.

PLATS at Somerset House's PICK ME UP exhibition.

This Tuesday PLATS' held their first workshop at Somerset House as part of their PICK ME UP exhibition, the UK's first contemporary graphic art fair. We created exquisite appendages and encouraged visitors to make themselves into amazing silhouette characters, immortalizing them in a weird world of pattern and shadow. We were very excited about the response to the workshop and if you missed out (and you are in London this weekend) then you can join us again this Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th for more shadow play! We hope you can make it. Images from Tuesday can be viewed on our Flickr page.
We would like to thank Gareth, Annette, Sarah and Rosie for all their brilliant help and expertise!

exhibition in Leipzig

Hello, the sun is shining on Berlin, which makes the city look a hundred times more inviting.. I am on the search for a studio still and have been looking in many odd places, mainly basements without light, and now Im hoping to find something with light so that I can actually work. But tomorrow,Thursday, Im heading back to Leipzig to see an exhibition by a friend, Steve Viezens in Gallery Kleindienst, which would translate into gallery "small service". The same night there's also an opening in Gallery B2 with the artist group VIP that I really like so this should be fun. Apart from that I am only too happy to see the spring coming since I have been ill for most of the last three months and I hope that will finally come to an end now.

Greetings to you guys in London, from me at a very big, strangely built and home made working desk in Berlin, our "livingroom" has turned into an office.

The Cut

Luke made a new animation while I was away... I think it's brilliant. Have a peek.

Thailand Sketchbook #2

Thailand Sketchbook

distinguished animator

Joachim just showed me this at breakfast and it's great! So I thought I'd throw that into your preparation for the workshops.

It is a 1927 animation from german animator Oskar Fischinger . He also made other beautiful films with forms and patterns and some of the first music videos ever, so well worth to have a look at! It sucks that Im not in London and can be a part of this workshop and shadow play, but I bet you will have a good time. Well, last night we came back to Berlin and now we are listening to the excellent cd from Lime Headed Dog, trying to keep a bit of the London feeling alive. But it's nice to be back home, there's a lot to do and my fingers are itching, I want to work.. but trying to focus while working on a table balancing on banana boxes is very hard so Im hoping that either we build a table this week or I finally get into the studio that I want to rent and can get started there before my head explode. Better get started but thank you guys for the great time in London, again! I wish I had a Wellcome trust library just around the corner here and that my home was in the Barbican but then again, can't have it all. Have a look at the animation, it's great! ciao.

Distinguished bits and pieces

Some of the beginnings for our workshop at Pick Me Up...

Night of the Elephant

*Studio at the Elephant event schedule and blog*

Elephant Launch and Shadows Galore

The brilliant Studio at the Elephant is open again and launching tomorrow from 6pm with mask-making, Laurie's next shadow puppet show, music and lovely people. Over the next few months the space will also be an open studio and exciting space hosting some residencies and workshops, including one with Plats. Should be grand...

two exhibitions in Malmö and London

After a week in Berlin it's time to head off again, this time with train to Copenhagen and and Malmö, with bags full of framed images that I hope we can carry without breaking our backs.

In Malmö I am participating in a group show, there is a Photography festival going on there over the weekend, click here for full program, it looks like it could be good! My work is on display with "Skanes Konstförening", here.

Im looking forward to going back to Sweden, even if it's only for a few days and I can't wait to eat a Semla! For those of you who do not know what that is, here is an imagefrom this page were someone has put together a list of were to buy the best one's in Sweden. It is basically a bun with creme and almond, but it's great! So between hanging the exhibition and meeting friends I will be in the bakery and eat as many of those as I can and then when I have stuffed myself full I will fly to London, that is if the plane can carry such a heavy Semla as that what I have then become.

In London is the exhibition opening of mine and David O'Kanes images for "The way of the cross", on the 8th of March at 7.30, here, and there is also a book launch for a publication showing the different artist's responses to the stations over the last five years. I never thought I would make images for a church but I think the end result is interesting and Im looking forward to the opening night, also because we got Carol Anne McGowan to do a concert for the night and that will probably be incredibly beautiful. So yeah, you should come along! That's what I will be up to for the next week and a half, travels and exhibitions. Should be good!
In Berlin we went to see a nice little show with 75 artist books from Sol LeWitt, it was at the Art Laboratory in Wedding, a small space were one can also ask to be shown the books out of the display cases, so that was cool! Well worth a visit, it's open for two more weeks.

