Wayne Chisnall's Artwork

Planetoid 210

2012-01-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

For a few years now I've been toying with the idea of using soil in some of my sculptures. This is my first foray into that particular area - I had to resist the urge to say 'field'. I'm not sure how I feel about this new piece (maybe it'll work as part of a larger group of similar sculptures) but that's okay because it was my first attempt at working with soil and I just wanted to see what would happen.

I'm actually pleased with the physical results, as the soil mixture has set hard and doesn't show any signs of flaking. As you can see from the work in progress shot below, I built a plywood armature first. Then I covered it in a soil, wood chip and glue mixture.

'Planetoid 210' is a realisation of one of a series of sketches that I've been working on for some time. These sketches all involve architectural structures or towers sitting atop planetoids or spherical bodies that are obviously too small to realistically support them. The original drawing was inspired by something that happened to me whilst I was in Goa, India. I was swimming in the sea and noticed an interesting seed pod floating towards me. And as I picked it up to investigate further a small colony of tiny crabs decided that they must have hit dry land and proceeded to disembark onto my hand. I don't think that I'll ever forget those curious little seafarers and I often wonder how far and long they must have been travelling in that manner.

New Prints Coming Soon

2012-01-19T16:33:00.000-08:00

In the next few weeks I'll be bringing out a limited edition box set of nine screen prints in collaboration with the very talented and hard working street artist (I'm still not sure if he likes being referred to as a street artist but what the hell - it's a tag that he keeps getting stuck with), Mister Remi Rough. The plan is that each box will contain four, nine by nine inch, signed and numbered screen prints designed by myself, four designed by Remi and a ninth one by the both of us. We have also talked about the possibility of producing a very limited edition version (of five boxes) where each box contains an additional four original works - maybe paintings or drawings.

In the meantime here's some info on three screen print designs that I still have available for purchase.

These hand-pulled, screen prints are in a limited edition of 50 - a much smaller edition than my Spidey Pods prints and each one is signed, titled, dated and editioned. I have cropped the prints down from the 70 x 50 cm paper, on which they were printed, to 60 x 45 cm as this size works best with the image. However, I have keep a couple back, un-cropped, just in case anyone would like to frame them in a larger frame with a wide mount. I know that Ikea do a nice 70 x 50 cm plain black or white wood frame, with a mount, for about £20 but I’ve not tried a print in one of these frames yet so can’t comment on how they look.

If you would like to get your hands on one of the black and white Swirly Skull prints at my special, commission-free price (usually 30-50% less than in shops and galleries) feel free to get in touch. I'm selling them for £50 each. So if you fancy buying one just drop me a line at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk.

However, for those of you who love skulls but also like a little bit of colour - here’s my 2 colour, ‘Swirly Skulls on Pink’ screen prints. They come in a strictly limited edition of 50 and each print is signed, titled, editioned and dated. The paper dimensions are 70 x 50 cm (larger than the new, single colour, ‘Swirly Skulls’ prints which are 60 x 45 cm). And as with the black and white Swirly Skull prints, these are also available for a super low, commission-free price (£60 each if bought directly from my good self). If you would like one just drop me an email at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk .

But if you fancy something with even more colour then how about one of my Spidey Pods prints? The most famous person, so far, to own one of these prints is the actor Andrew Garfield, who will be playing Peter Parker/Spiderman in the new Spiderman movie. Now if that’s not a good endorsement I don’t know what is.

The prints are all hand pulled, 3 colour, screen prints on acid-free, archival paper. The paper size is 58.6 cm x 54.2 cm (image 38.7 x 39.4 cm). Every print is signed and numbered (being from a maximum edition of 300). And if you would like to get your hands on one, my ‘commission-free’ price is £100 (around 33-50%off the usual gallery and shop price), just get in touch at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk.

To find out about the inspiration behind the print check out the original Spidey Pods sketch further down the blog.

Nail Heart

2012-01-14T18:47:00.000-08:00

It's been a few weeks now since I last posted anything on my blog (partly due to excesses of the festive season and partly due to with me having to deal with an unusually large accumulation of boringly non-arty grown-up things – oh, if only I could just spend the rest of my life in a big, purely creative bubble) so I thought it about time that put up something new.

I've recently been tinkering with a few new sculptures - this being the smallest. I'll post some pics of the others at a later date. As you can see, the piece is a wooden heart and much like my Nail Box sculpture, it's pierced with rusty nails and the odd screw here and there. Both pieces are heavily influenced by the minkisi carvings of the Congo.

Being a big fan of the immediacy of power tools, I carved the body of the Nail Heart on a band-saw which greatly sped up the carving process. The band-saw proved surprisingly versatile as a carving tool, if not a little scary – luckily I managed to finish the job with the same amount of fingers with which I started.

Before I added all the nails I let a few friends handle the lightly sanded and waxed wooden heart as it had a very tactile quality. And more than one person put this down to the fact that part of it looked and felt like a bottom. What can I say - maybe something subconscious filtered through during the production stage.

Nail Heart was kindly photographed by the very talented photographer, Miss Rosie Mayell.

Show Comes Down Early

2011-12-21T18:41:00.000-08:00

If any of you planned to catch the current Urban Curations exhibition at the Triple X Tattoo studio in Hackney, London I'm afraid to say that the show has already come down. It had to be cut short as Triple X Tattoo are now re-locating to a new studio in Leytonstone, East London.

I popped along this evening to collect my toy tower sculpture, Magnet. As I just live round the corner from the show, at the bottom of the now artistically fashionable Vyner Street and as my sculpture is mounted on wheels I decided to take a gamble and push my work home. It took a while but I as it got home in one piece I now feel reassured by the robustness of its construction. Although having to carry it up three flights of stairs did make me question the logic of simply not taking it back to my studio.

Unfortunately I didn't get to have a proper look at the show before it came down. I missed the opening night as I was still in Miami for Art Basel and since I've been back in the country I've busy trying to sort out a few future projects before the Christmas holidays. One of them is a nine piece screen print box-set in collaboration with the fabulous Mister Remi Rough – but more about that in the New Year.

Domus Launch Party

2011-12-16T20:32:00.000-08:00

Today saw the launch of the new Domus showroom at 50 Great Sutton Street in Clerkenwell, London. Working closely with Sam Frith and David Kong I co-curated the art exhibition side of the venue's launch. Domus has gone for an industrial and relaxed look but clearly haven't tried to fill every nook and cranny of their new space with their products, so the artwork that is on display doesn't look boxed in. Although not an art gallery, Domus Clerkenwell has a planned programme of integrated art exhibitions and the artwork currently on show is by Julian Wild, Gary Martin and myself. One of Julian's 'System' sculptures (a sphere made from copper pipes) is situated above and to the right of the fire place in the outside court yard, whilst Gary's 'Sink and Swim' sculptures that look like inflated arm bands can be found downstairs, aptly placed upon Domus' corner section of a swimming pool.

As Domus' main clients are architects, my 'And When I'm a Man' sculpture seemed the most fitting piece to show since it closely mirrors the preiser figures (some of which I noticed were used to decorate this year's Domus Christmas tree) that populate many an architectural model. And to coincide with the launch my sculpture also got a bit of a make-over. Over the years the piece had suffered a couple of knocks whilst in storage so now felt like the right time to sand it down, strengthen the joints, re-fill them and then give it a shiny new re-spray.

One of the many nice touches at today's launch was the group of waiters and waitresses that caught everyone off guard when they unexpectedly burst into song. They all had amazing operatic voices and the acoustics of the space seemed pretty darn good too.

2011 RCA Secret Postcards Revealed

2011-11-30T15:55:00.000-08:00

Now that this year's RCA Secret has come to an end I can reveal my entries. This year I entered three drawings under my given name, Wayne Chisnall, and three painted and drawn-over Swirly Skull prints under my nickname, Chig.

To see all six postcards just go to my Oodles of Doodles blog.

And to find out the names of the artists behind any of this year's artwork you can still view this year's cards online.

Tattoos and Toys

2011-11-24T18:52:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to announce that I've been invited to exhibit my toy tower sculpture, Magnet, in the new Urban Curations exhibition. The show is curated by Infinity Bunce in conjunction with Triple X Tattoo.

Unfortunately I won't be able to make it to the opening night on Saturday 3rd December as I'll still be in Miami for Art Basil but do feel free to pop along if you happen to be in the area.

The venue is Netil House, Studio 206, 1-7 Westgate Street, London E8 3RL, England.

RCA Secret Artists' Party 2011

2011-11-19T12:27:00.000-08:00

Last night saw the RCA Secret's eighteenth birthday launched with a party and Champagne reception, as a thank you to all the artists that have supported the project.

As usual the show is held in the Royal College of Art's Gulbenkian Galleries in Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU and the same rules apply. The original postcard-sized artworks produced by internationally acclaimed artists and up-and-coming graduates from the RCA will be on display for a week before going on sale to the public.

The 'secret' part of the show is that the cards are only signed on the reverse, keeping the artwork's author a mystery (although I know a few dedicated RCA Secret fans who usually work out pretty much who's produced what) up until the point that the card is purchased. Each card is priced at £45 and a maximum of for cards may be purchased per person but if you fancy joining the queue I suggest you get there early as I already saw one person camped out last night (a week ahead of the opening). Oh yes – and you'll have to register first.

If you can't make it to the show before the opening fear not as you can view this year's cards online.

As per usual, I've submitted three separate cards under both of my names,' Wayne Chisnall' and 'Chig'. Is that wrong? - I think not. There are no prizes this year for guessing which ones are mine as I think that most of them are pretty obvious. But do feel free to drop me a line if think you've worked them out and want to assess you powers of deduction.

Here's a photo of me at the party with the photographer, Rosie Mayell, obviously enjoying the Champagne a bit too much.

Unfortunately I won't be able to make it to the opening of this year's show on Saturday 26th of this month as I'll be jetting off to Miami for the opening of Art Basel. I'm looking forward to a few days of driving round the Florida Keys in a convertible (and possibly doing a spot of alligator wrestling) before hitting the fair for arty brunches, parties and exhibitions. I've already packed my best Don Johnson/Miami Vice outfit (circa 1984).

Nail Box in Art and Auction Magazine

2011-11-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

My Nail Box sculpture is due to be featured in the December issue of Art and Auction magazine as part of an ad campaign for the New York-based art storage and transportation company, Crozier Fine Arts, who are the global art logistics partner for Ai Weiwei's 'Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads'.

Photo by Rosie Mayell.

My Work on The Culture Show

2011-10-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a six and a half minute item by Michael Smith, investigating the cultural highlights of Birmingham. It appeared in Friday night's edition of The Culture Show on BBC 2 and briefly features (almost 2 minutes into the item - for those of an impatient disposition) my sculpture, The City, which was on show at the Creative Machines, Minimalist Sculptures exhibition at the old Curzon Street Station, as part of Birminhgam's The Event 2011.
Alternatively, you can click on this Culture Show link which will take you direct to the relevant page of the BBC website.

RCA Secret Blog Interview

2011-10-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

Well it’s that time of year again and the RCA Secret postcard show is almost upon us. It seems to come round faster every year and as usual I only just made the deadline for getting my cards into the show. This year, because of other mounting arty-farty commitments, I left things a bit late and was working on my six entries (three cards as Wayne Chisnall and three as Chig, the name I used to illustrate under and the one I'm more commonly known by back home) up until 3AM the night before the last handing-in day.

For anyone that fancies finding out what I and a few of the other regular contributors the RCA Secret think about the show please feel free to check out our interviews on the RCA Secret blog.

Here are a couple of my entries from last year’s RCA Secret show.

This one, Werecrow, under the name Chig…

And this one as Wayne Chisnall.

The Event at Curzon Street Station, Birmingham

2011-10-26T06:01:00.000-07:00

The launch night of The Event 2011 went off fantastically and I would definitely recommend that anyone who finds themselves in Birmingham between now and the 30th of this month should pop along to see it. And I’m not just saying that because I have a piece in the show. Even if you are not that interested in art (of which there are some great examples in the exhibition – I particularly liked the MDF sculptures) it is definitely worth going just to check out the time capsule that is the old Curzon Street Station – an old railway station building that is very rarely opened up to the public.

Up until I got off the train at Moor Street and headed for the show I didn’t know anything about the venue but once I saw it I was mightily impressed. Curzon Street Station is a haunting looking cube of a building standing alone in a waste land (the surrounding land presumably having been cleared to make way for new developments). If you do manage to make it to the show then check out the mummified cat set into the wall of the main entrance. Apparently if was discovered by builders whilst they were doing some renovation work and is thought to have been deliberately bricked up in the walls when the building was first built. Some sort of superstitious/good luck thing I believe.

Here’s picture of me tinkering with my sculpture, The City (photo courtesy of Rosie Mayell).

