Thing 2

March 10, 2016

Thing 2: At the end of 2014 I started working with a local (Brighton) ecology community group called Rewilding Sussex. This association resulted me being commissioned by the group to work on an exhibition they had planned together with university students from the Universities of Brighton and Sussex. I ended up offering art direction and curatorial advice, as well as producing a series of comics that illustrated some of the ideas and central themes of the show. Here’s some pictures of the exhibition's opening night and a couple of the comics I made for it (the comics are based on ideas created by the ecology and design students from Brighton and Sussex).

The exhibition was called Re-discover and took place at an amazing gallery in Brighton called ONCA. The show itself was complimented by a number of workshops and talks run by the incredibly talented scientists at the centre of Rewilding Sussex, people like the group's founder Chris Sandom, and Claudia Gray (who is a very able animator as well as a biologist), Dan Ingram and Harrison Tan (who, I’m proud to say is my cousin as well as my friend and co-worker). The central exhibition has now been gathered into a publication and distributed widely around Brighton. If you find yourself in a Brighton coffee shop, keep your eyes peeled you might be lucky enough to pick one up yourself.

You can learn more about Rewilding Sussex as well as read a PDF of the publication and find out about the notion of ‘rewilding’ itself at the group's swanky new website:

www.rewilding-sussex.com

In the summer, during the run up to the show at ONCA I started to get really into the idea of rewilding, it seems to offer a truly positive and hopeful solution to some of the environmental difficulties and challenges we currently face. I wanted to start considering these things in my work and so I started to make a daily strip for Rewilding Sussex. The result can be seen on my website and is called ’30 Days Wild’.

Based on the ideas of Chloe Mills, design student at Uni. Brighton.

Based on the ideas of Francesca Kirkland, design student at Uni. Brighton.

Based on the ideas developed by Theo Dyer, Katie Barton, Naomi Gann, Bethan Hall, Marco Prain, Emma James, Max Pannett, Indigo Rumbelow and Claire Reboah design and ecology students at Uni. Brighton & Uni Sussex.

Based on the ideas of Keenan Casey, design student at Uni. Brighton.

Tinto Press Are Awesome!

March 4, 2016

Wow, have I got some things to share. I'm going to start with the most recent and work backwards until I run out of things to write. I won't post it all at once since it's late and I want watch the lovely Mary Beard talk about Pompeii. But I'll try to get it all done by the end of next week. And from then I'll endeavour to keep this place up-to-date, ship shape and Bristol fashion.

Thing 1: The heroic Ted Intorico at Tinto Press has agreed to print my 24 page comic 'Mock Turtle'! I'm seriously chuffed about this. For the past 4 years I've been working on a couple of long graphic novels. The first of which, 'Going Home' is now nearing completion but won't actually be available for another year. So this little book feels great to be working on, because by comparison to a 200 page novel, 24 pages feels a quick piece of work. Here's some of the finished art work, without text. I'm a little over half way there and really having fun. Thanks Ted!

YES!

June 13, 2014

Hello there,

I hope you’re well. I’ve been so damned busy recently! Since the start of 2014 the amazing ‘Reframe’ project, (I’ve previously mentioned here and here), has taken me to Algiers, Istanbul and Brussells with my good friends Ilya and Hannah Berry. In those places we meet and made new friends with many great artists and movers and shakers. I feel incredibly lucky to have been involved. In the next couple of week’s I’ll post some photos and sketchbook pages from those trips.

In January I was contacted by Laura Malacart, a cross-disciplinary visual artist, who had developed a multi-media project built around the portrait of a 27-year-old 'non-verbal' autistic man. In spite of his lack of language, Kyle had found a ‘voice’ through music: Laura Malacart’s work was focussed on the political identity of his ‘non-verbal voice' as well as exploring the complexity of his physical voice in his multifaceted expressions.

Laura commissioned me to make the drawings for a 6-chapter graphic story to be experienced alongside a non-narrative video work called Onomatopoeia. I have drawn the story ‘YES!’ on the basis of her documentary video and photographic material, while and her script reports verbatim conversations collected during months of filming her subjects. For the launch of the event we have published a limited edition of the story on tabloid format, since she first learned about Kyle from a tabloid clipping.

She conducting the first two symposia at the Dana Centre and King’s College to launch our project and instigate a cross-disciplinary debate around the project’s core themes. Laura is a seriously talented individual who is committed to using her artistic practice to intervene on social issues. I highly recommend you seek her work out and follow her practice and how it develops.

Page 1, Chapter 6, YES

Here are the links to the event’s she’s staging, and the blog I produced to host the comic I drew. Blog

Event at the Dana Centre this coming Wednesday

Event at King College London on the 26th

This week I got some tremendously exciting news about Helix, the digital comic I worked on last year with David Blandy and Dr Adam Rutherford. I can’t say much now, but will fill you in very soon.

And to top it all off, tomorrow is ELCAF. I’ll be flogging me wares on the Small Press Table alongside many other great artists. It’ll be a total blast!

Reframe Reframed

January 17, 2014

Hello there,

And a very happy new year to you.

Just a quick post following on from the last one. The piece I made for the Reframe exhibition has been given a new year overhaul in preparation for it's up coming exhibitions in Algier (in association with FIBDA, the Algiers annual comics expo), Istanbul and Belgium.

The version I posted here at the end of last year was made with a very short deadline and as such there were a few things that niggled me about the colour and some of the compositional elements. Anyhow, I've tried to put those things right as far as I can and I post the new pages here so that you can be the judge.

Next Wednesday: REFRAME!

October 18, 2013

Next Wednesday (23rd October) will see the launch of

Reframe

an exhibition organized and hosted by Free Word of 9 comics by 9 nine artists from the UK, Turkey and Algeria. My humble offering will be joined by works by the UK's Hannah Berry and IYLA aka Ed Hillyer. I was asked to be a part of the project by Paul Gravett, thanks Paul! Here's the promotional stuffs:

Pioneering artists from three contrasting countries unite to create an innovative exhibition of new work exploring our contemporary attitudes to Europe. Bringing together new voices from Turkey, Algeria and the UK, Reframe invites nine emerging artists to use their distinctive styles and viewpoints to 'reframe' perspectives through a series of new graphic short stories that examine the cultural, social and political dynamics between Europe and each of the participating countries.

Here's a sneeky peek at my contribution: