Picked up the ever so pink and delightful Sugar Power from the airport a few days ago.  She and her gypsy bags were on their way for yet another adventure to meet the queen again. She carried three black bags, a pink feather in her hair and precious Melburnian memories. ‘I brought a gift for you, but i’m sorry… i drank it!‘, she said.

As we lazed around from one bar to another and talked, and talked, and talked more (wait! can a guy actually do that? ) i realized that i hadn’t missed her at all. It was almost like the past five years had turned into days and we were picking up from where we left off ‘just like that’.. unbelievable!

The wine flowed incessantly and as our tangents began to defy the fundamental notions of conversational geometry, i remembered how familiarly awesome her quirkiness was. Now it isn’t everyday that you see an emarati guy in a dish dash (also the owner of the hotel) laugh as he gets punched on the shoulder again and again by a crazy hippy!

Ardessa Nica Jessau! you remind me of Mr. Gump’s fantastic stories! YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!

Click here to see some of her awesomeness!

Sachin and Paresh of Curry Smugglers got in touch with me last week to see if i’d be interested in designing a little identity unit for their podcast and sure-as-bob i was. Already on their 3rd episode, the two still seem to have enough new insights to share and good energy to spread around with their seemingly laid back presence. It’s going to be interesting to see how far these two will go to keep things fresh as we go along. Personally, i have a pretty good feeling about it but the pressure is ON boys!!!

Tune in here

In a glittering ceremony last week, attended by over 200 eminent personalities from the media, marketing and advertising fraternity, the UAE Chapter of the IAA announced that it would award ParisGallery, the leading luxury retailer in the GCC with the honor of founding UAE’s National Lunch Bag.

For over 25 years, ParisGallery’s iconic red bag has become the quintessential grub bag for many UAE residents who prefer to carry their own lunch to work. Over the years, white collar employees have been traveling back and forth from work with this bag that has now officially been named a national fashion accessory. Hesham Ezzat, an executive working for a leading insurance firm claimed that not only was the size of the bag just ideal for most tupperware that he owned but the bag’s durability made it a highly reliable lunch mate.

The CEO of ParisGallery has been considering slashing his marketing budgets and producing more durable retail shopping bags from next year. In a proud moment after receiving the honor, he said ‘ All this while, i had no idea that shoppers were advertising my brand for me. Imagine, all the money i could have saved on marketing if i knew this was happening. I could have bought more hair gel and Bmw’s instead’

I know that the next post in queue was going to be dedicated to how awesome me and my writer were at the ‘Dubai Young Lynx 2009′ But i am forced to digress and crib about a depressing brief i found laying on my desk this morning. It was for the lack of a better word – CONDESCENDING!! – a brief that required me to design a poster urging mall shoppers to wear respectable clothing!! Now don’t get me wrong… i don’t usually consider any project as ‘beneath me’ and i have been charged guilty on numerous accounts as being the eternal optimist who sees a fluttering potential in mostly every shitty situation.. but somehow i considered it purely offensive and borderline insulting when i was asked to replicate an existing artwork for which we were missing our very own digital files. NOW THAT! IS BENEATH ME!

Anyway.. the drama queen within me found peace at the thought of ‘taking the piss’ !! mwahaha! If you can’t beat em – join em, is what they say ??? The call against ‘indecent exposure’ turned into a support for ‘decent exposure’ and i was calmed by the sound of my own brain giggling at these silly little figurines wearing these modestly shaped designer shopping bags. I mean after-all, if you can’t show any skin – you may as well wear the damn bag yea ??

Click on the image to see it BIG!

Introducing MY NAME IS ROBOT, the Middle East’s first custom toy show. Robotandspark invited 37 regional artists, designers, typographers, jewellers, artists, sculptors, photographers and leading creatives to customize the 8-inch resin robots and display them at thejamjar Gallery on Thursday February the 19th 2009.

The list of artists include Chor Boogie, Lisa Geuvarra, Rollan Rodriguez, Lewis De Mesa, Eduardo Yap, Paolomaria, Buffi Jashanmal, Renata Giovanoni, Diya Ajit, Hani Reza, Vivek Premachandran, The Tribe, Leo Burnett, Malek Ghorayeb, JWT, Zaid Alwan, TBWA, Khulood Khoory, Nina Jaitha, Cynthia Wong, James Gibbs, Roula Ghalayini, Bianca Bernstein, Nawal Khoory, Hind Iskander & Talayeh Jenab, Laughing Man, Stuart Harris, Darwin Guevarra, Yalda Jafari, Ogilvy One, James Clar, Amritraj Gupta, Joseph Manata, amirah t, Tony French and Jalal Abuthina, Expression and Hind Mezzaina.

Once the artists had finished, leading photographers from Bareface were asked to photograph the robots in any which way they wanted. These prints will be displayed alongside the robots and all artwork will be auctioned off for the charity START (www.startworld.org)

DJ Dany Neville from Underground Procedures will also be opening the exhibit with a live set.

The exhibition will run from the 19th Feb until the 23rd Feb.

