Clowns on the rampage

Naughty

It could be me

Something I made last night for a little exhibition. It will have some text on it but will add that later. They're supposed to be a gang of probable crims in a (rainbow!) police line up but actually turned out looking more like a bunch of kraftwerk-esque kids and purveyors of pared down germanic industrial electro. Whatcha gonna do.

Don't

Fighting Talk

Banjo Joe

Before.

After.

Electro Boyz

Don't look now.

Don't think.

Stand strong and clap.

Slightly reworked it.

Do it.

Don't Panic!

From a little book I made on imperatives. I think I was sort of thinking of that Anthony Burrill poster 'Keep Calm and Carry On'.

Inside I'm clapping

Thataway

'Advance on several fronts at once'.

Tom

Tom the life drawing model, missed out his special alice in wonderland tattoos though (the disney version).

Vices

I thought I may as well make something from all the old fag packets I accumulate rather than just letting them amass then chuck them. These photos are from some old slides I bought in a junk shop a while ago, got a whole bag of them and I like this one in particular - just a whole lot of guys walking into the sea together (they're surfing I think). It's quite a strange image in some ways. Anyway, I've got lots of these so will put more up soon. At least defacing them like this means I don't have to look at the foreboding warnings and makes me feel less bad about knowing I've smoked my way through all of them. Yes, denial is obviously the best plan.

Slip!

From a new little book I'm making which continues the overheard quips thing. I heard some grungy kids saying 'Yeh and then this guy appeared in like, a tabard? And he was like, running with an onion? We thought maybe he was in a race or something so we tried to make him slip up. Ha. Yeh. Don't think he was though, think he was just mental'. Classic. What's wrong with jogging about in a tabard with an onion for company if that's what grabs you? He possibly was slightly bonkers but in an endearing kind of way (maybe). Nevermind, nice idea - thanks kids.

Brillo babe

Reworked this. The text will be 'So I saw a man pushing a buggy and eating a scotch egg at the same time and the thing is right, the crumbs kept fallin onto the little 'uns head 'till it had this big orange brillo pad hair goin on'. I like the idea of a baby being scotch-egged.

Rah!

Silly thing, done in about 5 minutes. Underneath the layers of brylcreem and the corporate veneer, he is a python wrestlin macho man! Or the tragically now de-mulleted Wolf from seminal 90's Saturday night faux brawn-fest tv, Gladiators. (Wolf trivia - after briefly retaining his celebrity and 'even appearing several times on The Weakest Link'!' , has now retreated from that blinding lime light to run a kiddies playgroup and reconsider his mullet. Whadda guy.)

Three

Not sure this works especially well, bit muddy maybe? Anyway, used a photo I found in an old magazine of these three crazy kids and they looked like they were sharing a slightly risque joke so I thought - I'll have a go at messing about with that!

Leaflet

Something I did a while ago and just found lying about. Thought I may as well put it up too - it's a design for a leaflet, but without the text yet on it. Obviously it has the requisite amount of retro exclamations on it (rad! wicked! fresh!), along with horse men and cow headed babies. All very odd. Above is a detail of the right hand side which is my favourite and was thinking of adapting it in some way to become an image in it's own right.. we'll see if that happens.

Power woe!

So I made a series of posters and a little book in response to a brief of 'In distress'. Just played around with it really and had fun with it, no pretence of a solid concept or anything. And used lots of little rainclouds too. I wanted to explore various states of woe and despondence but also to team that with a darkly comic edge, so I coupled the images with lyrics from some rad and very special power ballads. Those tunes really do have some of the best quotes. Found some pictures in a 60's sewing magazine of hugely grinning people with sad eyes and in cheese-tastic poses, clad in heavy knitwear which set off the quotes nicely. Also, found a book on dobermans - complete with stickers! - which I wanted to use but it didn't prove quite as handy. I'm saving it for a rainy day. Or a project on dog love. I want to take this project a bit further by using some old slides I found and projecting the images onto people, then also collaging and painting onto their skin - on top of the projection to make a sort of moving collage. It's all about exploring mark making on the body, scarring and the manifestations of emotional well being on the physical body, which is quite a common thing apparently. Soon.




The image above - 'I think I'll go smash my face on my knees now' - the quote isn't from a song but a is a little sardonic quip from a friend and I thought it was vintage and just really had to be used. Not a specific distress I guess but nevermind. (The little bit of text at the top says 'She's a funny old bird alright'. Didn't mean it about my friend though, that would just be rude. The other bit of faint pencil text you probably can't read says 'She smashed her face up', lots of times.)





I found these magazines lying 'round in the studio and they had all these brilliantly gauche ads in the back for sex lines and that. It was all slightly sad and silly and funny too. So I played around with the idea of medicating loneliness with sex and teamed that with a slightly adapted quote from a tune by seminal power music makers Journey. Yeh! I cut up some of the phone line ads too and collaged it on. The repeated scrawled sentence on this one is 'But it never numbs it for long'. Should really start using a pen for this stuff shouldn't I?






'George he loves them mutts.' Not sure about the red stripe, think it's a bit wrong somehow? But quite pleased with the trio of dog up the top. I had this idea about someone who only really has their dog/pet for company but holds out forlornly for something more. Also, this (and other images which I'll put up soon - baited breath!) sprung from a half joking conversation I had with someone in the studio about doing a project on dog porn, an idea based entirely on my special doberman book - I decided against doing that in the end though.

Apathetic cows, risque cocklers, mulleted men.

Hello! I suppose this is it then. Not much to say at the moment other than that I plan to make a noble attempt to post on here regularly.. 'Attempt' being the key word here. For now, I thought I'd post some old stuff to get rid of what at the moment looks like a looming nothingness, and fill it with some of my favourite slightly 80's rainbow stripes and the like. I hope you find whatever does make it up on here rad and totally wizard! Yeh!
Or just quite interesting.