Tag Archives: We Love Real

andy
July 20, 2012

my REAL wall Featured Artist – Gareth Hopkins

As part of the 3 year my REAL wall retrospective, I enter the Featured Artists galleries and the very first artist to step up to the wall is Gareth Hopkins, a UK based artist and illustrator. The reason he’s the first featured artist in the retrospective is because my REAL wall would have not been nearly as interesting a place so fast if it hadn’t been for him.

Gareth was the first person to respond to my Gumtree ad for post and slowly introduced me to Postcrossing and mailart.

This is by no means all the artwork and post he’s sent me, as I reserved some of his artworks for other galleries I’ll be sending in, notably, Send me your Status, but this includes some important works, including the original letter and the one in which he introduces me to The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon and mailart, as well as 2 copies of the Intercorstal, an ongoing comic that he has produced.

To see more information on the pieces on the wall, just click on the wall above, which will take you through to flickr where you can hover over the image for more detailed information.

I’ve met Gareth a few times and he still continues to stay in touch and inspire. In fact, he’s the one who introduced me to the Real Gallery, where he lives in plot 25, so ultimately it’s down to him that I’m doing a retrospective at all

andy
June 28, 2012

Real Network Profile Timeline

I’m currently taking part in a postal project in the centre of London called welovereal. They give me a “plot” and I need to fill it by sending post in. My first piece of post has to be a profile, for which the organisers have sent a preformatted profile page requesting a name, location and bio.

I’ve decided that my plot will be a pretty thorough history of my REAL wall, so I wanted to get off on the right foot with the profile, giving the audience not just the information requested, but a neat biographic preview of what is to come over the month.

Facebooks timeline format suited this idea and approach perfectly, but I did have to totally ignore the layout provided.

It was such a lovely trip back down memory lane to dig out these major events, and the whole thing took just over 4 hours to complete

andy
June 24, 2012

REAL to Real


Earlier this week I heard about a new social network that really tickled me. Called Real, the physical network, this new social network can be found at www.welcometoreal.com.

So what makes it different from other social networks, you may be wondering. Well Real is a project sponsored by Royal Mail which gives a select few people some wall space in a premium location in London. All that the people have to do in return fill that space by sending in Real post.

It’s a real wall to be filled with real post. Sound familiar?

Anyway, i’m not bitter, even about the bit where they say they’re the first real social network as I applaud any effort to connect people, especially using post, and i’m throwing my full support behind the project.

I’ve been given a plot to fill, plot 45, and the lovely folk at Real have sent me a welcome pack, complete with lots of awesome pre-paid envelopes. I have some ideas and will probably ask for your help to fill my plot, so watch this space!

I’ll get started on my first pieces for the plot tonight. In the meantime, I decided to take all the post out into the real world, so here is the contents of my inbox on the tube between Hammersmith and Goldhawk Road. I think it all looks very happy there.

if you want to help new full my plot and show London what postal social networking is really all about, drop me a line!