Dyeing Breeds

Ext Inked has received further acclaim in the August 09 issue of Bizarre Magazine (UK). The article features information about UHC's latest and most controversial new art venture which invites 100 volunteers to become 'ambassadors' for a threatened species of insect, animal or plant and have a picture of it tattooed on their skin. Bizarre have also been given an exclusive peek at several of the designs including the Great Yellow Bumble Bee and the Erratic Ant created by UHC's co-founder Jai Redmen.

To find out more about Ext Inked or to register your interest in becoming an ambassador please visit the UHC website.

One and All

Our very own Joe Richardson was one of eight artists invited to take part in the 'I Don't Know About Community Networks But I Know What I Like' project organised by Alison Kershaw. The works were featured in the One and All exhibition at the Castlefield Galley, which ran from 3 April to 17 May 2009. 

   

 A review of this exhibition featured in the June issue of A-N Magazine.

Limited Edition Sushi

UHC has had the pleasure of working with Greenpeace for the Limited Edition Sushi Campaign, the aim of which is to stop trendy restaurant Nobu selling endangered species on their menu.

We are happy to see this campaign featured in the London Evening Standard newspaper and hope that through generating awareness for this issue people will realise that serving endangered species in restaurants such as Nobu is not cool!  

To find out more about this campaign please visit www.greenpeace.org.uk/nobu and watch www.endoftheline.com.

EXT INKED - en4m.org.uk

100 tattoos for conservation

"EXT INKED aims to show that our generation cares about the future of all species and is prepared to prove it in blood, sweat and tears", explain the organisers.

The project is launched today, on Darwin's birthday. "We really feel that Darwin would appreciate our desire to creatively celebrate evolution, the sheer beauty of these species and the human effort needed to save them," a participating artist writes.

EXT INKED is a new art project from Ultimate Holding Company, in conjunction with the Marine Conservation Society and Buglife (The Invertebrate Conservation Trust). Ultimate Holding Company is an award-winning, radical art and design collective operating in the heart of Manchester since 2002.

Volunteers will be permanently tattooed with the image of their chosen mammal, invertebrate, bird, reptile, fish or plant.

To keep EXT INKED free and avoid sponsorship, they are aiming to raise £5,000 from the public. They want the event to be free to attend and hope that it will attract a new wave of interest in conservationism.

With every successful free tattoo the project will create a new ambassador for another threatened species - a living exhibition of Charlie’s other angels!

If you think EXT INKED is a good idea and would like to help then sign up to the newsletter on their website linked below.

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, are dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us...” -Charles Darwin 'On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection'

Arts Council News

UHC water table recieves futher acclaim in the August issue of Arts Council 'News'. The article highlights the success of The Water Table grabbing bronze prize in the prestigious Show Garden Catagory, adding to its 'already impressive tally of horticultural awards'. Being described as innovative and beautiful, the project recieved a glowing report from the executive Director of Arts Council England,

"Congratulations to all those who have brought this innovative project together. The Arts Council is delighted to support ventures which have such a creative reach into the commnutiy. We feel sure Metal's partnership with southend will grow from strength top strength."

Creative Review

UHC has been mentioned for our work with Climate Camp in Jody Boenhart's article, In The Front Line in this months Creative Review (October 08):

Design at the Climate Camp

Each year the camp has worked with the Manchester-based studio Ultimate Holding Company (UHC) to create an integrated campaign (website, posters, flyers, stickers, etc.). The leading image for the 2008 camp was a Swiss army knife, out of which all the tools of activism extended: here is a wrench, book, wind turbine, loud speaker, rubber boot, carrot, and flower. The camp also produced a newspaper, You Are Here, in an edition of 20,000. Subtle headlines, text and images draw you into the issues slowly. Climate change is not even mentioned or alluded to until several pages into the paper. John Jordan worked on the paper and is one of the key design activists at the camp. The intention, he claims, is “to make publicity materials which have the slickness of corporate media yet the punch of rebel flyers, the poetic writing of literature yet the political analysis of radical theory, the desirability of capitalist design, yet the subversiveness of anarchist thinking”.

The crisp design produced by the Climate Camp is removed from the typical anarchist/Marxist/revolutionary visual codes of earlier activists movements. The Climate Camp’s graphic identity aims to be attractive to everyday people; it is accessible and asks everyone to participate. Gone are the stencilled or dirty grunge fonts that are identified with your counter-cultures. In an era when our rebellion has been sold back to us for so long that the aesthetics of rebellion are virtually meaningless, the Climate Camp has avoided positioning itself with any of the counter-culture based identity politics of earlier activists movements that could never escape the anarchist ghetto. So far, the camp has stayed clear of old ideology-based rhetoric and imagery, but is a constant battle to maintain a fresh perspective and communications strategy.

How does the relationship between the designer and client differ from a commercial situation? Here the client is the networking group of the camp. UHC describes the dynamic: “We begin from their starting point, that is to say – the brief is ‘to save the world now’ and the target audience is ‘everyone’. It can be hard pleasing everyone, with such a vociferously non-hierarchical, decentralised, voluntary and deeply committed group. Every year we nearly have to start building relationships from scratch, because the client is a shifting group. After three years we now have a good relationship with one or two people who have remained constant and are design savvy.”

The Independent

Included in the The Independent's special supplement for the climate clinic at the Labour Party Conference is our "e.on f.off" slogan as used by activists in their battle against the company's efforts to paint itself 'green' whilst building an unsustainable coal power plant at Kingsnorth in Kent.