TROVE: THE EVENT 2011
21 – 30 October 2011
Launch Night – Fri 21st (5-9pm)
Curzon Street Station,
corner of Curzon Street and New Canal Street
(opposite Millenium Point),
Birmingham B4 7XG
UK
(Nearest train station: Moor Street Station)

DOMUS

2011-10-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

If any of you have walked along Great Sutton Street in Clerkenwell, London recently there’s a fair chance that you will have seen what I’ve been up to on the side of a 35 metre long hoarding. No, I’ve not decided to try my hand at being a street artist (I’ll leave that other, more stealthy characters) – instead I’ve been commissioned by Domus to decorate the hoarding that currently covers the front of their new and soon to be completed showroom.

Domus is the leading UK supplier and specification advisers of tile, mosaic and stone solutions for commercial and residential projects and as well as displaying a massive selection of their fine wares the new showroom will also incorporate a large gallery space for the exhibition of artwork. As well as designing and painting the hoarding (with a lot of help from fellow artists and friends, Sam Frith, Lola Gunn, David Kong and others) for Domus and have also been asked me to curate the exhibition space once it opens.

To coincide with the opening of the new showroom and because their main clients tend to be architects, Domus have commissioned artist, Jessica Walters, to create thirty 45cm tall miniature sculptures based upon the small figures that populate architectural models. These figures (all modelled on Domus employees) are being positioned in public spaces around the city and three of them can already be found high up on the wall of the building opposite the showroom, nestling in some old fireplaces that were exposed during the WWII bombings.

To see the work in progress for both the building site and the hoarding check out Steve Charles’ photos.

Launch Party – This Friday

2011-10-17T17:03:00.000-07:00

This Friday will see the launch of The Event 2011 at Curzon Street Station, Curzon Street, Birmingham. I’ll be exhibiting my sculpture, The City (see the post below) and will be at the show from 5pm when it opens. If you are in the mood for checking out some art that night and in the area then please feel free to pop along and join me.

TROVE: THE EVENT 2011
21 – 30 October 2011
Launch Night – Fri 21st (5-9pm)
Curzon Street Station,
corner of Curzon Street and New Canal Street
(opposite Millenium Point),
Birmingham B4 7XG
UK

(Nearest train station: Moor Street Station)

Artists include: Wayne Chisnall, Stephen Cornford, Jamie Jackson, Markus Kayser, Rob Mullender, Alex Pearl, Ben Rowe, Martin Sexton, Laura Skinner, Minnie Weisz, Luke Williams and Adam Zoltowski

The Event 2011

2011-10-03T16:48:00.000-07:00

I’m delighted to say that I’ve been invited to exhibit work at TROVE's (a heritage site located in the Engine Room of Birmingham’s old Science and Industry Museum) new show as part of this month’s The Event 2011 (the third bi-annual visual art festival hosted by Birmingham Contemporary Art Forum) which runs from 21 – 30 October. The show brings together a combination of Heat Robinson-esque machines and 2D dreams of machines and is curated by Charlie Levine of TROVE in conjunction with Minnie Weisz Studio of King’s Cross, London. The exhibition will cross sound, film and object/sculpture and be based around the narrative of ‘Creative Machines’ and minimalist sculpture – a look into pure machines meets pure minimalism.

My contribution to the show will be my mobile cabinets of curiosity sculpture, The City.

TROVE: THE EVENT 2011
21 – 30 October 2011
Curzon Street Station, Curzon Street, Birmingham

Artists include: Alex Chinneck, Wayne Chisnall, Stephen Cornford, Jamie Jackson, Markus Kayser, Rob Mullender, Alex Pearl, Ben Rowe, Martin Sexton, Laura Skinner, Luke Williams and Adam Zoltowski

Orifice Tower (Work Nearing Completion)

2011-09-26T16:22:00.000-07:00

I seem to have been neglecting my blogs the last couple of weeks so I thought I’d give you an update on the progress of my latest tower sculpture (which is a much taller variation on my recent series of Orifice Box sculptures).

As I’m sure you’ll notice it’s now at least twice the height (around 6 foot tall) that it was at just a few posts ago. I’ve designed the sculpture so that it can be bolted together in three separate sections – which should make it a lot easier to transport to and from exhibitions. It’s still not completely finished as I’m still adding a few details but you get a rough idea of what the final piece will look like. I’ve also been working on a ‘Planetiod’ piece but I’ll tell you more about that one later.

Converse Bag Launch

2011-08-30T17:42:00.000-07:00

To mark the launch of their new bags and accessories range, Converse invited a few experts on style and self expression to customise some of the range with a nod to the phrase ‘back to school’. I was fortunate enough to collaborate on one of the bags with the very vocal and self expressive Chantelle Fiddy, the journalist and renowned commentator on the London grime scene. Miss Fiddy’s music credentials span from editing titles including Ctrl.Alt.Shift, RWD Magazine, Mixmag and Live, to working with the likes of Dazed & Confused, Sunday Times Style, and Guardian, and as a presenter on Channel 4’s ‘Generation Next’.

Here you can see us posing with our creation on a photo shoot organised by the lovely people from Coffin on Cake PR. I’m the not so pretty one on the right. To see more customised bags and their colourful creators check out the article ‘How to Work Your School Bag’ at Cooler. And mine and Chan’s creation is also featured the FHM article, ‘Converse Duffle Bags (graffiti not included)’, as well as in Fused Magazine.

For my part of the collaboration I took elements that were pertinent to Chan from her school days and reinterpreted them in a tattoo-style design, painted directly onto the canvas bag. I know that she is into fonts and the colour pink so this provided the background details. And for the main section I incorporated a heart and the crossed guns symbolism from the happy hardcore days whilst defusing the negative aspect of gun culture by having images of Chan’s favourite flowers emerging from the barrels – a reference stolen from the Peace Movement of the 60’s (check out Bernie Boston’s iconic Flower Power photo, taken during the last big march on the Pentagon in October 1967). And in keeping with old school tattoo designs (my dad was a tattooist) I tied it all together with a scroll which I left blank, ready for Chantelle to add the finishing touches.

And here is the finished product, complete with badges and text – ‘Fire What You Got’.

Repurposing with a Passion

2011-08-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

My work and I (god, I sound like the queen) have just been featured in the article, ’Repurposing with a Passion’ by the artist, writer and curator, D. Dominick Lombardi. In the article for Public Art and Ecology Magazine Beijing, China, Lombardi asks a number of artists from around the world to answer four questions about their art practice and the use of recycled materials in that practice. The article starts on page 59 of the magazine and my work is featured from pages 61-63 (the 2nd and 3rd pages of the article as they appear on screen).

Of my work Lombardi says:
‘From his studio in London, England, Wayne Chisnall creates art that references such things as structure, time and Modernism as they pass through a very contemporary mindset that focuses on humor, transience, functionality and futility. There is also the presence of popular culture in his thinking, as he addresses the differences between reality and perception, and how that affects the needs, wants and even the formation of
the human psyche.’

To find out what questions Lombardi asks of his chosen artists and to find out our responses please feel free to check out the article.

“Repurposing with a Passion”
by D. Dominick Lombardi.
Public Art and Ecology Magazine
Beijing, China
http://media.icompendium.com/ddlombar_RepurposingwithaPassion.pdf

Above photo courtesy of Phil Sofer

Big Up from Hattie Collins

2011-07-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

I’d like to say a big thank you to the lovely Miss Hattie Collins (Editor of RWD magazine, Music Editor for i-D Magazine, freelance contributor for The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Q etc and all round music journalist extraordinaire) for giving me and my work a mention in her interview with Arts London News.

Hattie was one of the first people to buy one of my limited edition Spidey Pods screen prints when I brought them out so what can I say – she obviously has good taste!
My Spidey Pods prints, along with my Swirly Skulls prints, are now available at various outlets in Carnaby Street and Leicester Square, London but if you would like one direct from my good self at the commission-free price of £100 then feel free to drop me a line at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk
and we’ll work out how best to get one to you.
The prints are all hand pulled, 3 colour, screen prints on acid-free, archival paper. The paper size is 58.6 cm x 54.2 cm (image 38.7 x 39.4 cm). Every print is signed and numbered (maximum edition of 300).

Planetoid Designs

2011-07-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve been spending a lot of time in my studio lately, working on my new Orifice Tower sculpture – which is coming along nicely (although I’m probably being a bit over indulgent with the fine details). However, in between waiting for the glue to set on some of the joints and inner box structures, I’ve been working on a few sketches for a potential new body of work and experimenting with a new material. The material in question is soil (well, it’s new to me as an art material). The designs are based upon an idea I had a few years ago – and are a follow on from the sketch that I made at the time.

The designs all feature buildings or building-like structures perched upon spherical planetoid-like masses that are far too small to properly support them. This tiny drawing shows a small cluster of towers.
The challenge with using soil as an art material is to find a way of stabilising it but fortunately my first experimental mixture of soil, glue and other materials seems to have worked even better than I’d expected - so I’m raring to go with the first piece.

Orifice Tower (Work in Progress)

2011-07-05T17:44:00.000-07:00

As much as I love socializing and taking full advantage of London’s amazing nightlife I have some how managed to make a bit more time for my studio practice. And the latest piece that I’m working on is a variation on my recent Orifice Box sculptures. But this time I’ve decided to elevate the work and substitute my signature wheels with a rickety wooden box and scaffold-like framework.

Like my wheeled orifice box structures this one also has a carved elliptical orifice in the front face of the box. This work-in-progress photo shows the top half of the sculpture that will eventually stand at around six foot tall. In the lower right-hand corner of the photo you can see one of my sketchbooks and the working drawing for the new orifice tower.

And here’s a closer view of the drawing – showing a few mid-process alterations.

Being a bit of a night-owl I prefer to work through the early hours. This means that I have the building to myself so can have the radio on pretty much as loud as I like. My friend Lisa gave me an old Roberts radio and the only bearable channels that get a clear reception are Radio 3 and 4, so I tend to mostly listen to classical music while I work.

Anyway – I’ll get to the point. A few nights ago, whilst working on this new piece I happened to be listening to some very fine choral music and it struck me that the orifice section of the work looked a bit like a mouth, singing. So I quickly sketched out this idea for a set of new orifice tower sculptures, each equipped with an internal speaker and collectively playing the same piece of choral music. Hopefully I’ll get to make this new body of work one day but it’s also very likely that it’ll just get relegated to my sketchbook graveyard of creative ideas.

Congratulations Nail Box

2011-06-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve just received an email from the nice folks at Saatchi Online to let me know that my Nail Box sculpture has made it into the next round of their Showdown competition. Out of the 2900 entries my piece made it into the final 300 (out of which only 5 are sculptures) which will now go to a juried selection. If Nail Box makes it into the final 30 selected for the last round, which will be a public voting round, then I may have to send out a few emails asking if anyone is feeling generous enough to give the little fella a helping hand (and yes, I do tend to anthropomorphise a lot of my work).

Secrets Revealed (Oli Bennett Cards)

2011-06-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

Well the Oli Bennett Secret Cards sale has now been and gone (although, if any of the cards didn’t sell on the night then I believe that they will still be available online till the 24th) so I can finally reveal which were the post cards that I created for the charity event.

This is one of them but if you would like to see the lot then please feel free to check out my Oodles of Doodles blog where I have just posted all four entries.

Urban Curations

2011-06-18T07:40:00.000-07:00

There’s a new website called Urban Curations that showcases work by some rather splendid street/urban and fine artists, photographers and Installation artists. So I feel very privileged to have a couple of my works featured on the site. All works are for sale and Infinity Bunce (founder of the site and a practising artist herself), who has been curating shows in London for some years, will be featuring many of the site’s selected artists for forthcoming events.

The first piece that I have featured on the site is a painting called Kitchen Blue. It is based upon a photograph that I took of a friend, Julia Lister (then known as Joolz Long), standing in my kitchen. The original photo was taken back in our student days in Northampton and as you can see, Julia wasn’t that keen on having her picture taken. A lot of people seem to like this painting and I’m not sure if it’s the ambiguity over the figure’s gender (what with the face being covered, the hair cropped short) or the contrast between the flat graphic nature of the background and the meatiness of the figure's flesh tones. And I assure you all that any confusion over Joolz’s gender if definitely down to my painting style and not her looking like a bloke (which by the way, she definitely doesn’t do).

The second of my paintings featured on the site is this one, The Ambassadors, based upon a photograph that appeared in the British tabloid press a few years ago. It shows a fight between some English and Turkish 'football fans'.
Like the background section in Kitchen Blue, the paint in The Ambassadors is a thick household gloss oil paint that has been applied with a very tiny brush. The paint had to be applied very quickly, before the paint had time to dry (so as to give a smooth finish and not leave any brush marks). With both paintings and others in the series, the white lines that make up the line drawings in the work are actually formed by the exposed and primed surface below. A lot of people asked me if I had somehow masked off these sections before starting the painting process and are surprised when I tell them that I don’t – that I simply paint either side of the lines. This might be a far more labour-intensive way of working but I do like the crisper line that this method produces. With this technique your eye also notices the very slight fluctuation of depth between the paint and the white line when you see the works in person.
The annoying thing about working on The Ambassadors was that about a week into the painting a wrinkled skin started to form on the surface of the paint as it dried so I had to scrap it off, re-prime the board, re-draw the image and start again. I don’t know if it was because of the hot weather or the mix of the paint but this happened four more times before I eventually got it right. It was a some what infuriating experience, during which, toys may have been thrown out of the pram.

