UPside Private View

Here are a view photos from the 'UPside' private view which took place on tuesday night. It was really well attended and a fun evening.

UPside is UP!

The group show that I'm involved in 'UPside' is now on view at the Medcalf Gallery at Exmouth market. There's 14 of us involved in the show, each presenting their own little reason to be cheerful. It's on until November 6 with the private view happening next Tuesday (21st September) so come along if you can!

The first two images are my contribution to the exhibition along with another piece (which I posted on the blog a couple of entries ago). Throughout this series of work, I wanted to get across a sense of intimacy and celebrate the valueless preciousness of the personal souvenirs we collect and treasure throughout our lives.

The third piece didn't make it in! This image is a visual of the kind of object I wanted to create - but I had a few lasertran issues so the final piece didn't turn out how I had hoped. All the same, I enjoyed the process and it's an idea I'd like to experiment with and develop a bit further.

Dave McKean @ the Pumphouse

I attended the Comica festival on Sunday at Battersea park. There was a nice mix of work on display and it gave an interesting overview on what's going on in the world of self-publishing...it seems to be quite an established sub-culture here in London.

The adjacent Pumphouse gallery is showing an exhibition entitled 'Hypercomics' which includes amongst others the work of Dave McKean. The artist himself was present on Sunday and did a short Q&A explaining a little about the concept behind the installation piece 'The Rut'. The artist uses the room itself to unfold the narrative and combines drawings, digital work and sculpture to unfold and extrude the story. I'm a big fan of Dave McKean's work so this was really a very special treat! The exhibition runs until Sept 26.

AOI Blog

This illustration of mine is currently being used on the AOI blog as a call out for volunteers for the forthcoming Images 34 exhibition next month.

UPside

I'm involved in a forthcoming group exhibition entitled 'UPside' which will be taking place at the Medcalf Gallery from September 13th - November 6th. The concept for 'UPside' is the simple little things in life which make you cheerful - your reasons not to be miserable!

There's 13 artists in total taking part in the show and in the spirit of collaboration, we've set up a blog to share our ideas and keep an eye on how everyone work is developing. This is my work in progress for the exhibition. My ‘UPside’ is inspired by the ephemera we keep throughout our lives as souvenirs of happy events. These old postcards, receipts, photographs and ornaments serve as memory triggers, transporting us back to these occasions. I want to make a series of small works which explore the concepts of memory, nostalgia and sentimental value.

British Library

This blog and my website have been invited to be archived by the British Library as part of their web archiving programme. Through this programme The British Library selects and archives sites which represent aspects of UK documentary heritage. As a result, a historical record is made of the websites and they will remain available to researchers in the future. The archive can be seen at www.webarchive.org.uk

OWN LABEL

This is a project that I'd been working on for a long time which has finally come to fruition :) The illustrations are for a online fashion business called OWN LABEL. The idea behind the site is to give up-coming fashion designers a new platform to gain exposure and have their designs put into production with their name on the label. OWN LABEL runs a number of fashion competitions which designers can enter by simply uploading some visuals of their mocked up garments. Their designs are published on the website to be voted for by the public. At the end of the competition the most popular garments are manufactured and sold through the online store with the designers name on the label. I also designed the site - www.own-label.com Have a look to find out more.