Current issue now on sale!

The Lost & Found issue of Helicon is now on sale!

32 pages glossy pages filled with art, poetry, photography, short stories and features - compiled by students from Bristol University. We only have 200 of these limited edition copies so make sure to get your hands on one!

Where can I pick up a copy?

This Friday 31st January, between 11am and 3pm we will be in the foyer of the Refectory on Woodland Road selling copies.

How much does it cost?

If you're a member of Helicon, it's free! The price for non-members is £1, but by signing up to be a member for just £3 you receive the following benefits:

• Free or discounted entry to all Helicon events and workshops - this term we have crafty workshops, creative writing workshops and film trips lined up

• Opportunity to sign up for the Helicon Book Club - announced February

• Free copies of this and future issues this year

• Sign up on Friday, and you will also be entered into our competition to win Boston Tea Party vouchers!

How do you sign up to be a member?

You can sign up for membership this Friday at the Refectory. If you are already a member, come along to pick up your free copy of the magazine then too. Some of us from the Helicon team will be there for a chat if you'd like to find out how you can contribute content to the blog and the next issue!

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to the Lost & Found issue - with your help, we really enjoyed putting the magazine together and we are looking forward to another term with lots more creative events for you.

Maddie On Things

Photographer Theron Humphrey travelled around the United States on a cross-country trip with his faithful pooch, Maddie. He took pictures of the coonhound in various situations (particularly standing on things, with great elegance). Simple as. Many of the photographs are hilarious, but others are more poignant and give us a real sense of the friendship between one man and his dog. Particularly amazing is Maddie's patience and poise as she is photographed, which was part of a larger project about rescue dogs that you can read more about using the link below.

Here's a selection of our favourites, but have a look at the whole lot here.

Zoë

Photostream Feature: Least Wanted

The police mugshot photograph was developed as early as the mid-nineteenth century, and it has since developed as an iconic photographic type in its own right. Formulaic and recognised the world over, it was developed at a when the Victorian fascination of labelling and categorising of people was at its height. Remarkably, the mugshot photograph has changed little in 150 years.

Today we bring you 'Least Wanted' - a photosteam that showcases historical mugshots. The collector of these images, Mark Michaelson has also released a book of these photographs, and he has amassed a collection of around 10,000 photographs taken from the 1870s to the 1970s. In theory, these photographs are formulaic and regular as we would expect from a mugshot. But in reality, every single one is unique - each face telling a different story.

When looking at these photographs, you can't help but imagine what sort of situations the arrested were involved in; faces look back at the camera smiling, blinking, scowling. It's also an amazing timeline of different fashions and hairstyles - the woman in the above photograph may have just been arrested, but her backcombed beehive remains perfectly intact and her expression speaks a thousand words. Some photographs have written details on them about the sitter, others reveal nothing. The photograph below is particularly fascinating -  claiming the arrested "likes to live big... will check into better type hotels and run up large bills" - which might give us a clue as to why he was charged.

Take a look at this fascinating collection of photographs here.

Zoë

The Folk House Creative Arts courses for the Spring term open now!

The Bristol Folk House on Park Street runs a huge number of creative arts courses: Arts and Crafts, Pottery, Writing, Languages, Music, Dance, Drama, Fitness and Personal Development.

The Folk House is an education centre tucked away on Park Street- pretty much opposite Boston Tea Party there's a little alleyway that leads to a cute little courtyard. This is the Folk House, home to all these great art courses and also hosts live music events and art exhibitions in their café-bar.

Their courses are now open for enrolment for the Spring term, starting in January. I would highly recommend signing up for one-even the choices just under 'art' are endless and all equally tempting- Cartoon Making, Illustration and Print-making to name a few.

I signed up for Digital Illustration to get to know the computer programmes that graphic designers used a little better. It's a six week course and not too pricey at all.

Have a look at all the courses they offer here:

http://www.bristolfolkhouse.co.uk/courses.php

Sacha

Alexa Meade: beautiful body art

Alexa Meade's collection 'your body is my canvas', is far more literal than you'd imagine. Forget paper or canvas, Meade opts to paint on her subjects, creating fascinating, detailed, living, breathing artworks.  This isn't 2D into 3D, but the reverse, yet, her uncanny paintings oddly seem to have far more joie de vivre than their 'real life' counterparts. Take a look!

Just in case you didn't believe me: the artist and her work...

And finally, my personal favourite, the self-portrait...

Painting or photograph, both? You decide.

JEM.

'Here Before'

Rookie Magazine is one of my go-to sites for essay procrastination. If you haven't heard of it already - I apologise for introducing you to it now, as many hours that could have been spent on work have been spent there.