Online Raffle Closes Today (Oli Bennett Secret Cards)

2011-06-15T01:39:00.000-07:00

If you would like the chance to win one of the first 50 places in the online queue and to buy yourself a couple of original post card-sized artworks in the Oli Bennett Secret Cards Art Sale then today is your last chance. Raffle tickets can now be bought through the Just Giving website.
Over a hundred artist have donated work to the event, including Peter Blake, Remi Rough, Sarah Butterfield, Kipper Williams, Anita Klein, Guy Denning, Candice Tripp, Patrick Hughes, Laura Keeble, Neverwork, Josie McCoy. I myself have created four new drawings for the sale and their numbers are 56, 79, 421 and 511. No, not really – I’m only kidding (it’s an anonymous event). Or am I kidding? Of course I am... Aren’t I?

This isn’t one of my entries in the sale. It’s just that I don’t like the idea of blogging, without giving you something to look at.

But if you miss the deadline for the tickets don’t worry because you can still pop along to the actual auction itself (the viewing and fundraising event) on Monday 20th June at the Westminster School, where all the art will be on display and where the bulk of it will still be for sale.
On the evening itself there’ll also be a traditional raffle, offering tickets to the English National Ballet, a magnum of champagne from Berry Bros & Rudd, wine books and Time Out subscriptions, as well as prizes made by the charity’s beneficiaries.

Admission to the Oli Bennett Charitable Trust event is free but places are limited so, please respond to Kieron by email at ConnollyKieron@aol.com if you would like to attend.

Saatchi Gallery Showdown 5

2011-06-12T15:59:00.000-07:00

I’ve just checked my page on the Saatchi Online site to see how my Nail Box sculpture is doing in the new Showdown competition and was surprised to find that it’s current standing is listed as 32 out of 2900 entries. This seems pretty good as it’s normally the paintings that get all the votes. But it’s early days yet and I won’t be shocked if it doesn’t make it into the top 300 entries and therefore advance to the jury voting stage.
Also, I suspect that Nail Box is a bit vain and only wanted to enter the competition so that lots of people would get to see it.

No Show(s)

2011-06-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately the Barbarian Art gallery, with bases in Zurich and Moscow, didn’t make it through the selection process for this year’s Frieze art fair in London so myself, and the other four artists that they had invited to represent them, won’t be exhibiting there this time.
And as I’ve not heard back from VZ Art Gallery regarding their request to show my work at this year’s Liste art fair in Basel, Switzerland (which starts very soon) I’m guessing that plans have changed there too. Oh well – easy come, easy go!

Fun in Venice (& Suffering for Other Peoples Art)

2011-06-08T18:25:00.000-07:00

Venice… Where to start!
I’ve just got back from my second ever Venice Biennale. For anyone who doesn’t know what this is, it is basically a giant, international contemporary art exhibition that takes place in Venice for about six months, every two years and this year is Venice’s 54th Biennale – so it’s been going a while now. For this biennial art fair numerous different countries stage exhibitions at various locations (pavilions), dotted throughout Venice, although the highest concentration of the pavilions tend to be situated in two areas to the east of the city, the Arsenale and the Giardini (a park where 30 pavilions were all purpose built for the various regularly entering countries, back in the… er… lets just play it safe and say the 20th Century).
Although the Biennale officially opened on Saturday 4th June I managed to secure a pass (with the help of my good friend, the journalist, Holly Howe) that let me go exploring the Giardini and the Arsenale for the three days preceding that date.

If you’re one of those people that aren’t that au fait with sleep then it is technically possible to fit in all the art shows and a good chunk of the opening parties into one week but unfortunately this year I was a bit incapacitated. The weekend before I’d cracked a rib falling off my bike (actually, if the truth be told – I fell over my bike before I even managed to get onto it) and even while being dosed up on some powerful painkillers, I was still walking like a geriatric most of the time. Not that I have anything against geriatrics – I just don’t want to be walking like one just yet. To make matters worse, half way through the week I sneezed and pulled a muscle in my lower back (go on - laugh – I know you want to). The only consolation of this was that the back pain took my mind off the pain in my ribs. The upshot of this being that this time round I only managed to cover the Arsenale, the Giardini and about a sixth of the remaining satellite shows. But even so, considering the amount of late night parties (always a good reason to get to the Biennale a few days before the official opening) we managed to go to, we still saw a hell of a lot of art.

The Parties
One of the annoying things about the parties and openings is that so many of them happen on the same night or at the same time and it’s not always possible to work out in advance which ones to pick. The grandest one (and the one for which I felt most underdressed) that we went to had to be the party hosted by Marino and Paola Golinelli (of the Marino Golinelli Foundation, founded in 1988 to promote art, science and culture) at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. After the speeches Holly and I got to speak to the very stylish and gracious Paola Golinelli and I gave her one of my mini screen prints. Again I have to thank Holly for arranging my invite to this one. It was a very swanky event that was made even more impressive (well, to me at least) by the giant, four or five stories tall, Bamboo nest structure that the institution had had constructed next door to their building, and connected via a bamboo walkway to their roof-top garden. The structure was definitely one of my main highlights of the week and I went back a few days after the party to walk up its internal spiral walkway to the viewing platform at the top.

On another occasion me and my merry band of Biennaleites unfortunately missed the boat to the island where the Frieze 20th birthday party was being held, due the fact that a nameless someone (Jackson – you swine) texted us the wrong address for the pick up point. Although, to be honest, most of us were still recovering from the amazing party that the Finish pavilion had thrown the night before, on one of the small outlying islands. So instead we all trundled off to massive garden party that the Icelandic pavilion was throwing.

The great thing about the Biennale is that you not only make new friends but that you bump into loads that you already know. As we arrived at the airport I bumped into two people I knew at the baggage collection and a third one on the coach outside. And at the Azerbaijan party I bumped into four people I knew, although I did already know that one of them, Lee Sharrock, would be there as she was the PR person for the show. And if any of you have been following the news items about the Venice Biennale then you probably won’t have missed the recent media attention that the Azerbaijan Pavilion has been receiving. But hey, as they say – all publicity is good publicity.

Favourite Pavilions
As you can probably imagine, last week was a week of visual overload so I’m not going to be able to instantly recall all the amazing pieces of artwork that I saw but here’s a few that still seem fresh in my mind. I’ll start with the Giardini cluster because that’s probably the easiest to remember.

I’m a big fan of Mike Nelson’s work and his all invasive installation in the British Pavilion is well worth the long wait in the massive queue outside (oh no, I’ve over hyped it now). I also have a soft spot for the work of Christian Boltanski so I was pleased to see that he hadn’t let us down with his contribution at the French Pavilion.

Opera seemed to be one of the reoccurring themes at the Biennale this year and I felt that the Hungarian Pavilion put it to best use with their Crash – Passive Interview installation/experimental opera, reflecting upon the stories of car crashes in dialogical form (created by Hajnal Németh). The USA Pavilion’s upturned tank (turned into a treadmill), cash machine pipe organ and strange gymnastics performances were also interesting. And Lee Yong-baek put on a fantastic solo show at the Korean Pavilion – my favourite work being either the mirror with the morphing religious icon faces or the slow-moving video piece of almost unperceivable soldiers, clad in flowery camouflaged uniforms, moving amongst a flowery foreground and background.

And here’s a photo of me posing with Lee Yong-baek’s soldiers in front of the US Pavilion’s upturned tank.

My amble through the Arsenale was a bit more of a blur but the main pieces that stuck out for me were the giant burning candles in the shape of a massive full scale renaissance sculpture and a life size man, an anti-mafia installation and the stunningly monumental clay sculptures of Adrián Villar Rojas at the Argentinean Pavilion.

Out of the few pavilions (20 or so) that I managed to see outside of the Arsenale and the Giardini these are some of my favourites:
Ho Tzu Nyen’s strangely hypnotic film, The Cloud of Unknowing, at the Singapore Pavilion. And I’m not just praising it because it was a relief to step out of the blazing hot sun, into a cool spacious hall and watch the film on a full-size cinema screen whilst reclining on enormous white leather bean bags. The mist that billows out from the screen at the end of the film is also a nice touch (oops – spoiler!). Actually, mist and smoke were another theme that kept popping up at the Biennale this year, especially at the Arsenale. And I did hear that Anish Kapoor also installed a smoke piece, Ascension, at a collateral event staged inside the Basilica di san Giorgio but I somehow managed to miss it – gutted!
Another pleasant surprise came in the form of Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil’s wobbly white interiors at the Luxembourg Pavilion.
And pretty much everything at the Future Pass – From Asia to the World show was amazing but unfortunately I only had a few minutes to rush round it before I had to catch my plane back to London.

So, here are my tips for enjoying the circus that is the Venice Biennale:

1. Get there a few days before it officially opens and enjoy all the parties.
2. Take comfortable footwear.
3. Unless you want to have to leave the parties early to catch the last boat back to your accommodation (10:30pm), book somewhere in Venice itself.
4. (And this is probably the most important one) If you meet a drunken Belarusian artist who wants to party and who wants you to party with him – then it’s virtually impossible to say no.

Sketchbook Project - Digitized

2011-05-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

Although I’m still regularly posting pages from my 40 page contribution to the Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project on my Oodles of Doodles blog (along with other random sketches and doodles) you can now see all of the pages from the sketchbook that I submitted for the project in the co-op’s all new, digital library.

My book is one of about 10,000 that are currently touring the US.

New Model Kit Designs

2011-05-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

I’m currently working on some designs for a new series of wall-mounted low relief sculptures. Like my And When I’m a Man piece (which was made from 12 casts of my own body), these new works will be based upon the pre-assembled Airfix-style model kits that many of us used to make when we were kids – except that these new ones will be much smaller than my original life-sized one. For this project I will be working in collaboration with the on-line arts magazine, FAD and the California-base industrial designer, Noel Wilson.

And like my second model kit based sculpture, Baby Kit, which subverted the whole point of the model kit (being that the sum of all its parts didn’t actually make a whole), the new series aims to do this a little more subtly by substituting just one element with something from an unrelated figure. In the case of this working drawing the left arm has been replaced with an octopus tentacle. In another design I have substituted the right leg for that of Daffy Duck.

This design which is based upon Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man drawing probably won’t be part of the new series of sculptures. It was just an idea that I had whilst I was sketching out the tentacle element of the first drawing and I couldn’t resist putting it down on paper to see how it looked.
Although I’ve always loved da Vinci’s drawings it wasn’t until I copied out the head and torso section of his Vitruvian Man that I really got a feel for the brilliance of his draughtsmanship. There’s a wonderful accuracy and economy of line in his drawing. I would advice anyone to get a piece of tracing paper and copy one of his sketches – just for the feel and flow of it.

Creative Spotlights Interview

2011-05-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

If there are any masochists out there who fancy reading more of my ramblings about art then please feel free to check out my interview with Creative Spotlights. The site currently runs features on art and music but will soon be venturing out into other creative industries such as film and theatre.

Calling All Artists

2011-04-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

If there are any artists out there who would like to put their talents to good use and help out the Oli Bennett Charitable Trust by creating one or more postcard sized pieces of artwork then please check out the details below.

I’ve just started working on my cards and here’s my first one. As you can see this pencil sketch bares a startling resemblance to one of my Orifice Box sculptures – although this one seems to be spawning or something (don’t ask me what it means – I only drew it). I’ll wait until after the sale before I post images of the rest – it supposed to be anonymous after all.

The Oli Bennett Charitable Trust (Registered Charity number: 1090861) is asking for donations of artwork for an anonymous postcard art show which will be held on 20 June 2011.

Oli Bennett was a young man killed in the 9/11 world trade centre attack. The charity is set up in his name to provide funding and grants for young people with business ideas, many of who are from an underprivileged background. It operates in a similar way to the Prince’s Trust. The fund has helped a wide variety of young people in the past set up businesses as wide ranging as wood recycling, sports coaching, fashion designing, jewellery making, ceramics, Car valeting, cake making etc.

The sale will be along very similar lines to the Royal College of Art secret postcard show RCA Secret.

Artists are asked to create postcard sized works of art in any media. They will be exhibited online for a week and then sold on the evening of the event for the sum of £20 each. The twist is that the artist signs the postcard on the back so the buyer doesn't know whose artwork they have got until they buy the card and then turn it over. All proceeds from the sale will go directly to the charity.

Any artists who would like to help by designing one or more postcards for the sale would be much appreciated. Please email your postal address to: olipostcards@btinternet.com

We will then get some cards sent off to you. The deadline for returning the cards is 1 June 2011.

If you would like to come to sale you would be very welcome, it will be on 20 June 2011 at Westminster School in central London. If you’d like to come let us know and we will send you more details. Thank you so much for your help.

Two Became One

2011-04-04T16:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve just realised that I didn’t get round to posting a photo of the stilted spiky cube piece once I installed inside my Frankenstein’s Orifice Box sculpture. So here it is, peeking out through the carved orifice of the external box structure.

