ARTS THREAD Blog » Book Art

New Designers 2011: Illustration

Zoe Duke — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 13:29:54 +0000

Nathan Oteng-Owusu, University of Herefordshire

Throughout the illustration section of New Designers this year we have found an array of outstanding technique and talent.

Nathan Oteng-Owusu from the University of Hertfordshire has created an array of stylised characters within his illustrations, often using bright cartoon-like colours. However, highlighting his diversity in sepias is ‘Twisted Tales’, a story of a cheeky squirrel and a luckless hunter presented in a pull out story board. Illustrated in two different ways on each side of the book, Nathan uses clean lines and confident digital techniques.

Arran Macphail, Cambridge School of Art

Presenting a strong ability to apply mixed media practice across his work is Arran Macphail from Cambridge School of Art. Using edgy graphics in an urban style, Aaran has illustrated the popular children’s story ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ in textured reds and black. With hand drawn and painted line pieces amongst his pop arty style, Arran presents an accomplished application to stand alone pieces including his digital work.

Frankie Brown, University of Portsmouth

Frankie Brown from the University of Portsmouth celebrates the hobby of collecting. Containing muted tones and an observation of human behaviour, Frankie has applied ‘the hoarder’, ‘the fetish’, ‘the souvenir’ and ‘the professional’ collector into high quality printed designs. Using clean repeat patterns and depth within her illustrations, Frankie has transferred her digital prints onto cards, cups and onto textiles for fashion.

Jessica Knight, Glyndwr University

MA Illustrator Jessica Knight from Glyndwr University illustrates seaside-esque scenes. Tranquil colour and lightly hand drawn scenes show off the strength of Jessica’s work, producing a concertina of simplistic images narrating the story of her beautiful characters in acrylic inks and emulsion.

Katie Pascoe, University of Portsmouth

Expressive illustrations from Katie Pascoe of the University of Portsmouth delve into the subject of fragility within nature and the impact of humans on the environment. Katie has thoroughly made use of a wide range of media, using weave, ink jet printing on fabric, hand sewn illustrations and laser cutting. Skeletal silhouettes present a very effective method of telling a story and provide a very versatile range of work. Katie’s pull-out book on Japanese paper displays through her beautifully illustrations the importance of the issues surrounding her work, making for very emotive and intricate showcase.

Michael Julings, University of Falmouth

Michael Julings from the University of Falmouth confidently uses colour in fantastically built up designs. Complementery colours amongst busy imagery allows Michael’s work to look organised and neat, yet tell a story in thorough depth. Containing many aspects of a theme, it clevery showcases the digital practice within Michael’s work in a very bold and playful fashion.

Nathan Oteng-Owusu
Arran Macphail
Frankie Brown
Jessica Knight
Katie Pascoe
Michael Julings

Emerging Creatives at Design Indaba Expo, Cape Town

Katie Dominy — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 18:40:59 +0000

Virgin Atlantic billboard & Detail, One Horse Town

Forty creative talents were invited to take part in the recent Design Indaba Expo as part of the festival’s initiative to identify and promote new designers in sectors including architecture, advertising, applied art, film, fashion, graphic design, interior design, jewellery, new media, publishing, product design and visual art.

The opportunity to show is given to both designers who have just started their own business and also to higher education creative students. The three-day event included a good selection of graphic design talents. See later this week for fashion, accessories and jewellery.

One Horse Town are Justin Poulter and Simon Berndt, two young Cape Town based illustrators, artists and designers. Specializing in illustration, they work for a variety of clients from magazines to advertising agencies to bands. Their Virgin Atlantic billboard features a pay off suggesting South Africans go on holiday during this summer’s World Cup. Their posters reference a mix of Surrealism, 50s Superheros and 60s and 70s imagery.

Agenda, One Horse Town; Design Indaba Expo creative stand winner, Justin Southey

Operating only since January 2009, One Horse Town already has picked up best stand at the Design Indaba in 2009 and they were a finalist at the South African Loerie media awards for their work for Saatchi & Saatchi and Wordsworth.

The award for the most creative stand went to Justin Southey, who graduated in applied design from Stellenbosch Academy of graphic design and photography in 2007 and now works freelance as an illustrator and designer. The stands were judged by Royal College of Art tutor Jurgen Bey and his RCA students. Justin uses many different mediums in his work and many involve human/creature combinations.

Love is the Key, Labia Theatre celebration Exchange, Justin Southey; You Have the Right to Know What You Eat, Ndumiso Nyoni; The Story of Not So Normal Norman Nanimal, Stephanie van Vuuren

Ndumiso Nyoni is an interactive/Graphic designer from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and is currently studying at the University of Johannesburg for a BTech in Multimedia. Ndumiso’s work at the Expo featured a series of activist posters called ‘You Have the Right to Know What You Eat’. The posters were designed as a response to the uncertainties of genetically modified foods.

Stephanie van Vuuren is completing a degree in Fine Art at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and specialises in 3D illustration and is experimenting with stop frame animation. Stephanise combines her enjoyment of sewing with manipulating images to create children’s stories based around her character Norman Nanimal.

Save-a-Pet project, Jedd Luke McNeilage

Jedd Luke McNeilage is studying graphic Design at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and his work includes a campaign project to seek funding for the Save-a-Pet scheme, by comparing homeless dogs to their human counterparts.

Book design, Claire Johnson

Claire Johnson graduated in graphic design from the AAA School of Advertising Cape Town and exhibited her animation and book designs, including a children’s story with a cut-paper starting point.

