The Osheaga festival in Montreal, Canada is just coming to a close and Pat Hamou has created these 4 posters for different concerts across the month. Released one a week they also all join up to form a landscape featuring the bands’ names – beautiful work from Pat although I think he’s probably sick of drawing bricks now.
and here’s one of them all together…
Check these out, Kid Acne has unearthed a pile of his old ‘Council Pop’ LPs and given them a makeover inside and out, added new material and more. He’s got them on sale in a very limited edition over here in a package that includes an extra disc of instrumentals and a customised ‘Radio Music’ 12″, the original single from the album. Three customised discs in an edition of 33 for £33 plus postage – bargain.
He made this 10 years ago with fellow artist Req One and it’s a possibly one of the most honest British rap albums you’ll ever hear. Totally unpretentious, Ed writes about what he knows and sees on the street rather than pretending it’s all about bitches, bling and being bad, he’s more likely to rap about dogs, dracula and going down the dole office.
Below is the piece Ed and Req One did that features on the back of the album cover.
There’s 3D graffiti by the likes of Delta, Daim, Toast, Made 514 and Replete but I think the King must be Italy’s Peeta. Check out this personal selection or look at even more over on his site.
Damn! Any regular reader of this blog knows that this combines two things I dearly love. There are 5 Lego maps of the London Underground on display around the capital until the end of the summer. More details and locations over at BuzzFeed.
It’s difficult enough to get a handle on the various activities and schemes of Psychedelic Satanism that Jason Atomic has his hand in.
Just to say that this weekend sees the first of his Super Satanic Saturdays at the Resistance Gallery.
Go to the Satanic Mojo blog for more background info on the upcoming comic and exhibition based on his exploits. The video above gives you an idea of where he’s heading, sounds right up my street.
The Image Duplicator show opened last night at the Orbital Gallery and was a great success with artists and punters out in force. The standard of work was excellent and centre stage was Dave Gibbons with his take on Lichtenstein‘s ‘Whaam!’, retitled ‘Whaat!?’ He graciously signed and chatted to all and was a thoroughly top bloke. Rian Hughes and Jason Atomic did a fine job organising everything, as did Mark Blamire in getting all the prints made and packaged up for people to buy. 
Prints of selected items are available to buy online here.
Special mentions for Garry Leach who turned up with a newly finish Popeye piece called ‘Plop Art’, complete with toilet roll, and Michelle Amir‘s Barbie car hosting a couple apeing ‘In The Car’. Massive thanks to Karl and everyone at Orbital Comics as well for hosting it at their gallery and providing hospitality. I was so pleased to be a part of it and even managed to sell my piece too! Second comic-related result of the week. The show is on at the Orbital Gallery inside Orbital Comics, 8 Great Newport Street, London, WC2H 7JA until May 31st after which it moves to the A&D gallery in Chiltern St.
For more photos see Steve Cook’s ever-excellent Secret Oranges blog or Rich Johnston‘s Bleeding Cool feature
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I’ll be at the Image Duplicator show in London tonight for the opening of the 2 week run but I’ll be at Dome Club in spirit, eating the free popcorn. It’s highly likely that I’ll physically be there for the June 6th showing though.
The Image Duplicator show opens for 2 weeks this Thursday at the Orbital Gallery inside Orbital Comics on Neal St, London. It sets various comic artists and graphic designers the task of re-appropriating, and in the process highlighting, the original artists that Roy Lichtenstein copied without credit for his most famous works.
Lining up to take part, and in some cases take the piss, are Dave Gibbons, Shaky Kane, Steve Cook, Howard Chaykin, Mark Blamire, Graeme Ross, myself, Jason Atomic and Rian Hughes – the latter two of which have put this whole event together
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There are many more too, and a catalogue has been put together along with high quality prints with all proceeds going to The Hero Initiative, a charity that aids ageing comic illustrators who are struggling to make a living. The prints are available online for those who can’t make it and some will be sold at the opening on Thursday night at the gallery. Hopefully a late addition to the show will be this cover of the current issue of Viz by Simon Thorp and interior cartoon by Lew Stringer and Graham Dury about a young Lichtenstein at school with Warhol.