Visit www.mynameisrobot.org for more info

So… now my turn to ramble ! I’ve been trying to get back to my roots again and return to my typical kitsch ‘omkara’ hindu art style again. This time round, the piece is called ‘My Name is Robot Kalki’ – The name Kalki means literally, “of iron” or “machine.” As this avatar, Lord Vishnu will incarnate himself as the machine-man, who will come riding his white horse and a blazing sword in his hands. He takes on his multi-armed form and as he punishes all evil-doers in this world, he recites the verse from the Hindu scripture- “Now i am become death, destroyer of worlds.” At the end of Kali Yuga, he will, destroy this world supposedly and recreate a golden age again. Here is a little video i slapped together inspired by a Nitin Sawhney track that has been my muse for the longest time ever!!!

See you at the show

So i recently thought it’d be a good idea to pop the twitter cherry and really look into what the hoo-haa about twittering was all about. Despite my over zealous colleague – Kedar’s unconditional endorsement, i found myself strolling quite lazily into this twitterworld of colorful chirping sparrows. I am now twittering @ artraj

Am still trying to figure out exactly how it turns me on. But until then, this shindy called the Twestival totally caught my attention (courtesy Kedar who tweets @ floatr) Up for grabs was a T-Shirt design gig for charity:water and so here we go.

Platform – a creative lifestyle magazine based out of New Delhi recently got in touch to feature ‘The Omkara’ in the January issue. So there we go. Glad to see the encouraging support to indian artists in other parts of the world. Three cheers and hats off to Shahnaz Siganporia and the rest of her team at Platform. Thanks!

http://platform-mag.com/

Didn’t quite expect to spend an entire day at INDEX, but the exhibition was almost the size of 20 football fields, hence the sore feet! Anyway, this is hardly going to be a review of the show, but more of a mental-note of the more interesting exhibits, artists and pieces that i came across. And yes! Ladies and Gentlemen – i spluuurged and i am pretty thrilled about it (albeit fractionally guilty). Anyhow, the following pieces seemed to appeal to my simple aesthetic senses quite a bit.

1. Lunablocks – Designed and created by Thierry Nahon and Philippe Landecker. (www.lunaticconstruction.com) Based on an original concept, the transformation and enlargement of bricks used in building games for children. Easily stacked together, functional and totally versatile, these Lunablocks are designed for the world of decoration and for the home. And guess what ? they come in light and compact, opaque, transparent or luminous materials. Sadly, i couldnt afford the acrylic and/or gold plated blocks, so i had to settle for the polysterene version (a collection of 7 blocks for a total of 168Euros)

2. Fatboy by Marimekko – Designed by Maija Isola (www.fatboy.nl/marimekko). She apparently found inspiration for the pattern whilst fetching water from a well. Well… whatever her inspiration, it definitely served as much needed delight for me when i saw the ‘Desert River’ exhibit and ten glorious fatboys sitting plump on a green stage. I walked away at first, but i came back sooner than expected to get myself my own ‘kaivo red’

3. Sculptural work by Gibbus (www.gibbus.cz). Some really elegant iron work from this very talented sculptor. His agent could not speak a word of english, but i guess what he was trying to explain was that his work is moderately inspired by Dali. That seemed just about right

4. The Timebeam (www.timebeam.com) This little piece of contraption is considered a classic design and ‘the antique of the future’. Its pretty neat actually. Think the price on this niftiness ranged from 600 to 1000 AED. The difference in pricing is because of the intensity of the light projected.

5. Thierry Bruet (www.thierrybruet.com). Now this painter-sculptor extraordinaire was something else. It was clear from his book that he had a passion for political sattire, but his style had such a unique touch to it that it would almost drift seamlessly between animated forms, lines and brushstrokes into realism. Very very nice indeed. Please check out his site – its totally worth it

6. SoWatt (www.pierremachinal.com) This contemporary chandelier of sorts honestly stole my heart. The artist Pierre had used porcelain light bulbs intertwined with a mesh of optic fibres to create this really wholesome piece of spatial and graphic art. Even the light bulbs were dimly illuminated by an optic fibre that passed into it. Immaculately Gorgeous! Priced at 14,406 USD, it seemed fit only for the lobby of a hotel or a restaurant that i would be initimidated to visit.

7. Emotional Doors (www.chiariluce.it) Some really cool emotional doors by chiariluce. Thanks to the awesomeness of LED technology, these doors are just perfect for spas me thinks. Less suited for residential thoug (but hey! this is Dubai)

b. Oscar Sierra (www.oscar-sierra.com) Interesting style of photo-collage memoir from Oscar Sierra. Think its quite a fun little thing to do at any place. So simple that you could almost do it yourself, ofcourse what you would be missing is Oscar’s stamp of approval, the slick finishing and the perfectly manicured plexiglass framing unit that comes with Oscar’s bill of 10,000USD !

There comes a time in every creative mans life when he decides to stop procrastinating and get his ‘Book’ ready. This ‘Book’ that i talk about is not a collection of pages with hardcovers on either side, but more so a collection of past creative exploits that individuals of cosmoplastic stature believe is worthy of sharing with those who sit perched above him on trees other than his own.

And now that i have exhausted myself by sounding so pointlessly proper. Let me tell you what i called my book !!!
It’s called ‘Bread, Butter & Jam’ – TaDaa!! Take a bite here and tell me what it tastes like to you.