Monday 3 May 2010

Pick Me Up


Last thursday I went to Pick Me Up at Somerset house- the first contemporary graphic arts fair in the UK. The Work was by an international selection of graphic artists and illustrators who used a diverse range styles and techniques. It showcased Collaborations such as Peep Show , Nobrow Press and Nous Vous . I thought the work was fantastic and it was great seeing illustrators at work, for example Rob Ryan who had moved his studio into a room in somerset house for the duration of the exhibition. It was also really refreshing to go to a space and see purely graphics and illustration work being displayed.

I found the work really inspiring. I really liked Le Gun's work of which I can't remember the name of, but it was basically a giant plastic white bum (about 2m by 2m) and a hole was made between the bum cheeks and you looked through it and the wall behind it was covered in black and white illustrations. I thought it was a great way to present work and you kind of hand of walk from side to side so you could see all the drawings through the bum hole. Plus the fact there was a giant white bum attached to the wall was quite eye catching in iteself.... I was also drawn to Nicholas Burrow's work who is part of the collaboration Nous Vous. I like his simplified interpretation of figures and the slight awkwardness of them reminds me quite a lot of Luke Best's work. In my project I will be drawing many figures as the first step in my process, possibly in a crowd so his work was very relevant in that respect.


Andrew Rae's work was also very relevant in the way he builds up crowds of figures. His images have quite a clean cut, finished quality which I like and after looking up more of his work I was really impressed by how well he instantly characterizes people. I picked up his Postcard book at the fair. The image below made me think I might like to build up a similar crowd of people, working from old family photos and then possibly using screen printing onto fabric to produce the final image. From there I could then cut the fabric up into smaller squares to make up the patches for a quilt or the image itself could form the final outcome and I could possibly work back into it, embroidering certain sections.

Another find was Natsko Seki's work . She seems to combine photos of faces with hand drawn and printed imagery, which was extremely effective. In general I thought her work was really clever and executed perfectly with clearly a lot of thought put into composition. It has lead me to consider making my original photographs more prominent in my work as well as considering composition more as that is usually something I find quite difficult and her work made me realise how much it affects the quality of the work.



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