HEART AND SOUL

HEART AND SOUL is a new special edition guitar designed by Franko B, made by the students of professor Gildo Pannochia at the Institute of Arts, Macerata and sponsored by Eko, Italia.
It was kindly played by Lorenzo (Jovanotti) during his recent tour of Italy.


Thanks to The Institute of Arts, Macerata, Gildo Pannochia, Giovanni Matarazzo and Eko. 
Special thanks to Saturnino and Lorenzo.

I STILL LOVE - artist's talk - Thursday 2nd June

Franko B in conversation with art critic and historian, Edward Lucie Smith.
6.30pm, Thursday 2nd June. The Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ

Discussion will revolve around the theories and concerns which inform Franko B's work and his current exhibition at The Nunnery, 'I Still Love'. This will be followed by a screening of a documentary accompanying his recent solo exhibition in Milan.

I STILL LOVE is Franko B’s first solo exhibition in London for seven years and features a new series of embroidered canvases, never before shown in the UK. The canvases, which depict animals, flowers, portraits and the male body, as well as images of torture and war, return to the central themes of Franko B’s work – death, eroticism, intimacy, pain and compassion. These recurrent motifs find a delicate new means of expression through the exclusive use of red and white cotton on unprimed canvas.

Franko B was born in Milan in 1960 and has lived in London since 1979. He graduated from Chelsea College and has been producing work across a diverse range of media since the early 1990s. Since 2009, he has been Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Macerata, Italy. Franko B is the current Artist in Residence with Bow Arts Trust.

Edward Lucie-Smith is an internationally known art critic and historian, who is also a poet, anthologist and a practising photographer. He has published more than a hundred books in all, more than sixty of them about art. Lucie-Smith’s photographs have been exhibited internationally and in Britain he was for many years a well-known broadcaster and journalist. He currently writes regularly for Art Review.

Doors will open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start.
Following the talk and screening, the exhibition will remain open until 9pm.

To reserve a place, please RSVP to nunnery@bowarts.com.

Gallery open Friday – Sunday, 1-5pm | Exhibition continues 6th May – 5th June 2011
Entry is free

AT NIGHT WE CRY

At Night We Cry is a new musical collaboration between Franko B and Jacopo Pannocchia with Stefano Teodori.
Our first ever performance will be at Art Day 2, at Terminal, Macerata, Italy - 3rd July 2011, 9pm.
The idea of this collective is to invite collaboration with other artists, allowing the group to mutate and progress organically over time. We are arty but also political.
Blog to come soon.

FRANKO B SUMMER SALON

Franko B Summer Salon
Saturday 25 June, 3-7pm. SE1 Project Space, 46 Willow Walk, London SE1 5SF
Part of Bow Arts Open 2011.
- All welcome -
Franko B has been running his ART POLITICS SEX Salons at Bow Arts Trust over the past two years, and at other venues across Europe since 2003. The event attracts a regular group of artists and art lovers who want to share their views and their creativity with others. (Read more about ARTS POLITICS SEX here.)

I STILL LOVE - review

Review by Steph Hurst for Spoonfed:

I Still Love is Franko B’s first solo exhibition in London for seven years. His latest body of work at The Nunnery Gallery is a series of larger-than-life images stitched onto canvas with yarn. The Nunnery (actually a former nunnery, with the architectural interior to prove it) lives down a long alleyway of artist studios, lit by a constellation of dangling fluorescent lights. This bright, high-ceilinged space provides a good home for the, ahem, well-hung embroidered canvases.

The front gallery is quiet and blanched with a muted palette of bone-coloured cotton on unprimed canvas. The aesthetic is minimal and features portraits of torture alongside a bird and a blank canvas. The grouping of these images becomes an overture for the rest of the show.

The nave gallery introduces playful, erotic imagery. Twinkies kissing. A robin perched on a branch. A double hanging (as seen in the front gallery) is re-appropriated in bright red Egyptian cotton, accentuating the colour contrast. There is language in the sharp elbows of the bold contour lines—in the curves of two penises kissing. They almost seem to be moving.

The images are both appropriated and personal. “I don’t want to work with images that repulse me,” Franko says, “but with images that I can’t forget – that are ingrained in my memory.” I have seen some of this work in his studio – subjects projected onto canvas with an old-school overhead projector. He condenses the original images to produce flat, stylised renderings. Grouped with the occasional flower or bird, war and brutality comprise the majority of the images. Arranged together in one place, they seem to engage in conversation.

The back gallery is the noisiest – floor to ceiling with 22 square canvases including several military portraits, a triptych of Tom (and the rambling scar on his abdomen), a couple of hangings (the thick red noose and the negative space), and my personal favourite, the spectacular sprawling of barbed wire.

In a recent documentary of I Still Love at PAC Milan, Franko says, “I’m an artist who works with single images. When I choose which image to work with, I choose one that has touched me or that keeps my attention. This might be two cute boys kissing and I feel some emotion towards it, or a child who has just escaped and survived an attack on his school, which has killed most of the other children. To me, it has the same effect.” The results are eye-catching (and highly collectible).

Franko’s distinctive branding – where classical meets queer – appears in the exclusive use of red and white. He’s been tagged a New Romantic, and I Still Love doesn’t deviate, but evolves the artist’s multidisciplinary approach… in other words, it works.

Franko B – I Still Love is at the Nunnery until 5th June 2011.

I STILL LOVE - Artist's Talk + screening

Thursday 2nd June

Franko B will discuss the theories and concerns which inform his work and the diverse range of approaches he takes to producing art. There will also be a screening of a documentary accompanying his recent solo exhibition in Milan. Doors will open at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Following the talk, the exhibition will stay open until 9pm.
To reserve a place, please RSVP to nunnery@bowarts.com.

Franko B - I STILL LOVE  - exhibition open 6th May - 5th June 2011, Friday-Sunday.
The Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ

FRATERNISE - THE SALON - exhibition and events


Fraternise - The Salon - Fundraising group exhibition at Beaconsfield, London. Until 29 May 2011, Tuesday – Sunday, 11am-5pm. Across all Galleries.















Fraternise – the Salon offers a collectible range of contemporary art works. Contributing artists include those at the top of the commercial game and others who are, as yet, unknown in the auction room.

With prices ranging from £5 – £20,000 this exhibition offers a special opportunity to exercise your judgment and perhaps risk your aesthetic arm, by starting or expanding a collection.

Events:
Monday 16 May 2011 at 7pm - Fraternise – for Collectors
Nina Miall, Director Haunch of Venison

Wednesday 18 May at 11am - Fraternise – the Coffee View

Saturday 21 May at 2pm - Fraternise – the Curators Talk

Friday 27 May from 6.30pm till late - LAST Fridays: Fraternise – the finissage
Last-chance, evening viewing of Fraternise – the Salon with late bar and Fraternising artist-DJs.

Full details of all events here.

NEW WORK














White neon, each 150 x 150 cm (mounted).