Pick Me Up 2012 - Kibbo Kift III and Heavy Pencil

Pick Me Up is back at Somerset house and so am I playing some musical music and doing a bit of live drawing.

First up is Supermundane's Kibbo Kift featuring a whole load of illustrator people performing poems and songs! The last two Kibbo Kift's have been awesome so it will be nice to take it to a new and grander venue. Should be a great evening featuring all of the above. I am excited. It's on the 22nd March from 6:30 until 9:30pm. Tickets can be bought here LINK

The following thursday eve I will be back amongst another whole load of talented people. I will be playing songs in a band featuring the mighty Andrew Rae, the stupendous Jim Stoten and the powerhouse that is Owen Gildersleeves. More Info below.

Thursday 29th March Heavy Pencil at Pick Me Up

Pete Fowler, Jim Stoten, Nick White, Luke Best, Miles Donovan, Andrew Rae, Owen Gildersleeve, Chrissie Macdonald, Lauren Davies, Anna Lomax and Jess Bonham

6.30pm-9.30pm Entrance included in fair ticket £8 or multiple entry pass £12 or £6 concession.

As well as the Thursday events I will have my Heart Limited Edition Snake tee for sale in the Pick me Up shop. There's always some great stuff to see and do at Pick Me Up. I for one am particularly excited about seeing Peepshow's Museum of Objects & Origins.

www.somersethouse.org.uk/pickmeup

Now Or Ever

Tomorrow I head off to Belgium for the install of 'Now Or Ever' a group show at Ter Dilft in Bornem. There will be work from Ephameron (BE), Joanna Hellgren (SE), Louis Reith (NL), Nous Vous (UK), Ward Zwart (BE) and myself (UK). It looks to be an exciting show, with plenty of space to have fun with. I have been creating and collating various bits and bobs to show, including some frames with pictures in, some 3d pieces and whole lot of heads. Fingers crossed everything makes it there in one piece or just the correct amount of pieces.

The show opens this saturday 17th march with live performances from those Nous Vous guys and is on till the 5th May.

A Perfect Day

Four original artworks from my Nobrow published book 'People I've never met & Conversations I've never had' are to be shown in the excellent group show 'A Perfect Day' in Amsterdam which opens today. The show is the continuation of the Apexart exhibit 'Lots of things like this' that took place in 2008 in New York and which was curated by author / publisher / artist man Dave Eggers. A perfect day carries on with the original exhibition's focus of drawings that mix text and image and the funny and it looks like a winner. I am pretty darn excited to be showing my work alongside such greats as Glen Baxter, Chris Johanson, Raymond Pettibon, David Shrigley, Simon Evans, I could go on. Ok, Saul Steinberg, Royal Art Lodge, Jeffrey Brown, Mr T from the A team. Ok the last one I made up but still I was impressed. If you find yourself in Amsterdam due to a holiday or because you live there then you should go and then you can let me know if I'm really in the show with those guys or if they've just put my stuff in a toilet or something.

A Perfect Day.

The Maestro's Loss

Normally at this time of the year (the start) I would post all the things I forgot to post during the last year but instead I thought I'd start as I mean to go on and post something published in 2012. This Illustration was for the Observer and came out on New Years day which also happens to be the first day of the year. The drawing accompanied a short story by Hari Kunzru called 'The Maestro's Loss' and was / is a great story to try and Illustrate. Go read it over here. The Cembalo Scrivano that the story has at it's centre is a fascinating contraption and you can really imagine a writer having to push down hard on those thick wooden keys.

As you can see the piece was printed up nice and big which was pretty exciting when I opened up the paper on Sunday, though perhaps others were probably cursing me for getting newspaper ink all over their fingers and elbows. 

I also got to include a few chalk drawings of the typewriter as a spot. Noice.

V&A Friday Late and Collectionistas.

I am involved in some things this weekend that should be brills. Firstly this friday evening 25th November I will be at the V&A as part of Friday Late - No Strings. In the words of the people form the V&A who wrote this -

Friday Late No Strings explores the world of contemporary graphics, typography and illustration through the lens of independent publishing. Collate your own zine with Publish and Be Damned or illustrate a 1-page comic with Nobrow. Witness 150 pages being read aloud in the Visual Editions Mass Reading Event and enjoy talks by Simon Garfield, Elias Redstone, Tom Keeley and friends of Eye magazine. Take part in screen-printing and bookbinding workshops and enjoy the sounds and visuals of DJ/VJ combination David Wilson and Sam Potter in the Grand Entrance.

I will be there as part of Nobrow who are taking over and curating the cafe. I will be tattooing people with an image of either an Animal, Vegetable or Mineral. There looks like lots of good workshops, talks and things to look at as well as me scribbling on people's arms. It's on from 6.30pm-10pm and it's free. More info here

The second thing is Collectionistas a Risograph print exhibition at The Mill co Project on Vyner st.

The exhibition curated by Kavel Rafferty is all about collecting and I am one of 25 artists / collectors who have created an image for the exhibition. My print is called 'Things in Bottles that aren't ships' and shows the future of my current collection 'Things in bottles that aren't ships'. (Above is a crop.)

The private view is this saturday 26th Nov from 12 - 7pm, where there will be refreshments and real records played by real record collectors. The prints (printed by Hato press) will be for sale at the very reasonable price of £15 and at limited edition of 30. The Millo Co Project is Here.

Perhaps see you at one of these!

Handmade and Bound 2011

Yo! I will be sharing a stall with the stupendous Mr Sam Rees this sunday at Handmade and Bound. The book art and zine fair has moved from to the new location of St Brides near Fleet st. As the above poster says it is open 12 - 6 and should have some fine folk selling super folded-paper based artworks.

K.K.II + Lmnop Q&A (The Alphabet post)

This saturday sees the second Kibbo Kift event held at The Victoria in Dalston in London. It is a night of musical music spoken spoken word all done by people who normally draw instead of these things. I will be playing some hastily made up songs and then watching proper bands Glow Wing and Fever Dream show me how it's meant to be done. The night is organised by the whirlwind that is Supermundane and features Will Edmonds and Nic Burrows (two thirds of Nous Vous) as well as Sarah Lippett (half of Crayon Legs) and Adrian Fleet (100% percent of Adrian Fleet). There will be a set of limited edition postcards by the performers and a badge for the first 100 hundred peoples.

More info here but not here. Do come it'll be fun.

In more work related news I did a Q & A with the fine people over at the LMNOP Shop who have a lovely shop in Brighton and great online one too. If you want to hear me chat about collecting, artists that I like and other ramblings head here but not here and definitely not here or here.