Hilo Chen, Beach 163, 2009

You wouldn’t know by looking outside but apparently it’s summertime… To make up for the lack of sunshine here’s some great paintings by American artist Hilo Chen. At first I thought these were photos, shot or manipulated to give them that super-saturated 70s look, but they’re hyper-real paintings. The colours, texture and details are amazing.

The images all focus on women on the beach and while one or two are a little overt, I think the overall feeling of voyeurism is tempered with an honesty of acknowledging  that sunkissed women in bikinis are attractive… Also the viewer wants to examine the painterly detail and not just look like a perv ogling women in bikinis. You can check out some more paintings here.

I love monkeys! Chimps, apes, gorillas too. I’m an equal-oppertunities primate fan. I distinctly remember having my photo taken in Dun Laoghaire when I was about 3 with two little makaks. And apparently my Chinese horoscope animal is the monkey so maybe that’s where I get it from.

If you even remotely like monkeys then check out this amazing set of monkey portraits by Jill Greenberg Studio.

Ciarán tries to ignore the Waistcoat Guy, while everyone else cowers in fear…

Last week was the end of the current crop of Threex3. Having done the internship myself back in the dark misty days of 2008 I can honestly say it’s one of the best ways of getting some experience when you’re fresh out of college. We had a great day – leaving the studio early to watch the Brasil v Netherlands quarter-final (and getting rained on in the process), trying to get my man-chest cast in plaster, keys in pints, socks in pints, shoes on awnings… Oh Paddy!

The best of luck to Rosie, Dan and Richie in their future endeavours, they’re three of the nicest and most talented people I’ve worked with.

Saw this on Parnell street and thought the old school hand-rendered type was great. It was actually a newish van — 98D — so the type would have been done in the last 10 years or so.

Dublin’s busy this weekend, there’s the PhotoIreland festival on and the annual Kings of Concrete. If you’re into boards, bikes, beats and balls then this 2 day event out the back of the Civic Offices on Wood Quay is for you. The video above is from last year’s event and here’s a few photos on flickr. Hopefully I’ll have some good shots from this year to post up soon.

From The Gift by Giorgia Fiorio

From Inspiration at Sebastian Guinness Gallery

Untold Fables by Daniel Holfeld

PhotoIreland is the countries first International Festival for Photography. There’s a load of cool shows on; I recommend getting down to see The Gift by Giorgia Fiorio in the Gallery of Photography, Inspiration curated by Perry Ogden at the Sebastian Guinness Gallery and  The Thing That Bruises You in The Back Loft, La Catedral. Super photo guy Daniel Holfeld has some pieces in The Thing That Bruises You, you can check out more of his stuff on his site (which I designed… shameless plug).

Yes, this week sees the 25th anniversary of the release of Back the Future. I’ve great memories of watching this a kid, it’s up there with the Empire Strikes Back as one of my all-time favourite movies. I wanted a Delorean almost as much as I wanted KITT from Knightrider. It seems to be one of those films — like the Goonies or a Connery Bond — that you watch whenever it’s on TV. Might head off to Lazer tonight and see if can rent it…

Homemade: Fresh Turkey, Sprouts, Swiss Cheese, Purple Onions On a Baguette. Scanned in collaboration with Microsoft’s Deep Zoom.

People that know me know I love cooking, baking, making any kind of delish food. Basically I’m a feeder (like me da). So it makes sense that one of my favourite blogs is Scanwiches, brainchild of Jon Chonko. Basically it’s really nice sambos scanned on a flatbed scanner. The simpleness of the idea goes really well with the outwardly simple nature of a sandwich, but there’s a depth and quality there, as there should be in all the best sambos.

My own personal fave sanger is smoked rashers, fresh tomatoes, a bit of oak leaf salad, some red sauce, maybe some Dubliner Red Cheddar and a Birdseye Potato Waffle on a ice bit of toasted wholegrain. Dammit I’m hungry now, lucky I’m of to the folks for a feed!!!

I got to work on a really great project recently called Cosmopolis: a festival of words, images and sounds to celebrate and explore the universal human practice of making stories which was held on UEA campus on 5th June 2010. Oddly enough I got to do the whole thing from start to finish: website, posters, flyers and guide.

I also got to go over to Norwich —  the land of Alan Partridge and Stephen Fry —  to visit the festival and meet the lovely Jessica and Landa from Tibor Jones, who I’ld been working with on the project. There was a great series of lectures by a tonne of writers, artists musicians and storymakers including Amit Chaudhuri, Dayanita Singh, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Geoff Dyer, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Richard T Kelly.

More photos on flickr and on thinksomethingdifferent.co.uk

The annual bike rally celebrating Bloomsday going down Capel St. The video was taken from the Zero-G studio on my iPhone, which iPhone guy fixed for me.