Short Bio:
30 something illustrator, artist and teacher working in Birmingham, UK.
Contact me at gareth@garethcourage.co.uk
Long Bio
Today (March 2011) I looked like this:
That photos was taken on an iphone – I used to spend a lot of time and money on poor quality cameras and expired film to make photos look like that but not so much any more. In a lot of ways Im quite pleased I can do it so easily but you do sometimes find me hunched over the negative scanner at work with long, scratched rolls of negatives. Or, dermatitis allowing, in a dark room with scratched perspex and 120 roll film.
I studied art in various guises at college (and I admit had a really great time) and ended up with a degree in sculpture. I used to make things, often in boxes, always out of found stuff and sometimes involving collaging little bits of paper to them.
Somewhere along the line the bits of paper became much more important. Probably about the same time I lost the university studio space and found myself hunched over a small wooden floor in a house in Nether Edge trying to use a mitre saw. You can see a small amount of the paper works I made here. Im really proud of this stuff and it made me creatively who I am today - especially compositional and colour wise.
Some time after this Photoshop and scanners became more important.
This didn’t happen quickly.
Ive only really been able to happily reproduce the effect of paper collage in the past year or two but its getting there. A big development was making VIEWER – a roughly quarterly PDF zine that was distributed via Flickr and free web-hosting. You can now see it here (and buy a printed copy). This was basically a big experiment in updating my skills in Photoshop, page layout and distribution. On the whole it worked and again Im very proud of it.
A lot of my free time is now taken up with First Fold – a co-operative record and publishing label. Creatively this is probably what Ive been looking for all along.
One day I will do a post or posts on “my favourite artists” but until then you could do worse than look here for things that visually interest me.
As a main day job I teach Photography and Fine Art at a Sixth Form College in Birmingham. Ive also been known to teach Media Production (DTP and video) and Graphic Communication but not so much.
Finally, I sell prints and zines through the We Are Birmingham shop and really hope to be selling them in more places and online at some point this year.
They sell pretty well and its always nice to get feedback – if you have come here after buying a print drop us a line or leave me a comment!
Contact me at gareth@garethcourage.co.uk
Hello Gareth,
last year I purchased two pieces of your artwork at an exhibition of crafts in the Bull Ring, Birmingham. I immediately connected with your style of work as the medium used echoes the way I work myself.
I am a teacher in graphic design living in Lichfield and working at Stafford College. I cut my teeth in graphics whilst working in the music industry during the 80′s and 90′s, designing record sleeves and
merchandise for alternative rock band The Wonder Stuff. Photomontage was the medium I used for all of the work I produced in the promotion of the band and is still my favourite way of working now.
I have just completed my Masters degree in Art and am hoping to rekindle my career in a freelance capacity. I am very keen to preserve hand rendered skills and prefer the sense of raw honesty they convey as apposed to photoshopped montage. I have viewed your work on the First Fold website and would love to talk to you about your designs and maybe get some pointers as to where to go with my own artwork. I am about to create an online portfolio of my work created during my masters, but could do with some advice as to which site is best for exposing my type of fine art illustration/graphics.
Hazel Pitt.
Hi Hazel – I would love to speak to you about your work – sounds great! (Ive still got examples of your work in my vinyl collection I expect). Ive put a contact address on the top of the page so please mail me (gareth at garethcourage.co.uk) – look forward to hearing from you soon.