Pick Me Up: Pick Me Up Selects Part 2

As part of the Pick Me Up contemporary graphic art fair, Pick Me Up Selects is showcasing 24 emerging talents in graphic design and illustration. ARTS THREAD highlights some of our favourites.

Seiko Kato’s intricate collages are fascinating in their complexity. Visitors are drawn in to marvel at her amazingly detailed, meticulously constructed pieces. Seiko is an avid collector of found objects and has a fascination with the macabre and the surreal. However, there is a playful element to her work, even when exploring themes of life and death.

A dark, brooding quality exudes from Wojciech Kolacz’s striking work. Wojciech references both modern day graffiti and traditional Polish folk art. Stark use of black and white and intricate details evoking fairytales and nightmares make these pieces distinctive and memorable.

Sarah Arnett spent a childhood in South Africa and originally trained as a textile designer in the UK. Her beautifully colourful pieces are complex, abstracted, decorative landscapes, which reflect Sarah’s love of nature and botanical gardens.

Gwenola Carrere’s colourful screen printed posters have a great, handcrafted feel. Her confident compositions reveal an energy that often creates a sense of movement within the confines of flat pattern.

Annelie Carlstom’s exhibit was a tour-de-force in the skilled use of a pencil. Annelie’s preferred tool is a 0.3 propelling pencil, which she uses to draw her subjects – often surreal beauties with distorted proportions. Her meticulous attention to detail is astonishing and it’s no surprise that Annelie is much in demand from fashion clients, including retail giant H&M.

Finally, Paris based graphic artist Jules Julien has worked independently since 2006, developing his distinctive style. Jules’s work depicts surreal and subverted, dark fantasy figures, often worked in monochrome.

The exhibition at Pick Me Up is enhanced by a lively programme of events during the course of the fair. Highlights include Designer in Residence Anthony Burrill’s daily fanzine, where the public can participate in making collages, and ‘Themlot’ collective’s ‘Make Your Own Film’ workshops.

Pick Me Up continues at Somerset House until March 27 2011.
Seiko Kato
Wojciech Kolacz
Sarah Arnett
Gwenola Carrere
Annelie Carlstom
Jules Julien