Fight Poverty silkscreen print

I am currently taking part in the Lottery of Birth exhibition at the London School of Economics (LSE), part of the United Youth Development Organization.

"No-one can decide where they are born – but this first fleeting moment of all of our lives matters more than anything that happens after. It affects everything: health, education, your future, even how long you live. Where you are born is not something you can control but its impact will follow you throughout your life." Rachel Schofield

I wanted to reflect the element of luck and chance in life, how one small thing can change your life for ever, for better or for worse. The project inspired me; that there is hope and people in the world trying to improve the lives of others, as well as the others who exploit and destroy lives.

 

 

Some bald wrestler guy

Personal work I did over Easter:
Found a bald wrestler in the paper... liked it... drew it... liked it even more.
Simple as that!

Print outside the box

Experimental print-making workshop held with Andy Parker just before the end of term. It gave us the chance to produce some personal work with focus on trying new methods and thinking outside the box.
I worked in collaboration with Ben Brooks on this piece, and with no real direction we jumped into it!

Inking up a wooden pallet with red we printed the background on a large scale. After a few tests and muck ups half the studio was covered in large rolls of pallet printed paper but we persevered...

I Heart B'town Beach Event

Poster Design for the I heart Btown Beach Event, sponsored by River Island. In connection with Julia's House charity, Sport BU, and Graduate Fashion Week. Its a really exciting event and a good chance to finally enjoy the beach after months of wind and rain!
For this poster i was asked to produce an illustration to go with the designer's poster. I had to fight a bit for what I wanted but this time the illustrator won over the graphic designer and had some elements moved around to give my illustration some room to make a stand. Working with other people on a project can be hard, least of all communicating with them and understanding what they want but it is all part of a learning experience!

Final faces

It has been a crazy busy week with commissions and Uni work but I have finally found a space second to update the blog...

I have finished the narrative brief, and covered every square inch of the studio in paint, glue, bleach, and dirty brushes. So all in all a very productive few days.

My response to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness took the form of an animation, displaying a mans fall into insanity, as his personality changes and the old self is covered up and overpowered by the new. I scanned in a total of 446 individual images, all screen-printed and then developed with paint and bleach, to create the fast changing (12fps) animation.
This project was as much a narration about personal development as it was a personal development for myself, destroying so many perfectly good screen-prints was a painful process, but one which has helped me to not be so precious about work and shows how important it is to develop my practice and push it in different directions. The only way to know is to try!

A table full of faces

Half way through the animation process...
Getting all the images into a rough sequence to be painted onto, the fun starts tomorrow!

 

 The first 150 prints laid out

  

 

Modern interpretation of Heart of Darkness

eJoseph Conrad's short novel The Heart of Darkness (the inspiration behind Francis Ford Coppola's amazing film Apocalypse Now) tells the story of the demise of man in an alien environment. He talks of the futile efforts of the colonizing Europeans to tame the wild land and harness its natural resources, resulting in fatigue, sickness and ultimately death. It is a story of man's blinding greed and fragile nature as the deeper they go the more they change.
It is this transition from the original self to a darker diseased self that I found so compelling.
The fall of man.

The the work so far...

So far I have screen-printed over 150 photographs of my housemate showing various emotions, marking the fall into depression. I'm not sure where this is going yet but the exploration into playing with colour and manipulation of imagery, looking to produce a animation at the end.

Playing with the idea of a changing personality, destruction of the original person as it becomes more corrupt and unrecognizable.

 

Basically just throwing paint around the room...