Premier Pli and launch video

Ive just picked up my copies of First Folds premier pli zine and its accompanying CD of audio (called Exquisite Corpse and based on a sound version of the Surrealist game of the same name) and it really is fantastic. Its limited to 100 copies and features words, images and sound from a variety of First Fold artists and collaborators. Its also selling really well and I highly recommend purchasing a copy before they are all gone. It costs £5 and in true independent record label style we loose money on every copy sold. Click here to go to the buy page on the Fold website!

Also the new documentry film makers 144 have completed the film they shot at the opening of my show and the premier pli launch and you can see the excellent results below.

Many thanks to Alan Dolhasz and Ed Lawes for producing something both First Fold and myself could never have afforded!

Permenance

As Im on Summer break Ive started scanning the collection of slides that I purchased on eBay back in March and posting them on Flickr. They probably number around 800 and are primarily an entire output from one keen family photographer in the 1950`s to early 1970`s. For variety there is also a handful of shop bought souvenir slides too from holiday locations.

As you can imagine they are mostly of holiday and family events during that time and look pretty much like my own family photographs – although they are often slightly creepy and I can imagine finding myself picking out a young Fred West  in one.  Also some of the captures are just plain weird – check out the woman’s on the left`s  eyes and body language in this one…

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Im intending to use these for a new set of illustrations at some point later in the year but for the moment Im just enjoying the monotonous, uncreative aspect of scanning and uploading. Ive also set up a tumblr blog here called Permenance which will post daily links to images posted on Flickr (where they will appear in one big lump in this set). Jim Davies has also being playing detective and placing some of the images on Google Maps which is an interesting idea to develop at some point. (UPDATE – Ive started a new set on Flickr detailing any locations of the photos found via google street map – please feel free to have a browse and see if you can find any others and post a comment/link with the photo if you do!)

Ive not started making any illustrations as yet but this photo montage from Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin is really floating my boat compositionally with its use of the same figure from different photos…

From The Ashes Of Industry We Rose…

Many thanks to everyone who attended the launch of my exhibition last Friday at the  We Are Birmingham space. It was a really successful and I had a great time meeting everyone that came – as did the other members of First Fold who were on hand with some excellent improvised electronic music. Here is a clip of Stuart and Jim (AKA Papa November & Spunkle) playing as the Folds house band “Nations Shall Rise..”

If you missed out in the night (or perhaps missed it again at the Zine Festival the next day) you should have a last chance to browse the walls over the coming weekend of July 16th and 17th before I take it down the following week – if you want to see it please get in contact with the shop directly as they are not really keeping regular hours!. Its a pity that it wont be visible for longer but as I understand it the We Are Birmingham space will be closing for good after that weekend (after the last of the artists works in storage has been collected) and the remaining assets put into liquidation. A sad loss to the city centre and a admirable retail experiment that I was very pleased to be a part of. In any case here of some photos I shot of the space during the hanging of the exhibition (admirably aided by Aaron Andrews) and a taster of what it looks like…

In addition to this main exhibiton I was asked by the very talented photographer and zine festival volunteer Helen Flanagan to show some of my frames in the independent city centre coffee shop 6/8 Kaffe. This was in conjuncton with the Bimingham Zine Festival and they had a little launch party a little before the event at the We Are Birmingham space. Sadly I was not able to make it up to the opening (due to some issues with USB cables and PA systems) but Antonio Roberts took some nice shots of the pictures and zines in situ…

And also this fab shot of Stuart and Ben manning the First Fold stall at the zine festival the following day…

And thats about it – thanks again to all who came and especially to all at First Fold. Watch this space too for a short documentary film that was made about the night that was shot and edited by new video production outfit 144.

Birmingham Zine Festival – Zine Fair

As I mentioned on the previous post I am showing an exhibition as part of the Birmingham Zine Festival from the 8th of July. In addition to that I will be selling VIEWER and prints alongside First Fold at the Zine Fair on Saturday 9th July also at the WaB space. First Fold will of course be selling there debut printed publication Premier Pli (which went to print this week in its final perfect bound form complete with  cryptic spine  text – which got all of us at Fold towers very excited).

In addition to us you will be able to peruse publications from over 30 exhibitors who self-publish books, comics and magazines. Members of the public are invited to browse the work on show and take part in a variety of events  including T-Shirt printing and film screenings. The first ever Birmingham Zine Festival took place in September 2010 and is run by volunteers who wish to celebrate and showcase exciting work that is published by independent artists and writers. Building on the success of our previous event, this year’s festival is shaping up to be even bigger and better!

