Vivienne Westwood

Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire in the village of Tintwistle, Derbyshireon 8 April 1941, the daughter of Gordon Swire and Dora Swire (née Ball), who had married two years previously, two weeks after the outbreak of World War II.At the time of Vivienne's birth, her father was employed as a storekeeper in an aircraft factory; he had previously worked as a greengrocer.

Aged 17, Vivienne and her family moved to Harrow, London. She studied at the Harrow School of Art - University of Westminster, taking fashion and silversmithing, but she left after one term saying, "I didn't know how a working-class girl like me could possibly make a living in the art world".After taking up a job in a factory and studying at a teacher-training college, she became a primary school teacher.During this period, she also created her own jewellery, which she would sell at a stall on Portobello Road.

In 1961, Vivienne Swire met Derek Westwood, a Hoover factory apprentice, in Harrow.They married on 21 July 1962 and Vivienne made her own wedding dress for the ceremony. In 1963, she gave birth to a son, Benjamin Westwood.

Stelarc

Stelarc (born Stelios Arcadiou, but legally changed his name in 1972) is a Cypriot-Australian performance artist whose works focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred around his concept that the human body is obsolete. Until 2007 he held the position of Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. He is currently a visiting Professor in the School of Arts at Brunel University, West London.

Stelarc's idiosyncratic performances often involve robotics or other relatively modern technology integrated with his body somehow. In 26 different performances he has suspended himself in flesh hook suspension, often with one of his robotic inventions integrated. His (seemingly) last suspension performance was held in Melbourne in March 2012. In another performance he allows his body to be controlled remotely by electronic muscle stimulators connected to the internet. He has also performed with a robotic third arm, and a pneumatic spider-like six-legged walking machine which sits the user in the centre of the legs and allows them to control the machine through arm gestures.

Monet

On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt (1868), an early example of plein-air impressionism, in which a gestural and suggestive use of oil paint was presented as a finished work of art.
When Monet traveled to Paris to visit the Louvre, he witnessed painters copying from the old masters. Having brought his paints and other tools with him, he would instead go and sit by a window and paint what he saw.[citation needed] Monet was in Paris for several years and met other young painters who would become friends and fellow impressionists; among them was Édouard Manet.

In June 1861, Monet joined the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria for a seven-year commitment, but, two years later, after he had contracted typhoid fever, his aunt intervened to get him out of the army if he agreed to complete an art course at an art school. It is possible that the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, whom Monet knew, may have prompted his aunt on this matter. Disillusioned with the traditional art taught at art schools, in 1862 Monet became a student of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley. Together they shared new approaches to art, painting the effects of light en plein air with broken color and rapid brushstrokes, in what later came to be known as Impressionism.

Monet's Camille or The Woman in the Green Dress (La femme à la robe verte), painted in 1866, brought him recognition and was one of many works featuring his future wife, Camille Doncieux; she was the model for the figures in Women in the Garden of the following year, as well as for On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt, 1868, pictured here. Shortly thereafter, Camille became pregnant and gave birth to their first child, Jean.

Dali

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), known as Salvador Dalí was a prominent Spanish surrealist painter born in Figueres, Spain.

Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.

Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to a self-styled "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.

Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork, to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem, and to the irritation of his critics.

Rankin

Waddell was brought up in St Albans, Hertfordshire. At the age of 21, whilst studying accounting at Brighton Polytechnic, he realised that his interests lay elsewhere and dropped out, taking up the study photography at London College of Printing. During this time, Rankin met Jefferson Hack, with whom he formed a working relationship. The two decided to start a magazine together called Dazed & Confused once they had graduated.

In 1999 Hack and Rankin founded Dazed Film & TV, a production company that would produce the first mast-head[clarification needed] television broadcast ever, the four hour special Renegade TV Gets Dazed, for Channel 4. In December 2000 Rankin launched his own quarterly fashion magazine, RANK. He also publishes Another Magazine, Another Man and more recently "HUNGER".

His many subjects have included Britney Spears, Kate Moss, Kylie Minogue, Spice Girls, Madonna, David Bowie, Björk, Juliette Binoche, Lily Allen, Kevin Spacey, The Rolling Stones, Vivienne Westwood, Cate Blanchett, Damien Hirst, Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair and M.I.A..

In addition, Rankin has donated his services to publicity campaigns for the charitable organisation Women's Aid, providing photographs for use in the What's it going to take? and Valentine's Day campaigns.

Rankin began 2009 by inviting people across the UK to participate in his project Rankin Live!. A show of two halves, Rankin brought a museum scale retrospective of the last 22 years of Rankin’s photographic life, together with portraits of 1500 of today’s British public. Open to people over thirteen who had a distinctive style, sense of British eccentricity and enthusiasm. The participants were invited to the Rankin Live exhibition at the Truman Brewery in August to sit for their personal shoot. The portraits produced on the day were hung as part of the ever-changing exhibition and uploaded to the Rankin Live website.

In April 2009 Rankin created ‘’Annroy’’, a contemporary structure designed by Trevor Horne Architects that is home to Rankin’s own state-of-the-art photographic studio, gallery and chic living space, where he lives with his wife and model Tuuli Shipster. Each month ‘’Annroy’’ holds a different exhibition, which features some of Rankin’s current work.

Rankin was first married to actress Kate Hardie. They married in 1995, divorced in 1998 and had a son, Lyle, together.

Rankin has photographed some of Hollywood’s most famous people and has shot some world-renowned campaigns, including Nike, Umbro, Reebok, Marks and Spencer’s, Rimmel, L’Oreal, Hugo Boss, Levi's, Shiatzy Chen, Thomas Wylde, Longchamp, Aussi, Madonna for H&M, Dove, BMW, and Coca Cola.

La chapelle

LaChapelle’s striking images have graced the covers and pages of Italian Vogue, French Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Rolling Stone and i-D, and he has photographed personalities as diverse as Janet Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Madonna, Shakira, Amanda Lepore, Eminem, Philip Johnson, Lance Armstrong, Pamela Anderson, Lil’ Kim, Uma Thurman, Elizabeth Taylor, David Beckham, Paris Hilton, Jeff Koons, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hillary Clinton, Muhammad Ali, and Britney Spears, to name a few.

After establishing himself as a fixture in contemporary photography, LaChapelle decided to branch out and direct music videos, live theatrical events, and documentary films. His directing credits include music videos for artists such as Christina Aguilera, Moby, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, The Vines, No Doubt and Florence and the Machine. His stage work includes Elton John’s The Red Piano and the Caesar’s Palace spectacular he designed and directed in 2004. His burgeoning interest in film led him to make the short documentary Krumped, an award-winner at Sundance from which he developed RIZE, the feature film acquired for worldwide distribution by Lion’s Gate Films. The film was released in the US and internationally in the Summer of 2005 to huge critical acclaim, and was chosen to open the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

Karla black

Karla Black presented major new sculptures in the grand ground floor of the Gallery of Modern Art’s exhibition space. Black is an artist who has achieved increasing international acclaim and attention in recent years, with the past two years showing a substantial shift in the scale and ambition of her work.

Black has exhibited nationally and internationally, recently with major presentations at Scotland and Venice, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice and the Turner Prize exhibition at the Baltic, Gateshead (both 2011). Black makes process based sculptural works, often using familiar domestic materials make-up and toiletries. The site specific sculptures are often fleeting, with unstable surfaces of powder, sawdust and soil existing only for the duration of the exhibition.










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