When I first saw Lichtenstein’s work, probably as a teen in the 80’s, I liked it a lot. What was not to like as I had read comics since by youth and was familiar with the ‘graphic language’ that he took from? ‘Cool’, I thought, ‘an artist bringing comics into the fine art realm‘. ‘Whaam!’ was fun, friends had posters in their rooms, when I first met my wife she had a postcard on her wall of ‘M…Maybe’ (‘…he became ill and couldn’t leave the studio’ – oh the irony of that later on). I wasn’t particularly taken with his style, it just seemed adequate, all I really saw were generic comic panels of a certain era, large on a wall or in an art book. You could always tell it was Lichtenstein because no one else did that in the art world, why would they? It was a great idea but anyone else would have been accused of copying Roy Lichtenstein (ironic indeed).
I, like most people I imagined, assumed that he had looked at various War and Romance comics of the 60’s – when a house style was encouraged and artists were told to draw in a certain way – and then done his own versions of the kind of images he saw. I never read these kinds of comics as a kid but saw them on spinners in the local newsagent, or at least the 70’s equivalents. I never saw the Mickey and Daffy Duck paintings and there were no references to Batman, Superman, Spiderman etc. so I figured he had his style and was doing the retro thing with it. It never occurred to me that he had literally copied panels from the issues of the day, that would be plagiarism wouldn’t it? Surely someone would sue him?
It wasn’t until I was pointed to David Barsalou‘s Deconstructing Lichtenstein site that the penny dropped – these were copies, direct lifts, but simplified to erase any traces of style the original artists had injected that could make them easily detectable. Despite this ‘blandardisation’ it’s still easy to tell what comes from where and in each case, almost without exception, the original was better than the copy. And it went on and on and on, I never knew he’d done so much work but his one idea rolled on for decades with diminishing returns. A lot of critics will bring up the amount of money Lichtenstein makes from the sale of his works, and, although it’s an unfair turn of events when the original he copied goes for a 1000th of the price of his copy, it’s not the thing that gets my goat. People will pay all sorts of prices based on the perceived resale value and no one paid more for a piece of work because it was ‘better’ than another – beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. It’s the high art vs low art attitude of the galleries, critics and historians that have taken it upon themselves to designate one thing as trash and another as Art.
I first became aware of this distinction in the college art class when we were asked to bring in a copy of our favourite painting and talk about it. Up until this point I had had no art history tutoring and could barely tell my Picasso from my Cezanne. I had no ‘Art’ books at home but I decided to look through the books that I did have and see if any of it took my fancy. Even then I was aware that comics weren’t considered Art so I looked through an illustrator book of Horror stories and found a painting of a gent holding a candelabre in the dark, illuminating mainly just his face. It was OK but nothing special, some nice light and shadow effects and I had nothing else so it got taken in. When it came to show my selection my tutor said, ‘but that’s not Art, that’s just illustration’, and that’s when I realised the divide existed.
From a tumblr called Anime Backgrounds, a site dedicated to the background animation art in various Japanese films. Here’s a few from Akira but check the whole site as it’s amazing.
Peep Rooks sent me this photo of one of the zoetrope prints I’d had inserted into the 4×12″ version of ‘The Search Engine’ for Record Store Day. He wrote, “I wanted to let you know that the zoetrope nr. 4 ended up in Estonia.
I ordered the record online about a week ago from a shop from the capital Tallinn and it found its place on a record player in the middle of nowhere near Viljandi.
… I did not have any idea what it (the zoetrope) was until a few days ago and now i am thinking..hehe – what are the odds? I wonder where will the other artworks end up…”
Another one turned up in Finland – Mikko posted on this site on May 1st,“I am one of the lucky ten who got one of the artworks, ‘original master’ collage!
I live in Helsinki, Finland.
Thank you!”
So, that’s two accounted for out of the ten, (see the 4 collages and 6 zoetrope prints here), if you have one or hear of someone with one – bear in mind some buyers won’t even know about them until they discover them – please let me know.
UPDATE 19/12/15: Today Christoph Chilli G from Nürnberg emailed me these images of the collage he found in his copy of the album!
The Image Duplicator show opens in 10 days at Orbital Comics in London. I have a piece in it which is also available as a print online up until the day the show opens. There will also be a catalogue available when it opens (my pages shown below). Currently there is a downloadable press release and selection of images on the Facebook page and it runs from May 16th-31st. See the blurb below for the concept if you’ve missed my previous posts on the subject. It’s been getting some great press in the comic world so far but if you want to write something about it elsewhere, please feel free or get in touch.
