The Raw London event truly lived up to its name last week, by showcasing a good mix of raw creative to a mixed crowd of art lovers, art discoverers, like me, fashionistas and people who just wanted an early start to the weekend on a thursday night.
RAW natural born artist is a global organisation that provides a platform for new and emerging creatives, through hosting monthly events that puts the spotlight on indie talent in film, fashion, music, art, hair & makeup artistry, performing art and photography in 54 cities across the U.S, London, Canada and Australia.
Raw was hosted at the creative hub in the east end of London at 93 feet east brick lane, which is part of the Old Truman Brewery and a popular venue for hosting various events ranging from live music performances, pop up art events and club nights.
The Raw event was held in two main rooms on the ground floor. In one of the exhibition space there was a bar and a temporary erection of fences with cinder blocks used by artist to display their artwork, which gave it an industrial urban feel.
In this room I discovered the work of Michelle Theodotou, a talented young female artist whose work spoke to me. Michelle has experimented with different media, but has settled with using paints. She likes accidents or mistakes in her work, as this could take you on a different journey and give birth to a new idea.
I was attracted by the dripping technique, contrasting colours, texture, the use of glitter and the feminine subjects displayed in her work. I was particularly drawn to this piece, titled “It doesn’t really matter“. It reminded me of people looking at art and digesting what the image was offering, the emotion generated and the thoughts an art piece might provoke.
In conversation with Michelle, she informed me that the work was inspired by the passing of her mum, which resulted in her thinking a lot and lead to her painting herself thinking, where the painting is an extension of herself, that’s why she painted a female body at the bottom.
The other piece I found interesting was this painting called Muted Desires, which had to follow me home. This work was inspired by Michelle watching a dancer dancing at an event and she saw a moment in the dancers demure which was a little bit sad. She felt it was a private moment that was not meant to be shared with the dancer’s audience, but Michelle was able to see this and captured it in this brilliant piece of art below.
Here are some more great pieces from Michelle Theodotou, that were also available at the event. This series is based on conversations she heard in a bar in New York.
Moving to the 2nd main room of the venue, was a bar and a stage for the performances and catwalk show. In the corner across the room was the work of Shoe Designer Ashanti Lou , who had these custom made glammed up shoes displayed for artistic consumption and to purchase of course. I could not get enough of the artistic effort that went into these shoetastic creations. As a lover of shoes with an artistic twist, I was debating between the practicality of wearing the shoes or simply having the shoes as an art piece. I went with the latter.
Whilst admiring the works of Ashanti Lou, I met a lady with customised nail art that matched one of the shoes on display, which was a complete coincidence.
Music by Eva Maia with her acoustic guitar, kicked off the performing art segment of the evening.
Cellar Door Dance a London based dance company that recently relocated from Los Angeles, put on an captivating contemporary dance performance.
The Twin Swing, a twin sister act, put on a smashing swing performance.
And they also got the crowd in on the act, by teaching us a couple of Lindy hop swing steps from the 1920s, which was very intriguing
The night ended with a cat walk show from La Couturiere
and trio combination of hair art design, make up by Estelle Rousseau and shoes by Ashanti Lou.
More shoes by Ashanti Lou
After which, I proceeded home to enjoy my new art pieces which I purchased from Michelle Theodotou collection. We can all own an original piece of art at affordable prices:)
