Art e-Facts 72 (New Year Special)

On the 1st of January 2007 the Twin Cities based collaborative art partnership Tectonic Industries and their family undertook their “One Year Project” to prepare, cook, eat and evaluate a meal each day as dictated by the book “365: No Repeats A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners“ by American celebrity cook Rachael Ray.

Despite personal disliking for a variety of foodstuffs and in one case an allergy to eggs, they fully committed to the project and published a daily blog giving an illuminating insight into the experience and the many challenges they faced including moving house, the birth of a new baby, cross country trips to exhibition openings and 5 variations of macaroni cheese 5 nights in a row.

Our sincere congratulations and thanks (as beneficiaries of the last 12 meals) goes to Tectonic Industries who completed the last recipe yesterday with Hamburger and Onion Stuffed Bread followed by Christmas Pasta.

Rumours are that “Another One Year Project” launches today with “Mustard Pork Chops” by a certain Ms N Lawson.

For further information go to:

http://oneyearproject.com/

http://anotheroneyearproject.com/

http://www.tectonic-industries.com/

Art e-Facts 55

British art group Unit One was formed by Paul Nash in 1933 to promote modern art, architecture and design. The two major currents in modern art at the time were seen as being abstract art on the one hand and Surrealism on the other. Unit One embraced the full spectrum, Nash made both abstract and Surrealist work in the mid 1930s and played a major part in organising the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936 (British Surrealism).

The launch of the group was announced in a letter from Nash to The Times newspaper, in which he wrote that Unit One was ‘to stand for the expression of a truly contemporary spirit, for that thing which is recognised as peculiarly of today in painting, sculpture and architecture’. The first and only group exhibition was held in 1934 accompanied by a book Unit One, subtitled The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture.

The other artists associated with the group were Armstrong, Bigge, Burra, Hepworth, Moore, Nicholson, Wadsworth and the architects Welles Coates and Colin Lucas.

Art e-Facts 53

In 1957 Otto Piene and Heinz Mack formed Group Zero or Group O, in Düsseldorf. Often referred to simply as Zero the group was joined in 1960 by Gunther Uecker.

A number of other artists were associated or exhibited with Zero, most notably Yves Klein and Jean Tinguely. The name refers to the countdown for a rocket launch and according to the group is meant to evoke ‘a zone of silence [out of which develops] a new beginning’. Zero was in reaction against the subjective character of the prevailing Art Informel and practised a form of Kinetic art using light and motion that they felt opened up new forms of perception.

Three issues of a journal, Zero, were published, in April and October 1958 and July 1961. The group dissolved in 1966.