Opening the wrapper to my subscriber’s copy of next Wednesday’s 2000ad, I audibly gasped upon seeing the original (and my personal favourite) logo across the top. With retro fonts, aged paper and Ben-Day dot effects, the reinstated offworld credits and the 235p price tag (it was 8p when it launched in 1977), it bought a nostalgic smile to my face.
The reason for this jump back in time? A story inside exploring the niche genre of comics about comics, a fan finds a rare issue and tracks down the reclusive artist before making a shocking discovery. Also in this issue, Al Ewing and Henry Flint‘s Zombo has gone off the weirdness scale and they now inhabit the throne of bizarro, surrealist pop-culture quoting horror/humour that Brendan McCarthy vacated some years back.
Things have been so manic this weekend that I’ve only just found time to write something about Storm Thorgerson who passed away last Thursday. As part of the design group Hipgnosis, alongside Aubrey Powell and Peter Christopherson (also no longer with us), they pretty much defined the look of the rock album sleeve in the late sixties, seventies and beyond. You will know their work even if you don’t realise it; Pink Floyd‘s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ being the most famous if not their best (as Storm used to admit). 10cc, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Scorpions, Peter Gabriel, The Who, Black Sabbath, Yes, ELO, AC/DC, Paul McCartney and many more… without their work it’s doubtful magazines like Mojo and Record Collector would have much to fill their pages with these days :).
Seriously though, it’s hard to think of anyone else who dominated sleeve design more in the seventies with such a distinctive brand of photographic surrealism, all made pre-computer, on budgets most designers could only dream of these days. It was the age of the gatefold sleeve, Led Zeppelin led the way in deluxe packaging and the sleeve as canvas was in its heyday. Even though Hipgnosis disbanded in 1983 Thorgerson made the transition out of the rock seventies and into the flasher, poppier eighties, still designing for Pink Floyd but adding XTC, Def Leppard, The Cult and more to his portfolio. After Hipgnosis he moved into video direction before returning to sleeve design in the nineties and noughties for bands like Biffy Clyro, The Mars Volta, Muse and Dream Theatre, all wanting some of that retro record sleeve surrealism.
Pick up any book of album cover art and it’s a sure bet that he or Hipgnosis will feature, in some cases heavily although he did co-author the 6 Record Cover Album books in the 80’s so that’s no surprise. His sleeves for Peter Gabriel and The Scorpions used to freak me out as a kid first visiting record shops and I absolutely loved the tribal mask constructions on the Ellis, Beggs and Howard ‘Homelands’ LP sleeve. He’ll probably best be remembered for his work with Pink Floyd and I get the sense that he was at his most relaxed and playful with them, especially is the various compilations and re-imaginings of his past work he was called upon to do, the best being the ‘Echoes’ compilation imagery.
These days the art of the record sleeve is getting reduced to a thumbnail, hidden away, then forgotten, in pdf ‘booklets’ attached to download packages and lower resolutions for the web. When budgets are so tight that album design duties are relegated to online competitions for fans to enter, it’s important to remember and recognise how important the work of Storm is and was. He and others like him shaped the visual language of parts of the music industry and showed that artwork can be as important, controversial and powerful as the music it surrounds. * Special mention for the excellent Hipgnosis Covers blog too, I could spend all day there.
Salon des Refusés V opens today at 201 Portobello Rd, London, W11, a pop up gallery and shop of 30 artists curated by Scraffer. Including work from names like Remi/Rough, Luke Insect, Pure Evil, Kid Acne, Inkie and James Jessop it should be a pretty diverse selection.
The overriding theme of the show is artists that are pushing boundaries, with the work of established artists hanging next to that of ‘up and comers’; there is something for everyone, both stylistically and fiscally.
I have an original collage piece on show called ‘Think of a Space’, one of the first of a new series I’m doing at the moment. The Scraffer site will also have two new colour versions of my ‘Skullstronaut’ print on sale shortly after the show.
The show will be on between 22nd to 28th April only and doors open between 10am and 7pm each day.
It’s that time of year again, Record Store Day looms this Saturday and the Secret 7″ project is back for another year. Initiated by Universal Records, it presents artists and designers with the chance to create a one-off cover for one of seven different releases, both old and new.
