Black Swan

These are too good not to mention too... Excellent work from British design company La Boca here.

Olly Moss

Olly Moss really is at the top of his game at that lovely place where graphic design and illustration merge. Check out his site here.

I first became aware of Olly's work through the excellent podcast on Computer Gaming and Gaming culture, A Life Well Wasted. Check that out too - here!

That's two little presents. Merry Christmas everyone!

Submit & Exhibit

I am pleased to announce that I am taking part in the open submission exhibition at The Rumsey Wells - Opening Night is Thursday 2nd December.

The inaugural Open Submission show features local, national and internationally based artists with work coming from as far afield as the USA and Pakistan. Featuring a diverse and exciting mix of photography, painting, collage, digital prints, screen prints, kinetic sculpture and more the work spans established artists, students and people making their first forays into the creative world.

The evenings events will include live music from the experimental musical group Transept as well as DJ sets from I-Tombs, Forrest City Joe, Penny Arcade (me) and more.

If you're about, head on down as it should be eclectic! If not, the exhibition is on for a month so be sure to check it out.

New Website Is Up!

It's taken a fair while, but the new Petit Mal website is finally up. I've slimmed it down a hell of a lot and removed a load of work (which is still all up on Flickr) to help create a coherent visual style. I'm very happy with the work that's up there and will be adding more in the coming weeks.

There's also a new links section - as mentioned below, many of the people on there were very helpful and generous with advice so please do check them out and support their work!

In other news, Buddy Peace is really someone you should be checking out. A consistently creative and original producer and mixtape legend, he is currently producing a minute-long beat each day until he reaches the magic number of 100. There's a fair few already up now so give them a listen here...

I love this kind of project where self-imposed rules push you in new and unexpected directions. Amazing stuff!

It's Been a Long Time...

Been very busy recently getting everything ship-shape to launch this Illustration business properly. Just finished a five day Business Start-Up course (which was excellent) and have been plugging away behind the scenes at the updated website, which should be up and running very shortly.

In the meantime, I have been drawing furiously. More work to follow soon.

Samoobsługa Pictures

Here are some pictures of the joint exhibition Samoobsługa, currently on show in the Rumsey Wells Underbelly until the end of this month. (More can be found on my Flickr page... here).

I'm pretty happy with how this all turned out. There were a few disasters as the collage work refused to stick to the walls, but that was all resolved pretty easily by using PVA instead of wallpaper paste.

After spending a week putting something up (the ripping it all down and putting it up again, twice) it becomes pretty hard to be objective about how successful the finished exhibition is. Plenty of nice feedback from people on the opening night and with a couple of weeks hindsight I'm happy with the overall aesthetic of it.

Moving forward, I'm going to have a change about of my website - I think it looks ok, but no longer reflects the sort of work I'm making - and slim down the amount of work on there. I have had a tendency to show everything in an attempt to appeal to anyone who might come across it, but this has the downside of watering down what I feel could be a tighter portfolio of work. Also, I want to avoid getting any future comissions based on work, or working styles, that I don't really enjoy doing anymore.

Which leads on to a little realisation, which may seem obvious, but only hit home after putting up the Samoobsługa exhibition. That is, I want to focus my energy on making work using processes I enjoy - as opposed to trying to control the finished product too much.

I've shyed away from collage for a while, instead focusing on drawing, but in putting up the installation I realised I enjoy the problem solving involved in collage. Everything placed down becomes something to resolve compositionally and I enjoy the uncertainty and suprise involved in working that way. More of that then.

Samoobsługa

So, the time has come where I have something to promote! Hurrah.

This lovely word (meaning 'take what you want/need') is the title for a joint exhibition between me and the aforementioned Sammy Merry.

There will be four 'main' pieces which I will be installing (cutting up, layering etc.) in the Rumsey Wells' Underbelly along with four collages by Sammy.

The title refers to a great discussion (one of many) Sammy and I had recently about how we don't feel like we need to endlessly justify our work - or at the least not justify every aspect of it. We do have explanations for decisions made and we're concerned about a range of things (which we will happily elaborate on over a drink), but really, shouldn't the person looking have the final say?

I don't know, some people love the detailed theory and analysis (and fair play to them) but we just want to make thought-provoking and interesting work.

The exhibition opening night is on 4th September at the Rumsey Wells from 8pm - with DJ-ing provided by Penny Arcade (Psych, Funk and Disco).