I had to add an extra light source just so you could see some of the details in the photo but when I come to exhibit the piece I will probably leave the interior without any artificial illumination. Although this will mean that the viewer won’t be able to fully see what is inside I do like the intrigue that comes with knowing that there is something half hidden going on. As a kid I was a big fan of horror movies and the ones that I loved the best were always the ones where you never fully saw the monster – where it was always lurking in the shadows (letting your imagination fill in the gaps).

So as if to totally shatter the illusion, here’s the internal piece just before I sealed it in. As you can see from the photo, I had to disassemble the outer structure in order to join the stilts of the inner cube to the base section (Ikea this ain’t). Originally I had planned to just remove the lid of the outer box and slot the stilts into the base that way but whilst I was hammering the nails into the inner cube the stilts must have realigned themselves so I had to do a bit of wrestling to get everything to fit back together (no, I’m wrong – it is just like Ikea).

Sketchbook Tour Hits Portland, Maine

2011-04-01T00:17:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday the Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project opened on the next leg of its tour at the Space Gallery in Portland, Maine. If you happen to be in the area and fancy checking out any of the 10,000 artists sketchbooks that are available for public perusal then you have until Saturday to do so. After that the project will be moving onto its next destination of The Granite Room in Atlanta, Georgia.

Here’s one of the pages from my contribution to the project.

And if you would like to see what I did for the project but can’t make it all the way to the US to visit the tour then by all means check out my Oodles of Doodles blog where I’ve been uploading pages from my sketchbook along with my other drawings, sketches and scribbles.

The Return of Spiky

2011-03-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I should finally be able to finish my Frankenstein’s Orifice Box sculpture when I install the internal Stilted Nail Cube piece. Even though I completed the main, outer shell some time ago, it has been sat in the workshop at the Victoria and Albert Museum (where I’ve been working and where I also collected the scraps of old wood to construct the sculpture) waiting for me to complete the internal structure. So now that both sections are complete I’ll have the outer shell delivered to my studio and hopefully they should fit together – fingers crossed.

The inner section is inspired by my earlier Nail Box sculpture which in-turn is heavily influenced by the Minkisi totems of the Congo (and possibly by an image I once saw of one of Eduardo Paolozzi’s early sculptures in an old catalogue – but I might have just dreamed that bit because I haven’t since been able to find any reference to it).
Although you can’t clearly see it from this image, the front and the back of the cube have windows of splintered wood ‘exploding’ outwards (so that you can look straight through the box). When I was constructing the piece I wanted the splintering to look quite spontaneous and not too contrived but in order to get the exact random quality that I was looking for I had to do quite a few controlled experiments first. This involved me sandwiching pieces of old wood between two thick pieces of plywood with holes cut out of the middles of them and clamping the lot firmly to a sturdy vice. I would then run at the vice, swinging a claw hammer like a maniac, and try and hit the sandwich dead in the centre of the cut-out holes (needless to say, there were a few near misses). At first I just tried hitting the centre of the holes from a non-maniacal, standing position but for some reason the screaming nutter approach achieved the best results.

As is the way with most of my projects – as soon as I start making one thing I get loads of ideas for similar or spin-off pieces. And when I was making the inner cube section of the Frankenstein Orifice Box I began to wonder what a whole cluster of stilted cube sculptures would look like if I lengthened the stilts so that the cubes were viewable at head height. Needless to say – I now want to make a cluster of long stilted cube sculptures (oh, where will I find the time?).
Incidentally, this sketch was made during a practice shoot for a filmed, 24 hour drawing project that I’m thinking of doing along with film makers, Oliver Goodrich and Mike Taylor at Big Face Art. The project will involve me sitting at desk and trying to draw solidly for 24 hours. I know that 24 hours doesn’t sound like a mammoth amount of time to do anything as an endurance task but it’s amazing how mentally tiring it can be if you just sit for six or seven hours and try to fill sketchbooks with drawings from the top of your head. Anyway – we’ll see how it goes.

While I was going through some of my old sketchbooks I came across this one from 2008 which also plays with the idea of raising up small box structures to head height via the use of spindly stick structures. So I must have these little themes running through my head and they just resurface every now and again when they spot a project that suits them. A lot of these drawings tend to be nothing more than thumbnail sketches accompanied by lots of scrawled instructions (normally about construction methods or suggested materials) to my future self - although this one doesn't seem too scribbly.

Sketchbook Tour Hits Texas This Week

2011-03-09T15:11:00.000-08:00

On Saturday 12th March the Art House Co-op’s Sketchbook Project starts its tour proper as it leaves its base, the Brooklyn Art Library, and heads off to the Austin Museum of Art, Texas. And the following day it will be stopping off at the 29th St Ballroom at Spider House.

So if you happen to be in Austin, Texas this weekend feel free to pop along to either venue and see if you can find my sketchbook (here’s one of the pages from my contribution to the project) amongst the 10,000 other books that make up the tour. The next leg of the tour will be at the Space Gallery in Portland, Maine but I’ll tell you about that one when it comes up at the end of the month.

And if you would like to see what I did for the project but can’t make it all the way to the US to visit the tour then by all means check out my Oodles of Doodles blog where I’ve been uploading pages from my sketchbook along with my other drawings, sketches, doodles and scribbles.

March 12, 2011 / 12:00-6:00pm
Austin Museum of Art
823 Congress Ave
Austin, TX

March 13th, 2011 / 12:00-6:00pm
29th St Ballroom at Spider House
2906 Fruth St
Austin, TX

New Prints at Beyond the Valley

2011-03-08T11:09:00.000-08:00

I’m pleased to announce that my latest screen prints, ‘Swirly Skulls’ and ‘Swirly Skulls on Pink’ (my particular favourite) are now available at the very fabulous Beyond the Valley concept store located at 2 Newburgh street, London W1F 7RD - off Carnaby Street.

Since its launch five years ago Beyond the Valley has gone from being a springboard for designers to one of London’s leading destinations for fashion and innovation. As well collaborating with up and coming artists and designers the store and label showcase products by well respected brands and this year’s names include Vivienne Westwood, Aveda, Nokia and Aston Martin. Beyond the Valley has been voted one of the top 100 Coolbrands of 2007/08/09 and 2010.

As well as ‘Swirly Skulls on Pink’ (above) and ‘Swirly Skulls’ (the black on white version) the store also stocks my older and more recognised screen print, Spidey Pods. Unfortunately the image above doesn't totally do the work justice. If you call into the shop and check out the print you'll see that the pink is much more vibrant in the flesh (or on paper rather).

So if you are in the vicinity of Carnaby Street then I thoroughly recommend you to pop into this lovely little store. Every time I nip in there I always find something new and peculiar that I want – which is why I have to restrict my visits.

Opening Night Footage

2011-03-07T16:21:00.000-08:00

I've just found this piece of footage from the opening night of the recent States of Reverie show at Scream Gallery in Mayfair. I've managed to spot my work and a few friends in amongst the crowd but even though I was there right from the opening I seem to have managed to evade the camera's lens – unless you count the split second that you see the back of my head whilst I’m talking to fellow artist and exhibitor, LG White.

Horned God Orifice Box

2011-03-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

Months ago I showed you some images of my Horned God Orifice Box (yes, I’ve still not come up with a snappier title for it yet) whilst it was under construction and even though I finished it soon after I forgot to post any images of it in its finished state. So here it is, along with a few related sketches.

Here it is sitting on one of the work benches in my studio. The Horned God part of its title comes from the branches coming out of either side of it. And the Orifice bit – well that’s probably quite obvious.

This small drawing from my pocket sketchbook was made early on when I first thought about starting the Orifice Box series. Unlike the Horned God and Frankenstein’s Orifice Boxes this is to be left plain except for an external drawing decoration. I have yet to start this one though.

In this image you can see that, in-keeping with my love of using found materials, I have used the backboards from some old paintings. They came from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and you can clearly see one of the original labels and some of the remnants of gum tape. Although you can’t see it from the two photos, the inside of the Horned God Orifice Box is lined with a collage of bits of early 20th Century newspaper and over-drawn in a similar style to the external pattern on the small drawing above.

One thing that I want to get back into the habit of doing is the quick-fire drawing sessions that I used to do every night before I went to bed. I particularly enjoy the very fast sketches that only take a few seconds to execute. What you loose in accuracy you tend to gain in vibrancy. This one was made after I’d started the new series of Orifice Box sculptures and is a kind of cross between them and my earlier wall-mounted Orifice sculpture.

Brooklyn Art Library Opening This Weekend

2011-02-18T04:42:00.000-08:00

This weekend sees the start of The Sketchbook Project’s tour of galleries and museums around the US. The tour begins at Art House Co-op’s very own Brooklyn Art Library located in the heart of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY.

My sketchbook will be one of the many books submitted by 28838 artists from 94 countries around the world. Each book on the tour can be checked out like a library book as well as being able to be viewed on-line. Although due to the scale of the project, it will take a while yet before all of the sketchbooks have been digitized. But if you would like to see in advance what I submitted for the project then feel free to check out my Oodles of Doodles blog.

To find out where else the project will be touring just click on the tour date map.

The Brooklyn Art Library - 103A N 3rd St. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Hours: Tues-Sun: 12:00pm-8:00pm (closed Mondays)

Where Art You Interview

2011-02-16T05:57:00.000-08:00

If anyone out there is interested in reading any more of my ramblings then please feel free to check out the interview that I just had with Where Art You editor, Helen Wilson. Where Art You is a website about art in London - featuring the latest reviews, previews, interviews and much more. The site is pretty darned good so even if you don’t really want to listen to what I have to say it’s worth checking out for the reviews and other stuff.

To wet your appetite (or kill it altogether) here’s the first question and my response -

As your model kit When I Am A Man suggests, many young boys want to be soldiers when they grow up – what was your childhood ambition?

Apart from a few very brief periods when I quite fancied being either a bin man, a monk, a steam roller driver or a kamikaze pilot (I was very young when I wanted to be the later and probably didn’t really understand the limited career path of being a human bomb, or the fact that I needed to be Japanese and born a few decades earlier) I always wanted to do something involving art.
As a child I would obsessively draw, paint and build stuff, so when I was old enough to realise that there were jobs out there that allowed you to carry on doing these things into adulthood I pretty much wanted to do all of them. I wanted to be everything from an architect to an illustrator to an animator to a comic book artist. But I was also a massive horror fan as a child and would fantasize about working in the film industry and making monsters for movies – although, growing up in semi-rural Shropshire, this seemed a world away and just a pipe dream.

Frieze, Basel and Venice Biennale 2011

2011-02-09T17:05:00.000-08:00

I’m ashamed to admit it but even though I live here in London I’ve never actually made it along to any of the Frieze art fairs. But this year looks to change all that as I’ve just been invited to be one of the five artists representing Natasha Akhmerova’s Barbarian Art gallery at this year’s fair. Barbarian Art is an international gallery based in Zurich and Moscow and active worldwide.

This year looks like being a pretty good year for international art fairs. As well as being invited to exhibit at Frieze and represent VZ Art Gallery at the Liste art fair in Basel, Switzerland, I’ve just booked (OK, my mate Holly has done all the bookings as she’s the organised one and secretly loves being in charge of everything) my flights and accommodation for this year’s Venice Biennale. I went for the first time two years ago and even though I lost my mobile (and 10 years worth of none backed-up phone numbers) in one of the canals I had the most amazing time. It’s incredible how small the art scene is because at the last Venice Biennale I bumped into so many people that I knew from London – a prime example being that on our first night there my mate popped next door to see if he could borrow a cork screw and found out that we’d booked a room next to a group of artist friends from back home. This year we’ve made sure that we arrive in Venice a few days ahead of the official opening weekend so as to take full advantage of the many opening parties – oh yeah!

Vote For Me (please)

2011-01-29T02:36:00.000-08:00

If anyone is feeling generous enough to spend a minute or two to vote for my piece in the Saatchi On-line Showdown I would be a very happy bunny. I have entered my giant green model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man. Unfortunately you have to sign up first (although you don't have to give any more details other than a name and your email address) and then come back to this link to find my work – but at least then you get to check out all the great artwork by thousands of other artists and decide which ones you think should make it into the next round. If you fancy taking part then hear's the link. Cheers.

Screen Prints For Sale

2011-01-26T02:35:00.000-08:00

Because to the large amount of traffic that my blog has been getting the last few weeks (largely due to the sudden on-line popularity of my life-size model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man) I thought I'd take advantage and give my screen prints another mention.

If the first one looks strangely familiar then you might remember the postcard-sized single skull versions that I made and handed out free to the folks queuing for last year’s RCA Secret show. I have been promising to bring out this larger, 9 skull version for over a year now but due to a prolonged bought of slackness, I’ve only just got round to it.

These new hand-pulled, screen prints are in a limited edition of 50 - a much smaller edition than my Spidey Pods prints and each one is signed, titled, dated and editioned. I’m currently in the process of cropping the prints down from the 70 x 50 cm paper, on which they were printed, to 60 x 45 cm as this size works best with the image. However, I may keep a couple back, un-cropped, just in case anyone would like to frame them in a larger frame with a wide mount. I know that Ikea do a nice 70 x 50 cm plain black or white wood frame, with a mount, for about £20 but I’ve not tried a print in one of these frames yet so can’t comment on how they look.

As the Swirly Skulls prints are new they have only just started to appear in the London galleries and shops but if you would like to get your hands on one at my special, commission-free price (usually 30-50% less than in shops and galleries) feel free to get in touch. I'm selling them for £50 each. So if you fancy buying one just drop me a line at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk.

However, for those of you who love skulls but also like a little bit of colour - here’s my new, 2 colour, ‘Swirly Skulls on Pink’ screen prints. They come in a strictly limited edition of 50 and each print is signed, titled, editioned and dated. The paper dimensions are 70 x 50 cm (larger than the new, single colour, ‘Swirly Skulls’ prints which are 60 x 45 cm). And as with the new, one colour, Swirly Skull prints, these are also available for a super low, commission-free price (£60 each if bought directly from my good self). If you would like one just drop me an email at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk .

States of Reverie – Opening Night

2011-01-23T15:23:00.000-08:00

I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone that made it to the opening night of the States Of Reverie exhibition at Scream on Thursday 13th (I should really have posted this over a week ago but it's been a busy couple of weeks). The turn out was amazing and it was only afterwards when a friend emailed my this wireimage link that I realised how many famous faces were present. After checking out the link it seemed that the place had been full of actors, designers, musicians and models. Needless to say, I didn't see a single one of them – I must have been wondering around in my own little bubble again.

Glen Matlock (of the Sex Pistols) and Jo Wood were amongst the guests...

along with actor, Sean Pertwee - seen here with Scream's very own press officer, Lee Sharrock.

And here's a picture of me looking a little drunk (although I promise I wasn't at this point. However, what condition I ended up in at the after-party at China White's is another matter entirely) in front of my giant model kit sculpture. Incidentally, I was totally blown away by how fast and by how many sites my model kit sculpture, And When I'm a Man, appeared on after an image of it appeared in my last post. I think that Laughing Squid might have been the first to feature it but it also soon appeared in the Huffington Post and on Boing Boing, as well as dozens of other sites. So thanks everybody.

'States of Reverie' exhibition at Scream

2011-01-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

This Thursday sees to opening of States of Reverie at the Scream Gallery in Mayfair, London - where I will be exhibiting three of my sculptures (And When I’m a Man, Magnet and Book Tower II). The other six artists in the show are Clare Chapman, Chinwook Kim, Ann-Marie James, Malgosia Stepnik, LG White and Guillermo de Zamacona.

‘And When I’m a Man’ which is basically a life-size version of myself as a 12 piece, pre-assembly, model kit will be hanging on the gallery’s office wall for the duration of the show.
As well as being a self-portrait, the piece engages with my interest in nostalgia and childhood perceptions of adulthood (and the role that toys play in this). One important aspect of the piece is its colour. When constructing the sculpture I tried to find the same colour as the green plastic soldiers that he used to play with as a child. But rather than go back and find examples of these toys to get an accurate match, I chose a colour that matched my memory of it – recognising that the passage of time would have altered and exaggerated the memory and produced something far more lurid.

And When I’m a Man was produced in 1998 but apart from appearing in a couple of small shows around that time and a brief appearance in the film Scratch directed by Jakob Rørvik, it has sat in storage at Candid Arts in Islington – until now that is.

I created ‘Book Tower II (Nostalgia For a Childhood That Wasn’t Mine)’ (also see Book Tower) last year for a show at a gallery in Redchurch Street, East London. Although I was wasn’t 100% happy with its proportions and thought it looked a bit stubby, so last week I added two more books to raise it to just the right height. So the image you see here is slightly different than the one you will see in the gallery from Thursday onwards.
Apart from the base section, none of the books are glued together – instead they all have cut away sections and are then slotted together. The construction process for the piece started of relatively straight forward enough. However, as the piece grew and got taller the construction processes dictated that the structure had to be regularly dismantled and reassembled in order to enable the addition of more sections. And the bigger it got the more difficult it got to remember how everything fitted together – especially since all the dust covers had to be removed and then cut to size and reapplied at the final stage.

Out of all of my sculptures ‘Magnet’ has had one of the most interesting lives so far. Originally titled Toy Tower it was changed to Magnet after its first showing when it became evident that its powers of attraction seemed to work on children and adults in equal measure. On the first day of Magnet’s first exhibition the person invigilating told me that they had looked over to where my sculpture should have been, only to find that it had disappeared. Apparently four little boys had managed to sneak the piece out into the street before being chased off by the invigilator, who wheeled the sculpture back into the gallery again.
Although originally constructed quite some time ago Magnet has had to be rebuilt several times as, over the years, the temptations of numerous collectors and souvenir hunters have obviously got the better of them. After almost every show I would find that pieces of the sculpture were missing. But as the toys in the sculpture date from the 60's to present day it's probably not that surprising. I sometimes wonder though, whether renaming it Magnet was just tempting fate.

States of Reverie
13 January – 20 February 2011
Scream gallery, 34 Bruton Street, London W1J 6QX
+ 44 (0) 20 7493 7388
Opening times: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm; Sat-Sun 11am-5pm

Sketchbook to America

2010-12-22T15:19:00.000-08:00

I’ve finally finished my sketch book for the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project - and this morning I posted it off to the Brooklyn Art Library, where it will join all other sketchbooks ready for the nine state tour. All the books submitted in time will do a tour of galleries and museums in Brooklyn, Austin, San Francisco, Portland, Atlanta and Chicago - where the public will be able to book them out like regular library books.

Here are a few drawings from the one that I have just sent off. If you would like to see the entire sketchbook I will shortly be posting all of the drawings (all 40 pages) on my other blog - Oodles of Doodles. I’ll aim for one post a day but we’ll see how it goes.

This drawing takes its inspiration from my sculpture, The City.

As you can see - I have a bit of a thing for boxes on wheels...

...and for things bursting or pouring out of boxes.

So far six states, have signed up to play host to the show but it is likely that more states will take part before the exhibition starts in March 2011. After the tour, all sketchbooks will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be bar-coded and available for the public to view. All participating artists on the tour have a webpage in which to show off their work – and here’s mine.

All New Swirly Skull Prints

2010-12-17T15:39:00.000-08:00

As promised – here’s my new, 2 colour, ‘Swirly Skulls on Pink’ screen prints. They come in a strictly limited edition of 60 and each print is signed, titled, editioned and dated. The paper dimensions are 70 x 50 cm (larger than the new, single colour, ‘Swirly Skulls’ prints which are 60 x 40 cm – see two posts down). And as with the new, one colour, Swirly Skull prints, these are also available for the super low, commission-free price of £60 each if bought directly from my good self. If you would like one just drop me an email at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk .

FAD Q&A

2010-12-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

My new Swirly Skulls prints (see the previous post) have just gone on sale at FAD website’s on-line shop. I’ve also taken part in a Q and A session that can be viewed in the Interviews section of the site. And if you can’t be bothered to click on the link to view my ramblings: well, here they are anyway -

1 If you weren’t an artist, what else would you be?
I’d still be a hoarder of junk. Maybe I’d open my own junk shop. I think I’d be good at that.

2 Name 3 of your least favourite artists.
Only a very tiny percentage of the artwork that I see ever gets me all fired up and excited. It’s not that I think the rest is bad – it’s just that the things that inspire me usually come from areas outside of art, or on the fringes of it. So I don’t really have any least favourite artist (unless you count the artists that a really like but not quite as much as the ones who’s work I really love – I suppose that technically they would be my least favourite), just lots who’s work doesn’t do much for me.

3. Anytime, any place – which artist’s body would you most like to inhabit?
It would be great to have some of the opportunities that certain artists have or have had but I’ve always liked being me and living in my own head so I’ll probably just stick if that is OK.

4 What is your favourite ‘ism’?
Buddhism… oh, you meant art movement ‘ism’.
When I was at University I loved art theory and it really helped my practice to a certain degree but art historians seems obsessed with ‘isms’ and movements and any number of ways of dividing art and artists into either this or that camp. Some artwork interests me and some artwork doesn’t. That’s the only two classifications of art that I need.

5 What was the most intelligent thing that someone said or wrote about your work?
Can’t remember – most of the time people say something to me about my work is while we’re at the opening of a show and I’ve normally had a drink or two by that point.

6. And the dumbest?
Again, I can’t remember but what ever it was, it was probably me that said it.

7 Which artists would you most like to rip off, sorry, I mean appropriate as a critique of originality and authorship?
I can’t see much point in deliberately ripping off other people’s work but as a kid I was obsessed with anything macabre (be it literature, TV, film, comics, animation or whatever) and the short films of animators such as the Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer have greatly influenced the sort of sculptural work I produce. Like them I try to make something that looks like it inhabits that half world somewhere between here and the realm of dream or fairy tale.
One thing that I do try to emulate, especially in my drawings, is the natural flow of organic forms. I love the functional aesthetics of nature and I have a bit of an obsession with roots, vines, tendrils and tentacles. They frequently appear in my drawings – either as an aspect of nature or as a biomorphic bridge between the geometric world of the man-made and the world of the organic.
Growing up in rural(ish) Shropshire probably had a big influence on my appreciation of natural forms. As a kid I would spend a lot of time exploring woods and field, and always marvelled at the easy with which nature reclaimed areas of man’s intervention. It was amazing growing up in the place that saw the birth of the industrial age, and being able to play amongst the ruins of old mills, kilns and giant bits of rusting machinery.

8 Do you care what your art costs? State your reasons!
Yes, to a certain extent. It’s very expensive and time consuming being an artist and the price of your work should reflect not only this but also the life time of practise and artistic development that went into getting you to the point you are at now. However, saying that, I don’t know of many artists that don’t make art for the love of it – so even if no-one was willing to buy my work, I’d still be making it.

9 What are the three big ideas that you would like your work to express?
I don’t know if my work expresses big ideas. My work tends to come out of a jumble of personal obsessions, observations, foibles, interests and minor anxieties. There are lots of re-occurring themes or motifs that surface in my work though. There is the roots or vines thing, as previously mentioned, but there’s also my love of boxes and containment. My tower and box sculptures (all on wheels) came about through anxieties about frequently moving from place to place and the logistical issue of transporting possessions. This probably all stems from my earlier experiences as a child when I had to move home a lot (often at a minute’s notice and in the dead of night) and only being able to take what ever we were able to carry. So the boxes and the tower pieces (where as much stuff is crammed into as small a space as possible) are partly a comment on our need for material possessions with the wheels providing a comical reminder of how this dependence on ‘stuff’ limits our mobility.
But there are lots of other ideas and issues that weave in and out of my work. One of these is memory and its mutable nature. I’ve always been fascinated by the fallibility of memory and how the stories of our own lives, that we tell ourselves, can subtly change over years – like a very long game of Chinese whispers. This is more strongly evident in my pieces that incorporate or recreate childhood artefacts and toys. When I made my life size model kit sculpture, And When I’m a Man (I’ll Think as a Man), I sprayed in a lurid green colour that was closest to my memory of some cheap plastic soldiers that I had as a child – recognising that the memory of the colour was probably inaccurate and an exaggeration of the original colour.
The majority of my sculptural work involves the reworking and assemblage of found objects/materials. And I like to use materials that I feel have a certain ‘resonance’ – a resonance that that is built up by interaction with people or the environment.

10 Are you a political artist?
Not so as you’d notice.

11 How do you start the process of making work?
It varies from piece to piece. With my 2D work I sometimes just get an image that comes to me and I try and render it as accurately as possibly – with varying degrees of success. Although recently I’ve been doing a lot of automatic drawing, where I just sit down and force myself to draw as fast as possible. This I try and do without thinking what the drawing will turn into. Again, this works with varying degrees of success but lots of interesting ideas come out of it and I find it to be a very good way of getting the creative juices (I really don’t like the phrase ‘creative juices’ but it probably best describes what I’m talking about) flowing.
As for my sculptural work – they almost always start with lots of preliminary sketches and working drawings. The first stages of drawing tend to be concerned with building a rough image of how I want the piece to eventually look. The next stage of drawings might be concerned with the logistics of construction and problem solving, although this also tends to be ongoing during the construction process, as I encounter unforeseen problems or issues. But as I said, it varies from piece to piece so these steps change and don’t always apply.

12 What next?
After the initial sketching stage I find the materials that I need and work them into the required shapes – then the building process begins as I join the various components together. Here I’m obviously talking more about my box and tower type constructions. Some other sculptures might be formed in a more organic way. The thing I love about sculpture is that it’s a very process based activity – one where the process or the materials themselves can often inform the next stage of the sculpture’s development. This can turn the finished sculpture into a very different beast than originally intended – or give birth to the ideas for a whole family of related but different sculptures.
It constantly keeps you questioning what you are doing (in a similar way to drawing) whilst also allowing you to loose yourself in the work. That sounds quite contradictory – maybe it’s a Zen kinda thing.
I think that the thing I love most about sculpture is that, for me at least, it feels more truthful. There’s something about making sculpture that allows you to lean deeper into your subconscious and come back out again with a few more nuggets of understanding – but I might be wrong.

