Between The Lines: Surrealist Sketches, Uncanny Inks and Impossibly Detailed Drawings

All Visual Arts, King’s Cross is a gallery with a unique taste: their shows heavy with the dark, the bizarre and the mysterious, the works always fresh, unique and sublimely crafted.

This spring AVA is saturated with surrealist sketches, uncanny inks and impossibly detailed drawings. Not just limited to the eight AVA represents, over 21 artists feature in this vast show – ranging from the sublimely grotesque erasure of contemporary German artist Dennis Scholl, to the carefully contoured illustrations of the infamous Salvador Dali. For a show entirely based upon a single medium, the variety is astonishing; as we see here, drawing does not only refer to graphite doodles but instead stands for anything put on a page by expert craftsmanship and the cultivated imagination. AVA’s shows often display a penchant for the bizarre and Between the Lines is no different, with artists from across the globe and centuries brought together by a common theme….

See the full review on Aesthetica, here:

http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/blog/between-the-lines-all-visual-arts-london/

Saturday’s sunshine substitutes…

As is stretched and opened my eyes this morning, I peeked out of my window hoping for a few weekend rays of sunshine and was let down…Birmingham has maintained it’s usual grey for another day. Boo… But here are a few happy little prints from I Love Doodle on Etsy guaranteed to brighten up your days – courtesy of my brilliant manfriend who sent me the below I’ll Never Let Go print yesterday and without whose support I’d probably be falling apart without at the moment! That’s the sickly part over, promise.

Never Let Go

Bee Happy

You can can

Moonstache!

Dandy Lions

That’d be me, hiding my head under the covers on Monday morning.

Three more weeks then I’m free and off to Pariiiiiiii’!

Anyone else feeling like their head’s stuck in a higher education vice at the mo…?

 SMILE. Tomorrow’s Sunday. The best day of the week, always. x

Gemma Correll wrote a book about me.

More from Comica Comiket!

 Not only was I bringing my dear friend coffee on Saturday, I also got to have a good snoop at Comica Comiket and discovered this illustrator, Gemma Correll. I’m not normally into childlike drawings but I sort of fell in love with these Zines and prints – mainly because they actually narrate my life. It’s uncanny.

I am the above image at the moment, last three weeks of uni are killing me. Meh.

Anyway here’s a little insight into the problems of scatty, disorganised, hypochondriac, creative types.

And me.

…I leave a trail of these like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs…

…hypochondria vastly increased by third year stress levels…

…cats are far more interesting than silly pretty boys with tattoos on their necks and deep Vs…

…at least you can always rely on one thing to make it all better!

That is why tonight will be red wine fuelled, yay!

More pugs, cats, dry wit and less me-related-stories from Gemma Correll can be found here.

Popshot Magazine…young poet WLTM enthusiastic illustrator.

Trying to get into a magazine..? Failing to get an Internship with any of the big names (like me!)..? Like drawing or writing things…? Popshot is the place to start!

This British bi-annual magazine brings together contemporary poets and illustrators from across the globe, clawing back poetry from a reputation as that stuffy wordy rubbish best kept in the classroom.

…how it works…

Popshot only accepts poetry for a few months every year and at the moment they’re closed for submissions – but only ’til June which gives you a couple of months to bash out a few decent lines. However they’re always looking for new illustrators so you can email them with your website and they’ll take a peek! Those lucky enough to be chosen as a Popshot illustrator are sent each new edition’s chosen anthology and are asked to produce an image for each poem, next one of these is chosen and bada bing, bada boom there we have a set of sharp poetry and edgy illustrations to match: Popshot!

The Childhood, Love, Power and Liberate issues are still available to buy at just £6 a piece which is pretty good for what’s basically a small illustration paperback if you ask me.

I’m going to get started on some poetry – I’m not much of an illustrator but apparently I can do words all right.

Dan Hillier…”Hello kindly visitor…”

I first saw Dan Hillier’s work in a friend’s parents’ living room over the fireplace, I thought it was a quaint victoriana etching until I noticed his horned dandies and the tentacles sprawling from his sweethearts. I didn’t ever bother to find out the name of the artist until I noticed his work splashed across a tent at Hackney Wicked Festival  last year, his work’s a great mix of actually impressive draughtsmanship and the surreal.

Here’s what he has to say…”Hello, kindly visitor.  Light your pipe and have a wander through my website why don’t you? Most of my work is made by collaging elements of found Victoriana and drawing with ink using a dip-nib pen. I’ve been working as a full-time artist since 2006 and sell my work personally from this site and from The Sunday Upmarket each week, and also through solo and group shows. “

Spiffing, what a splendid chap.

Hope you like his stuff, it’s nice to see an artist who can actually draw these days…

I must have of these, it’ll make my Tesco shop absolutely bloody marvellous!

Look! I found an art! …take me home…

After putting up our work in Bournville on Friday, I went for a wander around the Visual Arts studios and stumbled upon this little beautiful but dark set of pieces. The Visual Arts course is free to any media, technique, concept… so the work the students come up with is diverse and really very interesting. This was my favourite piece, but I searched high and low for clues to the identity of the artist to no avail. If she or he sees this then I hope you don’t mind me showing off your work, just thought it was slick, well presented and deserving of a post (and I’m slightly jealous of it); and if anyone knows whose work it is then please let me know.

Embroidered illustration. Enjoy…

Take me home. The Bible? The handkerchief? The shirt?                                                      Mysterious.

 

I don’t know if this little guy was meant to be there… but it’s oddly one of my favourite bits. Morbid much?

The Chapmans at the Museum of Childhood: Night frights come to life.

Since seeing the Chapman brothers’ exhibitions at White Cube earlier on in the summer, and more recently a particular piece at Frieze this year, my interest in this strange pair has grown and grown so I headed off to the Museum of Childhood with a couple of friends (and not just to try on Victorian maid’s outfits and be thrown off a rocking horse – under 12s only my arse!).

My Giant Colouring Book is on until mid-January and although it’s only a little exhibition of around 20 prints, it’s still most definitely worth a look. The prints are displayed at a slightly disturbingly child-friendly level for such grotesque images and are mostly born out of innocent colouring book pages, meant for quaint images of Bo Peep and her sheep: not exactly the Chapman’s forte.

It’s a refreshing and simple insight into the imaginations of two artists whose work is usually large-scale, expensive and pretty commercial really. The pair fascinate me but also drive me mad with their work; aesthetically I love their beautifully gruesome style, stunning but disgusting, but conceptually it all seems too ‘built to shock’ for me. A bit contrived. But contrived this exhibition is not, so have a look and just don’t jump on any rocking horses while you’re at it- not even the big one, apparently it’s not for grown-ups hrmph.

…and although the rocking horses may not be adult-friendly, they can’t stop you from dressing up!

I can goddamn well fit into children’s clothing if I want to!