Both myself and First Fold are very much looking forward to exhibiting and being involved.

From The Ashes Of Industry We Rise…

Im very pleased to announce that I have now  finalized the details for my exhibition that I first mentioned a couple of months back.  The flyer above gives the details (click through to see details on the printed flyer which is available as a limited, signed version too) but it does not mention that the exhibition also runs as part of the upcoming Birmingham Zine Festival.

This was a really fortuitous link up as when I booked the space I had no idea that it would be during the festival. Andrew, who is one of the organizers then they asked me to be involved as a formal part of the festival which aslo led to the idea of creating a First Fold zine which has led to the creation of Premier Pli (which is going to print as I type complete with its new perfect bound format). Nice.

The title for the exhibition was taken from a First Fold sampler CD that was released a couple of years back and I felt it tied in nicely with the reuse of Flickr Commons photographs – many of which were originally produced as industrial records and documents. I liked the idea that these images were having  a life after there original intention (which was usually purely as a document) and changing into something way beyond what he creator could have predicted. The two images below show a good illustration of this…

The images featured on the flyers (there are 4 different ones) are the preliminary sketches for the work I have been producing in the past year so are kind of interesting in how they represent the final outcomes of the illustrations (which are now complete and number 11 in total – and can see a complete set here). This is the last one I did for the band Einstellung for the forthcoming Chromatistes EP – its one of my favourites…

Ive already started preliminary work on the new batch of illsutrations for releases for First Fold. Im looking at more minimal work that relies almost entirely on compostion to produce narrative and a much more striking range of colour in combination with the muted neutral tones. With this in mind I have purchased a box of 800+ colour slides from the late 50′s to the 70′s from Ebay that seems to be an entire output of images from a ordinary English family during that time. Should be fun.

Premier Pli

This is the first of 5 illustrations I have been asked to do for First Folds forthcoming zine “Premier Pli” which will be launched in July.  Its hoped that the zine will become a regular out put for the fold – hopefully quarterly and it will feature artwork and text from all the fold artists as well as invited guests and collaborators.

The zine will also be packaged with some sort of audio or moving image work as well which could be in any format from CDR to VHS – the first issue will come with a red 7″ single featuring work from all the First Fold sound artists.

Each zine will be based around a theme, which could be anything from an image, phrase, saying or quote. The debut issue has been created around the William Morris quote “I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few“.

The rest of the illustrations will be shown on Flickr here and you will be able to buy copies of the zine from the First Fold Shop and other places in the real world. Ive made the decision that these illsuatrtions will only be avalable via the zine and not via my usual prints so if you want one or all of them you will have to buy the zine.

The launch party will be held on Friday 8th July at the We Are Birmingham Shop in Birmingham, UK.

Which will incidentally be the opening night of my exhibition of First Fold work in the shops basement gallery – more details on this to follow.

Troubles, Worries and Doubts

The last illustration for this round of First Fold releases in now complete and the download art finalised. This one was inspired by Them Use Them`s new album “The Meme Huts”.

As usual with a set of releases, one of them ALWAYS seems to take much longer to produce than the others – and this time it was this one.

My usual way of working is to listen to the music through several times in a variety of situations and settings (in the car, kitchen and on the walk to school for example) letting the music be almost a background to whatever else Im doing.

I actually rarely listen to the music I am meant to be illustrating but tend to listen to things it reminds me off while working (in this case Scott 4 and Panda Bear).  Sometimes I will get a clear idea of what I want to do but more often than not I just start by making a textured background from a variety of high res scans of paper (one day I will post all these on Flickr to share too).

After this I start to choose and arrange the other elements often by scouring the Flickr commons for word associated images (for example “hut“) which often just ends up with me just favouriting loads of other stuff for future reference. This is where I usually get stuck – sometimes for weeks.

At this point I often just restart the whole image from scratch in an attempt to kick start the process – for the above print this was actually a necessity as Id managed somehow to do it at the wrong size and resolution – and this usually does the trick. In fact when I started again this time I actually just reconstructed the whole image form scratch in the same composition and was much happier with it – only adding the vector sunrise and the text fragments.

I think next time round I will do a timed screen grab of a illustration as it progresses – a process I first saw in this great video called Science Machine by Chad Pugh which shows the construction of a front page illustration for Vimeo.