13 If Moma and the Tate and the Pompidou wanted to acquire one of your works each, which would you want them to have?
I’d let MOMA have And When I’m a Man (I’ll Think as a Man) because it’s my biggest sculpture to date and I’d like it to be seen by a wider audience. It’s also too big for me to store in my studio. I’d let the Tate have The City. Again because I’d like it to be seen by a wider audience but also because it’s my favourite piece so I’d like to be able to visit it whenever I liked. As for the Pompidou – maybe they could have Magnet or Fetish.

14 Complete the following sentence “Blessed art the artists, for they shall make their own worlds.”

15 Complete the following sentence “Blessed are the curators, for they shall arrange the worlds as they see fit.”

16 Complete the following sentence “Blessed are the art critics, for they shall explain these strange worlds.”

17. What is your favourite cheese?
I don’t have a favourite but (fat-free and synthetic cheese aside) I haven’t yet found a cheese that I don’t like – the stronger and smellier the better.

18. What’s next for you?
I’m currently working on a new series of orifice box sculptures. What sets this series apart from my previous box sculptures is a carved orifice set into the front of each piece. However, they are temporarily on hold at the moment as I attempt to fill a new sketchbook before Christmas, so that I can send it off to the Art House Co-Op Sketchbook Project which will be touring around the US early next year.
I will also be exhibiting a couple of sculptures from the 13th January at the new show at Scream in Mayfair.

New Screen Prints - Swirly Skulls

2010-12-13T16:44:00.000-08:00

Christmas is just around the corner and you still can’t think what to get Great Aunty Flow. Well fear not – I have just the solution. How about one of my brand new Swirly Skull prints? Guaranteed to cheer up any stuffy old living room and compliment the bewilderingly pervasive ceramic cat collection.

If the image looks strangely familiar then you might remember the postcard-sized single skull versions that I made and handed out free to the folks queuing for last year’s RCA Secret show. I have been promising to bring out this larger, 9 skull version for over a year now but due to a prolonged bought of slackness, I’ve only just got round to it – just in time for Christmas. What a coincidence!

These new hand-pulled, screen prints are in a limited edition of 50 - a much smaller edition than my Spidey Pods prints (scroll down the page for details), and each print is signed, titled, dated and editioned. I’m currently in the process of cropping the prints down from the 70 x 50 cm paper, on which they were printed, to 60 x 45 cm as this size works best with the image. However, I may keep a couple back, un-cropped, just in case anyone would like to frame them in a larger frame with a wide mount. I know that Ikea do a nice 70 x 50 cm plain black or white wood frame, with a mount, for about £20 but I’ve not tried a print in one of these frames yet so can’t comment on how they look.

As they’ve only just been printed, they don’t yet appear for sale in any galleries, shops or other sites. And as is the case with my Spidey Pods prints, I am offering these prints on my blog first, at a commission-free price. They are £60 each (30-50% less than in shops and galleries). So if you fancy buying one just drop me a line at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk and we can work out how to get one to you.

However, if you like your screen prints with a bit more colour then hang on till the end of the week when I will be bringing out a two colour, limited edition (probably in an edition of 45 to 50 prints) version. This set will also feature the 9 black Swirly Skulls but printed on a dripping block of baby pink. As the block of pink colour extends beyond the boarder of the skulls, the image holds it own on a larger sheet of paper so will be printed on 70 x 50 cm sheets.

So, as they said on something probably quite corny – ‘Watch this space’.

Sketchbook Project USA

2010-12-07T14:16:00.000-08:00

I know that I usually work well to tight deadlines but I think that I should have paid a bit more attention to when the handing in date for the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project was, when I signed up for it all those months ago. I knew that it was some time in 2011 but after having a quick check on-line I realised that the completed sketchbooks have to arrive back at the Brooklyn Art Library in the US (ready for their six state, museum and gallery tour - Brooklyn, Austin, San Francisco, Portland, Atlanta and Chicago) by the 15th of January. Taking into account the amount of time it will take to post them from the UK to the US and the fact that I just started my first sketch last night, I’m foreseeing a few very late nights ahead of me this festive season. Lovely!
So here’s what I’ve done so far. A few down – bloody loads to go!

This is a sketch of a component sculpture I made from an old, smashed doll’s head and selection of crabs legs – glued together.

Not sure what was going on in my head when I did this one - just felt the urge to draw tubes and pipes. I like tubes and pipes - what's wrong with that?

Again - not sure what I was thinking when I did this one. It seems to be a slightly depressed, clock-work thing.

I did this one this morning, in the cold light of day - a very bloody cold day (us Brits love to moan about the weather by the way). I thought that I had better start steering myself back towards the theme that I had chosen, and decided to create something that looked like it could be a scavenger. I call him Snozgoul.

And finally... this one. I haven't a clue... you tell me!

Participating artists were invited the chose from a wide selection of themes before starting their sketchbooks. I chose ‘I’m a Scavenger’. Considering my love of rubbish and approach to selecting materials (when sculpting), I think it’s quite apt.
So far six states, have signed up to play host to the show but it is likely that more states will take part before the exhibition starts in March 2011. After the tour, all sketchbooks will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be bar-coded and available for the public to view. All participating artists on the tour have a webpage in which to show off their work – and here’s mine.

Xmas Art Fair and Lucky Skip - Sat 27th Nov (2-6 pm)

2010-11-26T04:37:00.000-08:00

If anyone’s at a loose end this weekend please feel free to come along to the Cecil Court Christmas Fair (Saturday 27th November, 2-6 pm), a short walk from Leicester Square tube station, London. The fair sees the launch of Tenderproduct’s new print space - a basement area featuring a brand new collection of books, limited edition artist prints and original artist drawings and sculptures.

Although my new Swirly Skull prints aren’t yet ready (hopefully they’ll be available in time for Christmas), my Spidey Pods prints will be for sale at the launch. However, if you would like to buy a print from me at the ‘direct from the artist price’ feel free to get in touch at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk. They are hand pulled, 3 colour, screen prints on acid-free, archival paper. The paper size is 58.6 cm x 54.2 cm (image 38.7 x 39.4 cm). Every print is signed and numbered (being from a maximum edition of 300). And if you would like to get your hands on one, my ‘commission-free’ price is £100 (around 33% off the usual gallery and shop price), unframed.
To find out about the inspiration behind the print check out the original Spidey Pods sketch on my Oodles of Doodles blog.

Tenderproduct’s print space launch also coincides with Garudio Studiage’s Lucky Skip. A hand made artist skip full of wrapped goodies direct from Garudio Studuiage and tenderproduct: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO GET FOR JUST ONE POUND? An excellent way to kick of the Festive season, Garudio Studiage’s Lucky Skip will provide Cecil Court visitors with an afternoon of delight and surprises.
The Salvation Army Brass band will add to the Court’s festive mood by playing some Christmas Carols. Tenderproduct will be serving sweets and hot drinks to keep you warm as you take your lucky dip in the skip.

As well as myself, other artists participating in the Tenderproduct launch include: Janne Malmros, Junko Otake, James Irwin, Irene Pérez Hernández, Dan Arnold, Reena Makwana, Joseph Whitney, Katy Binks, Lizzie Cannon, Rachel Gannon, Tomasz Goli, Hannah Waldron, Akiko Ban, Glyn Walton, Nicko Straniero, Jacob Love, Mimi Leung, Sally Spinks, Lisa Slominski, Jeremy Wood, JL Murtaugh, Nicholas Phillips and Luzelle van der Westhuizen.

RCA No-longer Secret 2010

2010-11-20T17:51:00.000-08:00

Well, the RCA Secret is over for another year so now I can reveal which were my six postcard-sized artworks.

Number 411 (Jellyscuttle). Quite a few people worked this one out because it’s a copy of one of my quick-fire drawings.

This tentacle orifice box pencil sketch which was bought by Mr Adam Stone (one of the many dedicated front line RCA enthusiasts who braved the cold weather and camped out for the opening) was number 701 in the show.

Like the previous drawing, this orifice box sketch (number 2002) was probably quite easy to work out as being one of mine, especially if you’ve look at my new series of sculptures.

Number 2441 is a follow up piece to last year’s Love Is card – and features one of the same creatures. A friend told me that they thought the Love Is drawing seemed cynical so I thought I’d up the ante a little with this one.

I entered these last two biro drawings under my nickname, Chig (I thought it needed an outing). They proved to be the hardest ones for people to work out as being mine. This one, number 2210, is of a crow (my favourite bird) with human-like hands instead of feet. Actually there seemed to be a few crow pictures in the show this year. I've just found out that my Werecrow card is now in the possession of Sandy Lyell, up in Edinburgh - thanks for the lovely email Sandy.

I drew this winged torpedo one, number 605, after I got back from viewing an exhibition by a Russia artist in Shoreditch. In the show the artist (whose name I shamefully can’t remember) had made a model submarine that travelled up and down a massive water-filled Perspex tube that ran the length of the gallery.

New Member of the Family

2010-11-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

Here’s my latest Orifice Box sculpture. The pictures are courtesy of fellow RCA Secret contributor and photographer, Phil Sofer.

This one took quite a long time to construct as I wanted to cobble it together from multiple bits and pieces – to give it a bit of a Frankenstein’s Monster look. As with most of my box structures, I’m interested in the play between the organic and the geometric. Hopefully this can be seen in the interaction between the carved orifice and the angular interlocking wooden sections.

I’ve only just got round to putting the wheels on it – which is the part that I really look forward to as it gives a piece a sense of completion. However, this one isn’t totally finished yet. I’m working on a smaller cubic box (with an exploded front and back so that you can see straight through it) on stilts, that will sit inside this the sculpture. I’ve already completed the main structure of the inner box (which has now inspired me to make a series of them as sculptural pieces in their own right. This is one of the problems with sculpture – each piece can inspire multiple spin-offs) but before it is ready to install I intend to cover it in a thick coat of rusty nails, similar to my Nail Box sculpture.

This is me conducting rigorous structural integrity tests (don’t try this at home kids).

RCA Secret Artists Party

2010-11-13T12:05:00.000-08:00

Yesterday saw the public opening of RCA Secret 2010, the Royal College of Art’s annual exhibition of thousands of original postcard-sized artworks – the sale of which go to help the college’s students. Every year, as a thank you to all the artists who contribute, the RCA throws an opening party. Here are a few photos from that party.

This fantastic character, Peter, has been exhibiting at RCA Secret since it began.

Ooh - I can see one of my cards here.

WANTED - New Studio Space

2010-11-13T09:08:00.000-08:00

I’ve not been having a great deal of luck lately on the studio front. After just a few months in my new space in Whitechapel I find out that the building is to be redeveloped and we all have to be out by the end of December.
So if anyone out there knows of any suitable East London (Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Hackney, Whitechapel etc) space that I can use as a studio please get in touch. Anything over 130 square feet would be perfect. Here’s my email address – waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk . Cheers.

RCA Secret Time Again

2010-11-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

Well it’s that time of year again – the RCA Secret 2010 show is almost upon us. This year I have entered four pieces as Wayne Chisnall and two pieces as Chig (the name that most friends have known me by since I was ten or eleven). To give you a clue as to which ones in the exhibition are mine, I can tell you that four are pencil drawings and two are black biro drawings. What do you mean ‘those are crap clues’? OK then – here’s a big clue. Two of them relate to the latest set of sculptures that I’ve been working on (see earlier posts). And here’s an even bigger clue – one of the drawings relates to last year’s ‘Love Is’ card.

To anyone that doesn’t know about The Royal College of Art’s annual RCA Secret postcard show, here’s the info (lifted direct from their website – cos I’m too slack to type it out myself) –

RCA Secret is a unique annual exhibition and sale of original postcard-sized art, made by professional artists, designers and illustrators, plus current postgraduate students at the Royal College of Art.

THE SECRET
The postcards are displayed anonymously and are signed on the reverse, so that the artist remains a secret until after the cards are purchased and their signature is revealed on the back.

THE ARTISTS
Over 1,000 artists have donated work to RCA Secret this year, including Tracey Emin, Grayson Perry, Yoko Ono, Jake Chapman, Olafur Eliasson, Yinka Shonibare, Sir Peter Blake, John Baldessari, fashion designers Manolo Blahnik, Mary Quant and Sir Paul Smith, animator Nick Park, photographer David Bailey, film maker Mike Leigh and designers Ron Arad and James Dyson, as well as up-and-coming students and graduates from the Royal College of Art.

THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition opens on Friday 12 November, then from Sunday 14 November until Friday 19 November, 11am-6pm, with a late opening on Thursday 18 November until 9pm. Please note we are CLOSED on Saturday 13 November due to Government security restrictions for the Festival of Remembrance. Free Admission. The postcards will also be available for viewing on this website from Friday 12 November.

