True Detective

The day before I escaped England and reached good old Crete, I spent the entire day watching the first series of True Detective. I had already sorted my packing a day previous, and it was a good decision.
Having spent a day in that world gave sure as hell gave me something to think about on the four hour flight over.

I really enjoyed the vague hints of eldritch horror and the existential pondering of Rust. The cinematography, was pretty excellent too, showing the gigantic American south, populated with the skeleton of industry and destruction of previous hurricanes.

It was great, that's why I drew this picture.

Table Top Sale

This event was essentially a bring and buy sale at the Wharf chambers. Perhaps due to a lack of promotion, or the fact that it was the first time something like it had been organised, there were very few visitors. I did at least sell one or two zines, and did not feel inclined to buy anything.
A chap called Mike did approach me for a commission, and he described that he was involved in the refurbishment of a 1933 Focke Wulf, and would like a picture based on it, indicating that it should be about A2 in scale.
Other than that the event was pretty uninteresting, and we passed the time by playing hangman.

Leeds Zine Fair 2015

This year we decided to book a table between the four of us at the flat, thus costing us £2.50 each. The event was much larger than I remembered from last year, the cramped setting of the Wharf Chambers had been exchanged for the much larger Left Bank venue.

We were one of the earliest to arrive, since the Left Bank is less than five minutes from our house, this gave us the opportunity to help set up the tables, and choose whichever table we so desired to set up upon.

I did take some pictures, however the lighting was something out of a Caravaggio, and the imagery was pretty non-descriptive.

There were some common trends amongst the tables, such as heaps of socialist pamphleteers and a good amount of vegan preachers.

I also noted that the majority of the custom were female 20-30 year olds, although to my surprise I did make a decent return.

I brought three zines and an assortment of old prints left over from previous projects and last year's thoughtbubble. I sold only two of the former, while the prints shifted easier.

I did enjoy the event, although I was not particularly interested in buying anything as there were few items that tickled my fancy.

Post Apocalyptic Rides

The household has bought a table at the Leeds zine fair. So, that means that Becky, Hollie, Rowena and me will have to opportunity to sell some zines. I have already produced a couple of zines this year and I plan to sell those. Meanwhile I have been working on a bunch of vehicle designs based on the sort of cars that appeared in MAD MAX. Having produced six in total, I will now compress them into a zine format.

CLA Game Fair

I am not into the habitual gunning down of animals, however my sister had secured a fistful of free VIP passes due to a floral commission for the event. I also surmised that there would be plenty of tweed to peruse through.

I was quite shocked by the scale of the event. It was a town of welly-clad hunting enthusiasts, and of course common casuals such as my self looking for tweed or some other merchandise. The fair had been set up in one of the larger tracks of land belonging to Harewood house, and the ground had become thick with mud from the movement of people and vehicles.

I have never seen so many guns. Thousands of the buggers everywhere.

I did buy a tweed hat, which made the day more splendid.

Liverpool: Extra bits

With a Jackson Pollock exhibition underway, there was ample opportunity for merchandising. This obviously ties-in nicely with my current CoP research. Pollock prepared a selection of his pieces to be mechanically reproduced, in-fact there were examples of his silk-screen prints in the exhibition.

So superficially it may seem peculiar to constrain artwork that was so immediate the context of a t-shirt or tote bag etc, it was actually something Pollock had investigated throughout his career.

 As we were in close proximity, we also visited Gormley's 'Another Place', which are pretty darn spooky. They reminded me somewhat of the Easter Island statues, all facing out to the sea... seemingly waiting for something to emerge. The figures closer to the sea were heavily encrusted with various barnacles and other such growths making them seem far more ancient or eldritch.

The beach had an eerie atmosphere, monoliths of industry loomed in all directions such as the miles of wind farms out at sea, and great big machinery of the dockyards.
It was a bit apocalyptic-looking, especially in places where the dunes had consumed the seafront.

Tate Liverpool Workshop

During a trip to the Tate Liverpool we attended a free workshop for the under 18s. Thankfully, the artist operating the session was open to the idea that a bunch of 21 year olds could join in too.

The workshop was open throughout the day and had no specific time table. The theme of the days work was influenced by the Pollock exhibition, that we had not yet visited. 

It was liberating to make a mess on paper without worrying about context, range or distribution. I had a lot of fun messing around with materials, I even had the opportunity to make a visual 'record', which was spun under and arrangement of mirrors and projected using a sort of CCTV set up.