London Art Pop-up: Team Rex presents “Feel the Presence!” @Central St.Giles!

Update: You can Feel the Presence! until the 26th January 2013, as our Pop-up Show has extended due to your Presence! 

From Team Robbo re: Pop-up Art Shop

Where: UNIT 5 CENTRAL ST GILES 1 SAINT GILES HIGH STREET WC2H 8AG

When: 12 Dec 2012 – 5th Jan 2013

What: WE ROC HARD AND TEAM REX PRESENT “FEEL THE PRESENCE” A POP UP SHOP FOR ALL THINGS ART IN CENTRAL LONDON,LAUNCH NIGHT IS DECEMBER THE 14TH WITH MUSIC AND DRINKS ETC,YOU KNOW HOW WE ROLL…

Private View: USE THIS EMAIL ADDRESS FOR YOUR INVITE TO THE PRIVATE VIEW/lAUNCH. SHOP@TEAMREX.ORG

Message from ^Yu: Well thanks Team Robbo, it will be fun for me to put in a little something at your Google Building Pop-up Art Shop! All for fun and a good cause for Christmas and New Years! Feel the Presents!!!!!!! 🙂 Here’s looking at all of you! Happy Holidays! Fun! Fun!

One of these days I should remember to tell all readers that when any artist (but especially Graffiti artists) say something like: “It will just be a tiny little art show/shop/installation/thing” …it usually means something ….MUCH BIGGER! Pity those who take artistic euphemism, understatement and  contextual brain-storming too literally! 🙂 

I must say, Team Robbo …all of you really get me to go to places it would never really occur to me to exhibit at…that is FANTASTIC!..I guess that’s just the dynamics of the psychology between men and women! (in-joke alert!)…see you all at the Private view. I just hope I get it all finished and ready by then because this is such a Fun Art-shop idea!!!!!! I really needed it after the stress of National Museum of Modern Art in Cairo!!!! Thank you so much! XXOO 

Reflection image by (c) Kevin Button 2012

Info about Central St. Giles according to Wiki-info-link:

Central Saint Giles is a mixed-use development in central London. Built at a cost of £450 million and completed in May 2010, it was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano and is his first work in the UK.[2] The development consists of two buildings of up to 15 storeys in height, arranged around a public courtyard lined with shops and restaurants. It is chiefly notable for its façades, covered with 134,000 glazed tiles in vivid shades of green, orange, lime and yellow.[3] It has attracted a number of high-profile tenants including NBCUniversal, MindShare and Google.

Mixed reactions to its Architectural Designs! 🙂

Architectural critics have given lukewarm reviews to the Central Saint Giles development. Jay Merrick of The Independent called it the most “wilfully vivid mixed-use building” since No 1 Poultry was built in the 1990s and noted the way that the “shouty polychromatic architecture” of the development “imprint[s] the vista with a bumptious, laser-etched precision.” However, he expressed concern that the development would send the message that similar projects should convey “a false sense of worth” by being similarly dramatic. He criticised the way that the terracotta façades presented an overall effect that was “neither beautiful enough, nor surreal enough, to be truly remarkable”, presenting an effect that was “striking but not resonant. Nothing about these façades lingers in the mind. They are, oddly, bereft of joie de vivre.”[19]
The Observer’s critic Rowan Moore was somewhat more positive, calling the development “a Marmite building … which passers-by either hate or love”. He compared it to “a B-movie … in which giant mutant chewy sweets have, following a radioactive accident, invaded the world.” Nonetheless, he rated Central Saint Giles as “one of the better” of the recent wave of commercial-civil developments in central London, calling it “dignified and refined, and the talk of transparency and openness is genuine.” He praised the “beautiful precision” and complexity of the ceramic façade, citing its “depth and richness” and the “judgment in their precise tones”.
Ike Ijeh of Building noted that the striking colours of Central Saint Giles provided a “contrast with the traditional London grey/brown of the surrounding townscape [that] is both surreal and cinematic”. Although he was critical of the monotonous appearance of the building’s external windows, he gave “a resounding and unequivocal yes” to the question of whether the development succeeded, commending it for its “skilful construction of a new urban identity for a forgotten area and the generosity of its ground level engagement with context.”

Writing in Architecture Today, Neven Sidor commended the development’s design for “reach[ing] out to its context at the same time as boldly asserting its own personality.” He commented that “somehow colour therapy and fine terracotta modelling make the effect uplifting” and described the vistas from the central plaza as “a joy”, praising the skill that had gone into the design. Piano’s standing as an “international star” had, in Sidor’s view, given the architect the clout to insist on the development’s more unorthodox features and had been essential for such an ambitious complex to receive planning permission in the first place.
A less favourable perspective was offered by Ellis Woodman of Building Design, who criticised the lurid appearance of the development. He complained that “the site has been overdeveloped, to my mind, grotesquely so” and that its visual impact was “as shocking as that of any building realised in central London in 40 years”. He was particularly critical of the way that the colourful upper-floor façades clashed with the use of lines of exposed columns at the ground level and called the site “a grim compromise between two fundamentally opposed ideas of how the capital might develop”. On a more positive note, he praised the high quality of the office space and the spectacular views from the top floors and roof terrace.