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Radar Nine - Matt Held Facebook Portraits
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Radar Nine - Matt Held Facebook Portraits

[ 03:47 ]
Matt Held, a fine artist with a specialisation in portraiture, was blocked. After upping sticks from Seattle to NYC in his late thirties, young family in tow, as a last chance at 'making it', he became a stay at home Dad with the couple's new child. Nothing he did worked. Until, as an exercise in skintone, he painted his wife's facebook profile photo. Shortly after, the "I'll have my portrait painted by Matt Held" facebook group was born, and Matt was presented with no end of source material, inspiration, and an instant international network of influencers. Brooklyn Museum came calling, the blog posts spread and his numbers soared. We hang with Matt's family, and talk to No.16, No.33 and No.36 about why they were keen to be painted by someone they've never met, and what the project means to them.
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03:22
Sideshow Picasso (Marilyn Agrelo)
Brooklyn painter Marie Roberts comes from a family long entrenched in Coney Island's Sideshow. Her family home once housed the famous freaks and oddities of the 1920s and 1930s where her uncle was the "talker" luring audiences in to see them. Marie paints beautiful banners for the current Sideshow.
03:07
The Work's the Thing (Abigail Norris & Jerry Rothwell)
A short film about the art and working methods of Paul Housley. Born in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, in 1964, Paul studied at the Royal College of Art. He has an interest in observing the everyday and a penchant for humble mass-produced objects. Like a number of other young UK artists, Paul is returning to figurative painting, at a time when video, photography, installation and new media have attracted increased attention as art forms. Since the popularity of the young British artists, the rise of 'Brit Art' and the controversy of the Turner Prize, painting has taken a back seat. Damien Hirst was famously quoted as saying that painting was dead. Housley, however works with traditional materials, proving that painting is alive and has an energy and power of its own in today’s art world. His paintings play with our notions of taste, finding novelty in cliché and lyricism in mundane, blank objects like sports bags and light bulbs.
03:08
Repelling the Viewer (Abigail Norris & Jerry Rothwell)
Johannes Phokela, as he explains, has always been fascinated by iconic images and how they have “infiltrated our lives.” So this very unusual painter takes those images from classic paintings of the European masters and twists and turns them into satires of contemporary life. It might be turning a muscular white man black as he drapes himself over a nude woman, or hanging a cigarette from the mouth of a female, or adding a clown nose here and there. Filmmaker Jerry Rothwell’s camera captures Phokela at work, putting words to the brush strokes that transform allegories from centuries past into notions that could be considered subversive, as an unsettling cello underlines notions that could be considered subversive. At least, Phokela hopes so.
03:56
Radar Six - Cut & Paste
Design has not normally been thought of as a performance art, but Cut & Paste are looking to change that. For the last two years John Fiorelli and his team have been traveling the globe, taking the concept of live digital design to more and more communities. Now, in 16 cities across the world, designers compete onstage in a battle for supremacy and the chance to win the global championships. In a series of quickfire rounds they create original works from scratch, and are judged by a jury of esteemed peers from agencies and brands. We follow Ryan Kennedy (Designer, Deep Focus) as he prepares to partake in the NYC tournament, and talk to John about why he constructed a place for designers to create in public.
04:32
Radar Twenty-Four: From the Desk of Sarah Seely
From the Desk of Sarah Seely is a company of professional dancers, actors and artists all of whom work 9-5 desk jobs assisting executives. Rehearsals and performance opportunities are scheduled and created around this. The company's work is a blend of theater and dance, a celebration of present-day concerns and campy vintage aesthetics, topped off with the frustration of being artists in day jobs. We join the troupe as they rehearse the performance 'How to Disappear Completely' and take their post-apocalyptic vignettes to the street and the office. Sarah argues that a 9-5 desk job is like being a subsidized artist. Rather than identifying as an Executive Assistant or Personal Aide, the annual income, 401k and health insurance can actually make it easier to focus on what you do for artistic reasons.
03:56
Radar Ten - Newmindspace
Kevin Bracken is a modern day Peter Pan. From his Bushwick warehouse -the appropriately named Refuge- he works with teams of volunteers to create and stage free, fun, participatory events across America that enable strangers to interact publicly in a natural carefree way, uninhibited by monetary transactions. These events also allow the participants to reclaim public spaces; a must Kevin insists for responsible citizens, in order to challenge permit driven culture. The creator of International pillow fight day -a simultaneous experience ideated to prove the global strength of the 'urban playground movement'- all events are born from childhood games: multiplied, and staged in concrete plazas. We follow Kevin and his team as they prepare and launch Lightsaber Battle NYC, to much surprise and glee in Washington Square park.
03:27
Paradise Regained (Steve James)
He was the painter who brought paradise to the infamous Chicago housing projects, miles of urban housing rife with violence, gangs and crime until they were finally torn down. With Reed's wall-filling murals, residents transformed their living rooms into oases from the ghetto storms outside. Through description and animation, Reed depicts a world that is thankfully gone yet brought alive again by ex-residents who will seek his views of paradise.
05:06
Radar Twelve - Bambi Killers
Meghan, Dawn & Tanya are the Bambi Killers, a genre-defying creative troupe that meld performance art, music, role play, costume design, audio soundscapes and circus freakery into a series of short live acts that deal with themes as wide-ranging as alien invasion, conspiracy theories, government brainwashing and the representation of women in movies.  Inspired by Japanese girl gangs, The Switchblade Sisters, Grindhouse, and the Valley of the Dolls, they perform at punk gigs, dive bars and theaters to shocked silence and instant word of mouth.  Just wait for the inevitable movie, comic, clothing line, range of dolls...  Oh, and the spaceship.
04:00
Radar Fifteen: Art Battles
Sean Bono set up Art Battles as a way to correct a system he saw flawed. With artist friends getting arrested for graffiti, others loosing their individuality in mundane graphic design jobs, and more laboring unrecognized in galleries, he started painting battles in his canvas-lined apartment as a way out. Since then his unique take on live art has grown leaps and bounds with Art Battles now offering competitors a compelling way to get seen, sell their work & win residences at galleries. We follow Lexi Bella & Leif McIlwaine as they prepare for battle.
03:22
Art Talk! - Dan Colen - Part 3 of 3
In the final part of this profile, Dan discusses the controversy that surrounds his work and explains his easygoing attitude to the art world.
 

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