Thursday 29 April 2010

There Is No Stegosaurus In The Axbidge District Museum.



It's true, there isn't.
There's a story behind this, and a lot of it has to do with my trip to revisit my Grandad's old house in Axbridge, Sommerset. It will be the Title card of my Home movie, If I ever get round to developing the bloody Super-8 film, so just to fill you in on the basics;

The film and my work based upon it are to do with my childhood Illusions of Axbridge, a town I had not visited since the age of 6 years old. Perhaps the most grievous misinterpretation in my Child-like mind was that King John's Hunting Lodge, a 15th Century house and Local museum in the town Square contained a full Stegosaurus skeleton, which is insane because the place is tiny. My only explanation is that the trip to the museum was so hugely and terrifyingly boring that I was left to my own imagination to spice it up a bit. It is a notion that haunted me until about the age of 12.

Art Students Will Save Your Property Prices




Illustration for an article in RIBBED about urban regeneration in Shoreditch and other urban areas in London. For those not in the know, there is a definite cycle here; A slum town district in London has rock bottom property prices, attracting students to live there. The sudden influx of students creates a bar culture, that spills over into galleries, music events, etc. Richer students and Yuppies move into this fashionable party district. Property developers get in quick, throw up some high rises, up go the property prices, out go the students, and the Nightlife bubble collapses. The district begins a slow, decades long slide back into obscurity.

Pen and ink on three separate sheets of paper. Click to see big!

Elliot Baggott has no idea what "Neo-Renaissance" actually means.

Some Illustrations for Ribbed magazine. I had a lot of silly fun drawing these; the Venus de Milo has had it coming for far too long, in my opinion, and I like the bland "Woman" face that comes with Lego blocks.





This piece is based of the one piece of Renaissance art that I actually like; "Deathling" , by Hans Leinberger. A tiny, yet incredibly detailed woodcarving, and it's so clear that the artist has really looked at a human skeleton. I love everything about it; the willowy, effete pose, the way the tattered clothes hang from the withered bones, the sheer amount of shit and accessories that skeleton is carrying. Leinberger embodies the grim reaper not as a malevolent, brooding, evil threat, but a sort of jolly melancholic fucker,and I rather like that. He's certainly the only one i feel guilty about copying.

Saturday 10 April 2010

Surrealist Etiquette is now officially open to the perusal of the discerning public. May its reign be long and prosperous.