In other news, I have been doing a lot of research over the last few days into starting an Illustration business 'proper' and making it my bread and butter. In doing this I have contacted a number of Illustrators and I am honestly overwhelmed by how lovely people are - despite their busy workloads they have responded quickly and answered my questions thoroughly and given lovely feedback.

So, the upshot of that is that when I have time I will definitely sort out a 'links' page on my website, and I will have plenty of great artists to put on there.

This Is Just To Say...

Hannah Walker is amazing. This is a fact I was aware of long before I was invited to "attend"/"participate" in her new poetry show "This is Just to Say...", but after experiencing her "performance" earlier this week I am still moved and the colour of my world has shifted ever so slightly (for the better).

That's a lot of parentheses (sorry), but it's hard to pin down the show in traditional performance poetry terms. When you see it (which you should) you will be one of a small group of eight people all sitting round a table, potentially with wine, with Hannah at the head. The atmosphere is not unlike that of a seance, as Hannah raises the spector of Apology - an act we all perform every day, mostly without thinking - and deconstructs it through discussion, anecdote and beautiful, heartaching poetry. But like a seance, we are not mute witnesses to the act, the energy and involvement of the audience is an integral part of the show.

I'm sorry that I can't really go into more detail. I'd love to share moments from the performance we attended, but I would hate to ruin any of it - it's so much better approached open-minded.

I'm also sorry that I don't have the words to describe how beautiful and melancholy it is. Just see it - its being performed at the Edinburgh Festival as part of the Forest Fringe - Monday 16 – Friday 20 August, 5pm & 9pm. More details on that here.

That's three apologies and I haven't even left the house yet.

Sway and Sammy Merry

I'm currently reading "Sway" by Zachary Lazar. It's a great book (picked up on a whim) about the early days of the Rolling Stones, The Manson Family (esp. Bobby Beausoleil) and the film-maker Kenneth Anger (see a fantastic example of his work - with the 'Stones - here).

What Lazar does is re-tell, beautifully, recorded events from the lives of the people involved and embelishes them, essentially colouring the characters and drawing a dark web between them. I like this. I like that these events are raised to mythological status in his book, something we can all own a piece of.

I didn't intend this to become a book review blog, but this has really kick-started some connections for me and I have started researching the occult and symbolism. I am fascinated by the placement and layout of symbols, motifs and drawings. Are there symbols and codified words that when placed together have inherent meaning, or can any items be placed together and a deeper meaning attributed?

I feel the latter, but who knows?

As usual, I wouldn't expect any future work to be clearly an examination of this, but at the very least my imagination is running away with itself at the moment.

In other news, you should really look at Sammy Merry's website as he's a fantastic bastard with a unique talent for making art that manages to take the piss and somehow cut to the heart of the modern condition at the same time. Whatever that means. And he's going to be a dad, so spare a thought and some pennies should he try to sell you anything he's drawn on in the coming months.

Watercolours...

I have cracked open the tin of watercolours I've had since March and had a play.

Bits

Worse; PetitMal

It's Getting Worse; David Shrigley

This is Worse; Goya

All rights to the respective artists.

The Detectorist

This post firmly fits within the category of 'people I love, doing lovely things'.

My good friend Jonathan Blagrove wrote and directed this short film. Considering the constraints of time, money and weather it is nothing short of a little miracle. Funny, sweet and beautiful it caused a huge reaction at the Norwich Short Film Festival.

The Detectorist from Jonathan Blagrove on Vimeo.

Having completed its rounds you can now view the whole thing on Vimeo. It's entirely worth ten minutes of your day.

I also produced the lobby cards for this beauty, which can be found on my website here. (easy work when all the stills look so great!)

Enjoy!

Hello...

This blog will be a (sporadically updated) accompaniment to my website http://www.petitmal.co.uk. Here, I'll aim to upload stuff I'm working on, things I'm doing and things that are influencing my work.

Today I have been trying to neaten up my site and categorize the artwork on it so it's not such a mess of stuff. Hopefully that's worked as it feels like its taken up too much of my time already. The opportunity to draw has slipped by again.

However, work from yesterday can be found above. A continuation of a series of work drawn from old family photographs, combined with collage elements from 1970's D.I.Y. magazines found in a charity shop.