This year’s artists are Public Enemy, Elton John, Laura Marling, Nas, Haim, Jessie Ware and Nick Drake. Over 700 sleeves have been created and each will be available on April 20th at Mother, 10 Redchurch St, London, E2 7DD at the price of £40 each with the money raised going to the charity Art Against Knives.
You won’t know who has designed which sleeve or what song you’re buying (although you can take an educated guess) until you buy it, when all will be revealed. I bought three last year and it was one of the most exciting purchases I made in recent memory.
The sleeves were on view to the public last weekend and I managed to catch the last few minutes and snap some favourites before they closed the doors, which reopen at 10am on Saturday. I spotted work by Pete Fowler, Jonathan Edwards and Felt Mistress among them but Gilbert & George have contributed this year somewhere too.
After the post last week I’ve dug up a few more of these odd rock posters with a better look at Hunt Emerson‘s Ramones one and a very weird Stranglers image by Stuart Briers.
*update – two late additions found elsewhere: The Clash by Mark Manning (the same one?) and Siouxsie by Borin Van Loon (pseudonym?)
Very sad to hear the news that Carmine Infantino passed away the other day. I remember him from the time he used to draw Star Wars Weekly in the late 70’s as his distinct style stood out despite who was inking his work that week. As a result, he’s probably one of the first American comic book artists I noticed along with Micheal Golden‘s work on Micronauts. I didn’t have access to US comics at that time aside from the random samplings you could find in the spinner racks of some newsagents.
These vintage posters from the late 70’s, and many more of their kind, went up on eBay today from the seller v6kentman.They’re something you rarely see these days in a world where image and copyright is controlled meticulously; illustrated versions of current music idols, originally printed by Communication Vectors of London in 1979 and sold as posters.
What makes some of these especially interesting to me is that they are illustrated by some of the best of the UK’s underground comic artists at the time: Hunt Emerson, Kevin O’Neill, Bryan Talbot, Brett Ewins, John Higgins and David Hine. I’ve seen the O’Neill ones before but the rest are new to me and there were a lot of them it seems with 2 series’, A & B.
I can find virtually nothing about these on the web aside from a few more examples like Sid Vicious by Ewins and The Sex Pistols by Emerson. If anyone knows more about them then please get in touch. V6kentman has many more for sale though, all starting at £9.99 and featuring loads of other artists such as The Stones, Bowie, Ian Dury, The Runaways, Dylan, Zappa… some great, some not so successful. All fascinating to see though and linked in to a project I’m researching on music illustration in UK magazines from the 70’s onwards.
PS. David Hine writes:
“I hate that illustration! I think that was done 1979 or 1980. There were dozens of posters produced by Communication Vectors. This company, run by a guy called Mal Burns, also produced the comic Pssst! It was a weird setup, I think the money came from a mysterious French millionaire.
I do remember that all the submitted artwork was exhibited in a room and artists were invited to a meeting to vote on which should go to print. It was a ridiculous system. Only a small proportion of the artists were able to get there and I confess we fiddled the vote along the lines of “I’ll vote for yours if you vote for mine.” There were posters by Hunt Emerson, Bryan Talbot, Brett Ewins and Brendan McCarthy among others. Here’s a link to Brendan’s excellent take on The Specials and Johnny Rotten: I think I also did a Buzzcocks print. We were well paid for the time – £200 per artwork if memory serves.”
Work by Snub23 the grounded boat, The Duke of Lancaster, which has been dug into the Dee estuary in Flintshire since 1979. His giant piece, named “Your Time is Up, The Future is Here”, is 12m x 12m and part of a legal program by several artists to turn the ship into a work of art.
Every guy my age has a soft spot somewhere for Iron Maiden‘s covers (some of the music wasn’t bad either but I dipped out around ‘Somewhere in Time’). Their mascot, Eddie, has been with them through thick and thin, morphing and warping into new identities with each album and I just came across these two designs that ape classic sci-fi comics of the 60’s. I’m not sure if these were designs that didn’t make it as there seem to be more traditional versions of the same titles with Derek Riggs‘-style airbrush images too. But if you’re going to do the ‘comic’ look then this is how to do it. UPDATE: turns out that these were by Anthony Dry, see his comments about them down below.
I also found this cover in 3D and couldn’t resist posting it