Design Indaba Expo

One Horse Town 
Justin Southey
Ndumiso Nyoni
Stephanie van Vuuren: essveevee@hotmail.com
Jedd Luke McNeilage: jedd_mc@hotmail.com
Claire Johnson: iamclairejohnson@gmail.com

Slash and Moving Paper: exhibition and competition

ARTS THREAD N America Editor — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 11:47:34 +0000

The Story of Art, Georgia Russell, 2006 and detail

New York’s Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) is running a competition that celebrates the use of cut paper in animation inspired by its current exhibition Slash: Paper under the Knife. Upload your own videos to the website, view existing clips, and vote on your favourites.

Slash: Paper Under the Knife explores the use of cut paper in contemporary art and design, through sculpture, installation, and video animation. The exhibition features 12 new site-specific installations and other new and recent work by over 50 contemporary artists from around the world.

Using books as raw material, some artists have created works from printed books, subverting their original meaning, such as Scottish artist Georgia Russell, who presents a shredded version of Gombrich’s famous The Story of Art inside a glass dome, creating a fringed effect – like a porcupine specimen in a museum.

Andreas Kocks Paperwork #701G (in the beginning), Christoph Knoch 2007; Moving Paper submission

All Moving Paper submissions will be judged by MAD’s online visitors for the People’s Choice winners and by a jury of artists and curators for the MAD’s choice winners. Winning films will be screened as a part of the Moving Paper Film Festival on March 27 and March 28, 2010 at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City.

German artist Andreas Kocks has installed a site-specific work, a massive explosion of black paper that captures the dynamism of wet paint thrown violently against a wall.

Between the Lines, Ariana Boussard-Reifel, 2007 and detail

Other artists use paper to express political viewpoints, such as American artist Ariana Boussard-Reifel, who takes apart the text of a white supremacist book – cutting out each individual word, reducing the book into a pile of meaningless letters.

Grand Island, Chris Kenny, 2008 and detail

Cut paper is also used by some artists to create imagery landscapes, such as UK artist Chris Kenny, who has created a fictional Grand Island from deconstructed maps and French-born artist Béatrice Coron, who presents Watercity, a piece she created on-site during a three-week residence in MAD’s Open Studios last June.

WaterCity, Béatrice Coron, 2005 and detail

Andrew Scott Ross’ series Rocks and Rocks and Caves and Dreams is a mythical pre-history landscape that examines our cultural beliefs.

Rocks and Rocks and Caves and Dreams, Andrew Scott Ross, 2007-08 and detail

Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)
Moving Paper

Image credits left to right, top to bottom: 1 Courtesy of England & Co. Photo: England & Co Gallery, London; 3 Christoph Knoch; 4 Collection of the artist photo: Ariana Boussard-Reifel; 5 Courtesy of England & Co. photo: England & Co Gallery, London; 6 Collection of the artist. photo: Antoine Tempé; 7 Collection of the artist. photo: Vanessa Mayoraz

KALEID: unique artists’ books, London

Katie Dominy — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:54:15 +0000

KALEID; Folded Dictionary, Sam Winston

Contemporary artists’ book publisher Kaleid presents a group show dedicated to unique books created by artists and selected for their originality and conceptual response to the traditional book form. The exhibition is entitled The Grand Plasto-Baader-Books and runs until December 24 at the KALEID gallery, Shoreditch.

KALEID curator Deeqa Ismail has chosen the title The Grand Plasto-Baader-Books to reference the Dada artist Johannes Baader’s text and collage tower installation Das Grosse Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama and aims to bring to life its description as ‘the aftermath of an accident between a trolley car and a newspaper kiosk’ by US art historian Maud Lavin. Ismail, a graduate of the Book Arts and Design BA (Hons) course at the London College of Communication, aims to challenge the viewer to consider not what a book is but what a book can be.

Sam Winston’s Folded Dictionary is one of twenty volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary that have been transformed by folding every page differently – making more than 80,000 folds over the twenty books.

KALEID; Samantha Huang

The show includes both well-established artists and students still at college. For example, Samantha Huang is a student at the London College of Communication and has three pieces in the show – using varied techniques to work into the pages and covers of second hand books, such as punching out tiny colourful circles or cutting in horizontal lines to create ribbons of paper.

East Dulwich Dictionary, Finlay Taylor; Continuous Defence/Map 09, Mark Harris

Finlay Taylor, MA Printmaking Subject Leader at Camberwell College of Arts has displayed his East Dulwich Dictionary. Buried for six months, this decomposed and subsequently exhumed book has been transformed into a unique piece by Taylor’s use of worms and mollusks to burrow paths through the pages. Continuous Defence/Map 09 by Mark Harris is a piece made up of triangular section of old hardback book covers.

Aunt Bell, Evy Jokhova; Stille Nachte, Redchurch Idler

Aunt Bell by Evy Jokhova sees butterflies cut out and fluttering away from an old mildewed book. Redchurch Idler’s Stille Nachte is a seasonal piece made up of an overworked painting, light bulb and fan booklet.

12ft Tower, Pete Williams; Book Tower II, Wayne Chisnall; Reading, Haddock and Chubb

Pete Williams’ 12ft Tower, an installation made from rescued scrap wood and woodcuts, has been assembled as a focal point in the gallery; its ledges, nooks and crannies sheltering the table of unique books. Book Tower II (Nostalgia For a Childhood That Wasn’t Mine) by Wayne Chisnall is an installation made from interlocked second-hand children’s books – classic middle-class books such as the Ladybird series that reflect a nostalgia for a 50s/60s childhood. Reading by Haddock and Chubb is a black and white installation designed to be read with the eyes.

The Grand Plasto-Baader-Books runs until December 24 at the KALEID gallery, Shoreditch.

KALEID
Sam Winston
Evy Jokhova
Mark Harris
Wayne Chisnall
Haddock and Chubb