THE SALE
The cards are sold to the public at a one-day sale on Saturday 20 November, from 8am-6pm. Each postcard costs £45 and a maximum of four cards may be purchased per person. Postcards will only be available to purchase in person at the sale. It is recommended that you prepare a list of cards in advance, as the exhibition will not be open for viewing on the day of the sale.
You must have a Collector's Number to purchase a card. Click here to register.

THE RAFFLE
There is a raffle for a chance to win a place in the first fifty people at the front of the sale queue. Raffle tickets will be on sale at the exhibition (with a maximum of 10 tickets per person) until an hour before closing on each day.

WHERE WE ARE
Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU
Tube: South Kensington/High Street Kensington
Buses: 9, 10, 52, 452

Gone Postal

2010-11-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

I must admit that I have been a bit slack lately when it comes to playing my part in the postal art project, Collaborations, that was recently set up by the Finland-based photographer and artist, Adam Monaghan. Although I completed the first two of the four pieces straight after receiving them many months ago – I have only just now got round to completing the second two and posting them all off to the next artist on the list. Now I just have to get round to starting the next four that have arrived.

This is the third piece in the set – BEFORE I added to it.

This is the third piece in the set – AFTER my addition (note the naughty tentacle).

This is the fourth piece in the set – BEFORE I added to it.

This is the fourth piece in the set – AFTER my addition. I’m not quite sure where the long armed egg thing came from – I think it was getting late and I was getting tired.

The basic premise of the project is that Adam sends out sets of four 18 x 18 cm paintings/collages (that he has started) to various artists around the world. These artists then add to the works and post them onto another artist in the group, who does likewise. Once an artist feels the work is complete they return to Adam. Eventually, when all the works have been returned, we’ll have a small show somewhere and exhibit the end results. The artists currently taking part in the project are Tony Deleon in New York, Dale Devereux Barker in Ipswich, Katie Waller in Brighton, Larry Crittenden in Texas, Irene Runayker in Eastbourne, Carmen Dominguez in California, Kunigunda Dineikaite in Lithuania, Saara Konttinen in Helsinki, Peter Scribetta in New York, Adam Monaghan in Finland and myself here in London.

Last Night's Melt Private View

2010-10-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who managed to make it to last night’s opening party of the first ever Melt Art Fair at the Art Pavilion. The turn out was fantastic and it was great to catch up with a few old friends and chat to some of the other artists.

Unfortunately I’m not going to be in London this weekend so I can’t be here to mingle during the fair’s busiest two days. But the show carries on till 5pm Sunday, so if you are in London over the next few days and looking to check out the various art fairs then feel free to come along to Melt. It’s a great show, with some fantastic work, in an unusual and beautiful space, right in the middle of Mile End Park (a short walk from Mile End tube station).

I like this image. It looks like two characters that have found a common bond in hairiness.

Melt Art Fair, Mile End Art Pavilion, Clinton Road (off Grove Road), Mile End Park, London E3 4QY

Melt Art Fair - Opening Party (Wed 6pm - 8:30 pm)

2010-10-12T15:40:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos from Monday’s installation of the Melt Art Fair at the Art Pavilion in Mile End Park. The venue has to be one of the most amazing exhibition spaces in London. As well as being an architecturally stunning building (half buried under a man-made hill), it is almost magical how the light reflects from the adjacent pool and plays across the ceiling and walls of the gallery interior.
Along with 40 artists from the UK and abroad, I will be exhibiting a couple of my sculptures, Fetish and Nail Box. Melt is an independent venture, organised by Arthemisia.eu, as an alternative to the established London art fairs, Frieze and Zoo.

Although Melt officially opened today, we will be having opening party/private view tomorrow (Wednesday) from 6pm – 8:30pm (although the gallery will be open from 11am to view the artwork) so please feel free to come along and join us for a drink and a chance to meet the artist involved.

The opening times are from 11am – 6pm, Tuesday 12th to Sunday 17th October (closing at 5pm on Sunday) and the private view/drinks reception will be Wednesday 13th October (6pm – 8:30pm)
Melt Art Fair, Mile End Pavilion, Clinton Road (off Grove Road), Mile End Park, London E3 4QY

Melt Art Fair

2010-10-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

It’s art fair season again in London and from the 12th till the 17th I will be exhibiting two of my sculptural pieces, Fetish and Nail Box, in the Melt Art Fair at Mile End Pavilion. Even though the show opens on the 12th, the private view/opening party will be on Wednesday 13th from 6 pm – 8:30 pm. So if you are in the area do come along and join us for a drink and a chat.

Melt Art Fair, Mile End Art Pavilion, Clinton Road (off Grove Road), Mile End Park, London E3 4QY. 12-17 October 2010. Private view: Wednesday 13 October (6 pm - 8:30 pm). info@arthemisia.eu

Last Night's friday Late View

2010-09-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

Last night’s game of Two’s a Pair at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s ‘Friday Late View’ went well. Everyone who took part seemed to have a good time and happily walked away with a piece of original artwork at the end of it.

V&A 'Friday Late View' - Free Art

2010-09-22T17:02:00.001-07:00

If anyone’s at a loose end this Friday then why not come and join me at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London for the ‘Friday Late View’ (Two’s a Pair).
And if you fancy walking away with a free piece of artwork then come along and put your name down to play the Two’s a Pair, Memory Game. But get there early as they plan to allocate tickets to who ever wants to play and it’s a first come, first served deal. In this game of memory, plays will have to turn over and try and match two identical cards from a selection of over a hundred giant cards – all designed by “leading international artists” (not my words, I promise). And if you manage to match up a pair then you get to take home one of the cards home with you - for free, gratis, nothing, nowt…
When I was asked to produce a pair of cards for the event I decided to reproduce my Gimp doodle from my late night quick-fire drawings project/bed time ritual.

Open Studio - Today and Tomorrow

2010-09-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

It was great to see so many new and familiar faces at today's open studio event. The turn out was fantastic and there seemed to be a never ending procession of people popping through my door - although that could have had something to do with the fact that my studio was next to the free food (which was delicious by the way) and drink table. If anyone would like to come along tomorrow and join us for a chat and brunch, the doors will be open from Sunday 19th, 12 noon – 6 p.m. Here’s a map of the area.

At: La Ruche, 20 Buckle Street, Whitechapel, London, E1 8EH
Tube: Aldgate East

Open Studios - This Weekend

2010-09-16T15:22:00.000-07:00

If anyone fancies coming along to the open studio event at my studio, La Ruche, this weekend please feel free to do so. I’m gonna try and be there for the whole time which is this Saturday, 18th Sept, 12 noon – 7 p.m. and Sunday 19th, 12 noon – 6 p.m. Here’s a map of the area.

At: La Ruche, 20 Buckle Street, Whitechapel, London, E1 8EH
Tube: Aldgate East

In conjunction with London Design Festival and Open House weekend La Ruche will be opening its artists’ studios to the public - visit some of London's most exciting Contemporary Artists and Designers in this unique artist's community and creative regeneration project at the heart of Whitechapel, E1 - conveniently located near to The Whitechapel Gallery and Aldgate East tube.

Participating Artists include: Gordon Cheung, Nahem Shoa,
Lizzie Cannon, Wayne Chisnall, Constance Slaughter, Ann-Marie James, Caroline Lambard, Marcin Dudek, George Sleap,
Jeremy Evans, Anja Henckel, Alice Planel, Lia Chavez,
Jeannie Lowen, Beatrice Jarvis, and Douglas Park
Resident Galleries and Creative industries: Janet Rady Fine Art, dalla Rosa gallery, Quare offsite project (exhibiting
Larry Achiampong), 20x20 magazine, Troika, and rAndom

For Press and any other enquiries please contact:
Hive at La Ruche (Landline): +44 (0) 207 481 3230 laruche@hivelondon.org
Aeon Rose - Communications Officer, Hive +44 (0) 7960 991 550 info@hivelondon.org

La Ruche Open Studios | This Saturday 18th Sept, 12 noon - 7 p.m and Sunday 19th, 12 noon - 6 p.m

Fun, Games and Free Art!

2010-09-13T18:44:00.001-07:00

As part of this month’s ‘Friday Late View’ the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, London have asked various artists and illustrators to each produce two identical over-sized playing cards for a game of Two’s a Pair. I think the idea is that members of the public are given the opportunity to play the game and then get to keep a card if they can match it to its pair. As one of the artists selected to take part in the event I’ve decided to produce blown-up versions of one of my latest doodles, ‘Gimp’. I’ll do one in black and one in red – in keeping with the normal colours you find in suits of cards.

Drawings of Nothing

2010-09-09T09:02:00.001-07:00

I’ve just uploaded 24 new doodles, drawings, cartoons and scribbles. Doodling seems to have become part of my bed-time ritual lately. Most nights, just before I head off to sleep I try and force myself to jot down a few drawings. Sometimes I really get into it and am pleased with the rests, while other times I’m either not in the mood or just too tired and end up with something pretty awful. ‘Amorphous 4’ (above) is the fourth in a series of drawings which are the products of trying to draw things that don’t look like anything in particular. This might sound easy but once you start sketching random forms it gets harder not to let parts of the drawing look like something already existing – you’ll start to notice an eye, an elbow or something finger-like beginning to appear here and there.

Orifice Doodles

2010-08-27T15:53:00.001-07:00

As I’d previously mentioned, the new series of Orifice sculptures that I’m currently working on has started to influence my late night doodle sessions. And as promised, I’ve finally got round to uploading some of them onto my quick-fire drawings site.

Crab Head Doll

2010-08-17T16:35:00.000-07:00

As my blog has been a bit drawing/doodle-heavy lately I thought I’d give you a break with something 3D. This is one of my small component sculptures. I’m not quite sure where these component pieces are going – whether they will eventually form part of an installation, join together to form a weird mutated sculpture or just sit on the shelf and gather dust. Once I have enough of them I’m sure something will suggest itself.
As you can probably tell from this piece and from my Crab Claw paintings, I have a bit of an obsession with crustaceans and anything else that has claws. I think it probably stems from my love of collecting dead things as a child and of long walks along the beaches in Wales – where there was always an abundant supply of crab parts.

Another Doodle Update

2010-08-10T15:22:00.001-07:00

With lots going on at the moment I’ve not been doing as many of my late night doodles as usual. However, I have just got round to uploading a dozen quick-fire drawings from last week.
The thing that I like about automatic drawing is that at the moment you put pen to paper you don’t know what will appear in front of you. Your brain is just a split second in front of what you are doing – instantly reacting to the mark that you are currently making. Sometimes you slow down and feel that the drawing is going in a certain direction, and at this point it becomes more considered. At other times the marks just fly out onto the paper as if drawn by some external force. And when these ones work out you kinda feel guilty about taking credit for them.
But, as I said before, with this approach they can be a bit hit and miss - so please don’t judge them too harshly.

Addicted to Drawing

2010-08-04T14:45:00.001-07:00

I’m not wishing to knock it but I seem to be addicted to drawing at the moment – maybe it's my way of distracting myself from thinking about other stuff. I’ve just uploaded a few recent drawings to my sketchbook page. Most of them relate to, or are ideas for, the new Orifice Box sculpture project that I’m working on. But they are not the drawings that I mentioned in my previous post. Those ones will appear soon, on my quick-fire drawings page – just as soon as I get round to uploading them.

The Second Orifice

2010-08-03T17:16:00.000-07:00

Here’s some ‘work in progress’ photos of the second piece in my new Orifice Box series. The working title for this one is Horned God Orifice Box (a bit of a mouthful and not that catchy, I admit) because of the branches that grow out of the sides of the box – which remind me a little bit of horns. I know that the box is a little on the small side for anything with deity status but maybe the Horned God doesn’t have that much in the way of worshippers these days. I’ve still not yet decided what the interior of the box will line with. I’m toying with the idea of either hair or very old news print, with drawings over the top. I had thought about having the interior mirrored but I’m not sure if that would add much to the piece. I also have to add the trademark casters.
I think that this new series of work has started to influence my ongoing quick-fire drawing project, as a few of sketches have come out remarkably boxy. I’ll upload them soon so that you can see what I mean. Which reminds me – I must get round to scanning and uploading the next batch of doodles as they are starting to mount up.

Doodle Update

2010-07-28T16:25:00.000-07:00

Please feel free to check out the latest editions to my new series of quick-fire drawings. I’m not sure if it’s an addiction or just a late-night ritual but lately I feel the need to draw before I go to sleep – even when I’m really tired (which obviously shows in some of the doodles). I’m continually updating the site with new sketches but as it takes much longer to scan the buggers than it does to actually draw them, there tends to be a bit of a backlog of images waiting to be uploaded.

