Have You Zine...

A couple of months ago, I saw an advert for workshop event being held by two guys called Zineswap at the Amersham Arms. It was a Saturday morning, a sunny one at that and I left my house with a book on mountains, a scalpel and a cutting mat, and my friend India. I had heard of Zineswap but only because I have some sort of photographic memory and remembered their name from a flyer I picked up in December.

So I turned up on time, complying with one of my better traits, to see the gallery upstairs decked with tables strewn with hundreds of zines. Stapled, handstitched, folded, paperclipped. Black on white, white on black, red on yellow. A4, A5, A6, square. Paper, card, cd, photocopy. A comprehensive library of handmade publications and the epitomy of the resurgence of zine culture.

I approached the spritely blond one, sporting a heavy metal vest and animated limbs and introduced myself. He said his name was Gordon, his deft Brum accent trickling through his teeth. We happily conversed for a good third of an hour, he invited my to stretch my knowledge of the sub-cult.

Soon, the other one, suiting a slightly more sensible stripey tee, dawdled over and was introduced as Rob. He expained to me the birth of Zineswap, and I became increasingly excited to hear about their plans for the day and over the next few months. More workshops, applying for funding among other shit.

The way Zineswap works is: they request people to send in at least three copies of their zines about absolutely anything, then they put one in a library, hold one for the display table for their shows and put the remaining in a box which is taken to shows and are available for swapping with other publishers.

WEBSITE //

As more South London types began filing through the door, including some fine artists, events promoters and band members, the workshop began. The agenda held true two aspects of the brief; to make a live zine where anyone present could contribute, no matter their artistic lean, and to meet those with like-minds and talk to whoever caught your words. The interactive experiment was a success, a concoction of collage and a fathom of photocopies. Below are some of the double spreads put into the final PDF document (which is available for download from the zineswap website under past events.)

















Here are some photos from the event.













Since meeting these fine fellows, I have kept in contact with them and helped them with a show a few weeks ago at the Albany Theatre in Deptford. They are currently doing the rounds all over London, spreading the Z word and building on their already impressive catalogue of publications, which is only going to grow in direct proportion to their popularity.

I am happy that I can associate myself with such an exciting project, and they have just confirmed that they will be holding their second workshop in the Tate Modern in September. So I suggest you remember the name (not that it's an easy one to forget) and get making.

Itchy Fingers

I'm in an extremely good mood today, because after checking the website of Leeds-based art collective, Kraffhics, I noticed my name just sitting there amongst some of the hottest collage artists of the moment. I'm going to be in a book curated by Leemun Smith! I'm really excited and chuffed that my work was chosen for such a publication, as this gives me the perfect opportunity to show what I can do on a larger scale. Watch this space, and keep checking my blog over the next couple of weeks for fresh work.

SCAFFOLD SANS

UPDATE //

Following my drawings and subsequent digital mock ups of the specimen font, the obvious next step was to introduce another dimension. Using just straws and some ropey string, I recreated the forms looking particularly at geometry and trying to stay true to the observational drawings that began the whole project.

These are indeed simple mock-ups but, jeez, they took a fucking while. The finicky rope-tying was tedious but I think the results will help me to realize the prospect of actually creating the typeface from scaffolding.

I may make a few more of these but I don't want to dwell because it is now important I move onto perspective and perhaps a slightly larger scale.

TEST

test 2

TEST

test 1

LIQUIDS RESEARCH

Since Justine and I first thought about making a short film together, we have been putting our heads together to find a subject that is unassumingly mundane but can be transformed into a spectacle that arouses intrigue and beauty. These are a few of the films I have come across in the past few days after playing with a ferrofluid at the Science Museum last week.

Liquids, obviously are ubiquitous, but it is not the aesthetics of these experiments that really have us hooked; it's the unusual physical properties that they hold. For example salt water will not freeze until it makes contact with air and cornstarch paste possesses the appearance of a liquid but the impact of a solid.

Today, I bought cornstarch and began to play with the substance that is known as gloop, and Oobleck, which has been adopted by popular culture from a Dr. Seuss. It is scientifically known as a non-Newtonian fluid, which is an allusion to the ambiguous nature of the substance's viscosity. Oobleck and other 'shear thinckening fluids' are being tested on their effectiveness to stop bullets.

BRAIN VOMIT

Man, Woman, Machine.

Coming into the final stages of my project now. Following the collages below, i began to three-dimensionalise my ideas. Focusing on the prospect of man exhausting the art of inventing, due to the intense rate at which technology is progressing, I have explored the realms of failed inventions.

Taking a DIY stance, with tongue in cheek, I am employing readymades as the basis for my prototypes. To contextualise them, I will be doing a photoshoot and a catalogue to go in the exhibition. These shots show testing out the figurines that interact with the objects and give them a slightly surreal presence.

Adopting a very hand-made style, I am simultaneously putting the garden shed designers on a pedestal and commenting on the obsolence of these individuals' EUREKA moments.

More to follow.

Progress.

A handful of collages about inventions solving problems we never thought we had.
Apologies for the shit photos. I'll reshoot when it's light.

PROJECTILE //

Taking my octopus font to 3 dimensions.

When I saw a slide projector at a jumble sale last weekend for just £15, I would have to have been mentally ill not to invest. Okay, it was a bitch to lug back from Berkshire (BERKSHIRE) but so worth it. I bought some slide cases and made my own slides by printing some digitally manipulated characters onto acetate.

The idea behind the shoot was to recreate the appearance of tattoos on the body. Contortion of shapes; the way the ink wraps around the torso and limbs in a seductive manner. The octopus holds much symbolism in Japanese mythology, and my research has pointed me in the direction of a plethora of contemporary tattoos of octopii, which both borrow from ancestors and portray the current trend of anthropomorphous designs.

Another inspiration was the discovery of octopus wrestling, a truly odd sport which originated in Japan and I found through my research of the painter Hokusai. The idea of human and cephalopod grappling on a linoleum floor whilst candy pink symbols flash up on the screen and an adjudicator watches on intently (without blinking, might I add) was simultaneously enthralling and repelling.

I took characters from my 'Fisherman's Wife' font and made a digital collage, focussing on the scale and orientation of the letters. My intention was to create a canvas from which I could extract sections for my slides. I abstracted the characters in order to remove them from the context of a font and replace them in one of far more intrigue. Hugh modelled for me, and we had a pretty successful shoot because of his omnipresent want to help a brother out. Together we positioned his upper body within the projections so as to 'wear' the shapes. I chose to shoot in black and white because the lighting was so dramatic that it created an aura of unworldiness in my living room.