Saturday, 7 June 2014

yinka shonibare - artist at the royal academy

Showing at this year's RA show:
Jay Doubleyou: royal academy - summer exhibtion
is the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare:

He's done some very interesting things:
Yinka Shonibare RA | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts
Yinka Shonibare MBE (RA)

for example, something at Trafalgar Square:

Yinka Shonibare - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yinka Shonibare's ship in a bottle goes on permanent display in Greenwich | Art and design | theguardian.com

Yinka Shonibare pokes fun at bankers with new work at Royal Academy

Sculpture of a figure with cakes piled on his back is about greed, says artist, marking his election as an academician

Mark Brown, arts correspondent
The Guardian, Thursday 29 May 2014 17.19 BST
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Yinka Shonibare pokes fun at bankers with new work at Royal Academy

Artist Yinka Shonibare MBE with his new work Cake Man (II). Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

Yinka Shonibare is angry at capitalism – but he is "an angry hypocrite", he said on Thursday as his latest work poking fun at bankers was installed at the Royal Academy of Arts.

The sculpture is going on display at the RA's summer exhibition to mark his election as an academician, one of a record number of new members elected over the past year.

Called Cake Man (II), it features a lifesize mannequin dressed in African print, with a huge pile of cakes balanced precariously on his back.

"It's my tribute to bankers," said Shonibare. "There's been a lot of talk about bonuses to bankers and the top 1% literally taking all the cake. So this piece, I guess, is about greed. It has more cakes than anyone could ever eat or manage."

Shonibare said there continued to be genuine public resentment and he too was angry, although he was well aware people might shout 'hypocrite'. "The entire art world is underpinned by capitalism, so I guess I'm biting the hand that feeds me. That's not to say I can't pass comment but I know I can be accused of being complicit with the system."

Shonibare said it was an honour to become an academician, particularly because it was decided on by his peers.

To celebrate the record number of new academicians, what the RA called "a renewal of membership", a dedicated room has been given to works by the new recruits. They include Wolfgang Tillmans, Conrad Shawcross, Tim Shaw, Chantal Joffe, Neil Jeffries and the designer Thomas Heatherwick.

Another is Bob and Roberta Smith, also known as Patrick Brill. As it was "members' varnishing day", when works can by tradition be varnished or retouched if necessary, Brill was in the gallery with two tins of black paint.

He said he was correcting his spelling mistakes on his work, an enormous painting which is a literal transcript of a gripping and moving interview by Eddie Mair on Radio 4's PM with British surgeon David Nott about his experiences in Syria.

The summer show, the biggest event of its kind anywhere in the world, is as traditional a summer fixture as Wimbledon or the Derby, although a touch older. Now in its 246th year – remarkably it has been held every year without interruption since 1769 – it is held to adhere to one of the RA's founding principles: to "mount an annual exhibition open to all artists of distinguished merit" to finance the training of young artists in the Royal Academy Schools.

This year there will be more than 1,200 artworks, chosen from around 12,000 entries. The hanging committee was led by Hughie O'Donoghue and the majority of works in the main galleries of Burlington house will be on sale.

As well as the many works by artists few people have heard of, there will be works by higher profile names, with the sculptor Cornelia Parker, curating a room based on the theme of black and white, inviting contributions from Michael Craig-Martin, Richard Deacon, Tacita Dean, Martin Creed, Jeremy Deller, Mona Hatoum, David Shrigley, Christian Marclay and last year's Turner Prize winner, Laure Prouvost.

This year's show will also feature an architecture room, a print room and works in memory of academicians who have died over the last year including Sir Anthony Caro, Alan Davie, Maurice Cockrill, Ralph Brown and John Bellany.

• The RA Summer Exhibition, open to the public 9 June-17 August

Yinka Shonibare pokes fun at bankers with new work at Royal Academy | Art and design | The Guardian

Plus:
Yinka Shonibare: class act at Yorkshire Sculpture Park – in pictures | Art and design | theguardian.com
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royal academy - summer exhibtion

The Summer Exhibition at the RA is upon us:

Everything you’ll see at the Summer Exhibition represents what is happening in the art world right now. New and recent art created by everyone from emerging artists to the biggest names in contemporary art and architecture.

Summer Exhibition 2014 | Exhibition | Royal Academy of Arts

With some great videos:
Summer Exhibition 2014 | Exhibition | Royal Academy of Arts

And lots more stuff to explore:
Royal Academy of Arts

And at the BBC:
(but, sorry, you can't access it outside the UK!)
BBC Two - The Summer Exhibition: BBC Arts at the Royal Academy

4 June 2014 Last updated at 17:21

RA's Summer Exhibition: A sprawling exhibition of varying quality

By Will GompertzArts editor

The show mixes pieces from unknown and known artists

More from Will

The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition has run uninterrupted since 1769, showcasing the work of professional and amateur artists together in a quintessentially British exhibition.

BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz takes an illustrated tour of this year's show.

The academy has whittled down 12,000 submitted art works to 1,200 for its 2014 show, it's a sprawling exhibition of varying quality.

Rule number one in the exhibition-making manual is to start well with a strong room of good work. It reassures the visitor, gives him or her confidence.

Rule number two is: Don't show too much stuff.

The RA's Summer Exhibition has heeded the first, and - by design - ignored the second. The quantity of art on display is great, the standard patchy.

The show does start well with the RA's Central Hall exhibiting work by newly elected Academicians.

Yinka Shonibare's Cake Man II - yours for £162,000 - takes centre stage. The life-size mannequin is bent forwards, balancing a leaning tower of cakes on its shoulders.

The figure is dressed in Shonibare's signature colourful African fabrics, topped off with a globe for a head, decorated with stock market graphs. The sculpture is elegant, its message heavy-handed.

Bob and Roberta Smith, Conrad Shawcross and Chantal Joffe are all represented in the room, but the standout pieces are by the newly elected Honorary Academician, Marlene Dumas. The South African-born artist has two small head portraits - Helena and Scarlett. Both are excellent, neither is for sale.

Helena by Marlene Dumas

Turn left and you enter a room of black and white art curated by the artist Cornelia Parker. There's plenty to enjoy in here - not least a break from the chromatic cacophony of the rest of the show. She said she wanted to present work by artists whom she feels ought to be Academicians, like Ryan Gander, Fiona Banner and Martin Creed.

Artist Cornelia Parker is the RA's chosen special curator for this year's show

Their pieces are fine, but the one that caught my eye was a tiny pencil drawing hidden behind a giant placard by Bob and Roberta Smith. Unlike almost everything else in the room, this is not a work that Cornelia Parker commissioned or selected from friends' studios, but one she chose from the open submission.

It's called Haywain After Hieronymus Bosch and is for sale at £2,000, It is by Rowan Fuggle, an artist who appears to be a graduate from the The Ruskin School of Fine Art in Oxford. I grabbed this photo of it on my phone...

Haywain After Hieronymus Bosch by Rowan Fuggle

Next door, a mighty red inkjet print by Turner Prize-winner Wolfgang Tilmans blows away the black & white vibe. Greifbar 1 (£102,000) is one of the German photographer's large abstract colour-field images. Stand up-close and it appears sensuous and fragile, but seen from a distance it becomes powerful and bold. Either way, it's very good.

Tilmans's red inkjet print gives a different impression depending on how near or far the onlooker stands

Tilmans is not the only German making a splash with a large abstract work. In the huge Room III Gallery, two of the big daddies of German Expressionism are having something of a face off. On one side of the room there is a large, half painted, unusually delicate canvas by George Baselitz (£370,000).

Anselm Kiefer is another German artist with work in the show

Directly opposite hangs a massive impasto painting by Anselm Kiefer (not for sale) called Kranke Kunst ("sick art" or "diseased art").

It's not often that the two artists are hung in such close proximity, a curatorial stand-off that started with their controversial joint commission at the 1980 Venice Biennale, where one of Baselitz's statues was interpreted as giving a Nazi salute.

On a lighter note, there are a couple of small watercolours by the actress Una Stubbs, called Benedict and Martin respectively. They are of her fellow Sherlock stars Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch.

They're not marvellous, but they are fun - and that's allowed, even at the Royal Academy.

Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch, as painted by Una Stubbs

BBC News - RA's Summer Exhibition: A sprawling exhibition of varying quality
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Friday, 6 June 2014

business english: how to improve your vocabulary by watching movies about business

You can improve your business skills by watching videos:
Jay Doubleyou: business english: how to improve your pronunciation by watching youtube videos
... and by watching films:
Top Movies for Entrepreneurs | Inc.com
Top 25+ business movies to watch and learn from | MacStartup
50 Best Business Movies Ever

For a really useful website with trailers, here's an example:

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Glengarry Glen Ross Trailer - YouTube

Jon Teckman, a tutor at Ashridge Business School and previous chief executive of the British Film Institute, says that a particular scene in the film stands out as a good example of the dark side of leadership.

"[In the scene] Alec Baldwin attempts to motivate a stellar cast of failing salesmen to sell more parcels of land by offering them these incentives: 'First prize in this month's sales competition is a Cadillac Eldorado; second prize is a set of steak knives; third prize – you're fired!' Not the way we would encourage managers to motivate their teams nowadays but a great piece of cinema."

10 great movies and the business lessons they teach us

And number one is:

1. Citizen Kane (1941) If not one of the best movies of all time, then definitely in a league of its own in terms of business flicks. Orson Welles wrote, directed and starred in this masterpiece about Charles Foster Kane, which was inspired by the life of newspaper publisher and magnate William Randolph Hearst. The movie's use of lighting, camera angles and set design has served as the subject of film school studies for decades. Citizen Kane won the Oscar in 1941 for Best Screenplay, and stirred much controversy, as it appeared to fictionalize and even caricaturize aspects of Hearst's life.