Orifice Boxes - New Work

2010-07-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve just started working on a new series of sculptures that I’m hoping will be ready in time for a group show that I and fellow RBS sculptor, Alice Cunningham, are looking to organise later this year in Shoreditch, London. The exhibition is to be an all sculpture event; however, I think it might be nice to have some examples of working drawings on display too. Although it’s early days yet and we haven’t decided on how many artists to include in the show, I have already invited a very talented artist, Gary Martin, who has accepted.
Anyway - back to my new series of sculptures. Basically, I was itching to make something so I started trawling through my pile of old sketchbooks looking for any unrealised projects that I could bring to life, when I came across the above sketch. It is a drawing that I made a few years ago that was inspired by my earlier wall-mounted Orifice sculpture but which was describing an idea for a box sculpture on wheels (no surprise there then). The initial idea was for the box to be cobbled together from a mixture of different bits of wood and odds and ends in a Frankenstein’s monster kinda way. From the photos above, you can see the early stages of the new piece (from the orifice carved from a block of wood, to the completed front panel). As is often the case, it was the production of the work that triggered ideas for spin-off pieces or pieces that would work as a series. In this family group each of the sculptures, while being of varying sizes and dimensions, will have a carved orifice or portal and have something at its centre. This first one is to have a nail-encrusted inner box, not too dissimilar to my previous piece, Nail Box.

Oodles of Doodles

2010-07-11T18:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve just started a series of quick-fire drawings. The initial idea was just to try and draw as fast as I could (without thinking more than a split second ahead) and see what would happen. Most of the doodles are of heads because it just seems to require less concentration to draw a face (something everyone is familiar with) than anything else. And with each of these sketches I’d always start the same way – by drawing an eye as fast as I could, then just seeing where that led. I always find it hard to judge time very accurately when I’m drawing but at each sitting of probably not much more than 20 minutes I’d knock out 10 to 15 of these speed doodles. Although it can be easy to get side-tacked and accidentally start concentrating on what you’re doing – in which case, the drawing looses its fluidity and starts to become a conventional sketch again.
I don’t know if it properly qualifies as automatic drawing but it is fun to step away from the usual high concentration drawing approach for a short while and try something a bit fast and furious. With this method accuracy may go out of the window but you can end up with something quite free or surprising. Some of these pieces work and some of them obviously don't - but either way it is fun to break with the normal practice for a while and see if anything new emerges.

Geneva Art Fair - The Book

2010-06-25T08:34:00.001-07:00

Laurence Longueville who curated last year’s Art Park Fair International in Geneva, Switzerland has just produced a book to commemorate the event. This guide features work by over 22 emerging and established international artists (me being one of them). An image of my life-size model kit sculpture, ‘And When I’m a Man’, appears somewhere in the middle of the catalogue.
To view the book and its contents on-line just click on this link.

Pimping my Prints

2010-06-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

Once again I've been a bit remiss on the old salesman front so I thought it about time that I gave the Spidey Pods prints another mention. Here we go -

The design is based upon an earlier painting of mine (now in the collection of friend and art collector, Adam Stone – hope he doesn’t mind me mentioning that), which itself is based upon a section of an even earlier sketch that I made of a pile of ‘possibly alien’ pods receding into the distance. For some reason I decided to clothe the pods in different bits of the old Spider-man costume – probably just because I was a big Spiderman fan as a kid. And the reason that I drew the pods in the first place? Well that’s a bit of an odd one. After peeling back the skin on a segment of orange one evening (and being amazed at all the tiny pod-like bits that make up that segment) I later on woke up in the middle of the night and quickly tried to make a pencil sketch of what was in my head. However, as I began to draw I think that a few other influences had started to come into play – and I remembered the scene at the end of the original 1956 version of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie where the hero climbs into the back of the truck full of alien pods (oops – spoiler!) and of an old Simon Bisley drawing of the 2000 AD cartoon character, Sláine, standing on a pile of bodies. The idea to clothe the pods in bits of a super hero costume came to me the following day. As well as tying in with my interests in childhood nostalgia, I think that the pattern works both as a way of camouflaging the individual pods and as a kind of deconstruction of the super hero image - but maybe I’m just seeing more than is really there. Either way it seems to tie the whole image together nicely.

Anyway - each print is a signed and numbered (edition of 300), hand-pulled, 3 colour silk screen print on high grade, archival paper. The paper size is 58.6 x 54.2 cm with the image dimensions being 38.7 x 39.4 cm. The boarder at the bottom is slightly larger to allow for the signature and edition number – which also gives it a kind of Polaroid photo look.

Although they can be purchased from various galleries and shops around London, you can get one direct from me at the commission-free price of £100 (UK sterling).
I do have a small number for sale, mounted in custom made, white, box frames (which look amazing) for £150 - which is the cost price for the frame. These framed prints can be collect direct from my Whitechapel, London studio or delivered directly to London addresses. Anywhere outside of London and I can't guarantee that the picture glass will arrive intact so sorry but only unframed prints can be sent to these areas.

With regards to postage, all prints are rolled in acid-free tissue paper and posted in sturdy cardboard postal tubes with sealed plastic stoppers. Postage and packaging is free to UK customers (with a small charge for customers outside the UK - sorry).

If you are interested in purchasing a print please contact me at waynechisnall@yahoo.co.uk

City Stills

2010-06-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

I recently re-discovered some black and white photos that I took of my City sculpture, not long after I had first completed it. My initial idea for the City was for it to be a set for a small 8mm animated film (but it somehow turned itself inside out and became a tower sculpture instead) so these photos were a sort of tribute to the unborn film – ‘stills from a film that doesn’t exist’, if you like.
Having grown up on a diet of strange little dark animations and movies, I think that my sculptural influences probably owe more to cinematography than they do to offer fields of art. As I’m sure many of you can tell, I was always a big fan of people like the Brothers Quay and of Czech animators such as Jan Švankmajer - and the weird dreamlike worlds that they conjured up probably had a lot to do with the way my delicate little mind developed during those formative years.

Elephant Boy

2010-06-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

I love the way our minds works – how we can’t help but see human or animal figures in random patterns or in vegetable or mineral structures. Some people love staring at clouds (oh yeah, I can see a giant poodle in high heals) but I’m always fascinated by the weird things that can be made out in some types of bathroom tiles. I could stare at them for hours. At least that’s the story that I’m sticking to as to why I spend so long in the bathroom.
And why am I waffling on about such nonsense? Well, I was looking through some of my old sketchbooks the other night and I came across a couple of thumbnail sketches of a bit of twig (top image) that I’d picked up somewhere. Looking at the drawings again they reminded me of some sort of John Merrick type creature so I did a quick cartoon sketch and here’s the result.

US Sketchbook Tour

2010-06-13T16:48:00.000-07:00

I’d like to thank Holly Howe for telling me about the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project, which I’ve just signed up to be part of. Basically, the Brooklyn Art Library in America are inviting artists to submit completed sketchbooks (on a variety of themes) and these books will then be exhibited at galleries and museums as they make their way on tour across the country. So far six states, Brooklyn, Austin, San Francisco, Portland, Atlanta and Chicago have signed up to play host to the show. But it is likely that more states will take part before the exhibition starts in March 2011.
After the tour, all sketchbooks will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be bar-coded and available for the public to view.
As I’ve not yet received my sketch book I obviously don’t have anything to show so far (the image above is of a drawing that I did a couple of years ago) but the project’s website does offer each of the participating artists a webpage in which to show off their work – and here’s mine.

Alumni Interview

2010-06-06T10:53:00.001-07:00

Here’s a link to a recent interview that I did for the alumni magazine of my old college. I always find interviews kind of embarrassing because I always come across as quite proper or pompous.

Collaborative Doodles

2010-05-30T17:53:00.001-07:00

Here’s the before and after photos of the second painting that I ‘added to’ as part of the mail art Collaborations project set up by the Helsinki based photographer, Adam Monaghan.
I’m not quite sure what was going through my head when I did this one but I suppose that’s one of the joys and draw backs of starting a painting or drawing without having any fixed intentions – which I suppose would make this one a kind of painted doodle. I’ll be interested to see what it turns into once some of the other artists in the group have added their touches to it.
Although the project is still in its early stages at the moment, more and more international artists have started to take part and the initial results can be viewed by clicking this facebook link.

More-Whale-Less

2010-05-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to let you know that the closing of the latest 'Whaleless' show, KETOS 2.1, at the Civic Aquarium in Milan (where I am exhibiting my 'Poorly Remembered Whale' sculpture) has been put back, and that the exhibition will now close on Sunday 23rd May.
Click here to see more artwork from the show, including this fantastic photograph by Fernanda Veron.

Squidosaurus Rex

2010-05-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

As I’ve been without a studio for a while (and therefore not able to work on any sculptures) I’ve been doing a lot of drawing lately. Even though it was a kind of enforced break from sculpting – with me having to move out of my previous studio due to it being redeveloped – sometimes it’s good to take a break and do something more playful for a while. So I’ve been doing something I love; namely, defacing text books. In this drawing I’ve combined two of my favourite creatures – a T Rex and a Colossus Squid.
I’ve also just found my battered 1870’s copy of ‘The Works of Hogarth’, with 62 illustrations and can’t wait to get scribbling – very Chapman Brothers I know, but what the hell.

My New Studio - YAY!

2010-05-10T15:30:00.000-07:00

After what feels like an eternity of searching (please excuse the histrionics but I've only really had the space to do small drawings and paintings for the last couple of months) I've finally found myself a new studio to work in. Although, admittedly, a little bit more work needs doing to the space before I can start sculpting again - as you can see from the photo which shows my materials and equipment cowering in the corner of the room, waiting for some nice people to come and build a couple of walls around them.
My new studio is on the ground floor of La Ruche, a five story building in Whitechapel, London - just over the road from the Whitechapel Gallery. All five floors are being converted into artists' studios and there will also be a cafe and workshop space on the ground floor. Needless to say, I may have to venture out of my work space every now and then just to conduct quality control checks on the cakes selection in the cafe.
La Ruche is part of HIVE Projects which was launched in November 2009 as an extended arm of T1+2. HIVE Projects works with urban regeneration and heritage sites, together with established and emerging artists.

From Finland With Love

2010-04-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

Here’s the before and after images from the first piece in a mail art project that I’ve just added my personal touch (the tendrils) to. The project was the idea of the photographer and artist, Adam Monaghan, who is now based in Finland. The basic premise of the project is that Adam sends out sets of four 18 x 18 cm paintings/collages (that he has started) to various artists around the world. These artists then add to the works and post them onto another artist in the group, who does likewise. Once an artist feels the work is complete they return to Adam. Eventually, when all the works have been returned, we’ll have a small show somewhere and exhibit the end results. The artists currently taking part in the project are Tony Deleon in New York, Dale Devereux Barker in Ipswich, Katie Waller in Brighton, Kunigunda Dineikaite in Lithuania, Adam Monaghan in Finland and myself here in London.

My Botanical Ramble

2010-04-06T16:25:00.000-07:00

Botanists of The Asphalt from Lukasz Cholewiak on Vimeo.

Apologies in advance for my drunken ramblings ('never drink too much at your own private view' - a rule I always seem to forget) but I've just come across Lukasz Cholewiak's beautifully shot video of last November's Botanists of The Asphalt exhibition. The show was curated by Stephanie Pochet at CAMP in Shoreditch, London and featured work by David Macdiarmid, David London, Ruth Pickard, Aisling Roycroft, Kerim Aytac and myself.

Steam-Powered Fun

2010-04-05T09:29:00.001-07:00

For anyone interested in seeing some of the acts, inventions and fantastic costumes from the recent steampunk event that I took part in at London’s Scala club, here is a four minute clip that appeared on the BBC News. My City sculpture even makes a brief appearance but don’t blink, or you’ll miss it.
And to find out more about White Mischief and the whole steampunk phenomenon check out Boing Boing or one of the many other blogs and websites that focus on this idea of a Victorian age where technology was even more advanced than it is today.

My Last RBS Workshop

2010-04-04T17:36:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos from last Tuesday’s school workshop at the Royal British Society of Sculptors It was the largest class that I’ve worked with so far at the RBS so we divided the children up into two groups. While one group did sketches of the sculptures (that myself and the other artists are currently exhibiting in the Found show), the rest made small sculptures out of found objects and household materials. Then the two groups swapped over. I also got to give a small talk to the kids about my work. And once again, the children didn't cease to amaze me with the wonderful things they managed to produce in such a short space of time. Well done kids!

Whaleless in Berlin

2010-03-31T05:41:00.000-07:00

To give you a little taste of the sort of artwork that will be featuring in the up-coming KETOS 2.1 show at the Civic Aquarium in Milan here is a video clip of an earlier Whaleless show, from when it travelled to Strychnin's Berlin gallery. My sculpture is the wall mounted piece in the glass fronted coffin that appears early on in the video. Although now the number of contributing artist has grown so I imagine that the latest version of the exhibition will be a lot bigger.

Whaleless in Milan

2010-03-28T17:23:00.001-07:00

My Poorly Remembered Whale sculpture is continuing on its tour of Europe and will be shown in the upcoming Ketos 2.1 show as the Whaleless exhibition opens at its latest venue, the Civic Aquarium in Milan, Italy. The show opens on the 14th April, the same day as Milan Design Week, and closes on the 16th May. This will be the largest Whaleless show so far, with over 60 contributing artists.

Click here to see the wide range of artwork being shown, and to find links to more work by each of the exhibiting
Whaleless artists.

If your Italian is up to much, you can check out details of the event on the
Milan Civic Aquarium’s website (and maybe you can tell me what it says)

Whaleless Facebook Group