Rookie is the kind of magazine you wish you'd known about when you were fourteen. Founded by Tavi Gevinson (fashion-blogger extraordinaire from the age of 13), the online magazine has also produced two printed  'Yearbooks' that are high up on my christmas list.Not only does is Rookie one of the few online magazines to have a hand-stitched zine feel to it, but it features really well-written articles on a whole host of topics that are unseen elsewhere. Handwritten playlists under titles such as 'Hanging Out With Juliet Capulet' and 'High School Hallway Powerwalk' are embellished with the kinds of stickers you would have found in your 1996 sticker album; unusual amateur fashion lookbooks are incorporated with hand drawn collage and illustration; it also features DIY tutorials.

 Recently I came across this photo set, entitled 'Here Before: A Visual Déjà Vu' - that I wanted to share with Helicon readers, as I think it fits perfectly with the issue we are currently putting together: Lost & Found. Eleanor, the photographer, has said this about this haunting but beautiful set of images:

"This photo series is an exploration of my past versus my present self. Many of these pictures were shot in places I had not visited since I was a child. The feelings I felt revisiting them…I could not determine if they were memories or dreams. The images are an attempt to visually represent the feeling of déjà vu; to examine the way new memories overwrite but cannot eradicate old ones (thanks to Anaheed for teaching me what a palimpsest is!); and to pay homage to the masters of surreal art."

Our official submission date for this term's issue has closed, but we are still accepting art, photography, poetry and creative writing whilst we put the magazine together. Please send it to helicon.magazine@gmail.com, and see your work published in copies of Helicon all across Bristol!

Zoë

All images courtesy of Rookie

Abandoned Spaces

Following our submission theme this term, Lost & Found, today we bring you Absence of Water - a series of photographs by Gigi Cifali, a London based artist, that explores abandoned swimming pools across the country.

In the 1930s large public swimming pools were at the height of their success, but over the past 80 years many across the United Kingdom have been closed or demolished due to lack of visitors or funding. Some of the pools are of great architectural note and survive now only as a time capsule to the past. Photographed from the perspective of a swimmer in the pool, the spaces found and photographed by Cifali are cold, ghostly and forgotten. You can view the entire series here.

French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre have also been fascinated by places lost in time. Detroit, once a thriving metropolis in the United States, now has diminished population and many abandoned areas - following the decline of the automobile industry in the second half of the 20th century. In these eerie images, clocks have stopped, dust has settled and not a figure is in sight.

Marchand has said:

"Many times we would enter huge art deco buildings with once-beautiful chandeliers, ornate columns and extraordinary frescoes, and everything was crumbling and covered in dust, and the sense that you had entered a lost world was almost overwhelming. In a very real way, Detroit is a lost world – or at least a lost city where the magnificence of its past is everywhere evident."

You can view all of Marchand and Meffre's work here, which also explores abandoned theatres and Gunkanjima - an uninhabited island in Japan.

Zoë

The very best places to be lost or found

CABIN PORN! Don't be put off by the name...this website just shows the most beautiful, original little houses and cabins that are in the middle of nowhere and completely cut-off from almost everything. Each photo is as idyllic as the next, and I thought for our theme of Lost & Found this would give some good inspiration! Keep those submissions coming, the email is helicon.magazine@gmail.com

It would be so good to just be lost in one of these places, have a little holiday away from the usual busy life, and cut off from technology. I can never decide if I prefer the ones by the water, or in a wood? The treehouse ones are so cool, but then maybe you could catch your own fish if you were by a lake!

Here a few of my favourites, it's impossible to choose though, there are pages and pages on the site!

http://cabinporn.com/

Sacha

Great Art in Ugly Rooms

I recently discovered this inexplicable, yet thoroughly entertaining tumblr site called 'Great Art in Ugly Rooms' - http://greatartinuglyrooms.tumblr.com. You can suggest an artist and a location and voila, the mocked-up picture (of the picture) will appear. I think this concept is absolutely fascinating, challenging the way we think about viewing environments, and considering whether the 'surroundings' that frame (haha, what a pun) a painting impact negatively or positively on our reception of it. Would the Mona Lisa be so revered and acclaimed if it hung in a Bristol squat? Would a 'Picasso' lose any of its charm when displayed in a port-a-loo. Here's a few examples of amazing art and installations transposed into 'ugly' environments. Are they the better for this transplantation? You decide.

Ps. Note the amazing photoshop skills!

Jeff Koons in a kitchen.

Henri Matisse in a men's toilet. 

Lucian Freud in an empty room.

George Bellows in a living room.

Normal Rockwell in a conference room.

Richard Prince in a hospital cubicle. 

Alberto Giacometti in a cabin.

(My all-time favourite photographer) Nan Goldin in a lovely green room. 

Edouard Manet by a jacuzzi. 

Mark Rothko in a pretty pink bedroom. 

Grant Wood in a mirrored room.

Our very own Banksy in a purple bedroom.

Vincent Van Gogh in a playbarn.

Lastly, my personal favourite, Damien Hirst's formaldehyde sheep in a child's nursery.

Also, check out the twin site, 'Great Video in Ugly Rooms' - http://greatvideoinuglyrooms.tumblr.com

JEM.