Best business movies - AskMen
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Wednesday, 4 June 2014

vocabulary myth 3: vocabulary should be presented in semantic sets.

Continuing our look at Keith Folse's research:
Jay Doubleyou: vocabulary myths: applying second language research to classroom teaching
we come to the third 'myth':

Myth 3: Presenting new vocabulary in semantic sets facilitates learning.

But what are 'semantic sets'? You can also say 'semantic fields':

fields are defined by subject matter, such as body parts, landforms, diseases, colors, foods, or kinship relations.

Semantic Field - Definition and Examples

But there are many besides Keith Folse who don't think that these sets or fields are effective:

The negative effects of learning words in semantic sets: A replication

Teaching Semantic Sets of Vocab Words Interferes with Learning

Erten and Tekin, "Effects on vocabulary acquisition of presenting new words in semantic sets versus semantically unrelated sets." (2007).

People have vocabulary organized in their minds in patterns or semantic sets. Semantic sets are word groups where the words have closely related meanings or share common elements. Students tend to "recall words on the basis of the semantic field in which they are conceptually mapped" (408). As a result, many language textbooks organize words into semantic sets. There is evidence, however, that this can interfere with students' learning of vocabulary.

For this study sixty fourth graders were taught eighty new vocabulary words. The fourth graders learned four sets of words: two groups of semantically unrelated vocabulary words and two groups of related words. The study indicates that students recalled semantically unrelated words more accurately and more quickly than semantically related words. This is because teaching vocabulary words that are too closely connected at the same time can "cause interference due to cross-association and may even hinder vocabulary learning" (407).

I connected to this article personally, because in high school my AP Spanish teacher taught us vocabulary using semantic sets. For example, she had us learn 30 vocabulary words for different types of fruits and vegetables in one week. To this day I cannot tell you how to say "olive" or "melon" in Spanish. Now I know that's because learning words that were too closely connected caused interference.

The text suggests that teachers organize instruction around a theme as opposed to semantic relationships. For example, "Sweater, changing room, try on, wool, striped" would be a better group of words to teach than "scarf, tie, coat, pants, and skirt" (409). I will definitely take this into consideration when I am teaching.

Claire's Classroom Experience: Teaching Semantic Sets of Vocab Words Interferes with Learning
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Tuesday, 3 June 2014

business english: how to improve your pronunciation by watching youtube videos

We can read lots of e-mails and company brochures, look through the trade press and pick up good vocabulary from colleagues' reports.

But that's not enough to get your pronunciation right - as we know that how to write something in English is not the same as how to say something in English.

There are techniques already explored to improve your spoken English:
Jay Doubleyou: speaking fluently
Jay Doubleyou: learn english from movies
Jay Doubleyou: how to learn english from watching tv

Especially for business - and giving presentations:
Jay Doubleyou: sound scripting

One good thing is to listen and read at the same time, because you can see the word on the screen at the same time as hearing it - spelling plus pronunciation.

You can do this by watching films/the TV with the subtitles on:
ijellh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/The-Effect-of-Movie-Subtitles-on-EFL-LearnersOral-Performance.pdf
How to Use DVDs to Improve Your English
Learning English through a TV series | chiasuanchong

You can go to the BBC's Learning English website and do the listening exercises - then check things by listening with the audio script:
Learning English - Home
Learning English - Words in the News
Learning English - 6 Minute English

Again, especially for business - some very good listening and reading:
Learning English - English At Work
BBC Learning English | Ten Days

But with all of these resources you need to LISTEN AND REPEAT:
> either stop the recording and repeat what you just heard;
> or try shadowing - that is, don't stop the recording but speak at the same time:
English Speaking Practice: How to improve your English Speaking and Fluency: SHADOWING - YouTube
English Shadowing Training - Sarah Jenkins's Diary 1 - YouTube

Try using videos from YouTube in the area of business you need to work on.
Although you don't have a script to use, you should know enough about your business to listen, stop and repeat.
For example:
Bottled Gas & Equipment - Boss Gas - YouTube
Boehlke Bottled Gas - YouTube
THERMONA - trade fair AQUATHERM 2014 - YouTube
Bottled Gas Prices Rise - YouTube
Popular Industrial gas videos - YouTube

But you can find videos with subtitles too:
Big Energy Saving Week 2014 (subtitles) - YouTube

Lastly, what about all those sales training videos - again, with subtitles?
Aberdeen Group: state of the market for service organizations (English subtitles) - YouTube

Or even some specific business vocabulary videos?
VV 36 - English Vocabulary for Sales Management 2 - YouTube
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Monday, 2 June 2014

smog

Will we be getting the same amount of smog in cities this year as we did last year - or as we did earlier this year?

Here are two pieces from BBC Learning English - Words in the News:

June 2013:

Smog over Singapore