Now I have to arrange some stuff, print out tickets and write down information. I finally managed to register in Berlin, last week I met with a woman who clearly hated her job and people who can't understand bureaucracy, like me, she was incredibly unfriendly but today a nice young man who was into photography helped me so it was easy peasy and now I officially live in Berlin. Well done me. I don't know why I am so dumbstruck as soon as it comes to paperwork of this kind, maybe because I never payed attention in the classes dealing with these kind of things in school, but now when I have to understand it in German too..I just feel like I want to go home to Sweden, nevermind, I shall be brave.

So, hopefully see you soon, either in Malmö or in London!

the fools in berlin

I'm sorry for the lack of updates from my part for the last month, i have been both busy and somehow it's now my fourth week of having some kind of flu that does not seem to leave me alone. Probably because I do not stay in bed and get well, but that is so incredibly boring once you get over the first two days of enjoying sleeping in. We have moved now aswell, left Leipzig after almost four years (on and off) and now I suppose I should call Berlin home, we'll see about that, only spent one week here after the move and then I was mainly just sick so did not get to go around so much. After that we went to Wien to meet up with Sophia and try and do some research, some of it more succesful, other parts can not even with my best will be called succesful..but I don't know what I expected, it's hard to prepare with a head full of flu. Still, our searches in the archives turned out good and I enjoyed looking through manuscripts, reading original texts and seeing beautiful drawings. Also, as a non scientist, I am still very excited about filing systems, the texture of cards and papers, ordering books and all that, I guess that's something you get tired off if you do it long enough but I still find it great. That, and buying masks in a costume shop and some records in Substance, which seemed lika a very nice little record store.

Then after ten hours on a train with Sophia sleeping, Joachim reading and me learning about the Narrenturm we arrived back in Berlin. I love being on trains in Europe, especially when you get cheap tickets and can go to Vienna for 29 euros, brillliant! After a lovely weekend with Izzy and Sophia I now have to focus and somehow try to get well again.
I think I will go and check out where I can read and how to find a studio so as to be able to start working and making images. Seems like there are many spaces here but equally many people wanting to use them..so let's see.

Narrenturm: tower of fools

Still in Vienna, though we are getting the train to Berlin tomorrow. Here is a wee sneak of a drawing of a lovely lithograph from 1796 in a book about how there are no fools (crazies) in Vienna. If you look closely you can see them in the windows and one creeping out the door. Although things worked out quite differently in the tower than we had anticipated it´s an amazing amazing place and it houses some fascinating specimens and the marks of many tragic lives.

The Gurns

Things I Saw Today in Hua Hin

For emily in abu dhabi.

It is 1.23 am in Abu Dhabi and I am sitting in a lounge trying to pass the ten hours we have to wait here before flying on to Thailand. I am increasingly grouchy with lack of comfortable sleep and regressing to a teenager because I am with my parents and everyone keeps thinking I am one. Which should be a compliment to a newly turned 27 year old but I have decided that it is just fucking annoying and patronising.
The airport here is odd, partly because it is being done up so hardly anything is open and because terminal one looks a bit like a set from a 70s sci-fi movie, it is quite amazing. The main reason though is that there seems to be no apparent structure or obvious route you need to take to get anywhere, everything is just mixed up together; duty free here, security there but also over there and then checking in and gates randomly scattered willy-nilly. We arrived in the dark, which hasn't helped to orient myself, but from what I can gather from walking around and peering out of the dark windows is that the airport appears to be some sort of Star Wars set transplanted in the desert, big domes with tiny windows and passages coming off connecting you to other domes. Although that sounds fun, I can't help feeling like we are stuck in a time hole. At the moment time, morning and night mean nothing to my body, I am sure this is how it always is when you travel far, I can't remember feeling so disorientated though.
So for now I am going to ignore time. I hope this makes sense....I am very tired.

Madness manifest though hair

In two weeks Nadja, Joachim and I are off for a week of research, work and talking at the Narrentürm (tower of fools) in Vienna.

As sad as it is that Darwin thought madness could be illustrated through this woman's hair, it does make you think about how differently mental health issues would be considered if they were more physically manifest. It's very difficult to empathize with something you cannot see or relate to. This is sort of the basic root of what I'm thinking about for this project.